Emotional abuse

Emotional abuse, according to pcychologists, is is any kind of abuse that is emotional rather than physical. It can include anything from verbal abuse and constant criticism to more subtle tactics, such as repeated disapproval or even the refusal to ever be pleased. Manipulators of emotional abuse can make their victims feel guilty, to make their self- esteem irrelevant. Who usually suffer from emotional abuse? Of course people, who are very sensitive and easilly damaged – women or children.
In women case, they usually marry men, who demonstrate a lot of attention for them. After the wedding more and more they are getting hit by their husbands. After the physical abuse comes the emotional abuse – a husband shows his guilt and tries to please all woman‘s needs. After pleasing time, the hitting comes again.. the hunsband manipulates the situation psychologically in such way, that his beatings he ascribes to a woman – for her to feel guilty. Of course, mostly physical abuse comes with verbal abuse.
The most important thing is that if you ask a woman, why she doesn‘t leave her husband, if she suffers from beatings of her husband, she would probably say, that she hopes that was the last beat. But unfortunatelly it never is. Soon the husband becomes uncontrollable and he only wants that his woman only stay at home and satisfy all his wishes.

Children abuse contains about 8% of all children abuse. Manipulators of children can make a lot of damage for them, because brains are not set enough and it is possible to damage emotionally irreversibly. Usually during emotional abuse period, the victim comes to see him or herself as unworthy of love and affection.

Psychologists separated five types of emotional abuse for children:
Denying - parents reject their bond with children, show that children are unwanted.
Ignoring – parents do not have a bond with children – psychically they are there for them, but not emotionally.
Terrorizing – parents try to punish and criticize their children, even threaten with death.
Isolating – try to isolate children from their sight to make them „learn“ a lesson.
Corrupting – parents allow children to do anything, what should be restricted to them: use alcohol, drugs, watch pornographic tapes and so on.

Emotional abuse is a very big problem in nowadays society. We should do everything to prevent it. It is recommened for people, who suffer from emotional abuse to go to help centers or at least try to talk to psychologists or friends.

A listening task

I have listened to two bbc listening tasks. One was about English people’s health and another was about drug addicts in United Kingdom.
I listened both for the first time and I understood everything, although I listened them both one more time, just in case I skipped an important information. Honestly, I haven’t finished listening the second task, because it was very long and it seemed that I really understood everything.
Both tasks were quiet long, but I really enjoyed listening about the first topic, because im very interested about health and nutrition. Speakers were talking about obesity among English people. Why is that happening? What are the main reasons? When did it start? Even 50% of all English people are overweight. A very interesting fact was mentioned, that in UK in 4 mile distance there are about 29 fast – food cafes. Fast food is cheaper, easier and faster to eat, and you can find it almost everywhere. People do not embark on doing exercises, the biggest their activity is to get in or get out of the car. Even those people, who go to the gym three times per week reward themselves for doing that with a big pizza or hamburger and few beers. If people will not pay attention to what and when they eat, the children will start to die earlier than their parents in 15 years. For me, a very interesting fact was that the government tries to help to suppress the obesity by banning the advertisements of fast – food or even putting extra classes in curriculum for children to learn how to cook healthy food.
The second listening task was about the bond between government and drug addicts. There are very many drug addicts in UK and the government tries to reduce the number of them by not punishing the addicts, but rewarding them. Firstly, they were rewarded by travels, but later on medical stuff started to reward addicts with another drugs, like antidepressants. The chief of this health section was not aware of this and there was a quarrel about that with a woman from this section and a speaker from the radio show. In addition, Britain is a leader in EU by helping and improving treatments for drug addicts, although the percentage of fully treated addicts in whole UK is not very big.
The conclusion is that if a listening task is interesting, so it is does not matter – is it long or short – the most important thing is that you listen it with a great interest and want to hear more. Although both tasks were more than 15 min, but I honestly wanted to hear more.

Psychology of handwriting

Every person has its own handwriting. Although everyone of us can change their handwriting few times per writing, but the principles remain the same. People used to write by hand much more often many years ago and now they prefer writing by the new technologies. They barrely use handwriting, although we still can say many facts about the writer itself.

