How Criticism Affects You? Handling Criticism!
July 31, 2007 on 7:14 am | In Uncategorized | Comments Off
There are two types of criticism. One comes from others and the other is self-criticism.
Criticism from others: they may criticize us and evaluate us.
This criticism usually comes from our parents or family members.
They are sometimes overly critical of us and what we do. From the time we are born we are aware of what others think about us.
We grow up wanting and needing the approval of others. First, we need our parents approval.
We learn to do things that they want us to do so that they will give us approval. These learned behaviors became our usual pattern for dealing with issues.
Self-criticism: Somewhere through the growing process, we learned to turn the criticism inward, towards ourselves. Our parents may be gone but we are still giving ourselves criticism that our parents used to. This has become so automatic that we dont even realize we are doing it.
In order to change and grow, we need to change and eliminate the self-criticism. This is no easy task because this is a habit we have cultivated over a great length of time. You need to stop being critical of yourself and overly harsh on yourself.
People who are perfectionists tend to be harder on themselves than they should be. If you are a perfectionist you need to take heed and learn to allow yourself to be less than perfect.
Many perfectionists avoid doing things unless they know they are good at them. This limits their ability to learn and experience new things in life.
How to build self confidence?
Be strong in your beliefs and not listen to criticism:
In order to build self-confidence you need to be strong in your beliefs and not listen to criticism. This is often very hard to do. After someone has criticized you harshly its hard not to replay the harsh words over and over in our heads.
You can listen to the criticism, take it in, but then not let it affect you. This requires some practice, as you have become programmed over the years to respond to criticism.
Distinguish between negative criticism and constructive criticism:
Start by becoming aware of criticism and being able to distinguish between negative criticism and constructive criticism.
Negative criticism: Negative criticism is aimed at us personally and does not include anything to help guide us in a better direction. If someone gives us a negative comment without offering a suggestion on how to improve it, this could qualify as negative criticism.
Be aware of negative people who seem to get enjoyment out of tearing others down. They may not have your best interest at heart. In fact, they may be way off base when it comes to what they are telling you.
This is because they may have skewed perception. They also may feel a certain amount of jealousy towards others and the negativity stems from their own insecurities.
People who have negative attitudes or who offer negative criticism should be considered toxic and you should try to avoid dealing with them as much as possible. If you do need to deal with negative people, reassure yourself that you are worthy of what you do.
Remind yourself that this person is only offering one opinion and that you dont need to put value in that opinion. Finally, tell yourself that your opinion is really the only one that counts and you are fine.
Constructive criticism: Constructive criticism can actually provide benefits to you. Constructive criticism offers comments and follows up with suggestions for change, and is an honest attempt to help you in some way.
In order for you to take in the comments and try something new you need to be open to change. Remember, though, that the person offering the constructive criticism is also just a person, with opinions, just as you are. You are free to consider their comments but are not required to act on them.
Try not to dwell on any type of criticism. Over-thinking anything is usually spending too much time on something that isnt that important.
Again, remember that you are the person that you have to please and if you are happy, thats all that counts (as long as youre not hurting anyone in the process).
How to treat ourselves?
Place the most value in your own criticism and be sparing with that as well. People can be just as harsh on themselves as they can be of others, sometimes even more so.
Treat yourself with respect and love: Take care to treat yourself with respect and love, as you would others. Dont be too hard on yourself. Often, if you are overly critical of yourself it stems from parents that were over critical of you when you were young.
You may hear your parents telling you in your head when you do something wrong. Their words may still be with you today, even as an adult. Take charge of your life and become your own person.
As an adult you dont need to take criticism from others and you certainly dont need to give yourself negative criticism.
Listen to your inner critic: You listen to your inner critic because it has become your strategy for dealing with negative situations. You actually may feel comforted by having this voice inside you telling you how to cope with situations.
To find out when your inner critic is at work write down situations during the day where you are critical of yourself. At the end of the day find out what role your critic played in your day and what feelings you were avoiding.
Avoid over analyzing: Dont over-analyze. Many people that have low self-confidence tend to over-analyze every situation and conversation. Long after the fact they are still dwelling on exactly what was said, how it was said and what was meant by it.
They tend to come up with other ideas later for how they should have responded. You Dont need to analyze everything about it. Live in the here and now. In order to do that you need to let go of any preconceived notions about yourself and others. Stop judging yourself negatively.
Avoid making overgeneralizations about yourself: Try to see yourself in true light. If you have one mistake it doesnt necessarily follow that you will make other mistakes as well.
When you over generalize you use words such as never, always, every, none, nobody, everybody, etc. These words tend to lead you to incorrect conclusions.
Use filtering to see the world: Filtering is a method we use to see the world the way we want to see it. We look at the world only through our own filter and dont believe that there is another way to see things. To change this we need to first realize that we do it. Once we recognize that we can try to stop doing it.
