Real Life Psych Research Blog

The Psychology of Essential Oils

I’m sure you have heard of them by now: essential oils. Scented oils that are basically guaranteed to help with things like anxiety, stress, depression, balance, even arthritis, by putting oils in a diffuser or rolling them right on your body. Ever since essential oils started to become popular in the recent years, I was skeptical. My initial response, before even trying them, was that this must be a placebo effect: people think and believe they work, and so they do (ah, the power of the mind). However, the more I heard people swearing by them, the more tempted I was to try them out myself (ah, the power of persuasion). My Experience My thoughts going in: excited, but skeptical. I work with

The Psychology of Witnessing Trauma

It’s been a tough week. I went back and forth about the lens I wanted to take with this blog post concerning the Las Vegas shooting. I wrote my initial post on Tuesday, and when I went back to edit it I could see my emotions all over the page. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As I first wrote, emotions are often a catalyst for action and change. However, expressing my emotions the way I did in my first draft was not going to result in what I want for this blog. So here I go again. We were all witness to a community trauma Sunday, October 1st. Even if you weren’t there, you saw the news, heard others talking, and probably read some impassioned social media posts the next day. What happened

The Psychology of Flexibility

The Psychology of Self-Care

The Psychology of Life after a Near Death Experience

The Psychology of Essential Oils

The Psychology of Witnessing Trauma