8 Ways to Navigate Change Without Stress and Anxiety

a post by María Tomás-Keegan for YourTango.com [via World of Psychology]



Change doesn’t have to be terrifying

Life change — and change in general — is certain to happen. According to the Greek philosopher, Heracleitus, “The only thing that is constant is change.”

If this is true, and I believe it is, coping with life changes, transitions, and the stress and anxiety that comes with it should come more easily to everyone, don’t you think?

Yet, many shudder at the thought of change. Some bury their heads and hope it will go away while others open their arms and welcome the opportunities.

Heracleitus’ philosophy is a good starting point for those who shudder and duck and cover when they face a major change in life. It may help to do a little reframing and think about change differently.

One way to approach change is to go with the flow. Enjoy the ride, as wild as it may be.

This, of course, is easier said than done when you’re coping with life changes and transitions.

Here are 8 easy ways you can embrace change in your life and make it work in your favor:

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I am not sure that “easy” is the word I would use for these 8 ways to embrace change but “effective”  might work – at least for some people.
So, here I am, posting about change when I know how hard I resist it myself.
Practice what you preach Granny!

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Recognizing What You Can Control and Accepting What You Can’t

a post by Sharon Martin for the Happily Imperfect blog [via World of Psychology]



Codependents often focus on other people and their problems – sometimes getting obsessed with or fixated on helping or fixing things outside of their control. Not only can this lead to self-neglect, but it’s also frustrating and largely a waste of time and energy. Instead of focusing on things that we can’t control or influence, we need to focus on what we can control and learn to accept what we can’t.

But recognizing when we need to stop exerting control or influence isn’t always easy. In his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey uses a helpful framework to make it clear that we can’t influence or change many of the things we’re concerned about. And he explains that by focusing on things that we can do something about we can be more effective, get more done, and feel more satisfied in our work and personal lives.

Covey’s idea is pretty straight forward. We each have a Circle of Concern which includes everything we care about and a smaller Circle of Influence that includes those things that we care about and can do something about.

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Hazel’s comment
I had not thought about applying business techniques to mental health issues before reading this post.
IT WORKS for me!

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How to Take Back Control from the Negative Script in Your Head

a post by Kathryn Reay for the Tiny Buddha blog


“You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.” ~Dan Millman

I’d love to say I had an “Eat, Pray, Love” moment where sitting sobbing in the bathroom I received divine guidance to leave my husband and go traveling the world eating amazing food. But sadly, it wasn’t quite that profound.

It was more a long series of nights sobbing in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, and concluding “You’re broken.”

I wasn’t depressed and hadn’t been for a long time. My anxiety, a lifelong companion, was under control. So what was wrong?

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How the President’s Communication Style Is Like That of an Abusive Parent

a pot by Edie Weinstein for the World of Psychology blog

Abuse is defined as, “the improper usage or treatment of an entity, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, crimes, or other types of aggression.”

The more I hear the president speak, the more he presents as an abusive parent, with name-calling, threats and bullying hurled at those who disagree with his policies and public persona. The intention is to control through intimidation in order to maintain his version of reality. This is a common theme among those I have served as a career therapist over the past four decades. Stories from clients of parents who have been verbally and/or physically abusive have ranged from being barraged with disparaging names like ‘loser,’ and ‘incompetent,’ and being demeaned by the parent who considered their child’s needs of little consequence.

Memories of childhood abuse survivors are being triggered by what they witness daily at the hands of this administration. Increasingly, I am hearing it in my office.

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How to Feel More in Control When Life Gets Overwhelming

a post by Gianna Cifredo for the Tiny Buddha blog

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” ~Confucius

I’m in the middle of a career transition and it hasn’t been easy. For the first few months after quitting my job—a job which I thought should have been perfect, where I thought I would stay for years—I was paralyzed into inaction regarding anything career-related. I had lost confidence in my own judgment; after all, I had thought that job would be the one and it wasn’t, so did I even really know what I wanted?

