How a Successful Relationship Quiets the Mind

It is hardly news to suggest that neurotic people find comfort in being loved. People who struggle with depression, anxiety and OCD often experience isolation as a result of these conditions. Sharing them with a partner who can withstand such gale force emotions is often a great relief. Now someone has studied just how great this relief can be. A study published in the Journal of Personality followed several couples over many months to see how they handled neurotic behavior. The results were encouraging:

The scientists found that, while in a romantic relationship, neurotic behavior seemed to gradually decrease over time . . . For one thing, they receive support from each other, said Christine Finn. Secondly, the world of inner thought plays a crucial role: “The positive experiences and emotions gained by having a partner change the personality — not directly but indirectly — as at the same time the thought structures and the perception of presumably negative situations change,” Finn said.

Of course these researchers have ignored the far thornier question of how to land a stable relationship when you feel like a fragile and self-admonishing bundle of nerves.

At PPSC, we offer relationship therapy to help bridge this gap, offering patients the tools they need to make sense of their romantic relationships. Issues such as frequent arguments and problems of trust are often the product of each individual’s emotional history.

If you’d like to build healthy relationships and discover more productive ways to work through difficulties with your partner, please contact the New York relationship therapy experts of PPSC today.

So Funny, It’s Psychotic

It’s not often that researchers take the world of stand up comedy especially seriously. Which makes one recent study all the more remarkable: Researchers in the British Journal of Psychiatry have discovered that comics score significantly higher than control groups for so-called psychotic personality traits. Some of this study is perhaps self-evident. The findings that comics tend to be somewhat disorganized, and that they chafe at conformist pressure, qualify as something close to conventional wisdom. But of the four traits associated with psychosis, one in particular stood out to us: “‘introvertive anhedonia’ – reduced ability to feel social and physical pleasure.”

This is yet more confirmation of the deep link between depression and comedy, a phenomenon which has been described in many places over many years. Theories abound about what lies behind this association – is the comedy simply a coping mechanism to leaven the misery, or do both qualities spring from a similar emotional place? Whatever the explanation, it seems likely that no two people ever arrive at a humorous worldview in precisely the same way.

Depression therapy can be a great relief to people whose talents are undermined by periods of deep despair. If you’d like to find a therapist in New York who can help unpack your own feelings of “introvertive anhedonia,” please contact the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center here today.