Stop self blaming: Self-blame is thinking that is distorted because you blame yourself for everything, even when it isnt your fault. Sometimes you blame yourself for things that are out of your control or that you can only partially control.
One way to notice that you are living with self-blame is to hear yourself apologizing often. You may notice that you apologize for things other people do that you have no control over.
Start to take notice when you apologize for things that arent your fault. Stop saying youre sorry when you havent done anything wrong.
Ways to respond to criticism:
This article will help you learn how to filter and respond to criticism. Negative criticism can do damage to frail self-confidence. Keep in mind that when others criticize you they may have their own agenda. Learn to recognize what isnt true and respond to those who criticize you.
When you receive criticism follow these steps before responding.
- Look at the criticism objectively. Dont automatically agree with it.
- Ask yourself what the critic is saying. Make sure you understand.
- Is the criticism constructive?
- Is the criticism accurate?
- If it is inaccurate, correct the misconception with the critic.
- If it is accurate, acknowledge it to the critic and move on.
Many times criticism has roots in accuracy but is partially incorrect. In this case, make sure you respond to the misconceptions and acknowledge the parts that are true.
When you respond to the critic, be calm and prepared. If you need to, take some time and respond later once you have had a chance to review the situation completely.
Relaxing Is The Best Option For Getting Rid Of Anxiety And Panic
July 30, 2007 on 4:18 am | In Uncategorized | Comments Off
Relax; take it easy while telling self that you deserve it. What could be so wrong that you cannot find a solution to cope with the problem?
Sometimes we stress over simple fixes while other times danger is real.
For instance, if your son is identified with a disease and does not have insurance to cover up his medicines you had serious reasons to feel stress, fear, anxious and panicky.
However, you can get rid of this problem by tracking resources that will help you find resolve.
For example, if you are from a low-income family you can hunt for state help to pay for medical costs. So, relaxing and thinking is the eventual solution in eradicating stress, worry, anxiety, and panic.
Various Relaxation Techniques that can Help You:
At what time you find it hard to handle stress, which causes panic and anxiety be seated and relax for a moment to pull your feelings together. Often you will see that the threats create less danger than you imagined.
Mediation is one of the relaxation tactics that has confirmed success. Mediation is an interference strategy that stops infuriating thoughts or emotions.
Mediation will help you reduce aggravations, irritations, worry, frustration, and the like. This is the process of plummeting anxiety and panic, as well as stress.
Breathing strategies often help downgrade tension and stress. You should practice breathing tactics frequently and avoid saying “I will join you”.
Lets practice: Sit in a relaxed area of the room. Monitor the area closely while allowing your mind to relax and roam freely. Now, close your eyes.
Attempt to devoid your thoughts so that the mind feels at ease. Now, breathe in. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. As you practice, recognizes the tension leaving your body. Acknowledge the abdominal, watching the air come back to your lungs.
Imagination is a powerful store we have inside our minds. You can use the imagination to take trips, create friends, and find out new ideas. Practice: Imagine self in a beautiful garden. Picture you walking through a pleasant garden with a waterfall setting off the backdrop.
Now, observe what you see closely while you take time to smell, hear, touch, feel, and taste your nearby. Recognize what you feel. Practice the tactics as frequently as you like and eventually you will find respite from nervousness and panic.
Self-hypnosis is the process of putting yourself in a mood that takes you out of the moment. Self-hypnosis puts your mind in a sleeplike state, which is often artificially induced into the mind.
The practice will help you to react to any questions in the mind, while feeling with no trouble available to answers.
Stopping thoughts is a simple process most people find it tough to discovery. If you are eager to listen, you have the aptitude to train your mind to stop thinking.
A submissive nature is needed, since you will need to give self-permission to stop thinking. Just say I do not give you consent to think this way. You are safe now. Telling self you are safe will help you to block the thoughts.
Assertiveguidance is a great relaxation practice. Once you obtain assertive skills, you will have built the self-worth and confidence, which puts you in influence of your own mind. Once you have be in charge of your own mind, you will find less times that panic and anxiety takes control of you.
Exercise is the final choice of relaxing. As you train the body the mind will work in accord, thus you are building astonishing qualities we require as humans, thus removing panic and anxiety. Keep working!
Therapeutic Tactics For Conquering Depression
July 28, 2007 on 4:48 am | In Uncategorized | Comments Off
Depression can be managed effectively using various techniques.
Mental health services often choose between therapeutic plans in treating depression based on the severity.
The approaches in therapy could include Interpersonal Therapy, Cognitive Behavior, and the like.
Some of the tactics include
- Eclectic strategies
- Group therapy
- Nonverbal therapy
- Metaphorical strategies
- Classic gestalt tactics
- Rational therapy
- Classic behavior tactics
- Expressive tactics, and more
Eclectic strategies often include assorted techniques while using diverse tactics to free the mind of negative energies.
