Validate your own emotions

Defensiveness sabotages your ability to be a good listener. People become defensive when they feel threatened in a relationship.

The best way to avoid defensiveness and continue to listen well, even when you're upset, is to practice validating your own emotions. Say to yourself tha...

In everyday language, people often use the terms "emotions" and "moods", but psychologists actually make distinctions between the two. 

How do they differ?

An emotion is normally quite short-lived, but intense. Emotions are also likel...

We all worry, in our own ways, about how we’re being perceived.

The fact that we’re being judged matters much more than whether those judgments seem fair or well-informed. We also don’t tend to worry about someone having an undeservedly high opinion of us, unless we can see how that might ...