Does Ego Get in the way of Your Communication and Relationship Optimism?

By Dr. Russ,

Optimism is enhanced by the absence of ego from our self-worth and the absence of ego from our communication with others.  Here is an example of what I mean. 

A friend of mine recently inquired: “Dr. Russ – How can I communicate more effectively with my fiancé?”  He explained that while they dearly love each other they are still having unhealthy and emotionally draining arguments over minor and sometimes really petty things.

The Problem of Ego

He gave me the example of how he might express some negative or critical feelings about something her family said to him.  He explained that he felt hurt and unfairly criticized, even “put down.” But, when he brings up his hurt feelings to her, she gets upset with him and then he feels attacked.  It is clear from the description that his fiancé also felt attacked because she took the criticism of her family as a criticism of her and as a threat to her ego.  Pessimism is the only result of such an interaction.

Ego-Detached Communication

I explained to him that they were both letting their egos get in the way of effective communication and their happiness in the relationship.  I said the key is to remove the ego from the communication.  Here are some suggestions that I made.

1. Use ego-detached communication.  Instead of saying, “I felt hurt when your parents compared my profession to low life in a polluted body of water,” try to communicate with a detached ego and say, “I am wondering what your parents meant when they said most people in my line of work are equivalent to “pond scum.”
2. Admit to your ego sensitivity and reactivity. Describe your ego-involvement and then communicate with ego-detachment.  Begin with a description of your ego involvement: “When your parents started talking about their past experience with the low life of my profession, the hair on the back on my ego’s neck started to stand up.” Then explain you are trying to keep your ego in check and see what they might have meant by saying:  “I am telling my ego to chill out because I can’t imagine they would be talking about me like that.  I am wondering what they were trying to convey.”

Using such ego-detached communication poses the issue as a problem for joint deliberation and exploration without arousing an ego-defensive response in the fiancé.  Thus, she is now able to respond in an ego-detached rather than ego-defensive manner.  She might come back with one or more of the following:

1. “I too was wondering what they were thinking.”
2. “They did have some negative experiences in the recent past with people from your profession, but they have told me how different you are.  I may need to make sure they tell you that person-to-person.”

What do you think?  With this exchange - will the rest of their day be positive or negative?

Double Your Holiday Optimism by Giving Back with a Prayer

By Dr. Russ

In previous posts, I have written about the optimism of prayer.  Now social scientists are actually studying the value of prayer for remaining positive about a negative situation.  The benefits are both mental and spiritual.  Here is a brief summary of the findings.

1. Research supports the value of prayer for improving mental health and relieving emotional stress.
2. 75% of Americans say they pray on at least a weekly basis.
3. They mostly pray to handle hard situations like illness, sadness and anger.

Shane Sharp, a University of Wisconsin Madison sociology graduate student completed in depth interviews with 62 victims of violent relationships ages 19 to 72.  These victims reported that prayer relieved the anger and stress of abuse because:

• God acts as a powerful, loving and caring support system that is available whenever and wherever needed without fear of reprisal.

A recent study on the role of prayer in cancer survival found:

• That prayer helped survivors put on an optimistic or positive spin on the disease giving them energy and motivation to work hard on their own behalf in collaboration with their health team.
• The positive view created is a real mental event, not a placebo.
• Those who prayed also had better lung function and lived on average 2 to 3 years longer than those who did not.

As far as I know, prayer is a universal practice in all religions, and thus the optimistic benefits of prayer have the potential to benefit anyone regardless of religious affiliation.

In a recent prior post, I cited scientific research supporting the optimistic benefits of giving back to others, both physical and mental.  Now, imagine the optimism benefits of combining giving back with prayer.  I do not know of any research studies on this topic and will not speculate on whether the effect is additive, multiplicative, or cumulative.  However, it might be an interesting idea to consider. 

If you want to do your own personal experiment/research try praying for one or more of these give backs during the holidays, consider praying for the:

1. health of another
2. willingness to make the sacrifice to actually give to the food bank
3. energy to go to the grocery store, buy some food items, and deliver them to a charitable group doing a food drive
4. energy to volunteer at a soup kitchen that is feeding the homeless
5. the employment of someone you know who is unemployed
6. ability of financially needy family to focus on appreciating the joy of their togetherness
7. needy child to get help from a mentor or benefactor
8. your children to learn to see that the Spirit of the holidays is about giving and not receiving
9. all those who feel less fortunate to find the positive element of their circumstance and to be able to give thanks for that
10. wisdom and guidance to continue to find the positive attitude and joy of  giving back

Make a comment and let us know what you have prayed for over the holidays and how that has helped your optimism grow and flourish.



