How Can a Psychiatrist Help?

Let him know you are tuned in to the economic realities of the world, and do it sweetly, too. Many studies bear out this gender difference. Women manifest more adverse physiological reactions when speaking about marital conflict and family relationship problems. Men, in the same studies, show little detrimental response when these subjects are discussed but do show adverse physiological responses when they speak of problems and conflict at work. Blame Mother Nature for this. It is clear that partners who tend to each other reap individual and mutual benefits. Their tending behaviors and communications develop their marriage and ensure they will have a longer life span and healthier and happier lives, more of the better than the worse. In hunting parties and other community tasks, clan leaders saw that some members needed more help than others learning the skills and working together. Satisfied spouses, whose comparison level is higher, are more likely to give their partners attributional credit for positive acts. Thus it is the spouses with high expectations who tend to acknowledge their partners' positive acts while downplaying their negative acts, not those with low expectations, as the logic of expectancy violation would seem to imply. The principle of expectancy violation further implies that a partner's positive acts should be more attributionally significant to the extent that an individual's interpersonal expectations are chronically lower. However, existing evidence suggests exactly the opposite - Persons predisposed to poorer expectations--for example, as represented in traits such as insecure attachment, low self-esteem, depression, pessimism, and negative affectivity--tend to be more dissatisfied with their friends, close relationships, and social life (mirroring their harsher assessments in most life domains Karney & Bradbury, 1995). Thus, expectancy violation may not be as compelling an explanation for negativity bias as is often assumed, a conclusion also reached by Skowronski and Carlston (1989), who noted that in laboratory studies of social cognition, clear, well-established expectancies were about as likely to produce assimilation as contrast. Considerable evidence has accumulated across diverse areas of research demonstrating the independence of two distinct functional systems, one concerned with appetitive processes, the other concerned with aversive processes. This literature suggests that the processes and mechanisms involved in responding to positive stimuli may be largely independent of those involved in responding to negative stimuli. In other words, rather than representing opposite ends of a single continuous bad-good dimension, it may be more fruitful to consider the processes implicated in confrontational and congenial social interaction as functionally and conceptually independent (see Figure 6. 1). That is, they entail different eliciting circumstances, separate neural pathways, and behavioral mechanisms and they produce distinguishable outcomes. Terms are often used interchangeably. Very often someone will talk about their health, when they are really addressing a fitness problem.

Then you will encounter conversations where the word well-being is used to discuss a health problem. As these issues are still new to the participating public, there will always be confusion as to the appropriate use of each term. It is not so important that we use the correct term, just that we play an active role in our well-being, our physical condition and our overall health. Of course, everyone responsible should take the time to educate themselves and their children about the benefits of healthy eating. Learning to eat for life in a health conscious way is one of the best guarantees for a long and fulfilling life. The quality of our Life is as important as quantity for most individuals, but because of the debilitating disease, we are often forced to make a decision and choose between quality and quantity. Thanks to advances in modern medicine, the average person's lifespan now exceeds seventy years. Rather than ignore them and let them fall behind, the leaders were patient in teaching them, so they could go on to be successful and pull their weight. In return, they became grateful and loyal to their caring boss. Even if given the opportunity to join another clan, they didn't. Their bonds of allegiance were to their caring leader. It's okay to be a gruff bear at work as long as you remember that part of your evolutionary heritage is that you are a Care bear, too. It is well known in both the academic and business world that managers who are attentive and caring toward their team reap many benefits: better relationships, a motivated and productive staff, retention of talented employees, strong bottom line, and greater career success. How do you demonstrate care to your staff? Many do it by thoughtful gestures such as sending employees a birthday card or taking the gang out to lunch. More significant than these goodwill gestures is giving your team recognition for ideas, innovation, and a standard of excellence. Development is key: training, mentoring, and constructive evaluation. Bipolar models imply that high standing on one dimension requires low standing on the other bivariate, two-dimensional models, in contrast, imply that high standing on one dimension tends to be relatively uninformative about the other. 2 Functional independence of appetitive and aversive processes has been supported diversely.

Studies of the structure of affects indicate that positive and negative affect are best represented as functionally independent dimensions (eg, Watson, Wiese, Vaidya, & Tellegen, 1999). Belsky, Hsieh, and Crnic's (1995) analysis of infants' behavioral responses to affect-arousing situations found similar evidence for separate dimensions of positive and negative temperament, as did Gross and John's (1997) analysis of self-report data on adult emotional expressivity. Reflecting this and much more evidence, 2 This does not mean that these two dimensions are necessarily uncorrelated. Most studies, in fact, find low to moderate negative correlations between them. This may occur, for example, when activation of one system inhibits operation of the other. For example, high levels of negative affect tend to inhibit positive affects and vice versa (Cacioppo & Gardner, 1999). Nevertheless, although appetitive and aversive processes may interact, they remain conceptually and functionally independent by virtue of using different operating systems. Cacioppo and Gardner (1999) concluded that independent biological and behavioral mechanisms appear to regulate experiences and expressions of positive and negative affect. If you stop to think, it's quite a long time to walk on this land. With wonderful increases life expectancy, however, have the harmful effects of overvaluation and an unhealthy diet. It seems that as we move forward in one area, we are regressing in other areas The issue of obesity puts this debate first, what kind of quality life can someone who can barely walk because of their weight have? The first question I always ask is how did we get here? How did we go from one of the fitsest nations physically, wallowing in our weight? I believe the answer lies in our lack of education about the weight gain process, and a lack of concern about our children learning to eat and exercise properly. Today, we need to determine how much food we need, how much physical exercise we need, and how best to accomplish those goals. Calorie requirements, nutritional needs, physical needs and education on these needs are now information that we should all understand, at least as far as our individual is concerned. If you visit your local doctor, library, or fitness center, there are massive amounts of information available to help educate and help you make good health choices, regardless of age group. Take time to reflect on the specifics of how well you train and develop your staff. Do you send them to classes and seminars?