The handwriting depends on few features: slant, size, pressure, upper or lower case, word spacing, page margins and so on. But why is that important for handwriting? Why is it possible to bond person’s character and handwriting? Firstly, because our brains guide our hands – they are related. Furthermore, brains controls not only our motoric system, but emotional state as well, so if we contain everything we have the result – handwriting. That is why person’s handwriting is different, when he/she is happy or sad.

So firstly, if you want to analyse the handwriting, you have to picture the whole writing. Try to touch the writing. If you even can feel the letter, written on the paper, it means, that the writer was writing with a big pressure. These people usually are confident and have lots of emotional energy. Plus, they are very successful in life. People, with light pressure are not so confident and tries to avoid stressful situations. They can show empathy to other people.

Secondly, check the slant – it shows the response to external forces. If it is right slant, it means that a person is very communicative, they respond strongly to situations and a person mind is ruled by heart. If a slant is vertical, then a heart is rules by mind. Such person is independent and tries not to show his/her emotions to other people. Left slant people do not show any emotions at all and they can not stand being controlled by others.

Thirdly, the size of handwriting is also very important. If it is very large, then it shows extraversion, the person is outgoing, but usually only puts on act that he/she is very confident, although the truth is different. Very small size means contraversal person, although he/she likes to be dependent on somebody or maybe something.

People who write in upper case, mostly are ambitious, but those who write in down case are impatient.

The science about handwriting is called graphology. It is very interesting, but difficult as well. There are so many things you can tell about a person only from his/her writing! Although, usually people use more computer writing, not hand and it is more and more difficult to reveal the secrets and features about a person from the writing.

Psychology of laughter

One psychologist, called P.Ekman wanted to find out if all people smile the same all over the world. He found one tribe in Africa, that have been never heard of white people, radio or television, so they didn’t have an opportunity to see how other people can smile. So Ekman took those tribe people friendly faces and came back to USA. The smiles in USA and Africa were the same. He didn’t stop and made more research and separated 19 types of smile. 18 of them are insincere, they become like masks, when we don‘t want to show out true feelings. There is only one type of a real smile, when mouth lifts up, eyes are squinted and others. Only this smile reflects real joy. This smile was called Duchenne smile. The biggest influence is made by Musculus orbicularis oculi, that makes the smile so special. You can‘t fake this eye muscle, so you can‘t fake Duchenne smile as well.
A person smiles and laughs then, when he is happy. The research show that happiness is related to specific areas of the brain. Psychologists claim that those people who have the right side of the brain more active, are more pessimistic, untrustworthy. For them details can become a disaster, they tend to have depressions. People, who have left side dominated, usually are optimistics, easy going, communicative. Psychologists showed happy and frustrating extracts from movies. The reaction of people were very different, depending which side of the brain was dominating. Those, who had right side more active, were disgusted much more than the others. Although others were much more happier and laughed much more often. The blood of people with the left side domination, has more immune cells.
Talking about laughter, many years ago people believed that it can help to protect against death, old age. People tried to make a pregnant woman laugh that was going to give a birth to a child, to relax.
All these facts improves that we MUST smile and laugh as much as possible.