This kind of self-doubt makes me second-guess myself to the extreme—my goals, my desires, and even the validity of my feelings. This often means I start doing something, question what I’m doing and how I’m doing it, feel stressed and overwhelmed, and then end up doing nothing.

I’m still in this transition, but where once the self-doubt and overwhelm paralyzed me every day, I’m now taking back control and beginning to shape my life how I want it.

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When You Crave Control of Everything When You Crave Control of Everything

a post by Margarita Tartakovsky for the World of Psychology blog



You like to have things under control. Your home has to be organized in a particular way, and so does your schedule. You get stressed out when your days don’t go as planned — your child gets sick and misses daycare, you run into terrible traffic, a client cancels a meeting, your partner doesn’t want to attend the party.

Often it doesn’t take much for you to feel frustrated, frazzled and downright overwhelmed. Any disturbance to the status quo feels unbearable.

Maybe you like to control how others perceive you, so you show a very specific image: You are calm, collected, poised and put together, but on the inside, you’re anything but. Maybe you like to control the people in your life, everything from their schedules to their actions.

Either way, you need to have control. And it’s a need that often feels insatiable.

Where does this relentless craving come from?

Some people need control because they grew up in an environment where they had very little of it. As kids, they were surrounded by chaos or inconsistency, said Tanvi Patel, LPC-S, a psychotherapist specializing in work with high achieving adults and adult survivors of trauma.

Maybe their parents struggled with extreme moods or addiction. Maybe their parents repeated cycles where they were emotionally unavailable and then overly involved and intrusive, she said. Maybe they grew up with many different guardians, she added.

These kinds of situations make it difficult or even impossible to develop healthy attachments—and it’s our attachments with caregivers that dictate how we see ourselves and how we see the world, Patel said.

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Healthy Ways to React to Common Toxic and Manipulative Words

a post by Darius Cikanavicius (Psychology of Self) via World of Psychology



People with strong narcissistic, sociopathic, and psychopathic tendencies (hereafter narcissists) are unwilling or unable to resolve conflicts or participate in discussion in a healthy, mature manner.

Now, it’s worth noting that not everyone who doesn’t know how to build sound arguments, isn’t familiar with logical fallacies, or doesn’t know how to resolve conflicts is a narcissist. However, a regular, well-intentioned person is usually genuinely willing to become better at it. Meanwhile, a narcissistic person wants to win, dominate, and get what they want, oftentimes at the expense of other people’s well-being.

As someone who has been fascinated by and studied philology (i.e., language), psychology, and argumentation for most of my adult life, I’ve seen thousands of good and bad examples in various scenarios and everything in between. Most people, however, are not knowledgeable in these disciplines and therefore may become easily confused, frustrated, intimidated, or shocked when they encounter certain toxic tactics commonly used by narcissists and other manipulators.

And so in this article we will explore some typical techniques a narcissist uses in conflicts and similar social situations.

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When Life Forces Your Hand, Embrace the New Chapter

a post by Adam Bergen for the Tiny Buddha blog

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.” ~Seneca

Like most people, I’ve tried to control many aspects of my life, and this hasn’t always worked in my favor. Just when I thought I had it all under control, life has inconveniently shown me many, many times that I was getting a little too cocky.

You name it, I’ve tried to control it – from my schedule and time (hello, Type A personality) to forgoing random opportunities because my mind was made up on going a certain direction. I even tried calorie counting at the height of my exercising routine because I wanted ultimate control of what I put in my body.

Now, none of these are necessarily bad. Planning your time leads to efficiency, forgoing things because you are on a mission means you might be on the path to your purpose, and calorie counting could help you get the body you’ve always dreamed of. But when you do these things day in and day out, all at the same time… well, let’s just say the process can be stressful.

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How Psychological Abuse Damages Your Self

a post by Christiana Star for the World of Psychology blog

Psychological abuse leaves no visible marks and often remains hidden within families, romantic relationships, toxic individuals and groups, cults and organizations of various religious and non-religious orientations. However, it is at least as damaging as the more explicitly violent forms of physical and sexual abuse. Mental, emotional and spiritual abuse leaves lasting damage to a person’s sense of self, confidence and ability to navigate life successfully.

