Presence — Page 37

THE HUMAN LIBRARY

September 17, 2021 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

In Denmark, there are libraries where you can borrow a person instead of a book to listen to their life story for 30 minutes. The aim is to fight against prejudices. Each person has a title – “unemployed”, “refugee”, “bipolar”, etc. – but by listening to their story, you realize how much you shouldn’t “judge a book by its cover”. This innovative and brilliant project is active in more than 50 countries. It’s called “The Human Library”.

When I heard of THE HUMAN LIBRARY one of the first thoughts that came to my mind was, “I WANT TO GO THERE” quickly followed by “I WANT TO START ONE” and as I let those two thoughts dance wildly with each other, another tune began to play, a much slower, sweeter melody, familiar but still unheard:

WE LIVE DAILY IN
THE HUMAN LIBRARY

I can’t remember the last time I have lived a day without some kind of human interaction; as a hospice chaplain, a minister, a husband, a dad, a grandfather, a brother, an uncle, an in-law and as a frequent visitor to STARBUCKS, I have had countless encounters with so many people on any given day, and that’s just IN PERSON, not counting the texting, emailing, and messaging I do throughout the day; The question, isn’t WHEN HAVE I EVER BEEN TO THE HUMAN LIBRARY so much as WHEN HAVE I EVER BEEN ABSENT FROM THE HUMAN LIBRARY. . .

The biggest questions are:
AM I MAKING USE OF IT. . .
AM I LITERALLY BORROWING AS WELL AS GIVING. . .
AM I DOING MORE LISTENING/LEARNING. . .
AM I DOING MORE TALKING/TEACHING. . .
AM I DRIVING IDLY PAST THE HUMAN LIBRARY. . .
AM I PULLING INTO THE PARKING LOT OFTEN
(EARLY AND STAYING LATE). . .

THE HUMAN LIBRARY
. . .now that’s a Levy we can all get behind and vote
. . .S U P P O R T
WILL YOU
. . .This is one Library
where you don’t have to be
Q U I E T
JOIN ME

9/11

September 13, 2021 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

HOW OFTE DO WE SAY:
“Wow, it just seems like yesterday?”
How about:
239 months ago
How about:
1044 weeks ago
How about
7307 days ago
from
RIGHT NOW. . .
hardly some kind of
y e s t e r d a y

Maybe the greatest way to remember one day, one month, one year, or TWENTY, isn’t to look back but ahead and just live better. Just LIVE better. It most likely won’t change the world; it most likely won’t even be remembered, but for now, one person at a time ,one compassionate act at a time. . .
JUST LIVE BETTER. . .
not unless,
not except,
not if,
not but,
not or,
not until, |
just live better
and then maybe we’ll find
THE GREATEST WAY TO REMEMBER
IS JUST NOT TO FORGET

MAYBE YESTERDAY
is a lot closer
than we ever knew
and now know
for an ever

BATTERY POWERED

September 10, 2021 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

What does it take. . .
Seriously
what does it take
to reach another person
so they can trust you enough
that you’re able to not just be with them
but more importantly
help them. . .

I’m quickly coming up on my 27th anniversary of doing hospice work and now I’ve already passed the 41 years of ordination; so it would be easy for me to say, “Well, here are the lessons that I’ve learned and here are the takeaways and more importantly this is what you need to know.”

Really, this is none of those things; it’s just some insights, maybe some self revelations/realizations that I’ve learned and often, had to re-learn over and over again.

The Biggest: As much as we are the same, we are so individually different; and how I reach one person may not be how I reach another person, no matter what their age, no matter what their sexual orientation or their theological understandings or their socio-economic situation, no matter what their gender or their profession; Everybody is different and yet in so many ways, the same, in this one thing:

WE ALL WANT TO BE HEARD;
UNDERSTOOD;
ACKNOWLEDGED;
COMPANIONED;
L O V E D

Here’s where it gets tricky; sometimes how we are known or what we are called, identified, makes it almost impossible for us to do any of that for another person.

Case in point. I am a minister. I am a hospice chaplain. As soon as you identify yourself with those terms to anybody who asks you what do you, not only do you negate me, but in many ways, people fear me or they may seek me out to do what it is they think that I do or don’t do. . .

It doesn’t matter if it’s at the mall or the grocery store or after church on Sunday, at a restaurant or a playground; it doesn’t matter where you happen to be at any time. If you get identified as a ordained minister or a chaplain, you are going to be viewed in a different way and everything that you say or do after that, is going to be viewed in that manner; good and bad.

