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Currently viewing the tag: "feelings"
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Gradually over the years, a parallel life of undone things builds up. The unresolved has a lingering force and it follows us. Because this happens in the unconscious and unknown regions of our hearts, we rarely notice its effect. The undone continues to live near us; sometimes it is more powerful than what we have actually completed. What is finished lets us go free; it becomes truly part of us and is integrated and woven into memory. What remains unfinished continues to dwell in that still hungry and unformed part of the heart that could not realize itself and grow free; these gaps in our integrity stay open and hungry. -John O’Donohue,To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
Writing Prompt: What are your character’s regrets? How do they affect how he or she acts and feels?
Journaling Prompt: Write about one thing that you regret and how you could finish it.
Art Prompt: Regrets
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Write about the weight of regrets and unfinished business.
Photo Credit: Réno on Flickr
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“When we rely on our feelings, what feels ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ summarizes all the knowledge and information that we have acquired consciously and unconsciously about the world around us. It is this cumulative knowledge, which our feelings summarize for us, that allows us make better predictions. In a sense, our feelings give us access to a privileged window of knowledge and information — a window that a more analytical form of reasoning blocks us from.”
In accordance with the privileged window hypothesis, the researchers caution that some amount of relevant knowledge appears to be required to more accurately forecast the future. For example, in one study participants were asked to predict the weather. While participants who trusted their feelings were again better able to predict the weather, they were only able to do so for the weather in their own zip codes, not for the weather in Beijing or Melbourne. Professor Leonard Lee explains this is because “…they don’t possess a knowledge base that would help them to make those predictions.” As another example, only participants who had some background knowledge about the current football season benefited from trust in feelings in predicting the winner of the national college football BCS game.
Thus, if we have a proper knowledge base, the future need not be totally indecipherable if we simply learn to trust our feelings. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a scene about a character who is in touch with his or her feelings and is able to predict the futures of friends and family.
Journaling Prompt: How does journaling help you listen to your feelings?
Art Prompt: Intuition
Photo Credit: Rob Lee on Flickr
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The memories stored in our brain are either processed or unprocessed. If they are processed, it means that the brain has done its job and integrated a learning experience into our memory networks. Something happened that was disturbing, but I learned what I needed from it. I fight with a family member and I have a negative emotional and body reaction, but time passes and I think about it, talk about it, dream about it, and soon it doesn’t bother me any more. The appropriate connections are made in my brain and I might realize: “He’s been going through a hard time. We’ve had rough spots before and worked them out.” I decide what action to take and I feel better. In my memory network, what is useful is stored and what’s useless — like the feelings of anxiety or anger — is gone.
That is what the brain is geared to do: make the appropriate connections, “digest” the experience and store it in memory. But sometimes an experience can be so disturbing that the information processing system of the brain becomes imbalanced. When that happens, the experience is stored in an “unprocessed” form and still contains the emotions, physical sensations and beliefs that occurred at the time of the original event. So when I see the person again, instead of feeling OK, I have the same feeling of anger, hurt and anxiety. -Francine Shapiro, PhD
Writing Prompt: Write a character sketch for someone who has unprocessed traumatic memories.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a memory that continues to bother you.
Art Prompt: Memory
Photo Credit: Urban Woodswalker on Flickr
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How many times can our emotions be tied to someone else’s—be pulled and stretched and twisted—before they snap? Before they can never be mended again? -Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss
Writing Prompt: Write a scene, story, or poem about an emotionally challenging relationship.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a relationship where your emotions were pulled, stretched, and twisted.
Art Prompt: Twisted Emotions
Photo Credit: stevendepolo on Flickr
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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
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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
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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
Nonfiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about how our society deals with wounded souls
Photo Credit: The US Army on Flickr
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The WritingReader is on vacation for a week, but while I’m gone, enjoy this visual prompt. Create whatever it inspires in you!
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Photo by JelleS.
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Any excuse for a party, that’s my motto! Even if it’s just a party in my head. Nice to find someone who agrees with me. Even better that he put it in print, don’t you think?
Celebration is a mental experience with both conscious and unconscious dimensions. At a conscious level, celebration offers us a way – possibly the only way we know – to hold the moment, to engage in it fully and experience it fully, to experience ourselves and others in that context and feel grounded in the scheme of life and history. At an unconscious level, the celebrated moment imprints itself on us, adding to the hidden store of impressions that shape our thinking and color our view throughout life. In celebration we enrich our lives with the experience of our shared history as well as the shared moment. We may share a moment with others or with the memory of others, with God or simply with our own self. To do this in an ongoing way brings many of these enriched memories together to add depth of feeling and meaning to our daily lives. Our capacity to celebrate enables us to experience the deeper dimensions of any moment – at work, in love, or at play – as part of a human experience greater than ourselves. -Harvey L. Rich, In the Moment: Celebrating the Everyday
Writing Prompt: Create a celebration for your world or character.
Journaling Prompt: Write about your favorite celebration ever. What made it so meaningful to you?
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Write about the significance of celebrations in your family or your culture.
Art Prompt: Celebration
Photo Credit: williamcho on Flickr
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I used to think that I had insomnia. Some nights I do, but mostly I have Delayed Onset Sleep Syndrome. Either way you slice it, I’m not at my best before noon.
Insomnia is costing the average U.S. worker 11.3 days, or $2,280 in lost productivity every year, according to a study in the September 1 issue of the journal Sleep. As a nation, the total cost is 252.7 days and $63.2 billion. “We were shocked by the enormous impact insomnia has on the average person’s life,” said lead author Ronald C. Kessler, Ph.D. “It’s an underappreciated problem. Americans are not missing work because of insomnia. They are still going to their jobs but accomplishing less because they’re tired. In an information-based economy, it’s difficult to find a condition that has a greater effect on productivity.” -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Create a scene where your character is having difficulty sleeping. What is keeping him or her awake?
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Journaling Prompt: How do you cope when you can’t sleep?
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Art Prompt: Insomnia
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Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Write about the cost of insomnia to society and in your workplace or family.
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Photo Credit: Alyssa L. Miller on Flickr
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