Photo by Jacob Wackerhausen

Too much stress destroys your ability to focus. It’s like a grenade shattering your attention as you scramble to keep yourself steady.

Today, we’re reviewing the positive and negative effects of stress on your ability to focus and the most effective method for sharpening and controlling your attention.

We’ll start with a brief description of the types of attention.

The Three Types of Attention

In her book Peak Mind, Dr. Amishi Jha defines three categories of attention. It’s worth knowing these because they’ll help you rein in your attention based on the type you need.

1. Selective Attention (Flashlight)

Selective attention is the type you usually think of when talking about focusing. It narrows in on something and spotlights it. Meanwhile, distractions are muted so you can concentrate without interruptions. It functions like a flashlight with a steady, narrow beam.

You can use selective attention to focus on something in your outside environment, or turn it inward to focus on your internal environment, including thoughts, feelings, your body, and memories.

2. Alerting System (Floodlight)

Now imagine your flashlight shining with a wide beam, like a floodlight. You use this type of attention when you enter a room and scan it to get a panoramic view of what’s there and what’s going on.

Alerting attention focuses on the present moment. It’s broad, diffuse, and receptive. You use it in social settings, when walking into a meeting, or when brainstorming. You’re ready to pivot based on what’s happening right now.

Again, like selective attention, alerting attention can be applied to both your external and internal environments.

3. Executive Functioning (Juggler)

Dr. Jha likens executive attention to being a juggler. A juggler has many balls in the air and can switch attention back and forth quickly and with precision to keep them going without dropping any of them.

Executive attention derives its name from its reliance on executive functions.

An executive creates and manages a system to help you reach your goals. He oversees, monitors, and coordinates all aspects of the system to maximize results.

We’ll come back to a strategy that helps you sharpen all three types of attention, but first, let’s look at the effects stress has on them.

The Effects of Stress

Let’s start with several facts you need to know up front.

First, your ability to attend doesn’t fully mature until the age of 25, as does your brain.

That means you might mistake having ADHD during your teens when, in reality, it’s a matter of your attentional system not yet being fully developed. Not always, of course.

Now for some sobering news:

Your brain and attentional system start declining by age 35, and sometimes earlier.

Ugh! That means you need to learn how best to preserve both to slow down the decline.

Now for stress.

The upside is that you actually need a certain amount of stress to attend. In other words, you need a burst of energy and some urgency to kick your mind into gear enough to get going. Dopamine is part of this process.

On the other hand, once you reach a certain level of attention and keep applying stress, you get diminishing returns. Your attention starts to fade, making it harder to maintain.

This shift of attention due to increased stress is called the Yerkes-Dodson Law. See the diagram below for an illustration of how this works.

You’ve likely experienced this. You get motivated, start working on something, and attend more easily as you get into the flow. But at a certain point, you’ve reached the peak of your energy, and your attention begins to decline.

Often, we push ourselves beyond this point and keep going, but the benefits decrease. If you continue, you get fewer and fewer returns.

Stress peaks when you become overwhelmed and have to put in more and more effort to keep up with your tasks.

It also rises when you’re struggling with internal issues that cause worry, anxiety, or mood disturbances.

In short, two primary obstacles to maintaining attention are:

1. Time-related stressors
2. Emotions

Here are some strategies to help with both.

#1: Single-Mindedness

Think of attention as a strong Wi-Fi signal. When it’s working well, you get a clear picture on your computer, your TV streaming works, and there’s no fluctuation. But when it’s spotty, it goes on and off rapidly. You could be Zooming with someone, and their image freezes for a moment, or what they’re saying is out of sync with their mouth movements.

This process occurs when you’re multitasking or when you’re constantly interrupted while working.

The more focused and single-minded you are when doing just one thing, the less stressful it becomes. Not to mention, you perform better.

Everyone knows this, but we easily forget it. Practicing this daily helps retrain your mind to focus.

If you spend a lot of time online, you’ve probably weakened your ability to focus on one thing at a time, especially if you’re doing several things simultaneously. You might be watching TV, scrolling through Facebook, and having a conversation all at once.

This type of activity will eventually leave you unable to attend to any single-minded pursuit for any length of time.

Do one thing at a time.

#2: Create Emotional Space

Emotions can help you attend. If you have a strong interest in something, you do it easily. But emotions can also be a major detractor.

You’re trying to finish a report at work, but your mind keeps reverting to worry about one of your kids. You’re having catastrophic fantasies about what could go wrong. Finally, you give up and take a break because you can’t concentrate.

Our minds can’t tell the difference between doing something and imagining it. The stress is the same in either case.

So if you’re worrying and imagining worst-case scenarios, your stress response will drain your attention, as if something were actually happening around you.

In other words, emotions expend a lot of energy and effectively distract you from attending to what you want to focus on.

The antidote to all of this is to create emotional space so you can control how you respond to both internal and external stimuli. You can best achieve this through mindfulness meditation.

If you haven’t tried meditation and aren’t particularly enthused about it, don’t say no yet.

Dr. Jha cites extensive research showing that 12 minutes of mindfulness meditation per day, four days a week, engages all three types of attention and maintains it even under stress.

The method used during the research was to simply watch your breath, sitting quietly for 12 minutes. I’ve attached the specific directions so that you can try it.

I’ve meditated daily for many years. I remember when I started, I felt the effects immediately, which was helpful because it motivated me to keep going. But even more motivating are the cumulative effects you continue to experience the longer you practice.

You reach a point where you feel a sense of space in your mind, regardless of what’s happening around you. Because of that, you can respond to anything more intentionally.

That doesn’t mean you don’t get stressed out, but it happens less often, less intensely, and to a lesser degree.

For the very little time it takes, the positive effects are remarkable.

There are additional benefits beyond attention, including mood stabilization, creativity, patience, calmness, tolerance, and resilience.

#3: Remove Stressors

The last strategy is to work on removing stressors instead of stress.

Stress is your response to a stressor, not the other way around.

To reduce stress, you need to cut out the things that cause it – bad relationships, the wrong jobs, self-destructive behaviors, too little sleep, poor eating habits, and so on.

Take an inventory. What’s stressing you out most? List them and prioritize them. Then decide which of them you can remove and make a plan to do that.

Even if it takes time to remove a stressor, simply identifying it and making a plan will help.

Last Note

We’re approaching the holidays at lightning speed, but hopefully you’ll have some time after them to think about and try some of these ideas.

Don’t forget to check out the attached meditation instructions. I’ve also listed a few previous articles that might help.

That’s all for today!

Have a great two weeks!

All my best,

Barbara

Suggested Reading:
Mindfulness Meditation Instructions.pdf
How to Effectively Deal With Stressors
Stress-Release Strategies That Help You Avoid Burnout

Photo by Pablo Merchán Montes​ for Unsplash+

Ask yourself this question:

What would happen if you were suddenly unable to use your thinking brain and had to rely solely on your emotions to run your life?

It would be a s*** show!

Really, it would be disastrous, and that’s because emotions, although necessary and valuable, are not reliable sources of information. They have significant impact and purpose, but they can’t supplant critical thinking. And, by nature, they often lead us astray.

On the other hand, they are very necessary. Thinking without emotions would also be disastrous. We need a balance of both.

Today, let’s talk about the purpose of emotions, what they do, and what they can’t do. And along with that, how to best use them.

Let’s start with what emotions offer, and what they don’t.

Five Purposes

The first thing to remember when thinking about emotions is that they aren’t good or bad. They just are. What you do with them is what matters.

So don’t suppress them. You need them. Let them come up, and then you can decide how to respond.

Here are five reasons we need our emotions.

1. Our Natural Alarm System

Emotions are the product of our more primitive brain. They are the brain’s mechanism for warning us of danger that could threaten our survival.

Tied to the amygdala in the brain, emotions tell us when to pay attention.

At the same time, the primitive brain can be somewhat catastrophic and blow things out of proportion.

