Category: Lifestyle

Looking on the bright side

Looking on the bright side across adulthood

Eye tracking reveals changes in emotion regulation with age. We’ve all heard the advice to “look on the bright side” when we are feeling down – but is it good advice?

  1. Age Differences in Looking Patterns to Emotional Information

We next considered possible age differences in the tendency to look on the bright side of emotional stimuli.

  1. Linking Looking to Feeling

We have tried to test whether older adults’ tendency to look on the bright side is actually related to emotion regulation and effective outcomes. We have assessed mood using a potentiometer slider continuously at the same time as participants are having their eyes tracked: participants indicate their current mood by moving the slider.

  1. From Feeling to Doing

Older adults’ looking on the bright side may help them to regulate their emotional state, but what happens when the negative information they are looking less at in order to feel good is important and/or health-relevant. Older adults generally looked less at the negative emotional content and showed a faster emotion regulation response compared to their younger counterparts.

Learn about looking on the bright side

Whereas younger individuals may actually benefit – at least in terms of their moods – from looking more at the darker side of things, literally looking on the bright side of emotional stimuli seems to be a key tool for older adults to regulate their emotions, and it may not be associated with behavioral deficits. Put another way, older adults – at least in our investigations so far – do not seem to need to choose between mood and health: they are able to interact with the world in a way that helps them to regulate their mood while also engaging in positive health behavior.
Older adults may even use committing to engage in health behavior as a regulatory strategy itself, leading them to feel good and do good things as well. It may be that it is younger adults who must choose between regulating their emotions and engaging in health behaviors, as they did not regulate their moods as well and in some cases engaged in fewer health behaviors than did older adults; however, we have not yet tested whether younger adults could do better in different circumstances.

These patterns may have implications for the design of health messages. Younger adults may benefit from seeing “just the facts” so their emotion regulation attempts do not interfere with their ability to learn health information. Perhaps looking on the bright side can be harnessed to improve older adults’ health behavior; at the very least, older adults’ feeling good and behaving in health-promoting ways may not be mutually exclusive.

Affirm Your Worth With Affirmations

How important it is to be self aware to make progress in your life? How important it is to know how much respect you give to yourself to start with? People, and I am saying almost 99% people across the world look at others to validate themselves in many aspects making them loose their own power and control.

Does Positive Affirmations have any Role

Affirmations are the act or an instance of affirming; the assertion that something exists or is true, a statement or proposition that is declared to be true. Using affirmation to raise the self worth has been considered as a topic of controversy among professionals. Some believe that they work and are recommended in treatment highly. While lot others pass them off and say they have no use. In the opinion of depression guide, the theraptists should at least tell the idea to clients.

What is an affirmation?

Professionals who recommend and use affirmations are using it to enhance the purpose of changing the way people think. Most of the people across the world are programmed with negative thinking – like “I can’t do ____, I am no good, I am not good looking, I’m not smart?”. The idea of an affirmation is to change the way we think over a period of time. Remember that it took however many years to leran this affirmations.
It is going to take substantial time to reprogram your mind to think positive things about yourself and then believe them.
The important thing is to find out what you think negative about yourself and then rewrite it so it is in the for of a positive statement instead of a negative one.

How to Fail with Grace and maintain Affirmation?

Failure is a part of life—at work, at school, and even in our relationships. In short, we screw up all the time. Fortunately, new research shows how we can learn from our mistakes. As it happens, preserving our self-worth helps our brains make sense of our blunders so we can do better the next time around. Affirming your values also helps your brain attune to the errors of your ways so you can learn from your mistakes.

Self Esteem Affirmations

  1. I love and accept myself unconditionally.
  2. I approve of myself and feel great about myself.
  3. I radiate love and respect and in return I get love and respect.
  4. I am a well loved and well respected person.
  5. I am a cultured and wise and yet, a humble person.

Competition Leads to Depression In Girls

Competition Leads to Depression In Girls – Truth and facts

Competition is everywhere and almost inevitable in the current times. All people whether small or big are exposed it to it. It is both good as well as bad. Competing to win is very important for girls’ social relationships and it may cause depression if they lose or do not come first. The scenario for boys is completely different. According to the study performed by Dr. David Hibbard from California State University and Dr. Duane Buhrmester from the University of Texas The consequences of this completion on psychological well-being and social role in adolescents depends on both the type of competitiveness and the teenager’s gender.

In a competing world, one is set to win and others are set to lose. If the spirit of competition is taken far from just winning and losing, it may lead to selfishness and lack of compassion. It can affect people socially and emotionally. People of different genders have different effects of these changes.

Teenage Girls leading to depression

 

  1. Lack of fun – study days are mix of the cycle – Learn. Revise. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. This makes some students crumble under pressure and go deep in depression. The fun need to be there and has to be mixed just well with studies.
  2. Relationships and commitments are important. We all need care and affection and this is what girls need when they are in college or school. Knowing what they are going through is a sure shot way to take early pointers for any problem areas.
  3. Dying dreams – Know what the girls are really looking to do in their life. The competition is fierce. If the child is working towards something which is not their dream – half of their battle is lost. So know their dream or build one for them.

Sickening competition – this has been the issue with every one of us. The ever increasing population has made everyone run faster than other to take the limited fruits hanging in the future.  You’re a dancer? That’s not enough. You have to be an excellent dancer. You’re a coder? Watch her code in Python. She’s better than you.  You’re a singer? See she has a higher pitch than yours.

Hearing Inner Voices

Simple tips to Handle Betrayal and Hearing Voices

Betrayal harms us more than anything else in the world.  It can go down till the deepest parts of us. Yet it is possible to reach those inner dark places which hide the darkest fears and desires. It is possible through gentle love and listening.