Optimistic Parenting: Anger Management in Children

By Dr. Russ

In this week’s Tip of the Week we note that anger is the friend of pessimism, and that tolerance, acceptance and even forgiveness are the friends of optimism.  How can we teach children to manage anger with optimism?

Anger is a natural human emotion, and thus there is never anything wrong about having a particular feeling, including anger.  It is what we do or don’t do with our feelings that can cause us problems.

Anger Expression

Anger can be expressed in three modalities:  action, imagery or fantasy, and verbally in words.

• The action expression of anger usually results in injury to oneself or another or destruction of property. 
• Imagery and fantasy can provide a mental representation of action that forestalls the need for “acting out” while providing emotional release.
• Verbal expression of anger has two modalities:
  • verbal attack which has the potential for emotional but not physical,  destructiveness, not physical, and
  • verbal discussion of anger feelings done when one is calm which has the potential to resolve a situation.

Parents as Role Models for Anger

Young children, at least through the age of 14, are very subject to copying, mimicking, or modeling the behavior of their parents. 

• One learns this fact the hard way when the 14 year old asks if he too can tell the driver next to you they are number one with a quick upward, airborn thrust of the middle finger, shortly after you did the same.  No physical damage may be done with such a “flick-off,” but I have seen the recipient of such a gesture erupt into road rage and try to run a driver off the road.

Anger Management Goal

The optimistic child rearing goal is to teach the child how to handle anger with imagery and verbal description and discussion. 

• Verbal venting of anger can be useful as a starting point in anger management if the recipient of the venting is not the target of the anger.  
• The direct venting of anger at the anger target usually results in escalation of interpersonal conflict and increased anger.  
• When combined with derogatory and accusatory words, such venting can harm self esteem especially when targeted to a child.   

Action is Captivating to the Child's Mind

For whatever reason, the action expression of anger is very captivating to a child’s mind and is easily stored in memory.  Such memory storage includes the action itself, a representation of emotion, the triggering situation, and physical or human target.  Thus, it may only take a few instances of a parent “acting out” anger for a child to learn and repeat such behavior.

Ten Tips to Teach Optimistic Anger Management to Children

1. Acknowledge and verbally describe the child’s feelings; “you appear to be upset and angry right now.”
2. Accept the child’s feelings because feelings are feelings and we all have them; DO NOT punish or deny a feeling. Try saying: “It is ok to feel angry,  I  feel angry about such and such too.”
3. Help the child calm down.  “Let’s take a deep breath, calm down, take a look at what happened and see what we want to do about it.”
4. Discuss the event that “triggered” the anger.  Sometimes it might take a few true or false questions to get even a head nod: “Did you get angry when your sister knocked over your Lego tower?”
5. Examine the underlying problem: “You put in a lot of time building that tower and, “boom,” your sister comes over and knocked it down. That wasn’t fair was it?”
6. Speculate about the possible mind-set of the offender.  “I wonder why your sister would do that.” (Some possible answers:  you messed with something of hers; she felt left out; had wanted to help with the tower; she was jealous that you got my attention for tower building and she didn’t; daddy just sent her to “time out.”)
7. Such speculation usually initiates some thoughts of compassion for the other’s perspective; allows for a natural form of anger deflation like the air escaping from a balloon.  Pessimism dissipates and allows optimism to emerge in the form of insight and interpersonal understanding, compassion, forgiveness and acceptance.  
8. Having trouble with words? Have the child draw a picture of the situation and feelings.  Then have the child talk about the picture.
9. At some point it is time for apologies between sister and brother.  The sister would also need a “walking through” of steps 1-7.
10. Finally it is time for the: “How could I have handled this situation differently” discussion.  Such a discussion could involve a description of a “positive action redo” if “negative acting-out” occurred.  The sister might benefit here.  Or, it might involve the question, “How could you have known your sister was feeling left out?”  “What could you have done to help her feel include?”

Jackie Monroe presents the Tip of the Week and helps you let go of your anger and reframe your optimism with regards to the BP oil spill

Jackie Monroe presents the Optimism Tip of the Week, in which Dr. Russ Buss shares insight into how to reframe your anger about the disastrous oil situation in the Gulf.

Does Obama's "Kick Ass" Statement Inspire Optimism or Pessimism about BP Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico?

By Dr. Russ,

Daily Dose of Frustration

I am as frustrated as everyone else I know about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  I get asked everyday about where is the optimism in this situation.  Frankly, I have not come up with an easy or even good answer.  I share in the pessimism of the moment.

Catastrophic Images Breed Catastrophic Thinking

Everyday I tune in CNN and see oil gushing from the pipe deep below the surface.  I watch Anderson Cooper taking video of workers trying to wipe oil off of marsh grass and birds.  I see computer graphics depicting the oil moving toward the Florida beaches and possibly towards the East Coast of the USA.

When I see these images I feel hopeless and helpless.  Yes, it is easy and perhaps even accurate to engage in catastrophic thinking.  The marshlands of Louisiana are being destroyed, perhaps forever. Wildlife throughout the area is at risk of long term population depletion; some species could go extinct.  The way of life and yes culture of the small Louisiana fishing villages is also at risk of extinction.

Haiti versus BP

I ask:  What is the difference between the earthquake in Haiti and this BP oil spill? 

• The Haitian earthquake brought on feelings of grief, sadness, loss, and caring. 
• Toward BP, I feel mostly anger.  Obama is angry when he says he is looking around for "whose ass to kick.” 
• I feel sad for the birds, marshes and sea creatures that are suffering, but I am not mad at them.

I am not mad at “mother nature” for causing earthquakes.  As of yet, human beings can only measure the strength of an earthquake and when and where it occurs.  We cannot predict one with any accuracy, and certainly cannot prevent one from happening.  There is a benefit to our ability to measure and locate the earthquake.  With that information we can at least mount a rescue mission much more quickly and effectively; find some optimism.

Anger Analyzed

The feeling of anger is associated with preventability, intentionality, personalization and severity of consequences.  We are never as upset about a “fender bender” as we are about our car being “totaled.”  The devastation of the oil spill is beyond belief.

• Is it personal? You bet! Haiti is a foreign country, not US soil.  But, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida are part of the USA.
• Intentional? Perhaps not. But, there has been talk of an investigation into possible reckless disregard for safety guidelines.
• Preventable?  No one knows for sure, but many believe that warning signs were ignored and that maybe it could have been prevented.

Getting in Touch with the Anger

So when Obama says he is looking for some “ass to kick” he may be helping us get in touch with our anger over the situation. 

• I am sure we will soon be laughing in the delight of virtually expressed anger when some cartoonist depicts five BP oil executives bent over awaiting a good “ass kicking” from Obama!

Anger and Pessimism

The feeling of relief from such an imaginary expression of anger is fleeting.  I am quickly brought back to the reality of the environmental havoc and devastation being wrought upon the Gulf of Mexico, the coastline, its human and wildlife inhabitants and yes the world.

With Haiti, I have sadness without anger. 

• I can be optimistic about a rebuilding process. 
• I can believe the Martin Luther King quote:  “The stars shine brightest in the darkest hour.” 
• I can have the hope that a new and better Haiti can be rebuilt from the ashes of the earthquake.
• Without the anger, optimism is possible.

With anger, only pessimism is possible.  Anger interferes with an optimistic perspective, makes us want to look for someone to blame.

So, it is the anger that is preventing me from finding any optimism in this oil spill situation.

Finding Optimism

Perhaps the anger will subside as I acknowledge it, enjoy that “ass kickin’” cartoon, see the oil stop flowing all together, and let a little time pass.

Only then will I be able to find some optimism as I ponder these questions.

• Can we find a way to never let this happen again? 
• Like “Mothers Against Drunk Driving,” can we use this devastating experience as the impetus to finally find and use alternative sources of energy? 
• Can we find better and scientifically based ways to clean up oil? 
• Can we learn how to restore the marshes and advance environmental science? 
• Can we be more appreciative of the precious nature of a small town Louisiana culture and its preservation?

Ultimately, perhaps we can we learn to better appreciate “life on earth” in all of its forms of existence?  Therein lays one gargantuan “Golden Opportunity.”

To find or be optimistic, I don’t need the answers to all of the above questions to be YES.  I just need to believe that I can find or see others find creative and productive ways to take on these challenges and work towards solutions to these problems of the future.

But, right now, I wouldn’t mind seeing a good “ass kickin’.”