P.S. You can see the Duchenne smile at the end of this page

Psychology of conflicts

Everyone of us almost everyday faces conflicts. Some of them are bigger, some are smaller. The reaction to them is different as well. Some people like to conflict, some hate that and afterwards feel frustrated.
Conflicts are determined by specific signs of a body: raised voice, the heart starts to beat harder, we tremble from anger, becoming more and more pale or reddish. Sometimes we try not to show that to our opponent, in order to appear weak.
There are two basic types of conflicts : inner conflicts and outer conflicts. The first ones consist of many conflicts that are related to individual itself, for example: emotional, interpersonal, intrapersonal conflicts and the other side of conflicts is among relationships with other individuals: group, community, international conflicts. The first time, when a person starts to feel inner conflicts is adolescence - youngsters feel too many different opinions inside and tries to run away from them. Then another one of the biggest conflicts appears about 30 - 40 year old, and psychologists call it "middle age crisis".
The most interesting fact is that there are thousands of conflicts, but the sources are mostly few: biological needs, different values, different opinions, interests or psychological needs, sometimes it is the lack of reservoir. For example, let’s analyse 2 conflicts:
Brother and sister are arguing for the last piece of bread (who is going to eat that);
Two countries are fighting for the same piece of earth.
In both examples, the reason is the same and obvious: the lack of reservoir.
Other types of conflicts:
One side wins, another looses. Usually people have the attitude that either I will win or he, but the winner must be anyway. People try to do anything to overcome the opponent, but sometimes there could be only ONE winner – for example, many candidates are trying to apply for the same job, so naturally, only one will be able to work.
Both sides loose. That happens even more often that we can imagine, when both sides agree to refuse their aims. It is negative, because if the conflicting sides would try they could find better solution.
Both sides win. It is the most difficult way to find a solution, but the most beneficial. For example, the family lives needily, parents are working hard, and the children only ask money for expensive goods. The parents make a fund, where put not too much, but extra money for children and now they have to save the money, but sooner or later they will be able to buy a good they want. So both sides remain happy.
Psychologists suggest 7 steps plan to solve the conflicts:
Find out what you want personally – if you are not sure about that, the people around you are going to be more confused.
Tell your wishes to the other side – for this point, time and place is very important. If a person is already angry and you will tell him/her what you want, that can light a conflict.
Listen to the wishes of the other side
Try to find possible solutions – it is very important that both sides would tell their suggestions.
Evaluate possible solutions and choose the best one.
Materialize the solution
Still focus on that if the solution is really good – even if you chose a really good solution, they can not last forever.
To the conclusion, people should less focus on the conflicts, but better how to have better and better relationships among everybody.

Psychology of laziness

In the dictionary laziness is described as unwilling to work or to do any other activity. In the Bible it is one of the seven deadly sins. One man have said that laziness leads ahead all the humanity. Everybody describes laziness as a fault, but i want to describe advantages and disadvantages of it and some reasons. So let's talk about psychology of laziness.
The rush is the biggest illness nowadays. Everybody is rushing everytime and everywhere. People do not have time enough for themselves. The East and West countries are propogating laziness. Psychologists insist, that we must be lazy, at least for a little bit doing yoga, meditation or any other activity. That would be like "active laziness". By the way, Lithunia is among few countries in Europe, that have a very big part of workaholics. So that makes us think that we should be lazy wisely: not too much and not too less.
In other way, laziness can be an illness itself. There are some specific symptoms related to laziness: lack of concentration, body ache, fatigue, difficulty of falling asleep and in performing daily routine. That could been seen some changes in appetite as well.
Everything is OK, unless laziness becomes an addiction. There are three laziness as addiction symptoms:
1. Depression
2. Chain smokers
3. Sleeps much more than the average person most days of week.
Psychologists think that the best remedy would be staying busy with planned activities, self motivation and trying to live differently: practising more exercises and being on a diet. Laziness can be exercised in endocrine disorders, cardiovascular and digestive illnesses, increased nervousness or anemia.
Laziness can spread very fast, because if one person feels lazy, so other people will feel like that soon too. Sometimes laziness can be result from fatigue or hard work.
Another reason of laziness can be pessimism. The best remedy for laziness is work. If it is extremely hard to learn to enjoy working.
We must be lazy a little bit, but not become an addict of it and do nothing just staying in bed, eating and drinking.

Queue psychology

Everybody knows what is it to stand in a queue. Usually that makes people nervous, angry and agressive. What to do to avoid being irritated staying in a line? Not to go ever to a shop? The answer is no. My advice would be - if people are in a hurry, then try to do shopping in a smaller shop. If a person is not in a hurry, but it makes him/ her annoyed even to think about a queue - he/she should go to a shop with a bunch of friends and to make an amusing and fun time of it. And finally, if it still makes you nervous to stand in a queue - think about a poor cashier - she/he must work all day and listen to people complains. She or he may feel much worse than you. Let's be humane and respect each other.