Author: graciousminds

Are You Respecting Your Transgender Loved Ones?

by graciousminds, posted in Communication, Social Justice

“When I first came out as transgender, I was surprised to find that many people in my life wanted to support me. I received a lot of encouraging words, often from the folks I least expected.

It meant the world to me to be surrounded by people who just wanted me to be myself and be happy! In a society that can often be so hostile towards transgender people, having loved ones in our corner can make all the difference.

But I quickly realized that there’s a distinction between stating your support and actually respecting my identity. A lot of people talked the talk – but that didn’t always translate when it came to actions.”

See the tips here.

Why Emotional Fluency is Key for a Successful Relationship

by graciousminds, posted in Communication

It’s a skill that’s very much learnable, but probably not covered in your fancy liberal-arts education, unless you went to a super-progressive school. “We’re just not trained to speak in emotional language,” Gleason says. But in an intimate relationship, you’re constantly feeling some sort of emotion, whether it’s longing or anxiety or joy. So it would behoove those of us interested in having actual long-term, growth-oriented relationships (they’re possible, really!) to be able to put those emotions into words, to have a medium for your partner to know what’s going on. “The more that we’re able to put into some sort of language and convey it to our partner, that these are my inner experiences right now, the more empathy there is in the relationship,” he says. “The obverse of that is that the less I can say, this is my inner experience, the more my partner is going to be reacting to my outer behavior, oftentimes with judgement and frustration, rather than where they would relate to your experience with empathy.”

 

Read the full article here.

Maybe Monogamy isn’t the Only Way to Love?

by graciousminds, posted in Communication, Mental Health

“Her book examines the long, sometimes awkward legacy of philosophers’ thinking on romantic love, and compares that with a new subfield in close-relationships research — consensual nonmonogamy, or CNM. While singers and thinkers alike have been riffing on a “one and only” for decades, she argues that space is being made in the cultural conversation to “question the universal norm of monogamous love, just as we previously created space to question the universal norm of hetero love.” These norms are more fluid than they appear: In Jenkins’s lifetime alone, same-sex and cross-ethnicity relationships have become common.”

Read the full article here.

Tips To Calm An Anxious Child

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health

” Imagine you are driving in the car. You look in the rearview mirror and see your child trying to shrink into her seat.

 

“What’s wrong?” you ask.

 

“I don’t want to go to the birthday party.”

 

“But you’ve been excited all week. There will be cake and games and a bounce house. You love all of those things,” you try to reason.

 

“But I can’t go. There will be lots of people there I don’t know. No one will play with me. My tummy hurts.”

 

Sound familiar? As a parent of an anxious child, you might regularly find yourself in situations where no matter what you try, what effort you make, what compassion you offer, or what love you exude, nothing seems to help quash the worry that is affecting your little one’s everyday interactions.

 

In my work with anxious children, I have found it tremendously beneficial for both parents and kids to have a toolkit full of coping skills from which to choose. As you know, every child is different and some of the tools described below will resonate more than others. When you pick one to work with, please try it at least two to three times before making a judgment on whether it suits your child and family.

 

Here are 37 techniques to calm an anxious child.

Don’t Worry If You Always Worry

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health

“For most people, worrying is a form of problem-solving where you look at challenges in the future and work them out before they happen, which can be constructive. Researchers call this adaptive worrying and have identified the top five areas that people worry most about: relationships, finances, work, lack of confidence and an “aimless future. But some people worry too much. Chronic worriers fret all the time, about everything. Pathological worriers are chronic worriers whose apprehension affects their functioning. They’re just as likely to fret over a real problem, such as a job setback, as they are to stew over something that may not be a problem at all, say the weather next week.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Why Forcing Positivity Won’t Make You Happy

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health

” The harder you push, the worse it gets. We think forcing ourselves to think and feel optimistically will relieve the anguish, but all that actually does is backfire. Choosing to ignore negative feelings is like leaving garbage to pile up and pretending its not there anymore. You may decide to disregard it for a while, but eventually it will spill over and start to smell.”

Read the full article here.

Encouraging Kindness in Children Through Reading

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health

“Kindness is one of the most important character traits, but sometimes kids need an extra reminder about the best ways to be kind to others or why kindness matters. These books provide that reminder in creative and appealing ways. Happy reading!”

Check out the books here.