Behaviors - Reflectd - bringing psychology studies to life

Overthinking: Common Questions (and Answers) from Therapy

Simon Moesgaard — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:41:01 +0000

Overthinking often lurks beneath the surface of the struggles people bring to therapy. Yet we rarely pause to ask: What do we hope to gain by thinking so much? Most people don’t overthink because they enjoy it. They do it because it feels useful: a way to prepare, avoid mistakes, or find certainty in uncertainty. […]

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If You’re Not Playing, You’re Missing a Great Capacity

Simon Moesgaard — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 21:08:30 +0000

Play is wonderful. It may not rhyme with efficiency or productivity. In modern life, productivity has become a moral imperative, right? Time must be justified. Even rest is expected to “pay off.” In that context, play can seem pointless. Yet when play disappears, mental rigidity increases. Research consistently links play-like states to cognitive flexibility, emotional […]

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Believing That Thoughts Are Important to Control Increases the Perception of Stress, Experiment Shows

Simon Moesgaard — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 20:24:35 +0000

In 2017, Capobianco, Morrison, and Wells conducted an experiment to asses how the belief in the importance of thoughts (a negative metacognitive belief) affects people’s stress responses. 75 students (54 women, 21 men) participated in the experiment, and they went through the Trier Social Stress Test, in which they were given a short period to prepare […]

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Physical Activity Should Be a Key Component in the Treatment of Depression and Anxiety, Review of 1000 Trials Shows

Simon Moesgaard — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 19:33:04 +0000

Is physical activity really as effective as antidepressants and psychotherapy for treating symptoms of depression and anxiety? The largest review so far, summing up the results of over 1000 studies (all randomized controlled trials), shows that the effects of physical activity on symptoms of depression and anxiety are similar or even slightly better than the […]

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Inside the Mind of a Metacognitive Therapist – Part 4 Get Rid of or Get Good at?

Simon Moesgaard — Tue, 02 May 2023 13:18:58 +0000

Sometimes when I ask people about their goal of attending therapy, they might say that they want to get rid of negative thoughts and feelings, such as anxious or depressive thoughts. At other times, they might say that they want to get better at dealing with certain situations. If the goal is to get rid […]

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Inside the Mind of a Metacognitive Therapist – Part 3 The Meta-Level Dialogue

Simon Moesgaard — Mon, 01 May 2023 17:36:31 +0000

I want to share with you how the dialogue in metacognitive therapy is different from other talk therapies that I have done, from my point of view as a therapist. In metacognitive therapy sessions, I try to keep most of the dialogue at the meta-level (metacognitive mode), instead of at the content-level (object mode). A […]

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Can’t See the Forest for Trees? Studies Show The Mental Benefits of Engaging With Nature

Simon Moesgaard — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 22:53:37 +0000

Our culture has too often talked in terms of conquering nature. This is about as sensible as for a caddis worm to talk of conquering the pond that supports it, or a drunk to start fighting the bed he is lying on. – Mary Midgley (1978) Have you taken a forest bath lately? You might […]

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How to Give the Best Gifts, According to Psychological Research

Simon Moesgaard — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 21:16:11 +0000

What should you look for when buying a gift? This article tries to answer that question. A new paper, based on a survey of existing research, suggests that some gifts are great to give but not to receive. Scroll down and learn more from the infographic. The authors state that when we buy gifts, we are likely to focus […]

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Study: Your Generousity Creates More Generousity and Empathy in Others

Simon Moesgaard — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 19:48:46 +0000

Human beings are social beings. The tendency to behave, talk and walk like others is what we call conformity, which has been documented in various studies. It is believed that sociality is a product of evolution, meaning that we have had better chances of survival in groups than we have had on our own. We may react strongly to social exclusion because we […]

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Anger Impairs People’s Cognitive Scope, Study Shows

Simon Moesgaard — Sat, 08 Aug 2015 16:21:34 +0000

The fact that anger can have adverse effects on behavior is evident. When people get angry, they behave in ways that they normally would not do. So, anger seems to impair or even block rational thinking. New experimental research by Gable, Poole, and Harmon-Jones (2015), published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, supports the idea that […]

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