How to Get From Conflict to Understanding
When we get frustrated with others, we can get mired in our stories and locked into repeating patterns of behavior. It’s easy to get stuck in the blaming game.
I went to a workshop with dementia care expert, Teepa Snow, this week. She gave a perfect example of why so many of us can get stuck in frustration mode with members of our family.
The biggest mistake we make in relationships is this:
Read MoreFrom Trauma Drama to Ease in Relationships
I have a client who had 2 difficult housemates and didn’t feel like he could move. He called them entitled, and he felt like they regularly demanded far more from him than they were willing to do themselves. He often felt enraged, like a seething volcano about ready to erupt! He didn’t feel like he knew how to react to these kinds of stressful relationships!
He felt resentful because he was doing a large majority of the shared responsibilities. He was very concerned about saying something because he felt that, no matter how respectful he tried to be, they had a pattern of lashing out, being vindictive, or undermining his needs.
Read MoreWhat Makes Men Violent?
When I heard about the last mass shooting in Vegas, I felt physically ill. If the shooter was a Muslim or anything other than White, the media and politicians would label him as a terrorist.
If the shooter is White, they say that he has mental health issues.
But what has been the common denominator in 88 out of the last 91 shootings? It is that the shooter is a male.
While most men are not violent, most of the violence is committed by men. In fact, 90% of homicides are by men. And it is time that we as a country start to address the underlying causes before more lives are lost!
So what makes men violent?
Read MoreHow to Stay Informed Without Getting Depressed
I’ve always been troubled by massive injustices inflicted upon fellow citizens. In my quest to determine how to prevent a future Holocaust for example, I needed to understand what caused it. One of the most important lessons I learned in my college course, “Introduction to Political Freedom”, is that the most horrific injustices of the world occur when we are not paying attention and when we disengage.
Thus, I’m a big believer that it is essential to stay informed and engaged in what is going on in the world, and to do what you can to make it a better place.
But as an empath, staying informed and keeping engaged can be emotionally taxing and overwhelming. Every day I wake up, thinking about the state of our country, and how we can have peace and justice in this world. And often this obsession with the direction of our country leaves me in despair about the future.
But I know that I’m not alone, so after doing some research on the internet, I found some great advice which I’ll share below.
Read MoreThe Global Consequences of Ignoring our Mental Health
It saddens me terribly to say this, but I truly believe that in this country, we are facing an epidemic of cruelty. Forty years ago, I don’t think we could have ever imagined America as a country, where we would have an average of one mass shooting a day, where police would be regularly caught on tape beating up minorities, or where presidential candidates were allowed to openly incite violence towards anyone they didn’t like.
The reasons for this trend are many. I believe that rising inequality breeds greater unhappiness, and I’ve outlined the reasons in my article, “Does Inequality affect Your Happiness?” I also believe that as more of us compete for fewer resources, the greater need we have to prove our worth. If we aren’t careful, we can become less trusting. The need to survive can increase our tendency to discriminate against minorities, women, children, the elderly or people who are different than us.
But humans also have tremendous capacity to come together in crises. We have the power to work together, and respond to our collective suffering with empathy and compassion.
So what is the underlying difference between those that choose the path of hate vs. the path of compassion?
Read More5 Essential Tips to Curb Emotional Eating
You know that you aren’t hungry… after all, you’ve eaten your regular meals, but you are craving your favorite snack again. Maybe it’s in the middle of the afternoon, or more commonly late at night.
Why do we have these cravings, and what can we do to stop our emotional eating?
Have you noticed that we are more prone to giving into these cravings when you are stressed or late at night? Why? Because that is when our willpower is weakest. Willpower is limited, and if we are using it all day to effectively deal with existing stresses, then we will have less of it to resist those cravings. But there are tricks we can do to maximize our willpower and minimize our emotional eating habits.
What are the tricks to curb our emotional eating habits?
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