Year: 2019

January 16, 2019 at 12:47PM by CWC Raise your hand if this applies to you: You’re an over-achiever, you love being right (and doing things right on the first try), your G-cal is highly organized, you’re always early, you regularly stay late at work to re-read a draft for the 20th time, and if you could be any fictional character, it would be Hermione Granger…or Blair Waldorf. Sound familiar? Yeah…you’re a textbook perfectionist. For some people, perfectionist tendencies can work, says Erica Hamilton, Ph.D, a psychologist at Octave, a mental health studio in New York City. They’re able to still achieve their goals and actually feel motivated by that little voice in their head pushing them to be the very best. “But for many, it becomes quite paralyzing,” she says. People hold themselves back from pursuing their goals out of fear of coming up short, she says, or obsess over small details and mistakes. “In a lot of ways, perfectionism is something people use to protect themselves,” says Dr. Hamilton. “There’s this mindset of, ‘If I’m perfect, I can’t be rejected and good things will happen. And I will be accepted and loved.’ It’s one of the ways people try to control their anxiety of things that are outside their control.” But again, that can come with more costs than benefits. If you’ve been living with the perfectionist mindset your entire life, it might feel totally baked in your personality. But you may be overlooking two skills that could help

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January 16, 2019 at 12:46PM by CWC I was preparing to get in the shower this morning and finally shampoo my hair but… then I saw that it looked totally fine. My mouth actually fell open—I haven’t washed my hair since Sunday, and yet there’s no grease in sight and my hair—dare I say it—even looks quite good. I’m shook. In the past, I have been an everyday shampooer. And then I started doing every other day. Now, this? It’s as if I’ve somehow manipulated my hair to correspond with my hair-washing laziness. Once I began telling my friends and colleagues about this phenomenon, I learned that it’s not just me. Hair training is actually a thing. “Yes, you can absolutely train your hair to reduce the oily texture,” says Maria Ruiz, stylist at New York’s Eddie Arthur Salon. Say whaaa? “This is coming from someone who has very oily hair.” So there’s hope for even the greasiest-prone strands. All you have to do is, well, train it. Teach your hair to require less washes and it will obey you if you’re diligent. “To start training your hair, you must cut down on washing your hair as often as you may do now,” she explains. “Constantly washing your hair stimulates the sebaceous glands, which creates even more oil. So I suggest washing your hair every other day at the most—washing your hair two to three times a week is ideal.” It sounds outrageous if you’re a religious shampooer, but it’s totally

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