Keeping quiet
Most of us hesitate to push back and stand up for ourselves because we’re afraid of being perceived as aggressive or rude. And so we default to being passive.
But there’s a middle road between being passive and aggressive: You can be assertive. It means standing up for your own wants, needs, and values, in an honest and respectful way.
MORE IDEAS FROM THE ARTICLE
Worrying is the mental habit of trying to solve a problem that either can’t be solved or isn’t really a problem.
It gives us the illusion of control. Worrying about it won’t change things. But it will lead to a lot of anxiety.
When we hide our pain and isolate ourselves, we throw away the most powerful antidepressant: loving support from people who care about us.
You don’t need coping strategies when you’re sad discouraged, or helpless. You need people. You need support. You need someone to give you a hug and listen carefully to your story.
If you talked to other people the way you talked to yourself, you’d probably have zero friends, no job, and multiple warrants out for your arrest. Why treat yourself in a different way?
Stress management is a Band-Aid. It’s treating the symptoms.
If you’re constantly stressed, the long-term solution is to fix the original cause of the stress (the stressor) not the feeling (the stress response).
Cultivate a healthy skepticism of your own thoughts. Learn to let them be. You’ll be happier for it.
Your thoughts aren’t special. And a lot of them are actively detrimental if you maintain a habit of always giving them tons of respect and attention.
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Having good, supportive friendships, a strong marriage or close and loving relationships with our family members will make us much more likely to be happy.
Action steps: Take time, today, to spend time with your loved ones, to tell them what they mean to you, to listen to them, and develop your relationship with them.
It can make navigating even the most basic parts of our day exceedingly stressful and frustratingly inefficient.
The way we talk to ourselves about the events in our lives is subject to the same laws of learning and habit formation that physical behaviors are.
That means we can learn to talk to ourselves in specific ways just like we can learn to tie our shoes or say please and thank you.