When someone is anxious, it can be tempting to lend reassurance. Still, even well-intended comments sometimes hurt. This article offers several helpful points, among them are the following: Telling an anxious person that they need to get it together or that they are ‘ok’ is often not helpful. An expression of empathy for where someone […]
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Mother-daughter relationships are a unique blend of joy, love, understanding, and, at times, conflict. There’s a shared experience that makes them deeply connected, yet unique individual perspectives can lead to clashes and misunderstandings. The first common challenge in this relationship is communication. Mothers, often with a wealth of life experience, may offer advice that daughters
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Effective communication can have a positive impact on a client’s struggle. Psychotherapy has been found to be an effective remedy for many mental health conditions, but it’s important for therapists to be aware of ways how to communicate the salience of their approach to their clients. A new idea is to rate and measure the
Telling your story can be a powerful way for you and your family to respond to OCD.
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Everyone strives for personal happiness or well-being. Flourishing is a broader concept of well-being. To better understand which factors are associated to people’s flourishing, we took a closer look at the relationships of flourishing with three aspects of connectedness: Connectedness with oneself (self-love), with others (pro-socialness), and with the surrounding nature (nature connectedness). Participants were 138 adults between 18 and 71 years (M = 23.21, SD = 7.90, 98 women, 40 men). Significant positive correlations were found between flourishing and self-love and between flourishing and pro-socialness. Furthermore, nature connectedness correlated positively with self-love and with pro-socialness. A regression analysis revealed that all predictors explained 57.5% of the variance of the criterion flourishing. Self-love and pro-socialness were significant predictors of flourishing while nature connectedness was not. One explanation for the large correlations between self-love and flourishing could be overlapping aspects in both questionnaires. The fact that pro-socialness is a stronger predictor than nature connectedness could be due to a more reciprocal reinforcement of pro-social behavior. If a person treats another well, s/he is more likely treated well by that person which could reflect flourishing. Such a direct reciprocal relationship does not exist with nature.
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The rapid demise of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has triggered global bank fears and provides a test case for how not to communicate in a crisis.
Silicon Valley Bank failed the test when communications really mattered to stakeholders Read More »
Communication Research, Volume 50, Issue 3, Page 338-360, April 2023. This set of studies investigated replotting as a mechanism of narrative persuasion. Replotting involves both the cognitive act of imagining alternative plot lines to avoid an undesirable story outcome and an accompanying emotion such as anger, anxiety, or sadness. Both studies utilized a 2 (story outcome: death vs. survivor) × 2 (efficacy appeal: present vs. absent) message experiment design. Study 1 (N = 1,207) tested a non-narrative efficacy appeal appended to the story and assessed replotting anger. Study 2 (N = 716) tested an efficacy appeal embedded within the narrative and assessed replotting anger, anxiety, and sadness. Death narratives generated greater replotting sadness across efficacy conditions and greater replotting anger and anxiety when a narrative efficacy appeal was not included in the story. Replotting was negatively related to counterarguing and positively related to message elaboration. Replotting influenced behavioral intention either via counterarguing or message elaboration dependent on the efficacy condition.
Experts explain when to worry and how to talk about it with your kids.
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The Real Power of Love Christian Jonathan Haverkampf, M.D. Love is a feeling that keeps the world turning. Why are we able to love? Often, we do not know what to do with this feeling. It can trigger fears and social anxiety, but we need it to continue on our path and get to the
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The Fear of Living Christian Jonathan Haverkampf, M.D. Fear of death is widespread, but the fear of living can often be more impairing in daily life. Many mental health symptoms derive from an anxiousness, fear or apprehension about living in line with one’s needs, values and aspirations. Not engaging with life can lead to an
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