A Guide To Anger And Conflict Resolution
Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Recently, as I was eating dinner with a married couple the subject of how they deal with criticism arose. For the sake of privacy, I’ve changed their names to Sarah and Bob. In an earlier post, I addressed the question, “Unsolicited Criticism: Good or Bad.” Sarah and Bob agree with my conclusions in that post which in summary suggested…
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Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today’s topic–the verbal missiles launched at a couple of political individuals. Roseanne’s Missile TV star Roseanne Barr recently tweeted that Valerie Jarrett, a former top advisor to Obama, was the product of a coupling of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes. Note that Jarrett is an African-American who was born in Iran, a largely Muslim country. Muslims,…
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Welcome to From Insults to Respect. A while ago, as I began to think about what topic to write about for my next post, I received an email from Mindfreedom International (MI). It brought attention to a demonstration it was planning. As MI expressed it in part: A mock funeral mourning those lost to psychiatry or who have had their spirits broken and struggle to survive is…
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Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Here in Corning, New York, spring has just begun to display some of its glorious beauty. Meanwhile, I, and most of my neighbors, have just finished squaring up our tax obligations for 2017. As we did so, many of us gave some thought to the recently passed US tax overhaul. In the latest Gallup poll, 48% of respondents indicated they disapprove of…
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Welcome to From Insults to Respect. No doubt you have all noticed the recent commotion over the new US White House policy of raising tariffs on some manufactured goods. There are those who are enthusiastically supporting this, while others are vehemently arguing that we would be far better off sticking to the previous policy. Well, from my way of thinking, both policies have serious drawbacks. So,…
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Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Regular readers know that from time to time I address concerns about the use of antidepressants in our society. Well, as I was thinking about what to write about this week’s post, I learned of a new meta-analysis that was published in the medical journal Lancet that appears to support the claim that antidepressants are effective, at least in short-term studies. Although well thought…
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Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Whenever we learn of a mass shootings, we hear people unfairly connecting the horrendous murderous acts to people who have been classified as having a mental illness. For example, at one point immediately after one such tragic event, Paul Ryan, the former speaker of the House, announced, “People with mental illness are getting guns and committing these mass shootings.” Such…
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Welcome to From Insults to Respect. This week I happened to be listening to the old Graham Parker song, “Nobody Hurts You.” As I interpret the lyrics and how they are sung, it seems to me that they are a useful jumping off point for a discussion about so many of us being, at times, so disrespectful to ourselves. Graham’s Song The first line, sung with…
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Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Very recently, the US government passed a bill that provides a major overhaul of our taxation policy. Since the bill was signed into law, some of my friends have begun to ask me what I think of it. In response, I first tell them about a psychological study. The Study In the study, primatologists Sarah F. Brosnan and Frans B.M. de…
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Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today, let’s see if we can tie together some of the loose threads of my last post, which chronicled Joni Mitchell’s experience of depression. There we found that she explicitly rejected the idea that her experience indicated that she was mentally ill. Instead, she came to believe that, “Most of my best work came out of it. If you get rid of the…
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