Relationships

In this article, I discuss the mental health benefits which I and other Toronto Blue Jays supporters enjoyed during their 2025 journey to the World Series. I have long enjoyed being a fan of various sports. Some of my most treasured times have involved watching sporting events alone or with family and friends. Among the notable events in my childhood were traveling to Toronto with my father and older brother to attend Canadian football’s Grey Cup Game and being in the crowd at the Winnipeg Arena with that same older brother at Game 3 of the Canada versus Soviet Union Summit Series of Hockey. More recently, I traveled with my younger brother to San Francisco to watch a National Football League game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I also enjoy watching the men’s and women’s Canadian curling championships each year and discussing the action with my younger sister. I should also mention that I have also been a long-standing baseball fan. Among my cherished memories is going to Toronto Blue Jays games at the SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre) with my fellow graduate students when I attended the University of Toronto. These experiences point to my being a fan of the Blue Jays. However, it was not until this past Monday when I stayed up to watch all 18 innings of the 2025 Blue Jays’ loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the World Series that I realized how devoted I am. My commitment to watching the Blue Jays in their 2025 playoff run stemmed from the mental health benefits which I and other supporters derived from the experience. I will discuss these benefits in the following sections...[more]

In this article, I discuss insightful comments made recently by the world’s number one golfer. As a life-long avid sports fan, I have appreciated the talents of great athletes in a multitude of sports over the years. I have admired athletes at the top of their fields such as Wayne Gretzky in hockey, Michael Jordan in basketball, Tom Brady in football and Tiger Woods in golf. As entertaining as these Hall of Famers were when performing in their respective sports, they were not very exciting to to listen to in interviews. To be fair to the icons who I mentioned, with a few exceptions interviews with athletes are consistently comprised of cliches and banalities and are sorely lacking in insights and honesty. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to hear several thoughtful and candid comments in a recent news conference by no less than the top golfer on the planet. Even better for the purposes of this blog, his comments spoke to fundamental issues related to mental health. I will focus on Scottie Scheffler’s unusual interview in the following sections...[more]

In this article, I discuss the mental health benefits I accrued from supporting the Winnipeg Jets hockey team during the past season. As a native of Winnipeg, Manitoba, I have long been a supporter of their sports teams. This includes football’s Blue Bombers and, at one time, AAA baseball’s Whips who were the farm team of the Montreal Expos. During the winter and spring, my support is focused on the National Hockey League’s Winnipeg Jets. The Jets were recently eliminated in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs after a storybook season in which they claimed the President’s Trophy for finishing the regular season with the league’s best record. Although I was disappointed that the Jets’ playoff performance fell short of what was predicted based on their banner regular season, the many mental health benefits I enjoyed made it well worth it to be an avid supporter. In the following sections, I will use my support of the Jets to discuss how supporting a sports team can enhance your well-being...[more]

In this article, I discuss how using negative communication patterns has costs in personal relationships and in election campaigns. I regularly discuss ‘the four horsemen of the apocalypse’ with clients. To clarify, I do not spend much time discussing the Biblical reference to the four signs of the end of the world. Instead, I focus on four negative communication patterns described by psychologist and relationship expert Dr. John Gottman in The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Dr. Gottman refers to these patterns as the four horsemen of the apocalypse because their ongoing use leads to the end of relationships. I recently observed that politicians who regularly use the four horsemen when communicating may pay a price on election day. I came to this realization during the Canadian federal election campaign which culminated in the election of the Liberal Party of Canada with Mark Carney as Prime Minister on April 28, 2025. Based on what I learned about the result, I believe there is evidence that Dr. Gottman’s four horsemen played a role in the victory by Mr. Carney and his fellow Liberals. I will discuss these dynamics in the following sections...[more]