Dealing with emotional people - part II

In a post below, I was commenting that reasoning when talking to people in a highly emotional state is the wrong way to go. Empathising and trying to understand the emotion is so much better.

I need to add something that one should never ever say, especially not to emotional people: "It's all in your head." Fortunately doctors quit saying this or at least I haven't heard it lately.

If you feel the need to say it, stop and think for a minute. Maybe that emotional person is exaggerating, maybe her/his perception is way distorted, but there must be something that got the person so upset. And telling her/him that it's all in her head will not help at all. Clarifying the issue will help everyone.

Changing environments

We're visiting my home country - Romania. We also visited Turkey for a week. It is an interesting and revealing trip anxiety wise.

I am now relaxed enough that I can observe things. One of the things I noticed is that people's temperament is different from country to country. People in Romania are much more reserved than the typical ones in US. The people in Turkey are much more open than both. I am even more reserved than the typical Romanian, but I want to be as open as a Turk. LOL how's that for high expectations.

But this explains why coming to US I felt more out of line than I felt at home in Romania. I was never comfortable here either and I have my issues anyway, but at least I can feel I am not as abnormal as I think I am.

Right and wrong decisions

Did you notice that there are very few big decisions? Decisions that could change your life, decisions that are absolutely right or absolutely wrong. It seems that life gets you where it wants to no matter what decisions you make.


You can almost always turn around and try again another option. And no matter what decision you make there are opportunities and risks along the way. A decision might look perfect today and disastrous tomorrow due to some event that could not even be thought of.

So what's the right way to make decisions? I think you just need to figure what's good about each option, what's bad, then just make the decision and realize that either way it's about the same. An informed decision is occasionally better. So reading and asking around people who know is good.

A lot of people think though that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. I am one of them. If things end up badly, I agonize over which one was the wrong decision. I also agonize while making the decision. And any person that expresses an opinion about what is right makes me cringe and doubt myself.

If I could only understand that most of the time it does not matter: any decision is good enough.

Backpain anyone?

I can't live without blogging... all of a sudden I have so many things to say. I guess I must be feeling better. After all a vacation is coming up soon.

In the spirit of more exercising that I wrote about earlier, I subscribed to a blog for fitness - The Fitness Fixer. It's a great blog with simple solutions that don't require gyms and equipment.

It explains one cool way to avoid backpain: tuck the hips under and straighten the back. This is using the abs some, thus resolving two problems in one. Check it out!

http://www.healthline.com/blogs/exercise_fitness/

And I came up with a trick. I straightened my back and set the rearview mirror in my car to that height. Now each time I try to use it it reminds me to keep a straight back. Very neat!

We've been working out some 30-45 minutes every morning this week - aerobics. And I went to yoga 3 times.... hmmm this looks like it's working, doesn't it?