Misery Loves Company

How Miserable People will Make You Equally Miserable

“Misery loves good company, so if you are surrounded with drama, gossip and fools you may want to consider that you are presently at risk of becoming one of them.” – Bryant McGill

 

 

Remember that grumpy cousin that always grunts, huffs, and puffs at the family gatherings? No matter which topic you bring on, he would still come up with some sort of a negative comment. And no matter what you do to cheer him up, he would merely stay miserable.

Some people just cannot be pulled out of their bad mood. Regardless of what you say or do to make them feel better, it seems impossible to change their gloomy mindset.

However, misery loves company, so your cousin will probably try to drag you into his cloudy mood whenever he gets a chance. After a family dinner and a long conversation with him, you probably feel drained, low-spirited, and depressed.

How to Avoid Miserable People

I have a co-worker who is unhappy about everything. She complains about every single thing. And she would go on and on venting about the tiniest stresses in her life; until everyone around her feels completely drained, overwhelmed, and equally miserable.

 

Our negative family members, friends, and co-workers have a tendency to (consciously or unconsciously) make us equally miserable. The negative energy that unhappy people emit threatens to suck you in as soon as your miserable counterparts notice that they have your attention.

 

To keep up your mental well-being, you need to learn how to avoid the toxic interactions with miserable people. Here are a few tips.

 

Learn how to Recognize Miserable People

Toxic people want everyone else to be as miserable as they are. If you never see emotions other than sadness, anger, criticism, clinginess or jealousy, keep that person at arm’s length.

 

1. Set the boundaries

Put your needs first. Although you may feel empathy for your depressed friend, be mindful if her complaint becomes a ‘one too many.’ Don’t allow her misery to take over you. Respect your own needs for rest, peace and happiness.

2. Listen to your intuition

Trust your gut. It will empower you to recognize other people’s feelings and respond to them appropriately.

3. Surround yourself with positive people

Build an active support group of optimistic, healthy, and happy people and nurture healthy, positive relationships.

4. Be positive

Give out the positivity you want to see in others. Smile and laugh often and be kind and friendly in your social interactions. Your positivity will keep the miserable ones away.

 

The Effect, the Miserable People, have on Our Mental Health

 

Different studies have demonstrated that there is a strong link between negative relationships, stress, and health. Negative people can make you physically and emotionally drained. Also, after spending time with your miserable friend or a family member, you tend to feel worse about yourself.

 

Negative people affect our mood and bring us down. What is more, the neuroscience research has proved that miserable people and their negative attitude can actually have the effect on our brain.

 

Research has shown that misery is contagious. Even a small amount of negative brain activity can weaken our immune system and make us more prone to illness.

 

According to Dr. Travis Bradberry, negative viewpoints affect our IQ and cognitive skills. Negativity compromises the effectiveness of the neurons in the area of the brain responsible for reasoning and memory – the hippocampus.

 

This means that the negative words or actions the miserable people say and take in your presence can affect your brain. Thus who you choose to spend your time and interact with truly matters.

 

Career, Changing Career, Health, Lifestyle, News Event, Women Health, Workplace bullying

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What I Learned When I Conquered My Childhood Fear

“Believe in yourself, take on your challenges, dig deep within yourself to conquer fears. Never let anyone bring you down. You got to keep going.” – Chantal Sutherland

 

 

Many of us live with different fears for years, if not during a lifetime. It is normal to feel anxious or afraid when you perceive there is a real threat to your or a loved one’s security, safety, and welfare. However, many fears we drag with us are not adaptive and don’t represent the real threat. Yet, we cannot get rid of them.

 

According to findings in neuroscience, fear can affect your memory and your perception of reality. It can damage the hippocampus, a small organ in our brain’s temporal lobe, the part of the brain that regulates emotions and is associated with long-term memory. According to researchers from the University of Minnesota, fear can have other longstanding consequences on our health such as chronical depression, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases, accelerated aging and even premature death.

Therefore learning how to control your fears can help you stay healthy and literally save your life.