Some of the symptoms of depression include continuous sadness, anxiety, and emptiness. Pessimistic thoughts, and feelings of despair or hopelessness, are symptoms of depression.
Inability to enjoy common activities, helplessness, excessive guilt, feelings of worthlessness, insomnia, fatigue, declining of energy, suicidal thoughts and/or attempts, restlessness, headaches, chronic pains and aches, appetite and body changes in weight, concentration deficiency, complications with making decisions, forgetfulness, and so on are symptoms of depression.
Interpersonal Therapy
Interpersonal therapeutic procedures often include relationships between the patient, therapist, family, friends, or in groups. Thus, the therapist will monitor the patients interactions and work to build social tools, including socializing, communication, interacting, and the like.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy is generally used in mental health offices. The therapeutic strategy concerns with gaining of knowledge, which associates to processes of developing knowledge by usage of reasoning, perceptions, and intuitions.
Primarily the therapy focuses on conforming behaviors and the way a person thinks or reacts to emotional responses.
Gestalt Therapy
The classic gestalt tactics normally is, used in mental health services. Gestalt is a branch of mental health or psychology, which focuses on behaviors to treat the patient efficiently.
Still, gestalt focuses on perceptions, while moving to integrate the whole thinking process, thus moving to stimuli healing and response control. Therefore, gestalt therapy is the study and analysis of perceptions and behaviors combined.
The counselor will look at the patient from a standing point, while watching his or her responses or reactions to configurationally arranged wholes by means of stress on the consistency of physiological and psychological events, while noting rejections of breakdown or psychoanalysis into discrete or disconnected events of stimulus, response, and perception.
Primary focus in gestalt therapy is perceptions, since it plays part in the way a person views things. Thus, perceptions are our insight, awareness, and discernment combined. Yet, perception is also our sensitivity, assessing skills, observations, experiences, opinions, views, readings, and the like, as well.
Perceptions also affect our visualization skills. In sum, perceptions is our way of thinking, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and the like. In shorter terms, perceptions are our antenna ears.
Yet, perceptions extend further in gestalt therapy, since the therapist will also consider perceptional counterparts, such as judgments, discrimination, acumen, tastes, and sensitivity.
Consequences are included in this therapy, or rather facing consequences. To help you understand how therapy can help you manage and conquer your depression, lets consider a phrase in gestalt therapy, called the blocking and unblocking phrase.
Test: DO not feel alarmed, since the test is merely a way to help you see how gestalt works to help you manage and conquer depression.
Unblocking strategies: You will be, provided evocative questions in a list, which the goals are to locate or sport blocking areas in your mind.
Consequences:
Failures:
Emotions:
Stress:
Forget:
Mistakes:
Inhibitions:
Resources:
Hurdles:
Effort:
Attempt:
Repress:
Suppress:
Obsessing:
Compulsive:
Impulse:
Questions:
What do you think the ________of our depression is?
How do you distinguish failure?
What are your ________saying to you?
What are the ___________of your impulsive reactions?
How do you relate to stress?
Where do you hold back in expressing your __________?
Continue the process, by answering the questions. While this is not a full comprehensive example of the gestalt, it is a start in helping you to discover self.
Why You Canât Control Anger And Emotional Pain
July 27, 2007 on 5:48 am | In Uncategorized | Comments Off
Recognizing that you hold your own strings in life will put you face-to-face with your own pain, hurt, and other emotions, both positive and negative.
You may think, Well, if I cant control other people, then maybe I can control the negative energy and thoughts that arise in my mind and body when I hurt and feel angry.
This sensible-sounding solution is unfortunately another dead end.
Control over your emotional reactions is just as misleading as your desire to control other people.
The results that come out when people act to get rid of emotional and psychological pain:
- Numerous studies have shown that when people act to get rid of emotional and psychological pain, they end up instead with more emotional and psychological pain.
- You cant keep your unpleasant thoughts and emotions from burning you in the same way you can pull your hand away from a hot stove.
- Trying to control unpleasant emotions, internal bodily sensations, and even disturbing thoughts will mostly backfire.
- Youll get more of the very thing you dont want to think and feel. This happens because your body is a system with a built-in system of feedback loops-your brain and nervous system.
- When you act against parts of this system-suppressing, avoiding, stuffing painful feelings-it sends out reverberations to all other parts of the system. This mind-body connection is like a sensitive spider web in this respect. Everything is connected.
- Suppression and control take enormous effort. Suppressing unpleasant experiences-be they thoughts, memories, anger, anxiety, hurt, or bodily sensations-actually make matters worse. Why?
- The more you try not to think about a particular thought, the more of this thought youll actually have. The same is true of unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and some internal bodily sensations.