So when you get those niggling feelings of distress coming from your emotional brain, you have to review them mindfully to keep things in proportion to reality.

2. A Source of Drive and Energy

Emotions are like the spark plugs in your car. You can have a super engine, a full tank of gas, and everything in working order, but if you don’t start the car using those spark plugs, you’re not going anywhere.

Emotions supply the energy and drive to take action.

You have an idea, you make a plan, but you won’t be able to carry either of those out if you don’t put some emotional energy behind it.

Your emotions provide the sustained interest, the push to act, and the sense of accomplishment you get when you’re successful.

So they’re not just the spark to start things up, but they keep the engine going and provide the energy to sustain your motivation.

A think tank without emotional drive is just a think tank.

3. Emotions Create Memory

Our brain accumulates memories of events, experiences, and sensory information. However, it’s our emotions that make memories stand out and remain in our memory bank.

The greater the emotional impact something has on you, the more likely it is to find its way into your long-term memory.

This is a researched fact. And also why memories are not always reliable.

We don’t remember verbatim what happens. We remember the impact it has on us. The greater the emotional impact, the stronger the memory.

4. The Great Connecter

Without emotions, we wouldn’t be able to connect to anything.

Even if you’re dealing with complex ideas that come from intense thinking, your connection to them or to someone you’re sharing them with comes from emotional validation and investment.

Without emotion, the ideas would dry up. There would be no feeling of stimulation, interest, or connection.

People who see themselves as mostly rational and view emotions as secondary, or even unnecessary, are fooling themselves. Because without emotions, they wouldn’t be able to invest in or even enjoy their thoughts.

Relationships of any kind require emotions. They are the source of attraction, bonding, appreciation, attachment, and ongoing commitment.

5. Color, Nuance, and Definition

Think of emotions as the paint in a work of art.

The ideas, lines, and shapes are the cognitive aspects of a painting. But the color and shading are the emotional aspects that give it definition and nuance. It’s what allows us to feel the image and connect to it.

A line drawing can do that to an extent, but without shading, we see it more from a cognitive than an emotional perspective. Still beautiful, but not as connective unless the image itself portrays emotions we connect to.

How to Use Emotions

You can use emotions in all the ways we just defined, but it’s never good to take them at face value. They are highly influenced by past experiences and impressions, as well as discomfort or elation, depending on the situation.

In other words, they can exaggerate aspects of a situation while downplaying others.

Emotions aren’t good historians because of how selective they are, which means you miss information and facts that need consideration.

They also create drama in your mind and can lead you to quick reactions you later regret.

Let your emotions arise, but examine them before acting on them.

Question both your thoughts and feelings before making any decisions that will have a lasting or significant impact.

It’s fine to get lost in feelings that won’t have a negative impact, such as listening to your favorite music and temporarily losing yourself in the pleasure it brings you. But if you become angry at someone and feel compelled to tell them off, you’ll want to pull back and think it through before acting.

Maintain the position as the artist, not the painting itself.

In one of his articles, Nick Wignall writes that there are four reasons to ignore your emotions.

I wouldn’t necessarily ignore them, but I would step back from them in any of these situations and apply some critical thinking to see how exaggerated or accurate they are, and how they might affect your behavior.

I’ve added a fifth one. They are:

1. When they conflict with your values
2. When they lead to aggression
3. When they lead to worry
4. When they lead to rumination
5. When they lead to destruction

These are all self-evident except for the last one, which requires some definition.

Emotions can easily compel you to ignore consequences. When you feel strongly, you can react quickly without giving it a second thought. This phenomenon is what’s known as emotional hijacking (Goleman).

It happens when your emotional brain is triggered and interprets a stimulus as dangerous, triggering a spontaneous knee-jerk reaction without input from your thinking brain.

The stimulus can come from outside you, such as another person or situation, or from within, through your own thoughts or ruminations.

An example of the former would be shouting horrible, attacking things at your partner in the midst of a rage, and not being able to take them back. In the latter case, someone could self-harm in the midst of intense despair.

These situations result in destructive behavior you can’t undo. Emotions in these cases can have devastating results.

Treat Emotions as Your Creative Partner

Use your emotions in the ways we’ve talked about:

To connect, add color and interest to our life, supply drive and energy, serve as a warning device, and create memories.

But temper it with critical thinking. Be mindful.

That last one isn’t so easy, but it is something you should practice daily.

You need to separate your sense of self from both your thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings are things that arise within you and that you engage with.

The key is that you have a choice in how you engage and to what extent.

Our current culture is heavily biased toward emotions. I was raised in the 50s when culture was heavily biased toward rational thinking, to the exclusion of emotions. We were taught to suppress them and see them as second-class citizens in our minds.

That wasn’t beneficial, but neither is the current focus on emotions and the belief that you should follow your feelings.

No, you shouldn’t. You should use them carefully to inform, but not blindly follow them.

We need a balance and partnership between our emotions and thinking. That way, we get the best of both of them.

Make sure that you’re driving your car, not your feelings.

That’s all for today.

Have a great two weeks and a Happy Thanksgiving!

All my best,

Barbara

Getty Images for Unsplash+

Navigating life without being able to think effectively is like driving a car with a broken steering wheel. You’re all over the road.

The question is, “What does a strong thinking capacity entail?”

Ned Herrmann, a renowned researcher in creative thinking, offers an answer through his Whole Brain Model, which describes four thinking styles we use to manage our lives.

You’ll likely resonate most with one or two of them, while not so much with the others. Yet, you need them all to function optimally.

Let’s begin with a description of Herrmann’s model, then move on to how you can use this information to improve your relationships, succeed at work, and develop your communication skills.

The Whole Brain Model

In Herrmann’s model, he identifies four thinking preferences based on his extensive research. You might already be familiar with these if you’ve ever taken the HBDI for your job.

The four styles are as follows.

Quadrant A: Analytic

The analytic style deals in logic, facts, data, critical thinking, and all things quantitative. Analysts are good at solving problems and making decisions based on validated information.

People with these skills make good financial analysts, engineers, and researchers.

Quadrant B: Practical

The practical style emphasizes planning, organizing, sequencing, and attention to detail. This person handles tasks, calendars, implementation, scheduling, processes, and structure. They can create order out of chaos and keep everything on track.

People with these skills make excellent operations managers, event planners, and office managers.

Quadrant C: Relational

The relational style centers on people, feelings, and interpersonal dynamics. These folks embrace emotions and use them to build harmonious relationships through empathy, understanding, and clear communication. Emphasis is placed on making connections.

People who favor relational thinking make good therapists, coaches, trainers, and negotiators.

Quadrant D: Experimental

Think big picture for this style. The experimental style thrives on imagination, innovation, strategizing, intuition, and creativity. These are your visionaries: people who think outside the box and come up with creative solutions to problems. They excel at synthesizing ideas and making unique connections to overcome barriers.

People in this category are inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, and designers.

How Does This Help You?

As you go through the descriptions, which style appeals to you most? Are there several that match? What doesn’t appeal to you?

Knowing your preferred thinking style (or styles) has significant benefits. Here are three of them.

1. Get more aligned with your work.

The first benefit is that you can choose a job or career that matches your thinking style.

It’s easier for you to succeed in work that feels natural to you. You’ll be able to excel and find greater satisfaction from your work.

Someone analytical is probably not going to enjoy being a graphic designer, and vice versa. But they’ll love being a business analyst and do well at it.

Studies have shown that people are more productive when their work aligns with their thinking style.

If you think about the things you like to do, you’ll note that your favorite work activities fit with your preferred thinking style.

Exercise:

Write down the types of work activities you like to do, and see if they align with one or several of the thinking styles outlined above.

What activities do you dislike, and what styles do these represent?

It’s fun to see this on paper. From there, you can imagine other things you’d like to pursue that fit with your natural style.