The Childhood Fear

 

For years I’ve had a fear of swimming. I believe it originated when I almost drowned in a swimming pool as a small child. I never had swimming lessons as a child and never went swimming after the incident. Recently, I decided that it’s a perfect time to learn how to swim and conquer my fear. The first day of my swimming lessons I was able to learn how to feel comfortable in the water. After many other lessons, I learned the basics of floating and breathing while in the water. I was astonished to discover how relaxing and fun it was to swim.  I spent my whole life denying the pleasure of this activity just based on my fear.

 

But where does fear come from? We all have fears, but we also manage our anxiety differently. However, what I learned is that fear shouldn’t hold us in place and not allow us to move forward. Whether it’s the fear of spiders or fear of dealing with difficult people; how we handle it will impact our lives.

 

How to Conquer your Fears

There are some simple strategies available to help us cope with our fears and with a bit of luck, conquering them completely. Try building these strategies into your daily routine, and you’ll be amazed!

 

  1. Understand your Fear

Fear exists to keep you safe. Try to understand your fear and use it to plan your actions, instead of letting the fear control them.

 

  1. Practice Mindfulness and Breathing

Focus your mind on the present moment and don’t interpret or judge your emotions. Just be aware of them. Breathe deeply and calmly until you feel totally relaxed. Repeat this exercise a few times each day.

  1. Get Control of your Thoughts

Your imagination can be your worst enemy sometimes. Learn how to control negative thoughts. Calm down and breathe deeply. Then imagine the situation you’re dreading, but picture yourself calm and composed in that situation. Repeat this every time you start imagining the worst possible scenarios.

 

  1. Get Informed

Most of the time, we are afraid of the things we don’t know much about. The fear is based on a lack of information, so make sure you get the knowledge needed to understand the situation that triggers your anxiety instead of speculating about it.

 

  1. Seek a Therapist

Sometimes confronting your fears on your own may not be sufficient. If your fear disables you from moving forward with your life, seek a professional mental health help. A therapist can provide you with the tools and strategies you need to untangle the causes of your fears and ways to overcome them.

 

 

Health, Lifestyle, News Event, Women Health

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Therapeutic Knitting – The Benefits for People Recovering from Cancer and Stress

“Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn’t hurt the untroubled spirit either.” – Elizabeth Zimmermann

 

Knitting is an old crafting method of creating fabric from a single strand of yarn, using two needles. That’s how most of us would describe it if asked. However, knitting is rising in popularity nowadays, and not just because of the sheer pleasure of creating something with your two hands. Knitting is gaining popularity among people of all ages for its proven therapeutic benefits.

 

Knitting helps Relieve Stress from Cancer

Knitting is a fun and productive activity. But not only that. Research shows that knitting is also a way to help cancer patients cope by easing the symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. This is the reason many healthcare facilities and cancer centers are encouraging cancer patients and people recovering from cancer to try knitting.

 

Therapeutic Benefits of Knitting for People Recovering from Cancer

Many people report that knitting as well as other crafts help them quiet the brain, and help them focus and relax. Additionally, producing a usable product gives a sense of accomplishment, pride, and satisfaction. Here are the main therapeutic benefits of knitting for people who are recovering from cancer and stress as its inescapable companion.

Alleviating anxiety, stress, and depression

According to a survey by the British Journal of Occupational Therapy, knitting evidently improves people’s mood. The research shows that the repetitive movements of knitting can increase serotonin, a neurotransmitter that alleviates the feelings of anxiety and depression. In addition, knitting’s repetitive motion can stimulate the body’s relaxation response, by decreasing the heart rate and blood pressure, slowing the breathing and reducing the levels of stress hormones.

Focusing on Present Moment

Knitting serves as mindful meditation, in a certain way. According to research, using our hands meaningfully triggers healthy engagement and activity in about 60 percent of our brain. The rhythmic, repetitive movements in knitting keep our mind focused on the present moment, providing an escape from stressful thoughts, but at the same time allowing for internal reflection.

 

Both science and experience have proven the benefits of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness exercise helps relieve symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. And like in meditation, the rhythmic movements in knitting induce a state of mindfulness and affect a change in one’s state of mind. Thus knitting can be a great way to open up the benefits of mindfulness to people coping with after-cancer stress.

