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Currently viewing the tag: "fear"
Workplace incivility is commonplace and violates conventional workplace norms for mutual respect. It also displays a lack of regard for others. Although our first thoughts are likely to be for the victim of this ‘abuse’, it can also affect our own feelings as observers.Miner and Eischeid examined how observed workplace incivility towards female and male co-workers relates to four negative emotions – anger, demoralization, fear and anxiety – for both female and male observers. A total of 453 restaurant employees responded to an online survey examining the ‘quality of life in the restaurant industry’. Analyses showed that female observers reported significantly higher levels of anger, demoralization, fear and anxiety the more they observed other female employees being treated rudely and discourteously at work, in comparison to male employees.
Demoralization was the strongest negative emotion experienced by observing women.Similarly, male observers were significantly more angry, fearful and anxious the more they observed other men being treated uncivilly at work, compared to females. Interestingly, demoralization was not a negative emotion experienced by male observers in these situations.The authors conclude: “Our results paint a complex picture about the experience of specific negative emotions in response to observed incivility toward same gender co-workers. In some cases, women are more affected (demoralized) and in others, men are more affected (angry, fearful and anxious). In both cases, witnessing incivility towards same gender co-workers can have significant affective consequences for observers.” -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a scene about an abusive incident in the workplace. Include the internal monologue of both male and female observers.
Journaling Prompt: How do you react when you see someone being treated rudely at work?
Art Prompt: Abuse at work
Photo Credit: Ryan Vaarsi on Flickr
“Because social anxiety associated with the prospect of facing an embarrassing situation is such a common and powerful emotion in everyday life, we might think that we know ourselves well enough to predict our own behavior in such situations,” said Leaf Van Boven, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. “But the ample experience most of us should have gained with predicting our own future behavior isn’t sufficient to overcome the empathy gap — our inability to anticipate the impact of emotional states we aren’t currently experiencing.”
The illusion of courage has practical consequences. “People frequently face potential embarrassing situations in everyday life, and the illusion of courage is likely to cause us to expose ourselves to risks that, when the moment of truth arrives, we wish we hadn’t taken,” said George Loewenstein, the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Economics and Psychology within CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “Knowing that, we might choose to be more cautious, or we might use the illusion of courage to help us take risks we think are worth it, knowing full well that we are likely to regret the decision when the moment of truth arrives.” -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a poem or character’s internal monologue about a situation that requires the illusion of courage.
Journaling Prompt: How do you react when you face a potentially embarrassing situation?
Art Prompt: Illusion of Courage
Photo Credit: TWINTHOMAS on Flickr
He needed a gun. A big gun, and a SWAT team, and an army, and maybe Chuck Norris. -Matthew Bryan Laube, Ancient Awakening (The Ancient)
Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene or poem about someone who believes that the best defense is a good offense.
Journaling Prompt: What would it take for you to defeat your greatest fear?
Art Prompt: Defense
Photo Credit: Chris Halderman on Flickr
That’s what fear does- it makes you turn away from the things you really want, away from the things you need. Then it taunts you later, it tells you that you are too weak or broken to be happy, that you don’t deserve it. Fear’s only happy when you’re not, only content when you’re hungry but as still as a deer in headlights. For as long as she remembered, she’d thought that she worshipped no God, but this was a deception. Fear was her God. She had built Him altars of emptiness and worshipped Him in temples of isolation. She’d wasted her life in his service. -Lee Doty, Out of the Black
Writing Prompt: Write a scene or story where the main character is driven by fear.
Journaling Prompt: Write about one of your fears? How does that control your life?
Art Prompt: Fear
Photo Credit: Casey David on Flickr
The plague microbe had developed no special traits that allowed it to emerge with regularity and unhindered in Europe for five centuries. Crowded cities, poverty, misinformation, and perhaps too much faith in a powerless clergy and medical profession made the plague into the scourge that changed history. These same factors, more or less, exist today. -Anne Maczulak, Allies and Enemies: How the World Depends on Bacteria
Writing Prompt: Write a story or scene about a modern day plague.
Journaling Prompt: How do you feel about sensationalistic reporting of diseases like the bird flu? How do you distinguish between fear mongering and facts?
