“I’ll see your passive-aggressiveness and raise you a sweet-genuine”. ~ Unknown To talk about Passive-Aggressiveness we need to start with a simple definition of the 3 primary ways people behave and/or communicate. I’ve always thought of these as a clock (I hope this metaphor makes sense to you): • Passive behavior/communication (which shares many similarities…
It is characteristic of the emotions of the very young infant that they are of an extreme and powerful nature. ~ M. KleinI’ve always appreciated Object Relations Theory (ORT) however it’s one of “those” theories – so stick with me (and you might have to read this post twice to understand it . ORT comes…
The term neuroticism dates to the ancient Greeks who believed people were made up of four basic temperaments: choleric (anger/leaders), sanguine (happy/sociable), phlegmatic (calm/deep thinkers) and melancholic (neurotic/artists). Then came Freud (late 1800’s), who had many thoughts about neuroses (some better than others)! Simply summarized, he thought neuroses came from not facing, and thereby repressing,…
“Diligence is the mother of good luck”. (Proverb) When something happens to you, how much control do you feel you had over it? Your answer to this question is shaped by many factors (childhood experiences, parenting styles, abilities, trauma etc.) and causes you to fall somewhere on the spectrum of high internal to high external…
imple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. ~ Steve Jobs I think most of us are familiar with Marie Kondo’s ubiquitous book “The Life Changing Magic…
Ready for part two? Before we get to our Top 10 list of things that DO increase our levels of happiness, we need to ensure we’re all defining the term the same way. Psychologically speaking, happiness is a deep & lasting sense of satisfaction or contentment – not joy, exhilaration, or pleasure (the latter are…
The United States ranks 15th of 146 countries on the 2023 World Happiness Report (a somewhat flawed but interesting survey designed by Gallup and the U.N) – in the last ten years our highest ranking was 14th and lowest was 19th. Researching happiness is a huge empire but here are two things to consider: 1.…
We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it. ~ C. S. Lewis Once, a long time ago, I hated someone. She did me wrong and I despised her for it, simple as that. After the event, every day, I woke up and went to bed with ugly thoughts…
In my life I’ve known four pedophiles; I could not have asked for better teachers to show me how to genuinely develop, deepen and then display empathy (especially to those who are different from me). Not that the process happened quite this neatly or linearly…but it went something like this: To develop empathy, I first…
Albert Ellis was a colorful, quick witted, and socially awkward psychologist who thought a lot about disappointment – as he had quite a bit in his life. He famously stated that people “unnecessarily upset themselves” because they make faulty assumptions and have unrealistic expectations of the world around them. His answer to disappointment was to…