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ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SHOOTING: A TIME TO GRIEVE

On Friday, December 14, 2012, I sat down in front of my computer to write this week’s blog post.  The week before, I had written a very popular post titled, Conflicts with Ourselves: Lessons from Charlie Brown.    Because it already had more views then any blog post I had written, I thought I would write another one using some other comics that featured the same…

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INSULTS: LESSONS FROM THE CASE OF THE MAN SENTENCE TO JAIL FOR MOCKING DISABLED GIRL

A while back I saw a YouTube video dealing with insults that made someone cry went viral.  It is called, Bus Stop Ignorance. In the video we see 43-year-old William Bailey taunting Hope Knight, a ten-year old girl with cerebral palsy.  Hope uses crutches and Mr. Bailey, in the video, mocks the way she walks.  He also gets his son to join him in the…

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INSULTS: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE

Teasing is a game sometimes known as bantering, joshing, crackin’, rankin’, playing the dozens, trash talk, and infighting.  You are judged on the quality of your insults and also how well you keep your cool on being insulted. Even the most mature people may like to play the teasing game, for they enjoy the duel of wits and the occasional humorous comeback. Consider the following…

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CONFLICT: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE

In an early post on this blog I discussed the fact that often the reason why people might call you a name, insult or tease you is that they have a conflict with you (see the posts titled DIG FOR THE CONFLICT, CONFLICTS AND FRUSTRATION, and SUMMARIZE AND DELAY). For many of us, as soon as we see that someone has a conflict with us,…

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ANGER AS AN EMOTION

Recently I provided a post titled, ANGER: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE.  There we chiefly focused on the variety of anger expressions. Anger, in addition to being viewed as something that we express, is also viewed as an emotion.  To deeply understand the nature of anger we must understand what emotions are. The Four Basic Emotions There are four basic emotions.  Two of them, hope…

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ANGER: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE

If you have been following this blog you know that I have discussed anger on several occasions (See, for example, BEING A WISE FRIEND TO YOUR ANGRY SELF, PART 1 and BEING A WISE FRIEND TO YOUR ANGRY SELF, PART 2).  During these discussions, I mentioned that how you handle anger has a big influence on how much people like and respect you.  Today we delve into…

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RESPONDING TO CRITICISM: LESSONS FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES

If you have been following this blog, you know that lately we have been working on becoming masters at dealing with criticism.  One important lesson that we have focused in on is that in designing our response to a particular criticism it is crucial that we figure out why the person is criticizing us. Let’s say, for example, that John, upon entering my home and…

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JERRY SEINFELD, KRAMER, INSULTS AND THE N-WORD

Over the past couple of months on this blog in weekly posts I have been discussing criticism.  This past week on the internet I came upon an episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s internet show “Comedians in Car Getting Coffee.”  There, Jerry and his fellow comedian, Michael Richards, discuss a very unfortunate incident that dramatically illustrates some of the ideas I’ve been trying to convey to my…

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GUILTING VERSUS ENCOURAGING CARING: AN ADVANCE LESSON

by Jeffrey Rubin, PhD

Last week’s post is titled, AN INTRODUCTION TO “GUILTING.”  There we compared “GUILTING” to “ENCOURAGING CARING.”  Both are different styles of making a request and reacting if someone refuses to help. GUILTING  People using guilting express sadness at the current state of affairs and then ask for assistance.  Upon having a request turned down, the person who employs guilting responds in anger while seeking to…

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AN INTRODUCTION TO “GUILTING”

To become a master at responding to criticism, we have to first learn to recognize the reason for the criticism. So far we have discussed five of them: Criticism designed to encourage you to improve (see HERE and HERE) Playful teasing (see HERE) The desire to form a bond with a group by putting down non-group members (see HERE) Jealousy (see HERE) The criticizer is…

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