So every time I walk into a patient’s room for the first time or call them on phone, I try not to identify myself as the hospice chaplain, but a person who works with the hospice nurse or the social worker or the home health aide so they don’t get the wrong idea of why I’m visiting: TO SAVE THEM from eternal hell and let them know/accept MY JESUS or because they and their situation are so dire, they actually had to send the chaplain in because. . .

First and foremost, I see myself as a Companion. Not a counselor, not as a minister, not as a father confessor, not as an observer, not as a healer, but just as a companion.

HE was one of those people that fear the most when he heard the word chaplain and minister. Even though I tried to tell him I was not there to pound the pulpit or wave a Bible or to save him for all of eternity but just to be with him and to be of any kind of service that I could for him and his family. His mother was also one of our patients shortly after he became a hospice patient. When she actually died before him, it had him spiraling into an abyss of withdrawal and mistrust.

I never passed his room without at least sticking my head in and saying good morning and just asking a simple question of how you’re doing and is there anything I can get for you is there anything I can bring you.

Sometimes, there wasn’t even an acknowledgment on his end or he would actually turn his head away from me as I would give him a passing, “ just wanted to make sure you are as OK as you could be and I’ll check in on you later.”

Simple, right?

I was shocked one morning when the nurse came and got me and said this particular patient wanted to speak to just me and when I went in I saw him sitting at his bedside table, he was putting together a puzzle and he said I was just the guy he wanted to see. Even before I had the chance to ask him what he wanted, he was trying to hand me a $20 bill.

He reminded me how I was always asking if there’s anything I could do and now there was actually something. He wanted me to buy him a battery for his calipers. I told him the money wasn’t necessary and that we may actually have a battery on site that would fit his Electronic calipers.

We didn’t have the proper battery at the front desk where we often keep batteries for hearing aids and other devices, so I decided that I would go out to the store and see if I could pick up the battery myself.

It seemed like it was a lost cause after hitting a couple of different stores, but when I came back from my journeying I actually talked with one of the maintenance people who said, “That’s the kind a battery that you need for calipers, the same kind we have, and we actually have a four pack.”

When I took it to the patient and we together put it in his calipers and saw that it worked, it was as if he just seen a man who had walked on water and calmed the seas; moved mountains, all by just giving him one simple little battery.

That one simple act has forever changed the relationship that we now enjoy.

It’s kind of amazing all the things that we cannot do that others believe that we can and maybe that is our power. . .

If someone thinks you can help or heal them, and you think you can’t, choose their faith over your doubt.

Sometimes, all we need to do sometime is just notice what we recognize. The simple things most often are what we know, what we know that we know, and actually bet our lives that we know that for the life of us we never ACT LIKE WE KNOW. . .

THIS SPECIAL POWER
we all possess:

To merely become what another needs us to be for them
at that moment
and at that time
and that absolutely
no one else could be for them. . .

The best part about it is
we don’t have to possess
those magical powers
in order to make sure
that could happen to another person
because of who it is that we are
or aren’t
at that particular moment. . .

The Take Away:

Be all things to all people, not that you may save them, but that you may be able to help and companion them when they need it the most and no one else in or out of this world can do that one thing except you at that very moment.

There’s nothing more sacred or hallowed. . .

And better still:

NO BATTERIES REQUIRED

. . .The only question
(AND PLEASE FORGIVE THE OBVIOUS PUN)
Are You

PROVE IT
person by person

FELLOW FEELING

September 8, 2021 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

HOME
is absolutely at it’s best
when there’s no address or place
but just a warm
F E E L I N G
a true
FELLOW FEELING
most often known as
EMPATHY

How Small Moments of Empathy Affect Your Life

A new study suggests that everyday experiences of empathy contribute to our well-being and kind behavior toward others… JILL

Jill SUTTIE an outstanding journalist for GREATER GOOD Magazine recently reported on a new study about what we could all not so much need more of, but actually SHARE:
E M P A T H Y

Empathy is one of many skills that help us build better relationships. When we resonate with people’s feelings, consider their perspective, or feel compassion for them, we are more likely to be generous and altruistic, and less likely to be prejudiced against them.

But empathy can sometimes feel like a lofty concept. While it may be good for us and others, what does it actually look like in real life, and how can we cultivate it? Findings from lab studies don’t give us the full picture, often suffering from narrow definitions of empathy and not reflecting people’s everyday empathy experiences.

To fill this void in the research, Greg Depow at the University of Toronto and his colleagues conducted a study on people’s experience with empathy in their everyday lives, to find out how it affected their actions and well-being. Their findings shed some interesting light on how small moments of ordinary, everyday empathy work to benefit us all.

Empathy is common—and not only for those who are suffering. . .

The study recruited 246 participants, representative in many ways of the United States’ diverse population. Then, seven times a day for a week, participants were randomly prompted via cell phone to report on their current happiness level, sense of purpose, and overall well-being.

At each prompt, participants also noted if they’d had an empathy opportunity (someone expressing emotion in their presence), received or offered empathy, or performed a kind, helpful act for someone during the prior 15 minutes. If they had, they were asked to say how close they were to the other person involved, whether the empathy target’s emotion was positive or negative, and whether they resonated with the person’s feelings, took their perspective, or felt compassion for them—separate elements of empathy sometimes studied in isolation. They also noted how difficult it was to empathize and how confident they were that they accurately understood the person’s feelings.

Analyses of the responses showed that people tended to encounter empathy opportunities frequently, and that they empathized often in everyday life. On average, a person perceived about nine opportunities to empathize and six opportunities to receive empathy over 12 hours, and they empathized or received empathy about 88% of the time. They also tended to experience all of the elements of empathy simultaneously and to empathize more often with positive than negative emotion.

This last finding was an unexpected result, says Depow, because we usually think of empathy as a response to suffering.

“I was a little surprised that empathy was more common to positive emotions. But at the same time, there’s some work saying that people experience positive emotions about three times more often than negative emotions, so it makes some sense,” he says.

People also empathized more with close others than strangers in everyday life. That’s less surprising, says Depow, as people probably see intimates more often and have more opportunities for empathy. However, he says, people also spontaneously empathize with strangers.

He and his colleagues also found that people who noticed more empathy opportunities and empathized more reported greater happiness and well-being. However, these benefits were tied more to empathizing with others’ positive feelings rather than negative feelings. And, if people were less confident in their ability to empathize or if empathizing was difficult, their well-being was lower.

So, that raises the question: Is empathy good or bad for us? It could be a bit of both, depending on the situation, says Depow.

“Overall, empathy, in a multidimensional framework, is good for well-being,” he says. “But, when people have more opportunities to empathize with negative emotions—and some people have them consistently and repeatedly, like doctors in emergency care, for example—those can be risk factors for personal distress.”

In those situations, we may need to take steps to protect ourselves from the distress that can come with empathy. Still, Depow is more for empathy being a positive than a negative in our lives.

“To really share positive emotions seems to be good for us,” he says. “That means feeling joy with the other person—rather than feeling bad about yourself because you’re not doing as well—could be a good opportunity to increase your well-being.”

Everyday empathy and helping others

In Depow’s study, people practiced more kindness toward others at times when they experienced more empathy—no matter whether positive or negative emotions were shared. Again, he found this to be particularly noteworthy, as so much research on empathy and compassion focuses on witnessing others in need.

“Empathy is not always about engaging with the suffering of others,” he says. “We also use it often to connect with other people’s happiness, and that can be a way of feeling connected to those around us, too.”

Interestingly, not just showing empathy but also receiving empathy from another led to more kindness and helpfulness. Depow isn’t sure why that would be, and research has not focused a lot on how receiving empathy affects our behavior. But it could just have to do with how an empathic interaction increases our sense of community.

“Maybe if someone empathizes with you, you feel closer to them and the people around you. That might make you more willing to contribute and help out,” he says.

Who is the most empathic?

In general, Depow’s findings confirmed that different demographic groups had different experiences of everyday empathy. Women still tended to empathize more than men, and being religious bumped up one’s empathy levels at least a little.

However, he didn’t find much difference in empathy levels between political liberals and conservatives, except in a separate analysis not covered in the paper. There, he says, he found that conservatives extended empathy less toward strangers, perhaps explaining why past studies had found a difference between the two political groups.

“Conservatives and neutral participants [not politically affiliated] reserved their greatest extent of compassion for close others, while liberals felt high compassion even for strangers,” he says.

These findings are exploratory, though, and would need replication before confirming their validity. And, he adds, they shouldn’t discourage people from extending empathy between political groups. Instead, they illuminate how empathy generally works in our everyday lives and how we can cultivate it better. For example, empathy can be helpful for understanding other people’s thoughts and predicting what they might do in the future, he says, which can be helpful in working together.

So how can we bring more empathy (and more well-being) into our everyday lives? Though more research would need to be done to test this out, Depow says, it might benefit people to learn to notice empathy opportunities more often, savor others’ happiness more, or reframe our emotional reaction to suffering as an opportunity to help (rather than focusing on our own personal distress). If training like that were possible, empathy could become an even more potent happiness practice—and stave off loneliness, too, he says.

“If people could open themselves up for more opportunities to empathize with others and resonate with their positive experiences, while feeling compassion for their negative experiences, that could really help us all.”

Could it really be this simple:
R E C O G N I Z E
Your Pain
is my Pain
Your Happiness
is my happiness
and at the
END
the
MIDDLE
and in the
BEGINNING
Empathy
isn’t something we
have
or
share
but the very thing
we walk each other
H O M E

I Hear Ya

September 1, 2021 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

OR DO I. . .
DO YOU?
I really like to talk
in fact
I use my mouth for a living
and the least of it
is what I do on
SUNDAY MORNINGS. . .
I talk to dozen of people every day
in a hospice setting
in talking with people about
CELEBRATIONS OF LIFE
for their loved ones
COUPLES
who’d like to get married
and want me to be their officiant
to my friends
to my family
to neighbors
to just about everyone I pass
in a store
or at the gas station. . .
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
if I could only be paid by the
WORD
(and I’m not even talking about the texting and emailing)
I like talking

but that
LISTENING THING. . .
I SAY
I pride myself on my
LISTENING SKILLS
but I think it’s always worth
c h e c k i n g
and I
DO THAT A LOT
especially when I’m feeling a little
too sure
of myself

How to Do It

Time Required: At least 10 minutes. Try to make time for this practice at least once per week.

Find a quiet place where you can talk with a conversation partner without interruption or distraction. Invite him or her to share what’s on his or her mind. As he or she does so, try to follow the steps below. You don’t need to cover every step, but the more you do cover, the more effective this practice is likely to be.

P a r a p h r a s e

Once the other person has finished expressing a thought, paraphrase what he or she said to make sure you understand and to show that you are paying attention. Helpful ways to paraphrase include “What I hear you saying is…,” “It sounds like…,” and “If I understand you right….”

Ask questions

When appropriate, ask questions to encourage the other person to elaborate on his or her thoughts and feelings. Avoid jumping to conclusions about what the other person means. Instead, ask questions to clarify his or her meaning, such as, “When you say_____, do you mean_____?”

Express empathy

If the other person voices negative feelings, strive to validate these feelings rather than questioning or defending against them. For example, if the speaker expresses frustration, try to consider why he or she feels that way, regardless of whether you think that feeling is justified or whether you would feel that way yourself were you in his or her position. You might respond, “I can sense that you’re feeling frustrated,” and even “I can understand how that situation could cause frustration.”

Use engaged body language

Show that you are engaged and interested by making eye contact, nodding, facing the other person, and maintaining an open and relaxed body posture. Avoid attending to distractions in your environment or checking your phone. Be mindful of your facial expressions: Avoid expressions that might communicate disapproval or disgust.

Avoid judgment

Your goal is to understand the other person’s perspective and accept it for what it is, even if you disagree with it. Try not to interrupt with counter-arguments or mentally prepare a rebuttal while the other person is speaking.

Avoid giving advice

Problem-solving is likely to be more effective after both conversation partners understand one another’s perspective and feel heard. Moving too quickly into advice-giving can be counterproductive.

Take turns

After the other person has had a chance to speak and you have engaged in the active listening steps above, ask if it’s okay for you to share your perspective. When sharing your perspective, express yourself as clearly as possible using “I” statements (e.g., “I feel overwhelmed when you don’t help out around the house”). It may also be helpful, when relevant, to express empathy for the other person’s perspective (e.g., “I know you’ve been very busy lately and don’t mean to leave me hanging…”).

Why You Should Try It

Often we’ll listen to a conversation partner without really hearing him or her. In the process, we miss opportunities to connect with that person—and even risk making him or her feel neglected, disrespected, and resentful.

This exercise helps you express active interest in what the other person has to say and make him or her feel heard—a way to foster empathy and connection. This technique is especially well-suited for difficult conversations (such as arguments with a spouse) and for expressing support. Research suggests that using this technique can help others feel more understood and improve relationship satisfaction.

Why It Works

Active listening helps listeners better understand others’ perspectives and helps speakers feel more understood and less threatened. This technique can prevent miscommunication and spare hurt feelings on both sides. By improving communication and preventing arguments from escalating, active listening can make relationships more enduring and satisfying. Practicing active listening with someone close to you can also help you listen better when interacting with other people in your life, such as students, co-workers, or roommates.

Evidence That It Works

Weger, H., Castle Bell, G., Minei, E. M., & Robinson, M. C. (2014). The relative effectiveness of active listening in initial interactions. International Journal of Listening, 28(1), 13-31.

Participants had brief conversations (about their biggest disappointment with their university) with someone trained to engage in active listening, someone who gave them advice, or someone who gave simple acknowledgments of their point of view. Participants who received active listening reported feeling more understood at the end of the conversation.

Sources

Instructions adapted from: Markman, H., Stanley, S., & Blumberg, S.L. (1994). Fighting for your marriage. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Empathy Quiz

Active Listening involves approaching a conversation with a genuine desire to understand the other person’s feelings and perspective, without judgment or defensiveness. When you engage in Active Listening, you tune into what your conversation partner is communicating with their words and body language. How well do you feel and understand what others are feeling? Take the Empathy quiz (at Greater Good in Action) to find out.

DO IT
take a few moments to
take this
EMPATHY QUIZ
no one will be judging you
no one will share your answers
no one will make you feel embarrassed
B U T
like me,
you just may find
that what I know
what I know I know
what I’d bet my life that I know
I don’t always ACT like I know at all
W H I C H
is why I like to do a check up
from the EARS UP

I’d like to know that when I tell you,
“YEAH, I HEAR YA”
I really do
and I’m inviting you as
A CARING CATALYST
to do the same. . .
Do you hear me?

Where Christmas Decorations Go To DIE

August 30, 2021 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

Last Wednesday it was August 25 exactly four months before Christmas ( 116 days before Christmas www.xmasclock.com and it’s only a matter of time, way, way, before Halloween that we will be made known of that fact; in fact, depending on where you shop there may be some remnants of that right now.

YES, I AM THAT GUY Who normally tries to celebrate Christmas the 25th of every month and really, every day. I will be brutally honest with you, I feel most of the time even though I am that guy, the Christmas guy; a few years ago my coworkers gave me a Christmas tree for my birthday that said MERRY CHUCKMAS~~because I’m THAT guy

Yes, I took this video on a very windy March afternoon just three months after Christmas and so many months before we celebrate again. It was a reminder a very cold, chilly, and dismal reminder that every BEGINNING already has an ending tucked not so deeply inside of us that not so gently reminds us and everything around us that we don’t last forever. . . Unless something much deeper and much greater than a fading memory or a photographed moment could ever promise: OUR LOVE

Our love often visits that which is dead and those who have died to remind us and always them that’s not a plot of earth that we commemorate or place them, but deep within our hearts that they continue to live as they always have, as they always do, and as they always will

Where do Christmas decorations go to die? Sometimes you don’t have to look very far to find the answer and then to realize that the answer is not an answer at all but a small dusty-not-so-shiny-glimmer of hope that reminds us they haven’t died at all and never do. . .

We are the proof of that or we are not. . .

What SAY/SHOW you. . . ?

Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Do you know what’s going to happen in 116 days. . .
Seriously,
why wait. . .
WHY BURY
WHAT NEVER DIES. . . ?

PICTURE off the Wall

August 27, 2021 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

Mabel gifted us a beautiful cross-stitch of the Twenty-Third Psalm and went so far as to have it matted and professionally framed. When we took it home I knew exactly where I wanted to hang it; right outside of our bedroom door in the hallway so that every time we walked out, it would be the first thing we saw, reminding us of the gift, the giver and the promise it contained.

I AM NOT A HANDY MAN

I didn’t look for a stud to put the nail to hang the picture.

I didn’t even put up a super-duper wall hanger that would have been just as sturdy as nailing it into a wall stud.

I just eyed it up and put a nail in and hung the piece of art.

I have no idea why framed art like that has a way of falling down at 3:00 a.m. instead of 3:00 p.m. but that’s exactly what happened and when I heard the crash, I knew immediately it wasn’t a burglar, but a poorly hung picture.

We all have that picture, don’t we? It is the picture that each of us have been gifted or maybe even painstakingly painted ourselves; and not only paint but we frame it; we make sure we put it in the best of mats and it has glare-less glass over top of it so we could see it from any angle without any kind of shadowy, distorted glares. This preciously framed picture is the only one of its kind. It includes those we have put in our picture, who have made up our lives and painted all of the intricate strokes that would have made it impossible for us not to be US.

It is reflective our pristine PLAN A with no forethought of any kind of a PLAN B

It is THAT PICTURE, the one and only un-replicated ONE that we treasure most; that most often falls from the wall, no matter how it seems to be secured. The one-of-a-kind-picture that we have painted for our lives, for our family, for our loved ones; it’s that picture that we hang on the wall and whether we first find a stud or whether we wall anchor it, somehow, someway, that picture, usually in the middle of one of the dark nights of our souls, without any warning whatsoever, falls and gets 100% obliterated; it gets smashed, the glass, the frame, the mat. The Vision.

The actual picture itself gets destroyed and we never can put it back together again because it is that obliterated. Isn’t that our life? It doesn’t matter how many goals we have set. It doesn’t matter how many New Year’s Resolutions we’ve made and actually kept; It doesn’t matter how expensive the pen we’ve used to write our script on a mystical pad; it doesn’t matter how we dream, we wish, we deem it all to be; IT IS HOW it all turns out to be, despite of all of those other concerted efforts. OFTEN it does not turn out to be that way. OUR WAY. . .

We are all a collection of jagged, smashed pieces; broken pictures fallen off the wall; constantly attempting to gather and putting together pieces that never can be put together again.

THE WORST PART. . .

We seldom see the good news of the never-to-be-put-together-again-picture we’ve held so dear to us.

THE TRUTH. . .

Sometimes it takes a good picture smashing to have what could have never been imagined. It may never be expensively matted, framed or professionally hung, but in living-vivid-color, it’s as real as your heartbeat and more desperately needed than your next breath.

The picture of the PRESENT MOMENT is never perfect, but it is very real and even more,

EvOlViNg. . .

It just could be THAT PICTURE might be better than the one that we put on the wall,

the one we grieve the most;
Crooked as it may be
keeps us from seeing
THAT PICTURE. . . .

HAP HAP HAPPINESS HAPPENING

August 25, 2021 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

Stocksy

Essential, data-derived advice for leading a happy, healthy life, shared by researcher and psychiatrist Robert Waldinger. . .

Have you ever wished you could fast-forward your life so you could see if the decisions you’re making will lead to satisfaction and health in the future? In the world of scientific research, the closest you can get to that is by looking at the Harvard Study of Adult Development — a study that has tracked the lives of 724 men for 78 years, and one of the longest studies of adult life ever done. Investigators surveyed the group every two years about their physical and mental health, their professional lives, their friendships, their marriages — and also subjected them to periodic in-person interviews, medical exams, blood tests and brain scans.

With a front-row seat on these men’s lives, researchers have been able to track their circumstances and choices and see how the effects ripple through their lives. Psychiatrist Robert J. Waldinger, the study’s director and principal investigator, shared some of the major lessons in a popular TED Talk (What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness). He says, ”We’d been publishing journal articles with our findings for 75 years, but we publish in journals about lifespan developmental research that few people read. The government has invested millions of dollars in the research, so why keep it a secret?”

The big takeaways from that talk: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier, and loneliness kills. But there were, of course, many more lessons to be learned — the study has yielded more than 100 published papers so far, with enough data for “scores more” — and Waldinger shares four of them here.

1. A happy childhood has very, very long-lasting effects.

Having warm relationships with parents in childhood was a good predictor you’ll have warmer and more secure relationships with those closest to you when you’re an adult. Happy childhoods had the power to extend across decades to predict more secure relationships that people had with their spouses in their 80s, as well as better physical health in adulthood all the way into old age. And it’s not just parental bonds that matter: Having a close relationship with at least one sibling in childhood predicted which people were less likely to become depressed by age 50.

2. But … people with difficult childhoods can make up for them in midlife.

People who grow up in challenging environments — with chaotic families or economic uncertainty, for instance — grew old less happily than those who had more fortunate childhoods. But by the time people reached middle age (defined as ages 50–65), those who engaged in what psychologists call “generativity,” or an interest in establishing and guiding the next generation, were happier and better adjusted than those who didn’t. And generativity is not dependent on being a parent — while people can develop it by raising children, they can also exhibit it at work or other situations where they mentor younger adults.

3. Learning how to cope well with stress has a lifelong payoff.

We’ve all developed ways of managing stress and relieving anxiety, and Waldinger and his team have found that some ways can have greater long-term benefits than others. Among the adaptive coping methods they examined are sublimation (example: you feel unfairly treated by your employer, so you start an organization that helps protect workers’ rights), altruism (you struggle with addiction and help stay sober by being a sponsor for other addicts), and suppression (you’re worried about job cuts at your company but put those worries out of mind until you can do something to plan for the future). Maladaptive coping strategies include denial, acting out, or projection. The Harvard researchers found the subjects who dealt with stress by engaging in adaptive methods had better relationships with other people. And their way of coping had a cascade of beneficial effects: It made them easier for others to be with, which made people want to help them and led to more social support, and that, in turn, predicted healthier aging in their 60s and 70s. Added bonus: people who used adaptive mechanisms in middle age also had brains that stayed sharper longer.

4. Time with others protects us from the bruises of life’s ups and downs.

Waldinger has said “it’s the quality of your relationships that matters” is one significant takeaway from the study. Well, the researchers have found that quantity counts, too. Looking back on their lives, people most often reported their time spent with others as most meaningful, and the part of their lives of which they were the proudest. Spending time with other people made study subjects happier on a day-to-day basis, and in particular, time with a partner or spouse seemed to buffer them against the mood dips that come with aging’s physical pains and illnesses.

Waldinger continues to marvel at the researchers’ findings, even though he freely acknowledges how skewed their research group is — “it’s the most politically incorrect sample you could possibly have; it’s all white men!” (In fact, the group originally included John F. Kennedy.) With “only a handful” of the original subjects left to study, the Harvard team is now moving on to the men’s 1,300 children who’ve agreed to participate (a group that’s 51 percent female). But he’s painfully aware that the proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health could end even their long-running study. “Our kind of research might be one of the first projects to go. Our work is not urgent; it’s not the cure for cancer or Alzheimer’s,” he says.

DO YOU HAVE YOUR HAPPY FACE ON. . . ?
Maybe
. . .maybe that’s our biggest problem
THESE DAYS
. . .we are so busy making sure
we put on our
HAPPY FACES
we miss out on actually being
H A P P Y
. . .we are so busy
F A K I N G
H A P P Y
we’ve actually forgotten how to be
H A P P Y
. . .and worse
making Other’s
HAPPY
along the way. . .

YOU CAN
MAKE
HAP
HAP
HAPPINESS
HAPPEN
(but will you?)

VENT ON

August 18, 2021 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

Does Venting Your Feelings Actually Help?

While letting your negative emotions out may feel good in the moment, science suggests it might make matters worse in the long run. . .

JILL SUTTIE from Greater Good Magazine gives us report that allows us to take a closer look how LETTING IT FLY might be a good thing. . .

We all get upset from time to time—some of us more than others. Whether we’re sad about the loss of a loved one, angry at friends or family, or fearful about the state of the world, it often feels good to let it all out. . .

That’s because sharing our emotions reduces our stress while making us feel closer to others we share with and providing a sense of belonging. When we open up our inner selves and people respond with sympathy, we feel seen, understood, and supported.

But “sharing” covers a lot of different modes of communication. Are some healthier than others, over the long run? Science suggests that it depends, in part, on how you share and how people respond to you. Expressing our emotions often to others may actually make us feel worse, especially if we don’t find a way to gain some perspective on why we feel the way we do and take steps to soothe ourselves.

Why we Vent

Our emotions are valuable sources of information, alerting us that something is wrong in our environment and needs our attention. Whether we need to confront someone who’s abusing us, hide to avoid danger, or seek comfort from friends, feelings like anger, fear, and sadness help us prepare to meet the moment.

But if feelings are internal signals, why do we share them with others?

“We want to connect with other people who can help validate what we’re going through, and venting really does a pretty good job at fulfilling that need,” says researcher Ethan Kross, author of the book Chatter. “It feels good to know there’s someone there to rely on who cares enough to take time to listen.”

Sharing our feelings also provides an opportunity to gain insight into what’s causing our difficult feelings and avert future upsets. Sometimes, just verbalizing what’s bothering us to another person helps to clarify the situation and name the emotions involved. Or, if we get caught in emotional whirlwinds, our confidants can provide new perspectives and offer sound advice, says Kross.

Unfortunately, this latter part of the equation often gets lost in the shuffle, he adds.

“When we get stuck in a venting session, it feels good in the moment, because we’re connecting with other people,” he says. “But if all we do is vent, we don’t address our cognitive needs, too. We aren’t able to make sense of what we’re experiencing, to make meaning of it.”

So, while venting may be good for building supportive relationships and feel good in the moment, it’s not enough to help us through. If others simply listen and empathize, they may inadvertently extend our emotional upset.

The dark side of venting

For many years, psychologists believed that dark emotions, like anger, needed to be released physically. This led to a movement to “let it all out,” with psychologists literally telling people to hit soft objects, like pillows or punching bags, to release pent-up feelings.

It turns out, however, that this type of emotional venting likely doesn’t soothe anger as much as augment it. That’s because encouraging people to act out their anger makes them relive it in their bodies, strengthening the neural pathways for anger and making it easier to get angry the next time around. Studies on venting anger (without effective feedback), whether online or verbally, have also found it to be generally unhelpful.

The same is true of grief or anxiety following trauma. While we should of course seek support from those around us during difficult times of loss and pain, if we simply relive our experience without finding some way to soothe ourselves or find meaning, it could extend our suffering.