And, do you make sure the training you provide is effective? It's been my experience that training is too often evaluated superficially. All organizations would spend their training dollar smarter if they increased their rigor in evaluating its actual benefit to their staff. Moreover, organizations should ascertain whether the training they provide to their employees is meaningful--does it actually enhance their lives? Training in the basic tasks of a job is essential, but training that captures and demonstrates your care giving is employee meaningful training--it contributes to the development and enhancement of the employees' overall lives. Training on a new software program, or how to do an inventory, might be essential to their tasks, but I know from years of experience that a manager's employees find a training class on giving and taking criticism, emotional intelligence, and life balance to be deeply meaningful in their lives and improve team building and job performance, as well. Make it a priority to ask each of your direct reports what they specifically need (emotional nutrients) to feel they are developing themselves, and then follow up and do your best to provide it to them. The evolutionary tip here is to provide training to your staff that communicates you know what their challenges are and that you want to help them. Accumulating neurobiological evidence supports this position (eg, Davidson, 1992 Sutton & Davidson, 1997). Motivation Several programs of research indicate that the fundamental hedonic principle of motivation--that people seek pleasure and avoid pain--involves independent systems, one regulating approach to desired outcomes, the other regulating avoidance of disliked outcomes (see Carver, 1996, for an overview). For example, Gray (1987, 1994) and Fowles (1994) described the same two orienting systems, one an approach system that activates responding to rewarding (i. e. , appetitive) stimuli, the other an inhibition system that regulates responses to aversive stimuli. Similarly, in the achievement domain, Elliot (1997) distinguished approach goals, which concern obtaining success, and avoidance goals, which concern avoiding failure. The relative strength of approach and avoidance goals predicts various performance and affective outcomes (Elliot & Church, 1997). Social motivation may also be characterized in terms of distinct appetitive (hope for affiliation) and aversive (fear of rejection) drives (Boyatzis, 1973 Gable, 2000 Schmalt, 1999). Fincham and Linfield's (1997) suggestion that positive and negative feelings about marriage should be considered independent dimensions, rather than endpoints of a single dissatisfied-to-satisfied dimension, is consistent with this research. Higgins and colleagues have described two forms of self-regulation, promotion and prevention (Higgins, 1998). There are so many things to do in life that allow us to enjoy the fruits of our work. All of these options can be shortened if we haven't taken the time to take care of ourselves.

Quality is as important as quantity. Educating the healthy choices we can make, making the right health choices, and then living life to the fullest should be the ultimate goal of every living person. Speaking of education, before we can make really effective choices, we need to have a complete understanding of the subject at our fingertips. Today there are many words associated with well-being. Many of these terms are new to readers, and some of the terms are interchangeable between fitness, well-being and health. So let's take a minute to explain some of the terms you can see from time to time. Well-being itself is defined as the state of good physical and mental health, especially when maintained by adequate diet, exercise and habits. Meditation, a recommended exercise for everyone, but especially those that are used with hectic and stressful lifestyles, is defined as a commitment to contemplation, especially of a spiritual or devotional nature. Care bear bosses also take issue with the corporate conventional wisdom of keeping personal problems out of the workplace. It's easy to see why. As a clan community evolved, its members assumed specialized work roles. However, unlike today, everyone at work also lived together. While they worked together, the conversation would turn to other aspects of their community, topics ranging from child care to fights with their woman. Sharing these personal issues and how they could be handled became a way in which workers could give care and support to each other. In this sense, bringing personal issues to work is hardwired into us because our ancestors found it was a way to get help. Today, it is uncommon for an entire staff to actually live together--outside of an oil rig or a kibbutz--but we still have the same personal issues that our ancestors had, and talking about them at work should not be universally frowned-upon. Care bear bosses make the time to help their staff deal with personal issues. This attention can be simply listening to the problems they are having with their children, or the pain of their divorce. Promotion refers to sensitivity to available positive outcomes, orients the individual to approaching these outcomes, and is concerned with growth and accomplishment. Prevention refers to sensitivity to the possibility of negative outcomes, orients the individual to avoiding these consequences, and is concerned with security and safety.