2. Improve your communication.

Having a thinking style that differs from someone else’s can make communication difficult.

For example, if you lean toward the analytic style and are working on a project with someone who’s more experimental, you might get frustrated with each other.

The analyst focuses on details, data, consequences, facts, and logic. The experimental person is big-picture, global, impressionistic, focused on possibilities, and willing to take risks.

For these two people to work well together without throwing in the towel early, they will need to:

1. Acknowledge and embrace each other’s thinking styles.
2. Appreciate what they both bring to the table.
3. Understand how each of their gifts contributes to positive results.

In his book The Whole Brain Business Book, Herrmann cites research showing that diverse working teams are 66 percent more efficient at solving complex problems than homogeneous teams with similar thinking styles.

Exercise:

Think of someone you have a relationship with who has a thinking style that’s very different from yours. What kinds of communication issues have come up because of these differences?

Can you think of a conversation or conflict where these issues arose? How did you respond? Were you feeling frustrated or impatient?

Here’s an example

Your partner, an analyst, begins a conversation by sharing details and laying out an analysis for you. However, you, who use the experimental style, haven’t yet grasped the big-picture topic, and you start to feel very impatient.

You want to interrupt and say, “Just give me the overall picture in a few words without all those details.”  They, however, are frustrated because you want to skip over what they consider crucial facts.

When you recognize differences in thinking styles with someone else, you can work with that. You can discuss and decide together how to handle things so both of you are comfortable without feeling impatient or frustrated.

In the example above, you could both agree that the analyst will present the big-picture topic upfront to orient the other person. Then that person will, in turn, listen as the analyst builds their case with facts and data before adding their comments. This way, you honor both styles and gain the full benefit of each.

3. You can expand your use of styles.

Although you naturally lean toward one or more thinking styles, you need them all. That’s one of the main benefits of knowing this information.

As you look at your style (or styles), what’s missing? What do you tend to leave out that causes problems?

If you’re visionary and love to create, but you never analyze the effectiveness of your ideas and creations, you could get into a lot of trouble. Entrepreneurs often do this and fail because they don’t take the time to carefully review, analyze, and evaluate their results as they go, making the necessary changes.

On the other hand, someone who is highly analytical might miss the big picture and, along with it, creative solutions and opportunities for growth.

Here’s another example:

You can be a great planner, organizer, and taskmaster, but if you don’t attend to the emotional needs of the people you work with, you might offend them and create conflict that ultimately undermines your good planning.

You can see how having some skill in all four styles is helpful.

Exercise:

As you read about the four styles, which ones repelled you immediately?

That’s the one (or ones) you need to work on.

How can you incorporate these styles more into your interactions with others, your work, and your approach to projects? If you’re short on practical concerns, what’s the best way to improve your organizational habits? If you’re great at analysis but don’t usually think that much about people’s emotional needs, what exercises can you practice to increase your emotional intelligence?

Choose one to improve and map out a plan to work on it. Then execute it.

It feels good to have a handle on all four aspects of thinking. You get better at everything, especially critical thinking, which we all need.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Before we go today, I want to let you know that I am changing my blog delivery from weekly to biweekly. I’ve been sending out articles every week for over five years, but my life circumstances are shifting, and I need to cut back on my output.

I will continue to provide you with the best information and articles I can, and I hope to include some extras as we go that you’ll enjoy.

That’s all for today.

Have a great two weeks!

All my best,

Barbara

Photo by Szepy

Have you ever looked up mental health symptoms on the internet to find out what might be wrong with you? Or, if not you, with someone you know?

Or maybe you’ve heard of a particular mental health diagnosis and you wonder if it applies to you. Like ADHD, for example.

It’s a common thing to do, and the internet makes it easy to find information on your own without seeing a psychologist.

The problems are that:

1. A cursory review of online information is not sufficient to make a valid diagnosis.
2. “Popular psychology culture” can lead you astray.

In other words, psychology is subject to cultural fads, and those fads can influence how you see yourself and how you interpret both your own and others’ behavior and mental health status.

Today, I’m briefly describing recent and current psychology fads and giving you some strategies for what to do if you think you have psychological issues that need treatment.

Let’s start with the fads.

Psychology Diagnostic Fads

A diagnosis is a description of specific emotional and mental symptoms or conditions accompanied by a range of behavior patterns that cause distress and impairment in particular areas of a person’s life.

Generally, diagnoses describe specific mental and emotional disorders based on extensive observation and empirical research over time.

In other words, you have a list of possible symptoms that occur regularly, accompanied by specific, repetitive behaviors.

In social culture, some diagnoses become popularized and find their way into everyday descriptive language. You have a mood swing one day at work, and a co-worker says, “She’s just bipolar.”

You have to be careful of these fads, because they influence your perceptions and feed your confirmation bias to confirm your assumptions.

Here are four diagnostic fads that have occurred over the past 45+ years. You’ll recognize them.

Fad #1: Borderline Personality

In the late 80s, there was an emphasis in psychology circles on how to diagnose and treat Borderline Personality Disorder.

Interest in this disorder spread to the general public. It began to be used to describe anyone who seemed to be impulsive, highly emotional, difficult to deal with, or attention-seeking.

Then the movie ​Fatal Attraction was released in 1987, which added fuel to the fire. The label increased in popularity. If you haven’t seen the movie, Glenn Close plays a psychopathic woman with underlying Borderline Personality Disorder.

Fad #2: Bipolar

The Bipolar rage came later in the 1990s, and to some degree hasn’t subsided.

Someone who has mood swings or occasionally seems manic can be labeled Bipolar in a heartbeat.

This diagnosis remains a fad in popular culture today, so much so that people don’t think twice about referring to someone or to themselves as Bipolar at the hint of mood issues.

However, most people who think they are Bipolar are not.

The diagnosis is precise, and the criteria are definitive. It’s very well-researched and clearly describes symptoms, behavior, biological aspects, and treatment needs.

Having moods swing or occasionally acting out is not the basis for making such a serious diagnosis, yet we do it all the time. Even today, it’s a popular go-to when talking about moody people.

Fad #3: ADHD

You’d have to live off the grid not to know about this one.

This diagnosis was established in 1987, gained popularity in the early 1990s, and remains popular today.

Popular culture has latched on to “ADHD” to describe everything from a wandering mind to difficulty focusing to poor decision-making.

Those things are part of the descriptive symptomology for making the diagnosis, yet the diagnosis is much more complex and comprehensive than a handful of symptoms.

To complicate matters, other issues can create ADHD symptoms such as anxiety, depression, panic states, illness, drug use, and early attachment disorders.

Making a diagnosis requires investigating and sorting through all the possible causes of the symptoms before making a valid conclusion and prescribing the best treatment.

However, people commonly refer to themselves and their kids as ADHD when there’s a problem with focus or impulsivity.

Sometimes it’s used humorously, as in “I’m having an ADHD moment!”

There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does make the case for how easily some psychiatric diagnoses become fashionable.

Fad #4: On The Spectrum!

That brings us to the current psychology fad, which is Autism.

Autism is a real thing and has been misunderstood for years because no one really knew what it was or why someone behaved the way they did.

Fortunately, medical and psychological communities have devoted much more attention, along with additional research, to understanding, diagnosing, and treating this disorder.

Is it on the rise? Maybe, or maybe we just see it better than we did before. Either way, it’s in the public eye.

You often hear someone saying they’re “on the spectrum” or that someone else they know is “on the spectrum.” It covers everything from being shy to social awkwardness.

For people who have been struggling for years with Autism, or who have kids with the disorder, the growing professional interest is a relief. It signals help on the way and hope to treat the symptoms and improve lives.

The faddish aspect is not so welcome because we can use it to dismiss behavior patterns that aren’t related to Autism at all, but that need addressing.

The Upshot?

The upshot is that self-diagnosing based on psychological fads, confirmation bias, and faulty information on the internet can be damaging, even when done with good intentions.