Such struggles with yourself are fueled largely by an unwillingness to make space for every aspect of your experience and identity. Your mind would like you to believe that to be happy and to live life fully, you must get rid of your painful and unpleasant thoughts, feelings, or memories.
To have the good life means that you must be pain free. So you struggle to manage stuff, bury, deny, or medicate the hurt and pain.
All this time spent controlling tends to get in the way of what most people wish to spend their time doing-the experiences and relationships that youd probably much rather be having.
In what areas control works:
- Control works against you when applied to unwanted and painful aspects of your private world, just as it works against you when you try to impose it on other people.
- In both cases, you are sending out a message that diminishes your own and others humanity and dignity.
To get out of this cycle, youll need to first come to terms with the fact that deliberate control is not a solution. It is the problem. Your thoughts and feelings-the good, the bad, and the ugly-always go with you wherever you go.
These experiences define what is uniquely human about you. You cannot escape or avoid them so long as youre alive. They are part of you. To act against them is to act against your very being. To act against them means that you will remain stuck in hurt and anger.
Exercise: Pain Avoidance - A Self-Assessment
All efforts to suppress and control anger are essentially about avoiding pain. The goal is to make the hurt go away. However, this goal is unreachable; in fact, it is a dead end. Covering up hurt with anger does not make the hurt go away.
Instead it bottles the energy for release at a later time. The release later on might take the form of unfettered anger. Or it may show up as depression, anxiety, panic attacks, or physical symptoms such as headaches, ulcers, backaches, and fatigue.
Lets take a look at how you may be suppressing your emotional pain and hurt. Here is a partial list of behaviors that suggest you are in the habit of suppressing your anger. Read each statement carefully, and think about them as they apply to your life.
- I tend to hide my painful feelings for fear that nothing good can come from showing my emotions.
- I act to push out of my mind upsetting thoughts or memories.
- I avoid feeling unpleasant emotions and act to reduce them quickly.
- I habitually stuff my feelings or use distraction, alcohol, or other drugs and strategies to feel better.
- I resort to anger to hide other unpleasant emotions and thoughts.
- I see my emotional hurt and pain as real barriers to living the life I want and becoming the person I want to be.
- I tend to withdraw from problems, even if that means they are left unresolved.
- I refuse to air personal problems, needs, or concerns.
- I focus on maintaining the appearance of having it all together.
- I avoid controversial or troublesome topics.
- I second-guess my own choices.
- I play the role of people pleaser by putting myself second.
- I let my hurt and frustration pass without discussing it.
- I pretend that I dont have resentment, or that all is rosy in my life.
Innovations In Technology Affects Time Management Schemes
July 26, 2007 on 6:16 am | In Uncategorized | Comments Off
Where has the time gone? In todays world, the time is moving quickly, making it more vital for anyone to manage his or her time wisely.
The world focuses more on money than time when they are laying out a plan to handle their time. This is the process of making mistakes.
Time is more critical as the days progress. Technology has advanced so enormously that everyday we are learning new information.
Time is the most necessary element to productivity. When we manage our time wisely, the rest will become clear.
Time Management is Compulsory for Any Plan
In order to make any plan fall into place and any goal come alive, time management is essential. If you have a problem with setting goals, you might want to keep in mind that goals are the terminal point of any race.
This might help you feel the concept of competition comes into focus and most humans struggle to become better, and often better than the next person…it is called winning the race.
Its Time For Setting Up a Time Management Scheme
This is the best solution for setting up a time management scheme, if you have a competitive attitude. Otherwise, if you are achieving your goals you can set your mind to dream mode which means you have a strong aspiration to reach a goal. You have purpose!
Everyone needs purpose in life and the time, when we loose sight of our purposes, our time management schemes often fall over.
Dont delay, set up a plan, and keep your goals on the way, and your time management schemes will work appropriately. If you follow instructions then you will not ask where the time has gone. Instead, you will say, life is good!
Time Management Schemes Start with Goals
Time management schemes start with goals. When we set goals for our self, we often have to reroute a plan to work toward the goals.
Our plans should work all together with our goal, because plans are important in the process of achieving. Planning is the process of taking away in the sense we create a list of tasks that we must realize to reach our goals.
Work Hard To accomplish Your Achievements
Each day we refer to our list to see what our demands are for the day. When we finish our list of tasks, and have time left, we might want to work on the follow day tasks, since this cuts back time.
If you go after this procedure, you might find your boss saying, take some break (with pay) since you did a great job.
Similarly, if you are attending college classes, or even school, you might want to work hard each day to achieve your assignments. When you go home, you will become aware of you have time to do what you planned for the week.
Procrastination is the Leading Cause
Procrastination is the foremost cause for stress and cramming. If you are putting off assignment or responsibilities, you are short of commitment, which affects your time.
If you are investing time in cramming and stressed because of procrastination you are causing your mind and body harm. When the body and mind is not functioning right, most of your time is wasted.
Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.