10 Best Sleep Apps to Help You Get Some Shuteye
If you find yourself rolling around in bed for hours, unable to fall asleep, it’s safe to say your sleep schedule is a little f*cked up. And when you’re missing precious sleep time, your health, happiness, and productivity levels plummet over time.
While research indicates that having your phone in bed can disrupt sleep, there are certain sleep-tracking apps that can actually be beneficial to you building healthier habits. These 6 apps provide helpful feedback so you can make lifestyle adjustments to enhance your total sleep time.
The best TV shows to binge watch over Thanksgiving, according to psychologists
“Planet Earth”
Watch time: Around 12 hours (2 seasons, 17 episodes at around 45 minutes each)
Where to watch: Netflix
Why it’s good: It’s the series that put nature documentaries on the map and it’ll have you fully immersed the moment you tune in. “Research and experience both find one of the most effective ways to manage stress or stressful events continues to be distraction, preferably healthy distraction,” says clinical psychologist Kevin Gilliland. “If you can’t get to nature, bring it to your TV room; soak in awe, wonder, laughter, and who knows, plan your next vacation.”
Wondering When to Say “I Love You?” Here’s How to Know if You’re Ready
Dr. Kevin Gilliland, Psy.D., a licensed clinical psychologist, who counsels couples, finds that our vulnerabilities threaten to deceive us. “If you’re coming out of a difficult season in your life, you may find someone who brings you a lot of happiness, quickly feeling the impulse to say ‘I love you.’ But much of the time what you’re really saying is, ‘I’m hurting, and I’m lonely, and I need to be linked up with someone who will care about me,’” he says. “While it may feel good in the moment, misdirected feelings can create problems later on.”
How to Quit Vaping: Strategies from Experts and People Trying to Quit
If you’re a vape user, you know how good it feels to get your vape fix.
But if you want to quit e-cigarettes, especially after a wave of vaping-related lung injuries, it’s often a difficult road.[1] Whether you’re an adult who wants to stop vaping or a student trying to quit JUUL amidst peer pressure, it’s important to research how you can quit for good.
But how does one quit vaping? At the moment, there is a major research gap for effective vaping cessation methods. In a WebMD interview with Linda Richter, director of policy research and analysis at the Center on Addiction, she states…
4 Ways To Be A Good Listener To Our Peers
Being able to have someone who is able to listen is important. In her book “Is There No Place For Me?”, Kate Richards provides an example of how we can approach the conversation:
“Do you want to tell me about it? We can sit and talk. We can just sit. I’ll sit here with you and hold you in this space and I’ll listen because I care and I won’t let go of you until you’re ready to walk in the world again on your own.”
How can we be attentive? We should not be on our phones as our friend is sharing about a tough week they had. We should only pursue the conversation further only if they are comfortable talking about it. Non-verbal language such as nodding can assure our friend that we are following the story they are telling. If we are comfortable, they too would be comfortable to share. If we were fidgety and acting uninterested in the conversation, this would be discouraging for people to open up and talk.
Depression and Anxiety Are on the Rise in Young People, but Is Social Media to Blame?
If screens and social media are this central to the lives of millennial women, you can imagine the hold they must have on Generation Z, the first to come of age in this era. Americans spend an average of 11 hours each day interacting with some form of media, with those ages 18 to 34 spending nearly a third of that time on their phones. At the same time, adolescents and young adults are suffering from mood disorders and suicidal thoughts in greater numbers than any previous generation — a trend experts believe may have something to do with the way they relate to the world around them.
Still, some doctors — including Kevin Gilliland, PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist and executive director of Innovation360 — feel that the effects of screens and social media are highly individual. POPSUGAR asked Dr. Gilliland how to reclaim control and even find what he believes we’re all searching for: authentic connection.