Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries
Emotional First Aid
Guy WinchSözler ve Alıntılar
Sometimes our social groups recognize we've outgrown them even before we do.
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Low Self-Esteem Treatment A: Adopt Self Compassion & Silence The Critical Voices In Your Head
Low Self-Esteem Treatment B: Identify Your Strengths & Affirm Them
Low Self-Esteem Treatment C: Increase Your Tolerance For Compliments
Low Self-Esteem Treatment D: Increase Your Personal Empowerment
Practice, patience, and persistence are key ingredients in developing personal empowerment. Once we begin speaking up, we will be able to assess our strengths and weaknesses and learn which of our skills and tools still need work. Each setback will also teach us how to devise more effective plans.
Low Self-Esteem Treatment E: Improve Your Self Control
Exercise: Use your nondominant hand for as many tasks as possible every day between the hours of 8:00a.m. and 6:00p.m. for four to eight weeks.
Most of us only put in as much effort as a situation requires from us. If we can "get away" with being less considerate or less reciprocal, and various other forms of "getting without giving", many of us will, not because we're evil, but simply because we can. If people demanded or expected more of us we would do more, but when they don't, we don't make the effort. This dynamic is true in practically every relationship we have. When our self-esteem is low and we expect very little of others, we are likely to get very little from them as well.
Changing this dynamic once a relationship is already established is difficult because we're in essence "changing the terms of the deal" after the other person has already been operating under a specific set of assumptions and expectations. That is why it is crucial to pay great attention to the expectations we set up when our friendships and romantic relationships first begin.
Failure Treatment A: Get Support & Get Real
Failure Treatment B: Focus On Factors In Your Control
Failure Treatment C: Take Responsibility and Own The Fear
Rumination Treatment A: Change Your Perspective
(self immersed perspective x self distanced perspective)
Rumination Treatment B: Distract Yourself From Emotional Pain
(suppression x distraction)
Rumination Treatment C: Reframe The Anger
Rumination Treatment D: Go Easy On Your Friends
Guilt Treatment A: Learn the Recipe for an Effective Apology
Most of us conceive of apologies as including three basic ingredients: (1) a statement of regret for what happened; (2) a clear "I'm sorry" statement; and (3) a request for forgiveness -all of which must be delivered with sincerity. (...) Scientists have discovered three additional components that also play a vital role in an apology's effectiveness: validating the other person's feelings, offering atonement, and acknowledging we violated expectations.
How to Offer Authentic Emotional Validation
1-Let the other person complete his or her narrative about what happened so you have all the facts.
2-Convey your understanding of what happened to this person from his or her perspective (whether you agree with that perspective or not and even if that perspective is obviously skewed).
3-Convey your understanding of how the person felt as a result of what happened (from his or her perspective).
4-Acknowledge that his or her feelings are reasonable (which, given that person's perspective, they are).
5-Convey empathy and remorse for the person's emotional state.
Although it might not always be relevant, necessary, or possible to do so, making offers to compensate or atone for our actions in some way can be extremely meaningful to the offended party, even if he or she turns down the offers we make.
Guilt Treatment B: Forgive Yourself
Guilt Treatment C: Reengage in Life
Loss and Trauma Treatment A: Soothe Your Emotional Pain Your Way
Loss and Trauma Treatment B: Recover Lost Aspects of Your "Self"
1. List your qualities, characteristics, and abilities that you valued in yourself or that others valued about you before the events occurred (aim for at least ten items).
2. Which of the above items feel most disconnected from your life today or tend to be expressed less today than they had been previously?
3. For each quality you listed, write a brief paragraph describing why you feel disconnected from the attribute in question or why the quality is no longer expressed as extensively as it had been previously.
4. For each quality you listed, write a brief paragraph describing possible people, activities, or outlets you could pursue that would allow you to express the quality in a more substantial way than you are able to do currently.
5. Rank the items from the previous question according to which of them seem both doable and emotionally manageable.
6. Set yourself the goal of working through the list as best you can and at whatever pace seems most comfortable.
Loss and Trauma Treatment C: Find Meaning in Tragedy
1-I never imagined back then that such tragic events would lead me to:
2-What I did was significant and very meaningful to me because:
3-The first step of my journey toward the achievement was when I:
4-My achievement was possible because I changed my priorities such that:
5-Changing my priorities led me to make the following changes in my life:
6-Along the way I realized my purpose in life is: