GROUP CLASS TOPICS

Styles Of Anger

Each of us develops their own special style of anger:

* The "Mad Hatter" Driver: This person yells, curses, and offers gestures to other drivers when s/he
is in a hurry and frustrated.

* The Sulker: This person shuts down in a chair and stops speaking and looking at others.

* Safe Haven Abuser: This person takes her/his frustration out only on the ones s/he loves.

* The Distractor: This person disregards the object of his annoyance by reading the paper, forgetting
to run an errand, or playing the radio too loudly. When s/he is confronted, the response is:
I didn't know; I forgot; I'm tired.

* The Blamer: This person blames everybody for everything and rarely accepts responsibility for his own
short comings.

* The Avenger: This person believes s/he has been given the right to seek vengeance in any way for anything
by using the excuse: they deserved it.


Cyberspace addiction

If your daughter just spent an entire beautiful weekend tweaking her MySpace page, foregoing a trip with the family to an amusement park, she may be showing signs of addiction. If you checked your Internet browser’s history only to find out your innocent, naïve teenage son has spent the last five afternoons accessing pornographic Web sites where the titles alone are enough to make you blush, he may be addicted.

The Internet is a seductive place, especially for today’s linked-in teens who are far more likely to add graffiti to their friend’s Facebook wall than they are to actually get on their bicycle and ride over to that same friend’s house. You have to admit it would be a challenge to connect face-to-face with someone you’ve never met in person and who lives in a different time zone.

Therein lies the problem. The Internet is perfect for teens. Today’s social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter let them represent themselves as whomever, or whatever, they want. Everything is edited by them, chosen specifically to present the face they want the world to see. And if they decide to change that face, then they just delete some pictures, add some new friends, and voila’ – new person!

Experts say that as many as 10 percent of Internet users may be considered addicted, although some mental health professionals balk at using that term in a clinical sense. They argue that an activity can only be addictive when it causes a certain type of chemical reaction in the brain, and that’s hard to determine. But when you’re arguing with a teen about the amount of time she’s spending online and she just can’t get her paper done because her AOL Instant Messenger keeps alerting her something new and exciting is happening with her best friend, then call it what you like, it’s a problem – for you, the child, and the entire family.

Many parents feel torn, though, about limiting their children’s time on the computer. If a teen is struggling socially, some parents believe any human interaction, even through the computer, is preferable to none. And with teens that are risk-takers or have questionable taste in friends, some parents feel they can better monitor and keep their children safe by letting them stay home, downloading music files and creating quizzes for their Web pages. And many parents just want to avoid the tantrums, the cold shoulder, or the arguments that flare whenever the issue of computer time management comes up.

There are a couple of Web sites that you and your child can visit together to assess their level of addiction. Try the addiction quizzes at netaddiction.com or mediafamily.org. Even if you don’t actually believe your child is addicted, the tests are a good way to initiate some dialogue and get them thinking about how they are spending their time.

‘Parents are too permissive with their children nowadays’

Few people would defend the Victorian attitude to children, but if you were a parent in those days, at least you knew where you stood: children were to be seen and not hear 848f514i d.
Freud and company did away with all that and parents have been bewildered ever since.
The child’s happiness is all-important, the psychologists say, but what about the parents’ happiness?
Parents suffer constantly from fear and guilt while their children gaily romp about pulling the place apart. A good old-fashioned spanking is out of the question: no modern child-rearing manual would permit such barbarity. The trouble is you are not allowed even to shout. Who knows what deep psychological wounds you might inflict? The poor child may never recover from the dreadful traumatic experience. So it is that parents bend over backwards to avoid giving their children complexes which a hundred years ago hadn’t even been heard of. Certainly a child needs love, and a lot of it. But the excessive permissiveness of modern parents is surely doing more harm than good.

Psychologists have succeeded in undermining parents’ confidence in their own authority.
And it hasn’t taken children long to get wind of the fact. In addition to the great modern classics on child care, there are countless articles in magazines and newspapers. With so much unsolicited advice flying about, mum and dad just don’t know what to do any more. In the end, they do nothing at all. So, from early childhood, the kids are in charge and parents lives are regulated according to the needs of their offspring. When the little dears develop into teenagers, they take complete control. Lax authority over the years makes adolescent rebellion against parents all the more violent. If the young people are going to have a party, for instance, parents are asked to leave the house. Their presence merely spoils the fun. What else can the poor parents do but obey?

Children are hardy creatures (far hardier than the psychologists would have us believe) and most of them survive the harmful influence of extreme permissiveness which is the normal condition in the modern household. But a great many do not. The spread of juvenile delinquency in our own age is largely due to parental laxity. Mother, believing that little Johnny can look after himself, is not at home when he returns from school, so little Johnny roams the streets. The dividing-line between permissiveness and sheer negligence is very fine indeed.

The psychologists have much to answer for. They should keep their mouths shut and let parents get on with the job. And if children are knocked about a little bit in the process, it may not really matter too much. At least this will help them to develop vigorous views of their own and give them something positive to react against. Perhaps there’s some truth in the idea that children who’ve had a surfeit of happiness in their childhood emerge like stodgy puddings and fail to make a success of life.

 

Why (non-creepy) eye contact with strangers is a good thing

New research suggests doing your fellow humans a favor and acknowledging strangers you pass on the street: findings reveal that a smile or a simple nod, rather than deliberately ignoring someone or worse, staring straight through them, helps people feel less lonely and more connected."Ostracism is painful," study researcher Eric Wesselmann, a social psychologist at Purdue University in Indiana, told Live Science. "Sometimes, colloquially, I like to say ostracism sucks. It's not a pleasant experience."

He and his team presented their findings, published in February in the journal Psychological Science, at an annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Motivation in Chicago last week.

To reach their findings, Wesselmann and his team set up an experiment on a well-populated campus area. A research assistant walked along a busy path, picked a subject, and either met that person's eyes, met their eyes and smiled, or looked in the direction of the person's eyes, but past them -- "looking at them as if they were air," Wesselmann described.

After the person passed, another researcher stopped the subject and asked him or her to fill out a quick survey on social connectedness, with questions such as "Within the last minute, how disconnected do you feel from others?" Meanwhile, the subject remained uninformed that the person they just passed was connected to the survey.

The survey results showed that being ignored by a stranger had a significant emotional impact, with those receiving the distant stare relaying stronger feelings of isolation.

Granted, as Live Science reports, every city and country has its own set of street rules. For instance, smiling at strangers on a Paris or New York subway may be met with a certain disdain, or perhaps encourage unwanted advances. Yet in other cities, it is considered simply polite.

But regional differences aside, researchers acknowledge that staring right through someone is "off-putting anywhere." And in any case, loneliness and isolation is considered a growing problem in countries such as the US, the UK, and Japan, according to media reports.

John Cacioppo, Ph.D., author of several books including Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection and professor at the University of Chicago, suggests that extending yourself is vital to feeling less lonely -- get involved with a charity or class, or volunteer your time to meet new people outside your usual realm.

He also recommends thinking more positively. Optimism will draw a more consistent and positive response from others and help reinforce social connectedness. As you become more open and positive about new situations and people, subtle changes can happen in your attitude and perception of loneliness, he says -- and perhaps you may even find yourself smiling at strangers throughout your day.