Enhancing Confidence

Creating something useful and beautiful provides a sense of usefulness, purpose, and pride. Apart from being an enjoyable activity, knitting helps a person recovering from cancer feel in control, which increases her/his self-esteem. The knowing that the final product can be offered as a gift or donated to a charity provides a feeling of excitement and gives their self-worth a further boost.

Providing Positive Social Interactions

If done as a group activity, knitting can produce positive social interactions and a necessary sense of belonging for people recovering from cancer. Therapeutic group knitting helps people feel less isolated and out of control of their lives. Project Knit Well (https://projectknitwell.org) provides support to cancer patients and their family.

 

Knitting has a therapeutic effect on both mind and body. The research proved that it could even help manage chronic pain and improve person’s overall well-being. Therapeutic knitting for people recovering from cancer and stress helps with issues of stress, anxiety and depression, loneliness, low self-esteem, and social isolation. It can help boost confidence, mood and person’s motivation. Moreover, therapeutic knitting can help a person recovering from cancer change negative thoughts and attitudes into positive ones. In short, therapeutic knitting can boost a person’s overall well-being.

 

 

 

Cancer, Health, Lifestyle, News Event, Women Health

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How To Maintain A Platonic Friendship With Someone You Find Sexually Attractive

“Platonic love is love from the neck up.” – Tbyra Samter Winslow

 

 

We’ve seen this in the movies – guy meets girl, they become best friends, and then, when one of them gets involved in a relationship with another person the other develops a secret crush on them and eventually falls in love. In the end, the friend who is in the relationship finally realizes that the best friends should be in a relationship after all. Such TV shows and movies always have a large audience base, creating quite a niche. But is being friends with someone you are romantically or sexually attracted to, without these romantic entanglements, possible in real life?

 

I have a friend in my life who I am sexually attracted to, but I made a choice not to cross the boundary of our friendship. If I had crossed the line, I would’ve never had the benefit of having a beautiful, healthy bond that has endured over the years.

 

Men and women have been living, working, and playing together since the beginning of time, and it is inevitable that we will interact with one another. At school, we tend to form our own groups and mingle with people who have similar interests to us. At a young age, it is common for boys to be socialized to play with boys and girls to be socialized to play with girls. When puberty hits, we start to look for potential partners, and romantic feelings begin to form for some of for the opposite sex.

 

When we are looking to form friendships with others, we’re looking for someone who we “click” with. “Clicking” with someone sparks a tendency to want to spend more time with one another. It may be common interests, shared activities, or other qualities or traits that make us want to spend time with someone more than others, encouraging us to develop a friendship. Interestingly, and not surprisingly, these are the same reasons we might find for wanting to start a romantic relationship with someone, with the added caveat that there is a degree of romantic or sexual attraction. So, we have to ask, if there is a romantic or sexual attraction present between friends, are the just friends? Can they stay within the boundaries of friendship without it turning into a romantic relationship?

 

By definition, a friendly attraction is a bond, devoid of lust and sexual relations. It remains a friendship throughout the relationship but can become a romantic or sexual relationship if a line is crossed. On the two sides of the line are (1) platonic friendship, where simple companionship is allowed; and (2) romantic relationships where, in addition to friendship, romantic or sexual relations are permitted.

 

Four ways to stay in the platonic friend zone

 

1. Make every attempt to view your friend as a family member. Do not engage in any inappropriate physical situations.

 

2. Limit the amount of one on one meetings. When attending events, bring other people.

 

3. If the friend is currently in a relationship (or married), do not disrespect his or her partner. Reduce or discontinue communication until the other person feels comfortable with you.

 

4. Do not engage in sexual relations of any kind. The moment the relationship becomes sexual, it’s next to impossible to bring it back to a platonic friendship.

 

 

So, whether two people who are sexually attracted to one another can maintain a platonic friendship isn’t a yes or no question. It really depends on the parties involved and whether they decide to cross that line. If both friends choose not to cross the line between platonic friendship and romantic relationship, then yes, they can remain friends. But beyond that, it gets complicated and is something we must all be mindful of.

 

Career, Lifestyle, Love

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