For some time, people who worked with trauma victims encouraged them to “debrief” afterward, having them talk through what happened to them to ward off post-traumatic stress. But a randomized controlled study found that this didn’t help much, likely because debriefing doesn’t help distance people from their trauma. Similarly, students who vented their anxiety after 9/11 suffered from more anxiety up to four months later than those who didn’t. As the study authors write, their “focus on and venting of emotions was found to be uniquely predictive of longer-term anxiety.”

Venting through social media can do the same thing. In one study, researchers surveyed students attending Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University after mass shootings occurred at each campus to see how venting their grief over social media helped them recover. While students thought that venting was beneficial, their post-traumatic stress and depression scores actually went up the more they vented.

Talking and listening with care

Besides making us feel worse, venting can also have a negative effect on our audience.

While supportive friends and family hopefully care enough to listen and sympathize with us, it can be frustrating to sit with someone who vents frequently when that person seems to be wallowing in emotion without learning from their experience. And being around someone stuck in anger, fear, or sadness cycles can be overwhelming for listeners who may end up “catching” the emotions themselves.

“Repeatedly venting over and over and over again, can create friction in social relationships,” says Kross. “There’s often a limit to how much listeners, your friends, can actually hear.”

I know that I am guilty of wanting someone to listen to me when I’m upset—and not wanting advice right off the bat. If I’m in the midst of pain, trying to talk me out of my feelings or to offer pat solutions seems insensitive or even patronizing.

However, Kross doesn’t advocate for that. Instead, he says, there’s an art to being a listener. It takes a combination of empathy or sympathy—and waiting for the right moment before offering perspective.

“People are going to differ, depending on what they’re dealing with, how intense their experiences are,” he says. “Being sensitive to the fact that some people may need more time before they’re ready to transition from venting to thinking is really important.”

Skillful Venting

There is a healthier way to vent, Kross says. He suggests these guidelines:

Be selective about when you vent. There are lots of ways to deal with difficult emotions, and not all of them involve other people. Some people can gain perspective on their own, by writing their thoughts down or gaining distance from them through meditation. Kross recommends changing your environment to help you process emotions and tamp down rumination that might otherwise keep you stuck in an emotional whirlwind.

When you vent to others, prompt them to offer perspective. If you find yourself venting to someone without your emotions dissipating (or maybe getting worse), you may be caught in a cycle of “co-rumination”—a rehashing that can keep you stuck. To get out of that, you can ask the person to step back and help you reframe your experience by asking, “How should I think about this differently?” or “What should I do in this situation?” This will cue them to offer perspective and assure them that you’re looking for something more than a listening ear.

Consider to whom you vent. Before venting to someone, ask yourself, “Did this person really help me the last time I talked to them, or did they just make me feel worse?” If someone is there for you, but doesn’t tend to broaden your perspective, you may just get more stirred up emotionally. Being more deliberate about who you vent to could help you in the long run.

Be careful around online venting. While sharing our emotions online can help us feel better in the moment and identify supportive allies, results can be mixed. For one thing, negative emotions easily spread online, which may create a herd mentality, resulting in bullying or trolling—especially if you identify a particular person as responsible for your feelings. While it’s unclear if venting online is an overall good or bad thing, it may not help you gain the perspective you need to move forward.

Still, all in all, Kross says venting is a good thing, helping us cope. If we can get past the letting off steam part, we can feel better in the long run and keep our relationships strong, too.

“Venting serves some function,” he says. “It has benefits for the self in terms of satisfying our social and emotional needs. We just need to find out what the correct dosage is and make sure to offer to supplement that with cognitive reframing.

Better to be an
E A R
than a
M O U T H
sometimes
and having a
VENT OFF
(some of my co-workers and I have an unofficial VENT OFF every day where we LET IT FLY and are SAFELY HEARD)

Come. . .
LET US REASON
(Do I ever have an Ear for you!)

C R A Z I E S

August 13, 2021 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

T H I S
is just like us
. . .a mess
Until we come together
amazing things happen. . .
when your crazy
meets my crazy
and we know that it just fits
I T
doesn’t just feel like Christmas
it is
C H R I S T M A S
forever
NOW
Multiple that
with half the people in the world
with the other half people the world
And this world
just doesn’t become a crazy place
it becomes a craziest
of the craziest place
And
ON EARTH
AS IT IS IN HEAVEN
BECOMES THE CRAZIEST
OF THE CRAZIEST
NORMAL
OF ALL
FOR ALL
FOR AN EVER
ALL. . . .

Connect
them
l i n e s