It often takes considerable time for psychological abuse to be recognized for what it is. Perpetrators are masters at manipulation and creating a harmless facade behind which they use a range of techniques to keep their victims in line.

… lots of useful advice and information but please note the final paragraph

A word of warning:
If you recognize your own or someone else’s situation in any of the above descriptions, seek help as soon as possible. Be very careful how you proceed: withdrawing from an abusive situation can be a most dangerous and vulnerable period. Abusers have extreme and often violent reactions to losing their power. Make sure you do it as safely and with as much support as possible.

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10 Ways to Let Go of the Hustle and Surrender to the Flow

a post by Stacey Hagen for the Tiny Buddha blog


“You can’t control everything. Sometimes you just need to relax and have faith that things will work out. Let go a little and just let life happen.” ~Kody Keplinger

I have always been an overachiever: straight As, the top of my class; whatever I endeavored, I aimed to be the best at it. I strived through high school, college, graduate school, and in the corporate world.

My hard work came with awards, accolades, and the feeling of accomplishment. But it also came with burnout, exhaustion, and the feeling of never being good enough.

Once I achieved a goal, I was happy for a minute. But my next thought would inevitably be, “There must be more to life than this.”

Even though it didn’t feel good, I repeated this pattern of strive + achieve + repeat at every level in my life, until I had an epiphany.

It happened a few years ago when I traveled to Bali for a yoga retreat. While exploring the small third-world island, I noticed the locals with modest homes tending their fields, or running their local shop. One thing stood out: They all seemed incredibly happy – or at the very least, content – with their lives.

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Why I Was Addicted to Attention, Lies, and Drama

a post by Vironika Tugaleva for the Tiny Buddha blog



I’ve done a lot of things for attention that I’m not proud of. I’ve created drama. I’ve bragged. I’ve exaggerated. I’ve hurt people. I’ve hurt myself. I’ve lied and lied and lied.

No one wants to be labeled as an “attention seeker”. When people say, “She’s just doing it for attention,” they don’t mean it as a compliment. I knew this. And I knew that people said these things about me.

And still, I couldn’t stop.

I spend a lot of time around animals, especially cats. It’s easy to see which ones have experienced starvation. They have constant anxiety about food. They meow and meow when it’s feeding time. They scarf their portions down without breathing. If the bowl is left full, they’ll eat whatever’s there—even if it’s a week’s worth of food!

I was that cat with attention. I could never get enough.

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Uncertainty Is Your Friend

a post by Ruck Chen for the World of Psychology blog



It seemed so recent when I was 18 and uncertain what I wanted to do with my life. There were so many options available to me due to the decent grades I had in high school. My parents wanted me to go to university to get a degree that promised a good career. After some thoughts, I chose this route and was unprepared for what awaited me.

To put things simply, my plans for university didn’t go the way I wanted. My grades plummeted and I failed courses. My future was filled with plenty of uncertainty as I was unsure if I could get a job in the field after graduation. The fear of the uncertainty was probably a key factor for the anxiety and depression I faced.

I’m sure I’m not alone when it comes to the fear with uncertainty. We humans like to have control over our lives. We make plans and schedules so we have a sense of control. When certain events happen out of the blue, we struggle to adapt. Oftentimes, we make excuses for things we have no control over. We blame others and society if things aren’t going our way.

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How totalism works

via Arts & Letters Daily: Alexandra Stein in an essay for AEON

The brainwashing methods of isolation, engulfment and fear can lead anyone to a cult. I should know – I was in one.

I began my formal research in 1999, eight years after battling my way out of a secret, so-called Marxist-Leninist group whose leader controlled my life in its most intimate details. He determined what I wore: a version of the advice in John Molloy’s bestseller Dress for Success (1975), featuring tailored blue suits and floppy red silk bowties. More significantly, he decided when I could marry, and whether I might have children. The leader’s decrees were passed down via memos typed on beige notepaper and hand-delivered to me by my ‘contact’. Because I was a low-ranked member, the leader remained unknown to me.

