Relational Diversity

A 2022 study found that the more “relational diversity” a person has in their social repertoire, the higher their well-being. Using the analogy of a “social portfolio,” Harvard Business School doctoral candidate Hanne Collins and her colleagues found when people socialize with a range of conversation partners — family members, coworkers, friends, and strangers — on a given day, they report feeling happier than those who converse with fewer “categories” of people. 

Allie Volpe writing in Vox

Close a few doors

We can spend a lot of energy keeping doors open. Time is wasted when we refuse to let go because of the pain of watching a door close and seeing an option disappear. We pay a price to avoid feeling a particular emotion such as losing an opportunity. Find ways to avoid overbooking our lives by letting a few things fall off our plates. Cancel projects. Give away ideas to colleagues. Resign from committees. Rethink hobbies. Let a few doors close.

Stephen Goforth

The Most Effective Therapeutic Approach to Serious Emotional Issues

We are on a road to significant life disruptions when we cling to what we wish the world was like instead of what it really is like. As M Scott Peck wrote, “Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.” 

Like it or not, we are all neurotic to some degree. If the wrong set of circumstances comes along, and if they are combined with unhealthy attitudes encouraged by poor parenting and genetic tenancies, any of us can tip over into the abyss. 

Mental clarity is fundamental to emotional health. That's why, despite the biological component of mental illness, our therapeutic approaches should be holistic and address cognitive issues. A cognitive-focused approach has a history of greater effectiveness than drugs (except when dealing with extreme psychotic breaks, schizophrenia, etc.). After an initial physical exam rules out disease and general illness, an eclectic approach that is focused on cognitive therapy is the most effective direction. For most issues, drugs are best regulated to use as a tool allowing a person to find a place of stability in order to deal with fundamental unhealthy cognitive issues.

Stephen Goforth

Leadership in Times of Difficulty

Even if they don’t have immediate solutions, emotionally intelligent leaders are able to maintain calm in the face of difficulties. This can help their team focus their energy on coming up with solutions, rather than needlessly squandering time and effort on fear and worry. 

Harvey Deutschendorf writing in Fast Company

Emotionally intelligent leaders are willing to step out of their comfort zones

Growth and development require that we continue to push the boundaries of what we feel comfortable doing. Emotionally strong leaders recognize this and continue to push themselves and encourage those around them to go beyond what they already know and are familiar with. 

Emotionally intelligent leaders recognize that change is constant and that their success, the success of their people, and the success of the organization requires constant advancements and adjustments. 

Harvey Deutschendorf writing in Fast Company

Powerful Words

Words have profound suggestive power, and there is healing in the very saying of them. Utter a series of panicky words and your mind will immediately go into a mild state of nervousness. You will perhaps feel a sinking in the pit of your stomach that will affect your entire physical mechanism. If, on the contrary, you speak peaceful, quieting words, you mind will react in a peaceful manner.

Use such a word as “tranquility.” Repeat that word slowly several times. Tranquility is one of the most beautiful and melodic of all English words, and the mere saying of it tends to induce a tranquil state.

Another healing word is “serenity.” Picturize serenity as you say it. Repeat it slowly and in the mood of which the word is a symbol. Words such as these have a healing potency when used in this manner.

It is also helpful to use lines from poetry or passages from the Scriptures. The words of the Bible have a particularly strong therapeutic value. Drop them into your mind, allowing them to “dissolve” in consciousness, and they will spread a healing balm over your entire mental structure. This is one of the simplest processes to perform and also one of the most effective in attaining peace of mind.

Norman Vincent Peale
The Power of Positive Thinking

What to do instead of simply venting about frustrations

There is no consistent empirical support for the common view that putting an emotional experience into words can resolve it. We “equate emotional relief with emotional recovery,” but they’re not the same.

Chatting with friends can bring closure when they help you reconstrue an event, rather than just recount it. What does that look like? Asking why you think the other person acted that way, prodding to see whether there’s anything to be learned from it all, and just generally broadening your perspective to “the grand scheme of things.”

Gail Cornwall & Juli Fraga writing in Slate

This is the work of healing

Thursday, Jan. 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day

This is the work of healing. You deny what hurts, what you fear. You avoid it at all costs. Then you find a way to welcome and embrace what you’re most afraid of. And then you can finally let it go. 

Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger in her book The Choice

Ordering the mind

Unless a person knows how to give order to his or her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment: it will focus on some real or imaginary pain, on recent grudges or long-term frustrations. Entropy is the normal state of consciousness – a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.

To avoid this condition, people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever information is reality available, as long as it distracts attention from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings. This explains why such a huge proportion of time is invested in watching television, despite the fact that it is very rarely enjoyed. Compared to other sources of stimulation – like reading, talking to other people, or working on a hobby – TV can provide continuous and easily accessible information that will structure the viewers attention, at a very low cost in terms of the psychic energy that needs to be invested. While people watch television, people need not fear that their drifting minds will force them to fact disturbing personal problems. It is understandable that once on develops this strategy for overcoming psychic entropy, to give up the habit becomes almost impossible.

The better route for avoiding chaos in consciousness, of course, is through habits that give control over mental processes to the individual, rather than to some external source of stimulation… To acquire such habits requires practice, however, and the kind of goals and rules that are inherent in flow activities.

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow

The sacred present

Here you are! In the sacred present. I can’t heal you—or anyone—but I can celebrate your choice to dismantle the prison in your mind. Brick by brick. You can’t change what happened, you can’t change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose how you live now. 

Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger in her book The Choice

Depression Lingers

There is a chain of events follow the awareness of a loss that starts with mind-body chain of events that leads to depression. While it mind can resolve the loss, the body still needs time to recover. The biochemical changes accompanying the depression take time to return to normal. One may continue to feel depressed long after the problem seems to be resolved.

This is important to remember because many people who experience such temporary losses do not allow time for the body’s chemistry to heal. They are likely to interpret their continued low mood as a sign of failure, reject themselves, and create further loss and depression. Many depressions are perpetuated this way.

The healthiest way to deal with sadness following restoration of the loss is simply to accept it. Give the body time to heal after the mind is recovered.

Archibald Hart, Counseling the Depressed

Two Unhealthy Ways of Relating to the World

Most people who come to see a psychiatrist are suffering from what is called either neurosis or a character disorder. Put most simply, these two conditions are disorders of responsibility, and as such they are opposite styles of relating to the world and its problems. The neurotic assumes too much responsibility ; the person with character disorder not enough. When neurotics are in conflict with the world they automatically assume that they are at fault. When those with character disorders are in conflict with the world they automatically assume that the world is at fault. 

Even the speech patterns of neurotics and those with character disorders are different. The speech of the neurotic is notable for such expressions as “I ought to,” “I should,” and “I shouldn’t” indicating the individual’s self0image as an inferior man or woman always falling short of the mark, always making the wrong choices. The speech of a person with a character disorder, however ,relies heavily on “I can’t,” “I couldn’t” “I have to,” and “I had to” demonstrating a self-image of a being who has no power of choice, whose behavior is completely directed by external forces total beyond his or her control.

As might be imagined, neurotics, compared with character disordered people, are easy to work with in psychotherapy because the assume responsibility for their difficulties and there fore see themselves as having problems. Whose with character disorders are much more difficult, if not impossible, to work with because they don’t see themselves as the source of their problems; they see the world rather than themselves as being in need of change and there fore fail to recognize the necessity for self-examination.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled