Archive for March, 2006

Being Afraid From Being Afraid

Wednesday, March 8th, 2006

Some important aspect of fear is that it is really paradoxical and recursive.Let’s imagine any situation that brings fear to you. For instance, it may be a fear of separation from your spouse. Now try to realize that it is not something that happened yet. We know this so far.

Now, try to realize what you are dreaming about during you have this fear.

Most probably, you will easily realize that you dream about how afraid you will be.

This is what you are afraid from. You are afraid form being afraid.

You may say that this isn’t fear, this is just the pain of isolation, suffering that would come with the reality of separation. I urge you to try to differentiate fear from anger, anger from hate, hate from suffering and then again fear from the pain of losing a loved person. How much different are those feelings?

You will see that those aren’t much different from each other.

Fear is a very fundamental emotion that we name it differently while there are different uneasy situations. Therefore, fear has many sides, many faces, however fear is fear. Its different faces do not make fear something else, fear with a mask is not any other emotion then fear itself.

Give it a try, dive into it when you are afraid of something. You’ll see that what you are afraid from is fear itself.

Feel free to ask and comment.

Being Presentable

Tuesday, March 7th, 2006


Meeting Room, originally uploaded by merdi.

We often come across business or human resurces advertisements lik this: “We are looking for presentable sales representatives”. Now that’s okay, I am not against this.

We also read in many human resources books, self-help books and also there, we see the same suggestion of being presentable.

Then we try and force ourselves to be presentable but what is this? How do you define presentability?

People tend to understand a new hair cut, nice make-up, polished shoes, maybe not expensive but not cheap clothing, etc. This is okay, Of course there is great advantage both menthally and phsycially to look good.

However, I also observe that looking good become something like a religion and it goes beyond one’s real abilites. I mean presentability is emphasized so much that one can forget what she/he is really able to achieve and choose her/his power of having a good look. I don’t mean that people pay more attention or pay attention to only looking good. I say that while being phsyically good looking, people may tend to count on looking and avoid showing their other skills or find it unnecessary to inform about their real skills.

Apart from this, it is also a problematic issue to define what presentability is. To me, presentability in general means what you make people feel about you. If they feel comfortable, sincere, trustable with you, then you are presentable, at least presentable enough for an ordinary business day.

Children and Depression

Sunday, March 5th, 2006


Little Miss Serious, originally uploaded by Temeculamom.

Unfortunately, depression is something that can be seen in children too.

Similar to depression in grown-up people, children also tend to show sadness and irritability.

Low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities, change in appetite and sleep patterns, concentration difficulties, some phsyical pain that have no physical cause and a general change in activity level are main symptoms of depression in children.

Treatment can be made by antidepressants, psychotherapy or both. It is a very cruical responsibility to treat a child in depression because suicide and self-harm is not less common with children in comparison to depressed people in general.

There are psychiatrists and pschologists who are experienced in healing depressed children.

The impact of physical beauty on your mood

Thursday, March 2nd, 2006


30 anni bellissimi [BUON COMPLEANNO LULI!], originally uploaded by Babeffe.

Well, I came across this photo while hanging around flickr. You can click on it and see other photos of her too. This is babeffe, a flickr firend of mine. I like her photos really much.

Now, this is a slef-photo of her. Looking at her, I thought about general phsyical beauty, how we come to create the attractive self.

It is on our hands to be attractive. It is really a positive energy that would make us happier.

Instead of sitting in a dark room and waiting to be found, you can also work on your attractiveness and find yourself a date immediately.

Even when you have an ongoing relationship, you can create new leads of excitement by looking at yourself and making only little changes that would have great impact on your look.

That’s worth dealing with. Nowadays I also plan a post on distorted self-image and how that leads to more and deep into depression and meaningless anxiety.

Enjoy life. It is not as long as you think about.

Do you feel like that you filled yourself with trash?

Thursday, March 2nd, 2006


A Full Day’s Supply of Vitamin C …, originally uploaded by carpeicthus.

Have you ever had a feeling of having your mind full with unnecessary thoughts and feelings?

I sometimes think that I filled my mind with so much emptiness or so much dirty, useless information that my mind is going to explode with them. What an anxiety…

I live through the fear of not getting my mind back again to useful thought and feelings. I mean nice, happy feelings.

However, forcing yourself usually does not help. Instead of having this self-pressure on you, remember that it is yourself who put all that mess into your mind. This means you can empty your trash too.

This is worth thinking about. If you have any questions on this or if you feel like discussing it please feel free to comment.

Paying attention to things around you

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006


Fotografando, originally uploaded by Renata Diem.

One of the topics that both psychologists and therapists put emphasis on is attention.

I don’t necessarily mean those attention deficit disorders. I mean simply paying attention to things around us. Clothings, the floor, trees, cars, everything.

Try it. You will see how much detail in your life passing away without catching your attention.

This is only one side of the attention case. the other side is about realizing what you do at the very moment and where you are and your physical connection to the world.

Next time, when you come home from work try to think about clothes of people you met during the day. Don’t take this as a memory exercize, put the emphasis on yourself, your attention, investigate whether you were really there with your mind or not.

Then you can shift this further to other objects of attention, voices, manners, mimics, gestures.

You will see that your attention will get better.

How to choose a therapist?

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006

If you have decided to go through a therapy that may change your life a little bit, an important decision now would be about chooisng the right therapist.Instead of looking for a therapist first, try to do an internet search on therapy methods. Try to understand what is the best method that would fit your nature.

Apart from this, an initial therapy session would be helpful on having mor information on what therapy really is and that may ease your choices.

If you believe that you are really in a depression which is a medical thing rather than a mood or personality thing, try to look for a psychiatrist instead of a psychologist.

However, if I were you, I would look for a psychologist first that would help me to develop more insight for me. Hence, a psychologist may also tell you whether you are in a depression or not and may lead you to a psychiatrist.

Always, always love yourself and have fun with your problems.

How do you handle obstacles?

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006


stream, originally uploaded by It’s Miss Fish.

It is very important to think about the way you handle obstacles in your life.

It is also very important to know whether there are really obstacles in your life or is it just you make-up them according to your hidden decisions.

Let’s leave hidden decisions to another post and focus on real obstacles.

Assume that you are in love with somebody and she/he is married and she/he loves her husband or his wife very much. What do you do?

Another assumption might be that you are eager to buy two movies and watch them at home but at the same time you have only enough money to eat something for that day. What do you do?

The most important thing is not what you do but how you handle your feelings towards this hinderness.

Do you accept easily that you are not able to do everything in life? How much time and resources do you allocate to cope with inabilities?

Those may become the questions of the day. It’s not important “what” do you do, it is usually “how” do you do that brings hapiness or stress to you.

Please think about it. Don’t forget to enjoy tha entertainment that we call life.

To communicate or not to communicate

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006


Symmetries, originally uploaded by modelux.

During relationships, there are times that one can fall into doubt whether to tell her/his feelings or not. They don’t have to be feelings all the time, this can also what you think about her/him.There are reasons that people may avoid talking or establish any other communication like mail, chat, sms, etc. that is using language.

One of the reasons is past relationships in that she or he committed in an open communication which resulted in snob behavior on the other side. There is a thinking like, “if i am going to tell what i feel, the sun will go down, there won’t be any magic again”. This is the point exactly where a relationship gets poisoned by strategy.

Because by this time, you may enter into some cold war in which there are misery and the unknown.

On the other hand, some people may use this miscommunication (not to communicate is a miscommunication) as an attractive feature that will result in a posionous seduction. Thus, they may feel like they have a new weapon on her/him.

The fact is, we don’t need weapons in a relationship. Your body, your gestures, your communication overall is a very good tool to seduce someone. Moreover, those are real. When you tell about yourself and your relationship openly and still seduce her/him, you can feel that this seduction is very real.

Enjoy.

Digging the past isn’t always helpful

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006


Knightly Grunge, originally uploaded by ghostbones.

Those who are not very familiar with psychology are thinking psychotherapy as something that necessarily deals with the past.

It’s true that Sigmund Freud, who is one of the fathers of psychotherapy, established his psycho-analytic theories on dealing with past transgressions, unresolved conflicts, etc.

On the other hand, a psychotherapy session can be held not only about past memories of a patient but also on very patterns that the patient is behaving accordingly, without talking or investigating patent’s past life.

Recent therapeutical approaches involve methods that can break into one’s current behavior which is far beyond from reality and put new healthy thinking instead.

If you would like to take a therapy with a psychologist but you are afraid from dealing with your memories, childhood, etc. you can ask her / him to start from somewhere that you don’t have to immediately bring memories into your mind.

Try it and enjoy.

You are not an angel. Nobody is.

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006


Birds of a Feather, originally uploaded by ghostbones.

We sometimes tend to think that we are evil. We also tend to think that the society is evil too.

Both are not true. We are neither angels nor devils.

During therapeutic process, tehrapists usually try to overcome the idea that willingness is evil by nature.

We tend to think that if we are going to uncover our will, and do what we want, we are going to want bad things and do them.

This not the reality in fact. The reality is that we are running away from freedom. This freedom is a very basic one. Being able to get out form a job and find another one that can be more suitable to our nature and abilities is an option. This is a freedom.

However, we tend to think that if we let ourselves to be free, we would committ murder, we could be very aggressive, we could be a rapist, etc.

The reality is that we are resisting our freedom because we feel really safe in the problematic environment that we draw everyday. We are drown in this scenario.

If we try to understand that we are neither angel nor devil, things could unfold better and we can catch our freedom before the end comes.

Life is shorter than you imagine. Enjoy.

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