Author: Overcoming Adversity | Buteau’s Odyssey

You meet someone at a hotel breakfast table, on a walking tour, or during a delayed flight. Within hours, you are exploring a city together, sharing meals and swapping life stories. Sometimes the conversations feel more honest than those with people you have known for years. Then the trip ends. It can leave you wondering: Was that even a real friendship? Psychologically, the answer is yes—but it may belong to a category of relationships that exist only within a particular moment in time. The Psychology of Liminal Friendships Travel places people in what anthropologists call a liminal space—a transitional state…

Daily Dead readers are undoubtedly familiar with the work of Daniel Kraus, from Whalefall and Angel Down to co-authoring The Shape of Water with Guillermo del Toro and The Living Dead and Pay the Piper with George A. Romero. Now he’s back with Partially Devoured: How Night of the Living Dead Saved My Life and Changed the World, a deep dive into one of the greatest horror films ever made. Many of us owe our careers and love of horror to Romero’s landmark 1968 film, and Kraus’ Partially Devoured details both the cultural impact of the film, as well as the…

In my drinking days, I searched for answers to these questions for years: How do I quit drinking for good? What can I do to break my drinking patterns once and for all? Today, people come to me with the same questions. Despite calling myself an empowered alcohol-free coach, the truth is I don’t have an answer to those. Because making life changes rarely lies within a single decision. It often consists of many small decisions. In acceptance and commitment therapy, this is called a choice point, and it’s something that shows up again and again in how people relate…

Jamie Lee Curtis was not holding back any punches when talking about producer Jason Blum and her experience working with him. At her recent appearance at SXSW the actress participated in a panel titled “If Not Now, When, if Not Me, Who? Pivoting and Manifesting,” when she spoke abut making David Gordon Green’s horror film Halloween […]

My two best friends in the literary world are Anna Karenina and Winnie the Pooh. One tells me continually that romantic love is a sucker’s game, the other that friendship is forever. But Tolstoy’s classic isn’t just about friendship; it’s a how-to manual on how to not end up under a train. If Anna had just had a good friend to talk to, who, metaphorically speaking, had slapped some sense into her, there might have been a happier ending to that story. Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, as we all know, are the epitome of true love. “We’ll be friends…

In Over Your Dead Body, till death do us part can’t come soon enough. That’s not surprising if you’ve seen Tommy Wirkola’s Norwegian original, The Trip. Jorma Taccone’s American remake opts for a more cartoonish, comedy-forward take that keeps the graphic violence. It’s an antithetical romantic comedy until it’s not, finding hilarity in a couple’s apparent hatred for one another (at least to start). Taccone, who helped shape an entire generation’s sense of humor thanks to SNL Digital Shorts, makes us laugh as bullets fly and blood gushes. Although I’d warn against watching The Trip beforehand, since Wirkola’s nasty piece…

Much of contemporary discussion in mental health innovation centers on treatments—mechanisms of action, clinical endpoints, and regulatory milestones. Yet effective care depends not only on interventions, but on the relational and institutional structures that enable them. One of medicine’s most established constructs addressing this dimension is the therapeutic alliance. The Clinical Foundations of Alliance The therapeutic alliance originated in psychotherapy as a framework describing the collaborative bond between clinician and patient. Decades of empirical research have demonstrated that alliance quality correlates with treatment adherence, engagement, and outcomes across psychiatric conditions. The American Medical Association formalized this concept within its Code…

For the first time ever, an official Carl Kolchak action figure’s coming in 1/12 scale, and fans of The Night Stalker have a chance to back a Kickstarter and impel Kochak and his chief adversary into breathtaking existence.Indie toy company Wandering Planet Toys is partnering with publisher Monstrous to create the  licensed action figures of Kolchak, originally played by Darin McGavin, and his notorious nemesis the vampire Janos Skorzeny, portrayed in the first Night Stalker film by Barry Atwater.Since his 1972 debut in an ABC telefilm scripted by  the legendary Richard Matheson based on real-life Las Vegas reporter Jeff Rice’s novel,…

What comes to mind when you think of the top men’s FIFA World Cup moments? It could be Diego Maradona carving through England’s defense for the Goal of the Century. Or, a legend like Pele or Lionel Messi raising the trophy up high into the sky. It could be something more controversial, like Cristiano Ronaldo’s wink after getting Wayne Rooney sent off. When the World Cup comes to North America this summer, we’ll be in store for many more moments. It remains to be seen if they’ll make the pantheon of the best. Until then, we’re counting down the most iconic, most…

Do you want to know a secret? Most of us live lives that are remarkably similar to those of superstars. As a psychologist working in Newport Beach, California, I have had the privilege of working with some highly successful people who live their lives completely in the public eye. For these “superstars,” the public is intensely curious and constantly commenting on how their lives are going. I remember working with one public figure who had put on some excess weight while on a reality show. Social media viciously berated her for it, and the scrutiny was incredibly painful to endure.…