Here’s what can happen when you self-diagnose mental health issues.

Identity Distortion

When you label yourself in any way, you’re crunching your identity.

Diagnosing has a limiting impact. It pigeon-holes you into a neat little box that confines you and keeps your attention focused on specific aspects of yourself.

You can get so caught up in the label that you begin to restrict some of the positive aspects of your personality while focusing on what you perceive as symptoms and problems.

The label itself has a shrinking effect that’s detrimental, especially when self-imposed.

Victimization

Diagnoses can also make you feel victimized. That’s more common with trauma, but applies to experiencing psychological symptoms as well.

Even the term “disorder” conveys the idea that something is happening to you from outside you.

In effect, it does happen to you, but you still have to work to resolve the problems that are there. You can’t just offload them. You have to take an active role in processing them, which is why people seek treatment.

Reducing or Demeaning Others

Labeling someone with a diagnosis is reductionistic in itself. Instead of seeing that person in their wholeness, they become the symptoms associated with the diagnosis and not much more.

This phenomenon doesn’t just happen in popular culture; it also happens in professional circles – all too often, I might add.

Therapists can easily get in the habit of thinking of their clients as the diagnosis they have rather than the person they are.

A good therapist knows that the minute you assign a diagnosis to someone, you have to make sure you’re always seeing the whole person – their individual and unique circumstances, their strengths and assets, and always their value and worth despite symptoms.

Instead of Self-Diagnosing . . .

When you’re struggling with something – a mood pattern, behavior issue, relationship problem, or anything that impairs your well-being – focus on the specific behaviors involved instead of jumping to a diagnosis.

Assess the behavior and think about how you can change it. Look for information, techniques, and strategies to help you.

If you’re worried about a specific diagnosis, seek out a therapist who can help with the issues that are leading you toward your assumptions.

A diagnosis itself isn’t a bad thing. It can help point you in the right direction toward the best solutions and strategies to address it, but don’t diagnose yourself without professional confirmation.

Taking a simple test or inventory is a start, but most mental health diagnoses can’t be made without extensive interviewing and a review of your history.

By all means, be very careful about diagnosing others. Even if you’re right, diagnosing can be demeaning.

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Photo by Christian Kielberg on Unsplash

What do you need to feel valued?

That’s a broad question, for sure, and there are likely many things that fit your individual needs, but there are three must-haves built into our DNA. I’ll outline them in this article and give you some ways to incorporate them into your relationships.

The first one is a ground-floor requirement.

The Need to Feel Visible

Everyone needs to feel visible. It’s part of feeling worthy, feeling as though you matter, and being a part of humanity.

Over years of providing psychotherapy, I recognized that an essential part of the therapeutic process is to be a witness to someone else’s life, including their thoughts, feelings, experiences, ideas, needs, and obstacles.

Having someone listen to you with they’re full attention and concern is uplifting because it affirms your existence and value.

We all need a witness. That’s part of what we get from our relationships. When someone acknowledges you – acknowledges your life – you feel seen.

Invisibility is like a kind of death. It brings isolation, a feeling of not belonging, and eventually leads to depression.

One of the harshest punishments we levy on people in prison is to lock them up in solitary confinement for long periods of time.

The same applies to animals in captivity. They start to go crazy after a while. Literally, it can produce psychosis at some point.

We need each other. Our brains are set up that way. We need someone to witness our existence, even if it’s from afar.

We need to feel visible. It’s a necessary form of validation.

How to Use This:

Fortunately, witnessing and visibility go hand in hand. You get both for the price of one.

If you intentionally and thoughtfully show up for someone by acknowledging them and showing interest in their thoughts, feelings, and stories, you make them feel seen. Conversely, by being that witness, you also become visible.

Relationships characterized by mutual interest and acknowledgement are more likely to last and flourish.

However, there are some caveats. That brings us to the next item.

Confirmation of Worth

Witnessing is the first step, but it must include acceptance and affirmation to be beneficial.

You can be a witness to someone’s weaknesses through criticism and judgment, and call that witnessing. It is acknowledging someone’s existence, but only partially and without acceptance. And it’s damaging.

So, witnessing must include confirming someone’s worth. And that’s done by accepting the whole person, not just their individual assets.

It’s a strengths-based approach, which means you observe all the various aspects of someone’s personality and presentation but focus most on their strengths.

This is tricky because true acceptance doesn’t exclude any part of a person, even their imperfect parts.

But it can be achieved while helping someone recognize their worth and encouraging them to express their strengths to the fullest.

If you were practicing this with your partner, one of your kids, or even a friend, you would focus on the assets this person has by acknowledging them with appreciation and love.

You would still see the whole person, including areas that need improvement, but your primary focus would be to validate who they are and show your admiration for what they bring to the table.

And now for the third and last requirement.

Kindness and Empathy

To confirm someone’s worth successfully, kindness and empathy are necessary.

Empathy is the way to understand and accept someone’s feelings and reactions to life’s circumstances, and kindness is the act of offering help and healing during difficult times.

Kindness can be as simple as providing assistance or showing positive regard.

To be truly kind, you have to be interested in the other person’s feelings. Kindness says, without saying it, “You matter. You’re deserving of basic respect.”

Kindness rises above pettiness, elitism, discrimination, and hierarchical thinking. It equalizes us.

You can be kind to anyone at any time. That’s one aspect of it that makes it so powerful—it’s handy. We can use it often and easily.

You can be kind to people you don’t know, to people you have occasional contact with, and to people you see every day.

It’s a universal language that everyone understands when they’re on the receiving end.

How to Build These Practices

Now, let’s put together some practical tips you can use in your relationships to apply these ideas.

Witnessing

For people you see every day (such as your partner, family members, or children), set aside some time to find out how they are, what happened during the day, and how they felt.

This shouldn’t be a rote conversation like “How was your day?” They say, “It was fine. No problems.” And you say, “That’s great!” End of conversation.

This interaction should be an in-depth conversation where you ask questions and show interest in how this person really is. Not just what they encountered today, but how it affected them emotionally.

You need to be fully present, empathetic, and accessible.

Sometimes, all someone needs to feel visible is just to be heard. To feel like someone else is there who cares about them and has their back.

For people you see less often, you can still give that kind of full attention and interest that makes them feel heard and provides a sense of belonging. That’s the goal.

Confirmation of Worth

As you have conversations or interact with people, lean toward assets. Notice their strengths and comment on them.

You don’t have to fawn over people, and you shouldn’t do that, especially when you’re using that as a means of getting something you want. But you can authentically appreciate someone’s talents and gifts by saying so.

A soothing and enriching conversation you can engage in with your partner is to identify each other’s strengths and how they work together to benefit both of you.

It helps you each appreciate what you have together and what you each provide that makes you successful as a couple.

We usually focus on the negative. But if you intentionally have these kinds of conversations and exchanges, you discover that the things that bother you about each other become less important. And in the process, you both feel validated and valued.

Kindness and Empathy

Kindness is easy if you focus on it. It’s fun to practice getting better at it. Try these things:

1. Make eye contact and smile at people when out in public. It doesn’t need to be a lengthy contact. Just a quick acknowledgement with a genuine smile has the right impact.
2. When someone’s talking about something they’re upset about, don’t counteract with advice. Listen quietly with full attention, and empathize with their feelings. Just that and nothing more, unless they ask for it.
3. Help someone without being asked. It can be anything. Offering help with dropping off a car for repair. Helping unload the groceries. Making coffee. Anything small will do. Be sure to do it cheerfully and without any expectations.
4. Help someone when they ask. Willingly and with a smile.

Empathy requires a deeper level of engagement.

To be empathetic, you must take time to understand where someone is emotionally and how they are perceiving a situation. What story are they telling themselves, and how do they feel about it?

You need to listen, ask questions, and get a complete understanding of where they’re at without showing pity.

