Marcia Sirota's Blog, page 22

For the Upcoming Canadian Election, Vote Issues and Values, Not Popularity

 

The Canadian federal election is coming up in just a few days. It’s encouraging to see a record turn-out in the advance polls. Clearly, Canadian voters are motivated to have their opinions heard. I wonder, though, how well the voters know the party that they’re voting for.

It’s not that uncommon for an election to end up being more of a popularity contest than a policy-based vote. We often choose the leader who’s most appealing, most charismatic or most familiar to us while not really understanding what this person or their party actually stand for.

Voting should always be about what your goals are for yourself and your family and how each party’s values are likely (or unlikely) to help you achieve these goals. Still, it’s easy to be taken in by a flashing smile and a catchy line. It happened in the recent election of Rob Ford as premier of Ontario.

Ford is a great populist and he got a lot of love from people who didn’t appear to have taken the time to examine his real agenda.

Now that Ford is in office, a whole lot of Ontarians are up in arms about his actions, but if they’d taken the time to study his policies before the election, none of his cuts to education or health care, for example, would have come as a surprise.

If you don’t want to experience another nasty shock in the wake of the Federal election, you need to understand who you’re voting for.

It’s not enough to accept at face value the flashy promises made by each leader on the campaign trail. You need to learn the core values of the party you’re thinking about supporting. You need to decide if their values are in sync with yours, or not.

For this reason, it’s important to take time to reflect on your own values and ask yourself, “What’s most important to me? Is it the environment, the economy, education, taxes, or health care?” When you’re clear about what matters to you, it’s a lot easier to make the right decision on Election Day.

It’s so important to vote for the party whose values align with your own because otherwise, you won’t be able to achieve your goals. If you’re hoping to purchase your first home or save money for your retirement, for example, you need to vote for the party that values these things as well and that will help you to achieve these goals.

When you know the issues each party stands for, you’re empowered to cast your vote for the party that best aligns with your values and supports your goals.

It’s not enough to be captivated by a charming smile. That means nothing after the election dust settles. And you should always be skeptical about campaign-trail rhetoric. Many of these promises sound amazing but are nearly impossible to keep.

Instead, examine the policies of each party. Decide which party most closely lines up with the things that are important to you, and vote – not for the most charismatic leader or the most attractive leader but for the leader whose values you believe in.

Sign up here for my free, monthly newsletter. November is all about cultivating an attitude of gratitude.

And click on this link to check out my latest online course, How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All!

Dr. Mark Goulston golden nugget on the power of a hug (Tasty Bites of Wisdom Video Series)

I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the foremost thought leaders in the area of listening and empathy, Dr. Mark Goulston for my Ruthless Compassion podcast. Here’s one of my takeaways from this episode. Never underestimate the power of a hug.

Dr. Mark Goulston golden nugget on the power of a hug (Tasty Bites of Wisdom Series)

I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the foremost thought leaders in the area of listening and empathy, Dr. Mark Goulston for my Ruthless Compassion podcast. Here’s one of my takeaways from this episode. Never underestimate the power of a hug.

Dr. Brian Goldman golden nugget on the power of kindness (Tasty Bites of Wisdom Video Series)

Summary: It was terrific having Dr. Brian Goldman on my podcast. Here’s one of my takeaways from this episode. If you want to be kind to others, you first have to be kind to yourself.

 

 

Dr. Brian Goldman golden nugget on the power of kindness (Tasty Bites of Wisdom Series)

Summary: It was terrific having Dr. Brian Goldman on my podcast. Here’s one of my takeaways from this episode. If you want to be kind to others, you first have to be kind to yourself.

 

 

5 Positive Things to Say to a Depressed Person (and 4 Things Not to Say)

After years of being a psychiatrist and dealing with depression and other mental health issues, this is what I’ve learned: When someone is depressed, there are things you should say and things you shouldn’t say.

 

You should say these 5 positive things:

1) “I see that you’re having a hard time.” People feel better when they’re understood and not judged or analyzed.

2) “I’m here for you.” Depression is very isolating and alienating. Depressed people feel a sense of relief when they don’t feel so alone in their pain.

3) “You don’t have to figure this out on your own.” Depressed people often believe that they have to figure out on their own how to fix themselves. Then they feel guilty when inevitably, they can’t. They feel a lot less guilty and a lot less overwhelmed when they’re reassured that they don’t have to fix things all by themselves.

4) “Are you thinking of hurting yourself?” You should always ask a depressed person if they’re having suicidal thought or plans, because you could prevent a tragedy by getting them immediate help.

5) “Let’s get you some professional help.” Depression is a mental illness and it needs to be treated by qualified mental health professionals. Just like any illness, it won’t go away by thinking different thoughts or going for a brisk walk.

 

You shouldn’t say the following 4 things:

1) “Snap out of it.” This is an illness. They can’t just snap out of it. They need mental health help in the form of psychotherapy and often they’ll need medication as well to alleviate their symptoms and their suffering.

2) “You brought this on yourself.” People don’t make themselves depressed with a bad attitude. They become depressed because of a profound loss they’ve experienced and/or because they’re genetically prone to depression. This type of statement only makes them feel bad about themselves and more depressed.

3) “It’s not so bad.” To the depressed person who feels helpless, hopeless and unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel, it really is that bad. When you minimize their experience you only make them feel worse.

4) “It’s going to be okay.” You have no idea how it’s going to be. Telling a depressed person something like this will only make them lose their trust in you, because they’re not sure if it’s going to be okay at all. They don’t need your cheer-leading; they need your empathy right now.

Following these do’s and don’t for how to talk to someone who’s depressed will make you feel more confident in being able to help the person who’s suffering and it will help you avoid making them feel worse.

Sign up here for my free, monthly newsletter. November is all about cultivating an attitude of gratitude.

And click on this link to check out my latest online course, How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All!

Your Abuser Will Never Change, So Stop Trying to Change Them

Sometimes, a person inadvertently gets involved with an abuser. If this is you, you might not realize it at first, especially if they’re the type of abuser who’s initially very charming, charismatic, attractive and super-attentive.

Initially, you might think that you’ve won the relationship lottery, so when the inevitable red flags start waving in your face, you’re more likely to ignore them.

You tell yourself that the unkind, unreasonable, controlling and critical behaviors are just momentary lapses, until they become more and more common and begin to outweigh any moments of kindness or reasonable behavior.

Little by little, the person transforms from an apparently ideal mate into a nightmare partner. You start to feel overwhelmed by all the negativity coming at you.

And this is where many people make a crucial mistake. They do this by relying more on hope than facing what’s right in front of their eyes.

This is how it goes: when your partner shows you their true, ugly colors, you tell yourself that the original version of the person is the real one; not this nasty, hyper-critical jerk that you’re currently involved with. And you convince yourself that you can get your partner to become the ideal mate again, just by making them happy.

So, instead of saying, “F you, I’m outa here,” you try to convince your now-abusive partner that you’re not as bad as they’re saying you are. You try to retrieve the nice, reasonable, earlier version of your partner by “proving” to them that you’re worthy of their love.

But here’s the thing. If they’re this hyper-critical and unreasonable it’s your partner who isn’t worthy of your love.

Anyone who constantly complains about you, frustrates you, aggravates you and/or scares you is not deserving of your time, energy or affection. Anyone who can’t love and accept you exactly as you are and treat you with kindness, consideration and respect is not the type of person you want to associate with.

And here’s the other thing. Anyone who is this critical of you isn’t actually criticizing you because you have faults. Everyone has faults, including the person who’s criticizing you; especially the person who’s criticizing you.

But putting other people down will do nothing to boost their own self-worth. The things that will boost self-worth are 1: loving yourself; and 2: being kind to others.

When you have self-love and when your heart is open and loving toward others, you feel good about yourself. Putting other people down will only turn you into a bitter, miserable person.

So why do some people continually put others down? It’s because their brains are like the brain of an addict. They’re convinced that the wrong thing – in their case, cruelty to others – will heal their inner wounds and boost their self-esteem. It doesn’t work, but just like any addict, they’re convinced that it’s not working because they’re not doing it enough.

They redouble their efforts and ratchet up the criticisms, certain that more of the wrong thing will somehow turn into the right thing. Of course it won’t, anymore that more heroin; more vodka, more binge eating or more gambling will finally make someone feel better about themselves and their life.

On your end, you’re trying to convince this hyper-critical person who doesn’t actually deserve you that you’re not as bad as they keep saying you are. You’re trying to “prove” to them that you’re not as stupid, ugly or useless as they keep saying.

But if someone keeps saying that you’re stupid, ugly and useless, it proves that they’re the one with the problem.

With this nasty, upsetting behavior, your partner is showing you how hurtful they really are. Their actions are telling you that they’ll never, ever be satisfied with who you are or with anything you do (and for that matter, they’re incapable of seeing anyone else as acceptable, either). Their actions are showing you that staying with them is a set-up for a lifetime of misery.

The truth is that someone who needs to put you down to build themselves up will never accept any “proof” that you’re not as bad as they say. They need to see you as stupid and useless so that they can feel superior, by contrast. They’ll never accept your defenses against their verbal attacks because they believe that putting you down is the only way that they can feel better about themselves.

It’s futile to try and prove to a hyper-critical person that you’re not as bad as they say. They’re showing you, with their behavior, that they’re the one with the problem. They’re hurtful, really hurtful, and they’ll never change.

Your hurtful partner will never revert back to the seemingly nice person you first met. That’s because this nice version was the fake version – the bait they set to trap you. Once you were caught, they showed you their true self, and face it, it’s ugly. Stop telling yourself that they’re not so bad. They are.

The only choice in this scenario is to get away from this partner and never look back. Instead of trying to convince someone that you’re not that bad, it makes a lot more sense to end things now and find someone who can love you and accept you exactly the way you are.

Sign up here for my free, monthly newsletter. October is all about developing healthy relationships and avoiding toxic ones.

And click on this link to check out my latest online course, How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All!

How to Heal Your Shame and Supercharge Your Empathy

A lot of people these days seem to be lacking in empathy. We watch horrors on the news and we’re hardly moved. We hear of terrible tragedies befalling other people and we’re barely motivated to offer any help. We walk by homeless people on the street and we don’t even notice them.

Maybe it’s the amount of sensationalism we’re bombarded with every day that’s causing us to be so emotionally shut down. Maybe it’s the stress of modern life. Whatever it is, it’s not doing us any good.

We need to have empathy for one-another. It’s what keeps our society from crumbling into chaos and violence. It’s what enables us to feel a sense of connection and belonging with others. When we feel connected, our stress levels go down. Our immune system is boosted. We’re happier and healthier when we feel that sense of connection.

One reason why we might be lacking in empathy these days is that many people are dealing with a lot of shame. How to we develop shame? When bad things happen to us, it’s a psychological defense mechanism to blame ourselves. On the surface, this doesn’t seem to make any sense, but think of it this way:

When we’re in a hurtful situation and we feel powerless to change the situation, it causes feelings of despair to arise within us. These feelings of helplessness and hopelessness are almost worse than the feelings of sadness, hurt or anger that arise in response to our hurtful experiences.

It’s almost intolerable to feel so helpless and hopeless, so we unconsciously default to a primitive defense mechanism that is supposed to make us feel like we have more power and choice that perhaps we do. We blame ourselves because if the bad things that are happening to us are our fault, then we’re convinced that we have the power to change them.

Unfortunately, blaming ourselves for the bad things we’re experiencing doesn’t actually work. When bad things are happening to us that we can’t control – such as childhood abuse or neglect, or an adult diagnosis of a life-threatening illness – taking on responsibility for what’s happening doesn’t make it possible for us to change things. We just end up feeling worse because on top of the bad situation, we also feel bad about ourselves for not being able to change it.

As time passes, the self-blame turns into shame. We feel ashamed of the abuse we suffered as a child, or for the medical condition that has afflicted us. Then this really interesting psychological defense mechanism kicks in and adds insult to injury: we believe, deep down, that we are shameful and we deserve to feel shame, so we act in ways that will perpetuate our shame; like a self-fulfilling prophesy.

People who carry a lot of shame will behave self-destructively. Someone who was sexually abused will be promiscuous and go after abusive partners, in part to maintain the shame that they feel they deserve, deep down inside. Someone who grew up being told that they were a “bad child” might become an overeater or a drug abuser as an adult, in an unconscious attempt to maintain the shame they’re convinced that they deserve to feel.

The more we engage in our self-destructive, shame-producing behaviors, the more shame we feel. We create a shame spiral that grows and grows. And the more shame we feel the less empathy we feel, because shame isolates us and separates us from others. We feel undeserving of connection and unworthy of love. We can’t feel empathy toward others when we have no empathy for ourselves.

So, the answer to our empathy problem is, in part, to let go of our own shame. Primitive defense mechanisms (like self-blame and shame) arise spontaneously in our psyche but they don’t really work. We need to replace them with better self-care and better attitudes toward ourselves.

We need to start letting ourselves off the hook for the bad things that happened to us in the past. We even need to start forgiving ourselves for the bad choices we’ve been making that have been perpetuating our shame.

Just as we created a shame spiral by repeatedly engaging in behaviors that would perpetuate our shame, we can break the shame spiral by stopping these behaviors and by giving ourselves compassion and acceptance; forgiveness and love.

When we’re compassionate toward ourselves, we can heal the pain caused by the original hurts and perpetuated by our repeated self-destructive behaviors. We can build self-love and this will open our hearts to others. Suddenly, we can have empathy for ourselves and for everyone else.

And the pay-off of having more empathy is huge. Multiple studies have shown that being a caring, giving person makes us so much happier than being a selfish or insensitive one. The more empathy we feel toward ourselves, the more empathy we can feel toward others, and the more empathy we feel toward others, the happier we are.

On a physical level, shame causes stress. It raises the levels of Cortisol, our body’s stress hormone. This leads to obesity, premature aging, and a lowered ability of our immune system to fight disease. On the other hand, empathy for ourselves and others increases Oxytocin, the bonding hormone in our body, which lowers the levels of Cortisol and promotes well-being.

In my recent podcast with Dr. Brian Goldman he spoke eloquently about the role of shame in our lack of empathy and how important it is for us to let go of our shame.

Even if you’ve been carrying a lot of shame up until now, you don’t have to hold on to it. You can start to let go of the shame and self-blame and be more empathetic with yourself. You’ll feel happier, healthier and more connected to others, and it’ll be a lot easier to care about everyone else when you’re not busy hating on yourself.

Sign up here for my free, monthly newsletter. October is all about developing healthy relationships and avoiding toxic ones.

And click on this link to check out my latest online course, How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All!

5 Reasons Why Prince Charming Might Be A Prince Nasty (Video Series)

 

I recorded this video because people have the wrong idea about Prince Charming. His or her personality traits meet the diagnostic criteria for a personality disorder, like antisocial or narcissistic. To learn more about the Prince (or Princess) Charming type, watch my video. To watch more videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

5 Reasons Why Prince Charming Might Be A Prince Nasty

 

I recorded this video because people have the wrong idea about Prince Charming. His or her personality traits meet the diagnostic criteria for a personality disorder, like antisocial or narcissistic. To learn more about the Prince (or Princess) Charming type, watch my video.