Welcome to Dr. Zender’s Psychology Today blog, The New Normal.
Traumatic accidents can seriously impact every area of your life. However, with the proper information and support you—or someone you care about—can reclaim the life you were meant to live. In Dr. Zender’s blog, you will find tools, tips and ideas to facilitate your recovery process —tools that will help you to cope with your physical and psychological injuries and conditions. You will learn to do more than just survive, you will learn to thrive!
A note to auto insurance companies: You will find valuable information here that will help you better serve your insured customers. In fact, when patients get the proper supports, needed care and treatment up front, they need far fewer resources in the long run than if support is withheld. That translates into a big win-win for your company and a boost to your bottom line!
The Mental Health Benefits of Dance
Numerous studies have explored the mental health benefits of both physical exercise and listening to music. Not surprisingly, dance therapy has also been found to have a positive impact on mental health, according to recent research conducted at Goldsmiths, University of London. What contributes to dance's powerful effect on the brain? It may have to do with the interaction that [...]
The Path to Recovering From a Traumatic Brain Injury
As we mark Brain Injury Awareness Month, which occurs in March of each year, I'm heartened to see progress in the attention given to the needs of TBI patients through new research initiatives, books dedicated to recovery, and more extensive resources within the TBI community. Still, much about healing the brain after trauma remains a mystery. As we continue to [...]
Understanding the Concussion Symptoms You May Not Expect
On top of the well-known symptoms you may experience after a head injury—including short-term memory deficits, difficulty focusing and concentrating, fatigue, noise and light sensitivity, headaches, vomiting or nausea, vision problems, balance issues, emotional dysregulation, and sleeping disturbances—there are a host of other lesser known effects to brain and body functioning that can occur. These symptoms can continue for months [...]
The “Parts” of Trauma
Making Peace with Psychological Injury According to the Oxford English dictionary, one of the definitions of the word trauma is “personal injury”. Defining, describing and sharing our individual experiences of trauma has become part of the collective consciousness of humanity, paving the way for healing to occur. One innovative approach to working with and healing trauma developed over the past [...]
Navigating Stress Illnesses
Many terms have been popularized over the decades to denote illnesses that appear to have their causal origins not in identifiable physical ailments, but in overwhelmingly painful emotions or unmanageable stress. Terms such as psychosomatic, somatoform, psychophysiological, functional, and others have been employed to describe illness for which there is no identified physical cause. Read more on Psychology Today
The Mystery of Long Covid
I recently spent two days in continuing education with one of the country’s top experts on mind-body perspectives on chronic pain. The focus of the training was on understanding the differences between structural and neurocircuit sources of pain. It turns out that many chronic pain problems can be understood as a brain coding problem related to the brain turning on [...]