Real empathy is genuine. There’s no need to one-up. You listen with both your heart and your mind, and reflect back what you believe is being said.

Remember that when you feel like someone understands and gets you, you feel heard, seen, and appreciated.

That’s what you should aim for when practicing empathy.

I hope you got something today to help your relationships thrive and grow, as well as understand what you need in a relationship.

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Photo by Nappy for Unsplash+

I just watched the news. What was I thinking? If you want to feel depressed, that’s the thing to do.

Now, I’m not saying you should stop keeping up with what’s happening. You need to. But the heaviness we all currently labor under is debilitating. We’ve normalized stress and cynicism.

That being the case, it’s more important than ever to find pockets of joy amidst the barrage of negativity.

We need to remember how to laugh. Not the tee-hee kind of laughter, but the deep belly kind of laughter that resets our nervous systems and reconnects us to each other.

Let’s start with outlining what laughter can do for you.

Why You Need to Laugh More

First, laughter is not avoidance. It’s an antidote to pain. It lifts you and signals hope, even when things are challenging.

Secondly, there are real physiological and psychological benefits from laughter, verified by research. Here’s a quick list:

Physiological Effects:

• Boosts your immune system
• Reduces levels of stress hormones
• Stimulates circulation
• Improves heart health
• Enhances mental functioning (focus, attention, and concentration)
• Elevates your pain threshold and tolerance
• Strengthens your core muscles

Psychological Effects:

• Lowers stress by reducing levels of stress hormones
• Improves depression by altering dopamine and serotonin levels
• Provides needed mental health breaks, allowing you to function better
• Alters and widens your perspective when dealing with trauma and negative input
• Connects us and supports inclusiveness
• Enhances our relationships

Not An Escape

Laughter is not a means of avoidance or escape. It’s a powerful coping mechanism that helps us deal with stress and brings us together to solve the problems we face.

It doesn’t deny pain; it gives it room to breathe.

It lets you loosen your grip on worrying about what’s wrong long enough to see it with more clarity. It’s an aid for reframing your problems and building emotional endurance.

Most importantly, humor helps diffuse tension, especially when conflicts arise. It reaches across barriers of age, race, culture, and language. It’s a connector even when there is strong disagreement.

It provides levity and, in the process, opens pathways to find areas of agreement.

In short, laughter (and humor) is:

1. An effective coping mechanism
2. Perspective changer
3. Tension diffuser

We need to cultivate it. Now more than ever.

How to Promote More Laughter in Your Daily Life

1. Give yourself permission.

It’s easy to feel guilty about feeling good when things feel grim all around you. However, that’s when you need humor most. Because it’s not only a coping strategy, but a survival skill. Let it rip!

2. Make it social

Laughing with other people is powerful because it’s both contagious and amplifying.

Haven’t you had the experience of sitting around with family or friends and telling stories that have everybody laughing so hard they can barely breathe?

It’s like a massive pressure valve release. No matter what else is going on in your life, for that moment, you feel swept up in pure joy.

Laughing with other people, even just chuckling, tends to intensify the effects.

Make some time to get together with people you can laugh with and share moments of unadulterated joy.

3. Engage with your favorite laughter triggers.

These are your favorite comedians, TV shows, reels, storytellers, or books that make you laugh without effort.

I’ve got a few comedians I watch on YouTube when I want a lift, as well as some TV shows that have been favs for years because the humor is always fresh, no matter how many times I watch them.

I have a relative who watches reruns of Friends daily because it levels out her mood when she’s stressed. My husband and I watch Seinfeld for the same reason.

Sometimes, just 10 minutes of accessible humor can lift your spirits and provide a mental break from stress – enough to get back to work with renewed energy.

4. Look for the absurd.

Looking for the absurd in situations (which isn’t hard to do these days) can help you see things from a broader perspective.

It diffuses obstacles. It also restores your sense of control and makes things easier. Something that feels insurmountable becomes workable, allowing you to sort through the issues at hand and address them effectively.

5. Review past experiences.

When you can remember and see the humor in past experiences that at the time were difficult, you’re able to look at the present with more hope.

You’re reminded that you sometimes inflate the significance of things in your mind and assume the worst, yet in retrospect, it wasn’t at all as bad as you thought.

You can laugh at yourself, or with yourself, as you recall your inflated or assumptive thoughts at the time.

By the way, being able to laugh at yourself is a healthy and emotionally intelligent activity, not to mention humorous and uplifting.

6. Play!

You might scoff at this one, but it’s effective. Adults who can play are happier, less stressed, and more creative. If you tend toward seriousness, you may find it challenging to let yourself regress and be playful, but give it a try.

Try acting silly with someone you’re close to. Play games together. Do something fun and out of the ordinary.

Take time out of your usual day-to-day to engage in an activity that absorbs your mind and delights your being.

Make it social: a trip to a theme park with friends, playing cards or board games, going on a picnic, or signing up for a craft class.

Remember that taking a break from serious, focused work or problem-solving by engaging in something fun that sparks joy can make you more effective when you return to it.

Make Humor Your Ally

There will always be things to worry about, sometimes more than others.

Regardless of the times or the obstacles, humor and the experience of joy are necessary coping mechanisms that not only provide a temporary respite but also initiate new and creative thinking to help come up with solutions.

A sense of humor is an aid to mental health. From a psychological point of view, it’s a necessity. It’s like the whistle on the tea kettle that keeps the steam from building up until it explodes.

Make time to laugh. Cultivate it. And, when at all possible, use it to connect with others.

You’ll feel less isolated and more in control of the actions you can take to solve the problems you face.

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Photo Courtesy of Getty Images

You’ve heard of gaslighting, and surely have been on the receiving end of it at some time or other.

Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse where someone attempts to undermine your view of reality through manipulation. In other words, make you think that what you perceive to be real isn’t.

The term “gaslighting” comes from a 1944 movie called Gaslight, in which a husband tries to convince his wife that she’s imagining things that aren’t real, even though they are.

Self-gaslighting is turning the tables on yourself and denying your perceptions and feelings, even though you know better.

We all do this sometimes, but for some people, self-gaslighting is a regular practice, often tied to trauma.

Let’s start with what it looks like.

Examples of Self-Gaslighting

Your wife excessively berates and attacks you about something, and although your feelings are hurt, you shrug it off and tell yourself you’re too sensitive and that she didn’t really mean what she said.

Even though you know that your boss has been gunning for you lately, you decide it must all be in your head.

Your friend takes advantage of you regularly and often shows up late when you have plans together, but instead of complaining, you decide you’re too needy and should be happy that you have a friend.

In each of these cases, you minimize your feelings and perceptions. In effect, you distort reality and turn the tables against yourself by portraying yourself as the problem.

Why It Happens

This type of behavior is common in abusive relationships.

The abuser gaslights their partner, and then the partner gaslights themselves using the same faulty rationale.

The purpose is usually to keep the peace and prevent further abuse or conflict.

However, sometimes people gaslight themselves without any prompting from someone else, and in those cases, it often has its roots in previous experiences.

For example, if you were raised in a family where expressing negative feelings was taboo, and your feelings were often minimized, you might do the same to yourself as an adult. You always put on a happy face regardless of how you truly feel. And if you don’t, you feel guilty.

Your goal here is to avoid the feeling of disapproval you’ve internalized from your family. It makes you feel bad about yourself when you go against the grain.

Self-Gaslighting and Trauma

Habitual self-gaslighting is often related to trauma.

Trauma in this sense isn’t always some horrific experience, but can be a more subtle and lengthy molding of your behavior over time. It generally comes from your upbringing in your family of origin.

Suppose you experienced a lot of dissonance while growing up between how you perceived yourself and what was acceptable to the adults in your family.

You end up with a split sense of yourself – the one that’s acceptable and the one that isn’t.

Being your authentic self can feel uncomfortable when it doesn’t match the model your parents expected you to follow.