Whether it is a child suffering from sexual abuse or a partner dealing with domestic violence, the trauma is overwhelming since it involves someone with intimate relationship. Since you are dependent on the other person for food, shelter, emotional wellbeing, support, etc. the suffering received is also severe in the case of abuse.

In the cases of abuse and betrayal, many times people start hearing their names being called out from the back. When they turn around, there is no one. This hearing of voices if happens more than 2-3 times a week, is not normal and comes under the category of issue called hearing voices which has its roots in the betrayal and abuse you had suffered from deep inside.

When our experience of hearing voices goes beyond hearing names, then we tend to feel concerned. These in other words are also called auditory hallucinations which may not necessarily always be abnormal.

Differences in Voices origin

Different people hear voices from different places. Sometimes the voices appear to come through ears and sometimes, it is like coming from inside the head. There could be many voices or single voice coming from these places.  These voices can be both encouraging or intimidating coming either from someone you know in your life or from someone you never heard of.

Betrayal trauma can lead to visual and auditory hallucinations such as victims hearing the voice of their abuser.

Advice for those hearing voices

The following advice can help you recover from the deep hurt from these voices:

Acceptance

Accepting your voices and stop battling with yourself to avoid them, will make you in better position to understand them.

Control

There are different ways you can gain control over your voices. You can distract yourself from the voices by listening to music through headphones. You can also start a dialogue with the voices you hear. If the voices you hear are threatening, tell them that they have no power over you.

Valentine’s month: Tell us your love stories

Valentine’s Day is just a week away. Love is in the air, well actually airwaves.
Happy Valentines Day
Our screens bombard us with images of bouquets of red roses, strawberries dipped in chocolate and French perfumes. Overnight, stores and shop fronts are filled with pink and red window displays heralding the arrival of Valentine’s Day: A celebration of love, romance and friendship.
Well, we at depression-guide thought we’d celebrate the season of love little differently. Instead of putting up typical lists of mushy love movies to watch or romantic books to read love stories of fictional characters, we want to put up real love stories of real people.

So send us your love story of how the two of you meet? Was it love at first sight? Was yours an arranged marriage? Who proposed and how? We’ll feature the best stories on depression-guide this Valentine’s day.

Don’t forget to send us a sweet picture of the two of you along with your story.

Email us at:mailto:publications@depression-guide.com

Does spending thousands on your college education worthy?

Barack Obama hinted one controversial statement when he said in January that “folks can make a lot more by learning a trade than they might with an art history degree. Although he was forced to apologies by an angry professor of history, he was every word right.
college

According to research conducted, the center found that out of 11.6 million jobs created in the post-recession economy, 11.5 million went to people with at least some college education.

Out of these 8.4 million went to workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher. People with a high school diploma landed to just 80,000 jobs in the recovery.

Does the degree you select has a role in Success?

The plain answer to this question is yes, it does. There are many degrees which pay for themselves while some others does not pay. Some other interesting facts:
1.College graduates aged 25 to 32 who are working full time earn about $17,500 more annually than their peers who have only a high school diploma.
2.Not all degrees are equally useful.
3.A residential four-year degree can set you back as much as $60,000 a year

Hard subjects pay off

Engineering or other had to learn subjects surprisingly fetches far more returns as compared to simpler to learn subjects.
In addition to this data, the research conducted by one company said that the average return on college is falling. In 2010, students could expect to break even within eight years of finishing school. Since then, that has increased to nine years. And if this trend continues, students who start college in 2030 without scholarships or grants, it said, may not see a return on investment until age 37.

Study conducted by Goldman Sachs for Economic Returns of Degree

Goldman Sachs tried to find the economic return on college education as the total all-in cost of college (net of grants and scholarships) and the wages foregone during the 4 years of study versus the wage premium that undergraduate degree holders enjoy versus high school graduates over their working life.

The Dissolving Nuclear Family and The Decline Of The West

On the fold of last century and all throughout the last one, there were predominantly joint families which moved to nuclear families. This trend is also changing in the recent times where one parent households, cohabitation, same sex families, and voluntary childless couples are increasingly becoming common.

family

As you might know, the term nuclear family refers to the family group which comprises of parents and children. Extended families on the other hand have those with kinship ties. Since families has been the basic social unit for the expression of love between man and woman raising of children since ages, changes in its structure is definitely bringing lot of changes we are going to experience.

Ideal families are in-existent all across the modern history, although the nuclear families are also on a decline. All being said and done, the three-generational family, which includes grandparents in addition to parents and children, has the greatest support for raising children and continuation of the family lineage.

The nuclear family is a historical aberration and ultimately doomed to fail.

Below are some of the latest trends in the families and their structure which is fast growing at least in the west.

1.One recent trend mentioned the changing nature of families where there is a prevalence of single-parent entities.
2.Cohabitation or live in relation has common living place without the benefit of legal, cultural, or religious sanctions.
3.Formal marriages between homosexual partners also started getting popularity
4.Voluntary childlessness in women is also seen proliferating in current times.

The nuclear family is unsustainable economically

Re-emergence of the extended family in the West focuses on the fact that it is expensive to live apart and how living together is cheaper for everybody.
History Future Now is not so sure.
Some of the measures of the government in recent times has changed the way economics work for current nuclear families:
1.Childcare – The government currently provides childcare for young families.
2.Retirement homes – The government currently pays for retirement homes for people who are retired and are unable to live on their own.
3.Pensions – The government currently provides pensions for its retired citizens.
4.Unemployment and housing benefits – The government currently provides benefits for people who are unemployed and housing for those who are in need of housing.

Since the last 70,000 years of human history we have lived very successfully in extended families and it is only since last 100 years we have been trying something different which is showing its issues and concerns. Nuclear families were a norm, but now the pace has been against it.