I joined this Minneapolis-based group, called The Organization (The O) believing I was to contribute to their stated goal of social justice, a value instilled in me by my family. However, what I actually did revolved around, first, being a factory machinist tending numerical control lathes and, then, grunt work in the group’s wholegrain bakery (we did at least make good bread) and, finally, writing business computer programs. The fact that these tasks seemed oddly disconnected from any strategy for social change did not escape my notice. I regularly questioned (until I learned not to) how all this was leading to justice for the poor and the powerless. A stern ‘struggle with the practice’ was the only answer I ever received, and back to my labours I would go, like Boxer the horse in George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945), hardworking but still unenlightened as to the ultimate goal.

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This is not a short read but it does explain much about how some people can control others in groups, in cults and probably individually.

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How to Be There for Others Without Taking on Their Pain

a blog post by Malia Bradshaw for Tiny Buddha


“Letting go helps us to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress.” ~Melody Beattie

When our loved ones suffer, it’s hard not to get swept up in their pain. We want so desperately to fix them, to take away their hardship, and to see them flourishing.

As a control freak, I often find myself going into “fixer mode” when my partner is struggling with work stress, which only makes me more anxious when nothing I suggest works, and him more frustrated when I get so preoccupied with his issues.

Then, after all my frantic attempts at control, there’s a little voice inside that tells me to stop. To listen. To be there for him without trying to change anything. To witness his pain and sit next to him while he feels it.

In this way, it’s not my job to fix his problems. It’s my job to be there for him with love as he figures out how to handle his own suffering. I am freed from feeling the responsibility of taking on his pain.

Here are a few tips for how to not get overwhelmed when others are suffering.

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Creating the Boiler Room Environment: The Job Demand-Control-Support Model as an Explanation for Workplace Bullying

Alan K. Goodboy, Matthew M. Martin, Jennifer M. Knight and Zachary Long (West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA) published in Communication Research Volume 42 Issue 2 (March 2017)

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explain workplace bullying as a symptom of high-strain employment. The Job Demand-Control-Support (JDCS) model of work design was used to frame this study and examine workplace bullying antecedents and consequences.

Full-time American employees (N = 314) working in various organizations completed a questionnaire about their bullying experiences, working environments, and occupational outcomes. Results revealed that workplace bullying was correlated with expected negative outcomes at work (i.e., job dissatisfaction, job stress, anxiety).

In line with JDCS model predictions, employees who worked at organizations characterized by high psychological demands, low control, and low supervisor social support (i.e., an additive model) reported more workplace bullying (supporting an iso-strain hypothesis).

Results of a moderated moderation analysis revealed a significant three-way interaction between demands, control, and support (supporting a buffering hypothesis); under workplace conditions characterized by low supervisor social support, employee control over how work was completed buffered the negative effect of job demands on workplace bullying.

Supervisors, then, should consider how promoting employee autonomy and communicating social support to employees might nullify workplace conditions that encourage bullying, especially when work is particularly demanding.

Full text (PDF)

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My Name Is Sue. How Do You Do! (Names and Identity)

an article by Irina Perianova (University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria) published in Issues in Social Sciences Volume 3 Number 1 (2015)

Abstract

The paper aims to give an overview of the functions of proper names as a complex multi-dimensional phenomenon. While implying certain conceptual characteristics proper names reflect the way people see themselves, or what others might infer about them, and thus shapе their attitude.

As part of the cultural discourse they serve as determinants of social identity. An important feature of personal names is their potential to be used metaphorically – as characterizers and signifiers. Naming conventions depend on culture, generation, status and existing linguistic forms. Avoiding a name as a form of address is culture-based, or expresses attitude and affect. Furthermore, names are an instrument of control, submission and otherisaton.

They are also a marker of memory and trust as well as a signifier of status. The disparity of addressing when, for example, one of the speakers uses the first name and the other one the surname, always implies some kind of inequality.

The drift of the current changes in naming/addressing in the West is egalitarian and characterized by greater informality and reciprocity.

Full Text: PDF

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