To navigate the dissonance, you learn to subdue that part of yourself, and if needed, disown it.

The method for doing that is to self-gaslight; to tell yourself that those parts of you that are unacceptable aren’t okay, and when they pop up, you minimize or repress them.

Some situations are very obvious. For example, if you have a volatile parent, you might have learned to mirror their gaslighting by appeasing, excusing, and explaining away their bad behavior, and making up for things you didn’t do.

All of these actions are survival techniques in an abusive environment.

The problem is that as an adult, you perpetuate the behavior by becoming your own abuser. You undermine yourself, dismiss and invalidate your feelings, and blame yourself when it’s not your fault.

Additionally, if the trauma was prolonged and occurred during your formative years, you’ll keep attracting partners who will repeat that trauma.

It’s not a conscious choice. It happens despite your desire to do otherwise.

How to Fix It

A little self-gaslighting isn’t hard to fix once you see it. You can catch yourself when you do it and correct it on the spot.

But for most of us who grew up in situations like those just described, it takes time and concerted effort.

The first step is seeing it.

That step alone might be difficult because self-gaslighting tends to ignore and undermine what’s real. You think to yourself, “I’m making a mountain out of a molehill! Knock it off!”

And that, of course, is more self-gaslighting.

To stop self-gaslighting, you need to accomplish several things:

1. Allow your genuine thoughts and feelings to emerge without judgment and accept them as they are.
2. Diminish the authority of the voices from whom you learned to gaslight.

Both parts of this process are necessary and work together.

As you become more comfortable validating your genuine feelings and exploring your perceptions openly, you begin to recognize the voices and who they belong to without fear.

In other words, they lose their power over you, and you feel safe from them.

Gaslighters are bullies. They bully with muscle, words, and sometimes honey. But either way, they’re bullies. When you call their bluff, they lose their power and generally back down.

Part of the process is confronting the bully in your head that was born of your trauma or early experiences. Let’s talk about how to approach this.

The Journaling Process

Journaling is one of the best ways to uncover your self-gaslighting behaviors while also identifying your true thoughts and feelings. Seeing it on paper clarifies things in a way that surpasses talking.

Here are some journal prompts you can try:

1. How do I really feel about ____?

Use this question repeatedly, both now and when reviewing past situations. Make it a habit so that it becomes an automatic practice you don’t have to consciously work at. It will stop you from suppressing your emotions.

2. How have I used self-gaslighting in the past to survive my circumstances?

This prompt will help you understand how and why the habit developed, as well as who was involved. How was this behavior adaptive to protect you earlier in your life, but is not adaptive as an adult?

Self-gaslighting was originally an attempt to cope with a situation where you didn’t hold the power to do otherwise, which was necessary at the time.

What if you had an alcoholic father who was physically and emotionally abusive when drunk? You would quickly learn how to appease him to avoid the abuse, and in the process, suppress any other feelings you might have besides fear and a need to stay safe.

However, as an adult, you might use these same strategies anytime someone is slightly angry or perturbed, even though there is no real danger.

You need to sort through those adaptive strategies and identify which ones no longer serve you.

3. How am I harming myself with self-gaslighting?

Write down the specific behaviors, phrases, habits, and practices you engage in that are not in your best interest. What can you replace them with now?

4. How am I feeling about myself as I do these exercises?

This step is crucial because it helps identify automatic self-gaslighting that might go unnoticed. Recognize it, observe it, and replace it with self-compassion.

Therapy

You can do the journaling process on your own, but if you need help with it, therapy can be a good option.

Being able to process what you journal with someone who can help you see things from a broader perspective is a good idea.

A skilled therapist with experience can offer insights that you might overlook on your own and help you work through obstacles that are holding you back.

The Turning Point

A noticeable shift that signifies a turning point is when you no longer find yourself attracted to or engaged with people who gaslight you.

Not only do you stop doing it to yourself, but you also don’t knowingly or unknowingly get involved with people who don’t validate your worth and accept you for who you are.

It may take time, but it’s worth the pursuit.

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Photo by Nappy for Unsplash+

Here’s my usual self-talk when I’m trying to focus:

“Don’t get distracted! Keep your mind on your work. Stay focused. Stop drifting. Earth to Barb. Earth to Barb . . .”

Sound familiar? Do you get caught up in that same battle with distraction? I’m sure you do. Everybody does. Even someone who’s generally focused. It happens.

Distraction isn’t inherently bad. It depends on how you use it. It can definitely take you down a rabbit hole where you lose control of your time, but used the right way, distraction can be beneficial. The trick is knowing how to use it and how not to.

The first step is awareness.

Observe Yourself for a Week

You need to find out just how much time you spend engaging in distractions. Not only how much time, but also doing what?

A good place to start is to observe yourself for a week and note every time you become distracted.

This task is a little tricky because sometimes you knowingly engage in distractions, and other times it just happens, and you don’t recognize it until you’re interrupted. You can guestimate when necessary.

If a week is too much, start with several days. You want to document the actual activity you’re engaged in and the amount of time you spent. Those are the two pieces of information you need.

Examples include spending time on social media, watching TV, surfing the net, or engaging in any other type of digital activity.

Others may be less obvious, such as getting lost in thought or getting caught up in another activity to avoid doing something you need to do.

The Why

In addition to documenting the activity you use to distract yourself and the time spent, you also want to document the reason behind it.

Generally, distractions are used as a means of avoidance. Avoiding emotional pain, boredom, doing something you don’t want to do, dealing with a problem, or interacting with someone you dislike.

In other cases, you become distracted because something else interrupts you or catches your attention.

In the latter case, the distraction wasn’t deliberate. It happened to you.

For example, you’re working on a project at work, and your boss calls you into his office for a moment. You get distracted from what you were doing. Or you’re reading a book at home and your neighbor decides to blare his stereo, which grabs your attention and prevents you from focusing.

These types of distractions aren’t the ones that you need to document unless you want to. The distractions we’re addressing are the ones used for avoidance.

You can still document all of them if you’re also interested in finding out what gets in the way of your productivity.

Make your list for at least two days, but shoot for a full week. You’ll learn more that way.

What Did You Learn?

Now that you have some real data, you can find out two things:

1. What are your go-to activities to distract yourself?
2. What are you avoiding when you engage in them?

That second question will likely vary depending on where you are, the time of day, who you’re with, or whether you’re alone.

Let it sit for a few days and see what kinds of insights pop up in your mind.

The first thing most people notice is the amount of time they spend on distractions.

And secondly, the repetitive use of certain types of distractions.

They also get a good picture of what kinds of things they avoid, and how often.

This information is invaluable because it can inspire you to make changes that will ultimately reduce your stress and make you feel more in control of your life. You may also become more acutely aware of things you avoid that need to be confronted and changed.

Most people are aware that they use distractions to avoid things, but few of us are aware of how much and in what ways. The quantity is usually surprising.

Get the data, evaluate it, and record your conclusions and insights.

When Distractions Are Beneficial

Distractions aren’t all bad. Sometimes you need them. For example:

You need a break from a brain-intensive task to rest your mind and return with renewed energy and a fresh perspective.

You’ve worked hard all day and need something to distract you from your work and help you relax in the evening.

You feel overwhelmed with a problem and need some time to let it sit before figuring out what to do.

Distractions in any of these cases can be helpful. None of them are attempts to avoid the actual work or situation, but to break up the intensity of focus that’s getting in the way of making progress. They’re purposeful.

A typical example is working for an hour, taking a 10- to 15-minute break, and then resuming work. These breaks serve as distractions that allow your mind to rest and recharge.

There’s a commonality in all these examples. It is that you use distraction in a very intentional way, even if it’s to watch a movie.

You decide how long the distraction will last, and what you’ll do during the time. You might work for 30 minutes, check social media for 10, and then return to work. The distraction is contained, voluntary, and useful.