Art Prompt: Plague
Photo Credit: otisarchives2 on Flickr
Life may indeed be very fairly divided into the seasons of HOPE and FEAR. In YOUTH, we hope every thing may be right: in AGE, we fear every thing will be wrong. -William Kitchiner, The Cook’s Oracle; and Housekeeper’s Manual
Writing Prompt: Write a character sketch for someone who is old, addressing regrets and loss.
Journaling Prompt: How would you describe the season of life you are in right now?
Art Prompt: Seasons of Life
Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney on Flickr
How do you gain an advantage in battle when you are outnumbered? Here is one strategy:
The Celts scared the Romans and other ‘civilized’ contemporary observers. When they went into battle, they would strip naked and dash at their enemies dressed in nothing but sandals and their fancy necklaces. They howled as if possessed by demons, their shrieks augmented by loud bagpipes. -Ryan Hackney, Amy Hackney Blackwell, Garland Kimmer, 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Irish History: The People, Places, Culture, and Tradition of the Emerald Isle
Writing Prompt: Write a battle scene where the outnumbered warriors use an interesting strategy to gain an advantage.
Journaling Prompt: Do you ever use scare tactics to gain an advantage in an argument? How does that work for you?
Art Prompt: Scare Tactics
Photo Credit: Arnett Gill on Flickr
acquiesce verb (used without object), -esced, -esc·ing.
to assent tacitly; submit or comply silently or without protest; agree; consent: to acquiesce halfheartedly in a business transaction
to assent tacitly; submit or comply silently or without protest; agree; consent: to acquiesce halfheartedly in a business transaction
Writing Prompt: Use the word of the week in a scene or poem.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you acquiesced against your will.
Art Prompt: Acquiesce
Photo Credit: Rosemary McKevitt on Flickr
You’ve heard the proverb, “Fences make good neighbords.” It turns out there is more to that proverb than meets the eye.
‘People often turn to aesthetic boundaries in their environment to give them a sense that their world is ordered and structured as opposed to random and chaotic,’ writes author Keisha Cutright (University of Pennsylvania).
Cutright’s research indicates that people who feel a lack of control seek tangible boundaries, such as frames around paintings, fences around yards, or prominent borders surrounding a firm’s logo. “When individuals no longer feel in control of their lives, they seem to seek the sense of order and structure that boundaries provide — the sense that ‘there’s a place for everything and everything is in its place,’” Cutright explains.
The author also found that individuals who have other places to turn for a sense of structure had less need for physical boundaries. “Individuals who rely on God for a sense of order and structure were less likely to heighten their preference for boundaries in the face of low personal control than individuals who do not,” Cutright writes.
In a world where consumers face natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and everyday chaos at home, they will seek whatever small comfort they can. ‘In other words, don’t be alarmed if you find yourself craving thicker picture frames and a new fence for your yard. You may just need a little control in your life,’ Cutright concludes. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a character sketch showing how your character feels a lack of control and how he or she tries to get it back.
Journaling Prompt: How do you respond when you feel a lack of control.
Art Prompt: Fences
Photo Credit: guzzphoto on Flickr
Here is a different take on PTSD with an interesting idea for how to heal the wound.
‘My colleagues and I suspect that the greatest lasting harm is from moral injury,’ says Litz, director of the Mental Health Core of the Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiological Research and Information Center. He and six colleagues published an article on the topic in the December 2009 Clinical Psychological Review, in which they define moral injury as a wound that can occur when troops participate in, witness or fall victim to actions that transgress their most deeply held moral beliefs.
While the severity of this kind of wound differs from person to person, moral injury can lead to deep despair.
‘They have lost their sense that virtue is even possible,’ Shay says. ‘It corrodes the soul.’…
‘In traditional cultures, warriors always came back to tell their stories, to give witness and to do healing ceremonies in front of the entire community,’ Tick says. ‘The community witnessed the stories, felt the emotions, carried the burdens with their warriors and transferred responsibility for actions from the warriors to the community.’ -Miller-McCune
Writing Prompt: Create a ritual to help your character heal from a moral injury.
Journaling Prompt: How do you heal your soul when you’ve sustained a moral injury.
Art Prompt: Healing
Photo Credit: The US Army on Flickr
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