That’s very different from getting lost in watching Reels on Facebook or YouTube videos for hours, and then at some point, realizing you haven’t done the things you had intended to do.

That’s a runaway distraction. It’s involuntary and steals your time and motivation.

Constructive distractions are timed, planned, and intentional.

Use These Rules to Manage Distractions

1. Be aware that you’re about to engage in a distraction before you do it.

In other words, don’t engage in distracting activities without being aware that you’re doing so.

2. Decide how long you’ll engage in it based on your purpose.

Distractions are aids. They can be used as breaks, as entertainment to relax, as a means of allowing creative ideas to emerge, or as a change of scenery to avoid stagnation. Why are you doing it, and is it in your best interest?

3. Don’t use distraction as a means to avoid something.

But do use it as a respite or break when you feel stuck. However, be sure to return to the problem or task you need to address.

4. Avoid bingeing on distractions.

Distractions aren’t meant to be lengthy. You might argue that taking a vacation is a distraction. It is, but that’s more than a distraction. It’s a planned activity with a purpose.

5. Monitor the effect that your distractions have on you.

If watching the news is a distraction or sitting on social media is a distraction, how good are either of those activities for you? And how much or how long should you be engaging in them? What are the benefits and what are the downsides?

You might decide that 15 minutes on social media is beneficial for you because it helps you relax and restores your energy to do other things, but not a whole hour. Monitor it.

6. Be mindful of the timing.

For example, using distractions early in the day before you’ve really dug into your work is a means of avoidance. Let your distractions serve as breaks, rewards, and opportunities for resetting. Not for avoidance.

The Bottom Line

Used correctly, distraction is a good instrument for pacing yourself.

Rather than wrestle with it, take control of it, monitor it, use it intentionally, and enjoy it.

It’s a good technique for making things easier as long as you’re on top of it. Don’t let it be on top of you!

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Photo by Fethi Benattallah on Unsplash

As promised last week, I’m outlining some strategies for you today to boost your emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence refers to your ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as the emotions of others.

There are five skills associated with EQ, but today we’re going to address three of them:

1. Self-Awareness
2. Self-Regulation
3. Empathy

Let’s start with self-awareness.

Improve Your Self-Awareness

The two primary tasks for increasing your self-awareness are:

1. Identifying your emotions
2. Exploring your emotions

The first step—identifying your emotions—means recognizing your feelings as they come up, without suppressing or avoiding them.

This is not always an easy process. Feelings can arise fast and overlap, requiring you to step back and sort them out. They can also be painful or unwanted, causing you to suppress or ignore them.

The second step – exploring your emotions – is an analytical process. You decide what the particular feeling (or feelings) means, and how it’s going to impact you.

Generally, the process is as follows:

• A feeling arises.
• You think about it and interpret what it means to you.
• You decide whether a response is needed, what it will be, and when you’ll execute it.

Ultimately, you decide either purposefully or unwittingly how much power that feeling is going to have.

One thing to keep straight in your mind is that feelings arise without your permission. It’s not something you can control, nor should you try. Your job is to identify the feeling and then determine what it means and how to respond to it.

Meta-Feeling

I recently read an e-book by Mark Manson, titled Developing Emotional Intelligence. He discussed a concept I really liked called “meta-feeling.”

I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept of meta-cognition, which is thinking about what you’re thinking. Meta-feeling is feeling about how you’re feeling.

He outlines four directions that meta-feelings can take, which is useful. They are:

1. Feeling bad about feeling bad (self-loathing)
2. Feeling bad about feeling good (guilt)
3. Feeling good about feeling bad (self-righteousness)
4. Feeling good about feeling good (ego-narcissism)

His point was that when we have meta-feelings, we’re creating stories about our feelings and assigning judgments based on shoulds.

Should I feel this, and if I do, what does that mean?

Yet, there are no shoulds when it comes to feelings. They just come up.

The meaning you assign is what creates your reactions, whether good or bad.

This means that if you want to become truly self-aware, you need to accept several facts about your emotions:

1. They can be misleading and inaccurate.

They’re often based on assumptions you have, misinformation, amygdala reactions to faulty alarms or fears, or extensions of long-term memories.

Their value is the energy, drive, and color they bring to your life. They motivate and inspire you to act. But you are the one who controls that action.

2. They’re temporary.

Feelings are just that – feelings. They come up and, after a while, reside. Keep in mind that feelings are different than moods. Moods are a more stable state of being, also based on emotions, but they’re complex and longer-lasting.

3. Feelings operate on the pain-pleasure continuum.

They’re either pulling you toward pleasure or plunging you toward pain. They can also be neutral. We’re a pleasure-seeking species, so we tend to repel painful feelings and favor those that bring pleasure.

Self-awareness is the ability to watch this movie play out from beginning to end without acting impulsively.

Instead of relying on meta-feeling, lean more toward meta-cognition. Think about the narrative you’re constructing and the interpretation you’re embracing.

Meta-cognition is the tool of mindfulness, which allows you to watch the flow of feelings while examining the validity of what they mean and how you wish to react to or act upon them.

Strategies:

1. Get more precise in naming your feelings.

Most of us use the same five or six words repetitively to describe how we feel. Maybe you use more, but when you look at a substantial list of positive and negative feeling words, you’ll find there are many gradations and variations of feelings.

The words you choose to describe a feeling to yourself have an impact on the narrative you create and the power you give the feeling.

2. Practice identifying feelings for a few minutes each day as they arise.

Let them surface and then sit with them without acting on them. See what meta-feelings arise. How long do they last? Do you want to act on them right away? In ten minutes? In an hour? Do you feel the same after a while?

When you sit with painful feelings or those you want to avoid, they will lose some of their power over time, and you’ll feel less inclined to react to them or suppress them.

Now let’s move to regulating emotions.

Improve Regulating Your Emotions

The two strategies above are both designed to set the stage for self-regulation.

When you’re aware of your feelings and have examined their accuracy and meaning from a distance, you have already exerted some control over them.

Instead of jumping into action, you’ve set up a weigh-station like trucks used to have to go through on highways to see if they were too heavy.

It’s a process that goes like this:

• The feeling arises.
• You identify and acknowledge it.
• You evaluate its accuracy.
• And you decide how to react to or use it.

The key ingredient in this process is spacing.

When you set up your weigh station, you have the opportunity to decide how and in what manner you express the feeling.

The space between you and the feeling is the means by which you can regulate your behavior, thoughts, and reactions.

Strategies:

3. The key strategy here is to figure out how to give yourself that needed space.

You can practice meditation. Journal or write out your feelings and discern what you think is valuable and true. You can talk it out with someone you trust. You can practice sitting with feelings. You can also wait overnight or longer to respond if needed.

4. Ask yourself what judgments you’re having about your feelings.

Meta-feelings often occur under your radar, but they have an undermining effect on you. It’s important to stay on top of them and run interference. Judgment isn’t helpful when examining emotions.

Increase Your Empathy

Empathy is a crucial skill in emotional intelligence because it honors our shared humanity.

Common humanity is an idea introduced by Kristin Neff in her book, Self-Compassion.

It means recognizing and accepting our shared capacity as human beings to make mistakes, fail, and suffer. And also our shared capacity to love, connect, and understand one another.

Empathy requires acceptance, not of bad behavior, but of our fallibility and frailty.

That applies to you as well as to other people. If you judge your feelings and mistakes with self-loathing, you will do the same when dealing with others. If you are compassionate with yourself and honest about your thoughts and feelings, you can be that way with others.

Self-awareness must be accompanied by self-acceptance if you’re to be empathetic. In other words, empathy begins at home.

That doesn’t mean excusing mistakes, but forgiving and repairing them while always striving to improve. If you accept yourself, you’ll find it much easier to empathize with others.

Self-loathing as well as self-righteousness keep you locked in an emotional cell with no means of getting out.

Strategies:

5. Reflect on a time when you showed empathy to someone.

What did you do that conveyed empathy, and do you think the other person felt it?

6. Now reflect on the opposite scenario.

Examine a time when you could have been more empathetic, but didn’t?

What got in the way?

7. Practice observing your feelings without judgment or shoulds.

If you tend to be judgmental about your feelings, consciously practice letting them arise but without judgment.

When someone meditates, this is part of the process. In fact, when you meditate, all kinds of thoughts and feelings arise.

I was initially horrified at the stuff that came up when I began practicing meditation. But just because it does, doesn’t mean that’s who you are.

Let it come, sit with it, and let it go.

The more you’re able to do that, the more self-aware and empathetic you’ll become. You’ll also be able to direct your responses the way you’d like to.

Last Note

Emotional intelligence is a big subject, and we’ve just scratched the surface today. If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend reading “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman. It’s the EQ bible, so to speak.

A quick read for basic information about EQ can be found in an article on the Verywell Mind website titled ​”5 Key Emotional Intelligence Skills.”​

The e-book I mentioned by Mark Manson appears to be unavailable any longer. Or at least I can’t find it on his site. He has many other articles about emotional intelligence that you may enjoy at ​MarkManson.net.​

Happy reading!

That’s all for today!

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Photo by Getty Images

Every day, you make decisions about what you will tolerate and what you won’t. Do you give it much thought?

Some choices are automatic, but others are not so easy. Having some guidelines helps, which I’ll share with you today.

But, before we dive into that, let’s back up and look at the pros and cons of being tolerant. Then the guidelines will make more sense.

The Pros

There are three pros worth considering. They are:

1. Making good use of diversity
2. Enhancing personal growth
3. Expanding emotional intelligence

Let’s take them one at a time.

Making Good Use of Diversity

Diversity is a hot topic in our country right now, but we’re not going to delve into its political aspects.

For our purposes, diversity is a broad concept that means looking at the whole, rather than just the parts. It’s inclusive.

If you look at a rainbow, you see the many colors that the prism produces. The rainbow includes them all, and its beauty is partly due to that variation within the whole.

Similarly, diversity means looking at all the options in a situation and being inquisitive about different approaches, aspects, and ideas. It favors variety.

For example, when you travel somewhere, there are usually several routes you can take.

You might choose the straight route on a highway that gets you there faster with fewer twists and turns.

Or, you could opt for a winding route that passes through the countryside, so you can enjoy the scenery and have a chance to relax and think. It’s less stressful.

Both options have benefits, but one is likely to appeal to you more than the other.

That’s a simple example of diversity. You won’t object to either of those, but you’ll pick the one that works best for your needs.

Diversity related to different points of view or cultural practices and norms is more challenging.

However, the pros of considering other views outside of your own are that you have the opportunity to explore new ways of thinking.

Exposure to novel ideas can expand your mind and increase your knowledge base. In other words, you can grow.

Enhancing Personal Growth

One thing that inhibits growth is our natural fear of the unknown. It’s part of our survival instincts, which we’re born with.

Our early ancestors had to be able to quickly assess potential threats when confronted with unfamiliar situations or people. This is where the concept of being afraid of strangers originates.

If you understand this concept, you can see how it also plays into a fear of diversity.

The instinct to say no before saying yes is part of this inborn fear of the unfamiliar.

It’s not necessarily negative, but it can inhibit an openness to learning and accepting that there is more than one approach to things.

Growth is an ongoing, exploratory process. It requires consideration of the many colors of the rainbow.

That doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything you hear. It means you recognize that there is more than one way of looking at something, just like there’s more than one route to a destination.

Expanding Emotional Intelligence

That brings us to emotional intelligence and its role in tolerance.

Part of emotional intelligence is being able to recognize your own fears, biases, and judgments without acting on them. Another is expressing empathy and having awareness of others’ feelings.

Both of these assist you in regulating your emotions, which come into play when dealing with diverse opinions and perspectives.

You might ask questions to help clarify a position or even challenge it, but you can conduct yourself in a manner that preserves the humanity of both you and the other person.

A good method is to lead with curiosity. Instead of jumping into a debate, ask questions like:

• How did you come to that conclusion?
• What information are you basing it on?
• What’s been your experience?

All of these demonstrate a genuine interest in understanding the other person, which creates a connection.

It doesn’t mean you agree with their point of view, but you respect their right to have it.

Reacting in this way enhances your empathy, expands your emotional intelligence, and deepens your self-awareness.

Okay, that’s all good, but there are times when tolerance is not in anybody’s best interest. Let’s review the cons.

The Cons

There are two cons:

1. Encouraging, accepting, or implicitly participating in abusive or unacceptable behavior
2. Suppressing your authentic self

Encouraging or Participating in Unacceptable Behavior

There is a line between accepting alternative ideas, points of view, or activities and implicitly participating in behaviors you see as abusive, harmful, or unacceptable.

When a point of view encompasses violence or abusive behavior, or something you feel is unacceptable because it challenges your fundamental values, that line is crossed.

At that point, you usually withdraw your tolerance.

Sometimes you simply decide not to participate in discussions. Other times, you may actively object.

You have to make those decisions on a case-by-case examination. You might, for instance, tolerate discussions of opposing views, but not tolerate personal attacks in the process.

It ultimately comes down to knowing what you value and what you consider acceptable.

Psychological flexibility is a component of emotional intelligence, but it does not extend to accepting harmful behavior.

Suppressing Your Authentic Self

In this case, you tolerate unacceptable behavior out of fear.

For example, you stay with an abusive partner because you’re afraid of the consequences if you leave.

Or you may decide to tolerate some degree of unacceptable behavior out of need. For example, you put up with a bad boss because you need your job.

These decisions are murky and usually involve some form of fear.

You’re afraid of what might happen if you choose not to tolerate a behavior, or afraid of what will happen if you continue to accept behavior you oppose.

In both cases, you’re struggling with your sense of autonomy, self-worth, self-respect, and self-expression.

We don’t have easy choices in these kinds of situations, and each case is different. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

You must weigh the consequences of backing out versus staying, while also exploring alternative options. The goal is always to move away from what’s harmful.

The Decisions

When deciding what to tolerate, these questions serve as good guidelines.

1. What’s at stake?

Is this something I need to argue for?

Does it have any significant impact? Or is it just a difference in beliefs, ideas, or customs I can accept?

2. Do I need to take a stand?

Is the situation crossing a serious value boundary? If so, do I need to put energy into objecting?

If the situation directly affects you, you may take some action.

However, if you’re dealing with a social media post, you might ignore it altogether because you see no reason to engage.

3. Am I reacting to an exaggerated fear or a genuine one?

That’s an important distinction. For example, some people fear diversity of any kind because it’s unfamiliar.

The question to ask yourself is, “Is there an underlying fear that’s causing my reactions, and if so, what is it? How valid is it?”

Gaining insight into yourself and your motivations can help you determine where and when to draw the line.

Three Things to Do

1. Set boundaries.

Tolerance is intertwined with boundary-setting.

Knowing what you will or will not tolerate is the basis for setting boundaries, as well as determining their strength and knowing when to apply them.

2. Enhance your ability to manage and regulate your emotions.

Part of being tolerant is having the ability to manage your emotional reactions during interactions with someone who thinks differently from you.

People who are adept at regulating their emotions can listen to different viewpoints and engage in discussions without becoming overly reactive, regardless of how divergent the opinions are. They’re also more comfortable with diversity.

3. Work on your emotional intelligence.

It’s in your best interest, as well as the interest of everyone, to work on developing emotional intelligence.

• It encourages psychological flexibility while also sharpening your values.
• It expands empathy, helps you better understand yourself, and enables you to manage your emotions more effectively.

Tolerance is tied to all of those things.

Next week, I’ll review some key principles of emotional intelligence and tell you how you can improve them.

That’s all for today!

Have a good week!

All my best,

Barbara