Why can't I speak in public?

If gaslighting had a mantra, it would be repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth. This is especially true when the person gaslighting is in a powerful position. I imagine you can think of a few prominent politicians that fit that description. The more a gaslighter fuels our mistrust of others, the more cynical we become of other people's motives, and that spirals into pessimism, distrust, and disappointment more generally. While intelligent skepticism is warranted--after all, one is wise to distrust untrustworthy sources--the double whammy of rising rates of kneejerk cynicism about human nature, combined with apocalyptic forecasts about the future of the planet, leaves many with the helpless feeling that the world is too broken to fix. We may become so overloaded with worries that we disconnect from the suffering of others or lose motivation to lend support, a condition psychologists call compassion fatigue. We detach, withdraw, and disengage. Fear and despair mute our ability to find creative solutions. Maybe you were doubtful, but thought you'd give at least one more shot at feeling better. In all of those situations, you still picked up the damn article. You're ready for this. You are in a period of progress. Whether it's a little tweaking that you want to do or a radical overhaul, allow this period of your life to be one that you work on yourself. There's no timeline on healing, but there's also no time like the present to start making some changes. The anxious brain is likely to take that statement and feel like that is a lot of pressure. You might think, Do I HAVE to get better now? It's all good. These things can take time, but you're already closer to the version of you that you want to be. He lays out the movie storyboards on a table and improvises a stirring synopsis of the film they are supposed to be making. He is appealing to the soldiers by applying the principle of balance.

He knows that the soldiers have a very strong positive attitude toward revolution, so he's showing that the film crew is equally excited to be capturing a fictional story about a triumphant revolution on film. He's hoping that the soldiers will seek to bring those two cognitions into balance: If we like revolution, and you like revolution, then it follows that we like you. Is he persuasive? Do the Americans make it out of Iran? You'll have to watch to find out. SECTION REVIEW Characteristics of the Audience A message's influence on attitudes and behavior depends on who receives it. Three Determinants of Persuadability They cause us to self-isolate. Hopelessness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Are you feeling eco-anxiety? If you picked up this article because you are personally experiencing eco-anxiety, or climate grief, or deep worry, I hope this article reminds you that you aren't alone in these feelings. You aren't crazy. Lots of people feel the same way, and psychologists confirm that it makes sense. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), fear is a reasonable, even healthy response to the enormity and urgency of the planetary crisis. Dr Courtney Howard speaks on behalf of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment when she says, The intersection between the climate emergency and mental and physical health will become one of the world's major issues. The CMHA labels the climate emergency as a mental-health emergency. More than a thousand psychologists signed an open letter endorsed by the Association of Clinical Psychologists UK demanding immediate and effective action on climate change in light of the enormous mental-health impact of the climate crisis. In fact, if the prospect of changing everything all at once is daunting or scary to you, then break it up into smaller pieces. Get out a sheet of paper and write down the things that stuck with you from this article.

Write down the things that you don't have to go back and re-read to remember. Even if you can't remember the full details, write down a few general concepts. Now, think about the aspects of your anxiety that are causing you the most grief. Which pieces are really screwing with you? You just found a place to start. Is there one of those issues that seems to line up well with the concepts you learned in this article? You bet your ass there is! Set yourself up with a plan for success. Self-esteem Education and intelligence Initial Attitudes One-sided arguments obscure counterarguments, appealing to audiences leaning toward agreement. Two-sided arguments avoid the perception of bias, appealing to audiences leaning toward disagreement. How People Think and Self-monitor People with a high need for cognition prefer the central route. Those motivated to make a good impression are more susceptible to peripheral-route cues. Regulatory Style For audiences high in promotion focus, influential messages highlight positive outcomes. Your feelings are real. But the point I want to keep driving home is that they are also inflamed by a flow of information in which positive developments are almost entirely missing.

You feel deeply about the environmental crisis because you have a deep love for this magnificent planet. That love is a strong and wonderful quality, and it's empowering to find a way to excavate it from beneath all your fear and anger and grief and disappointment. When you look through the research at what triggers and sustains personal environmental behaviors, it's things like compassion rather than shaming. It's showing empathy when someone does something that they know they shouldn't do--reminding them that we're all human and mistakes are just a normal part of life. It's finding meaningful purpose in the actions. It's getting support from important relationships. All of us experience a vast range of emotions, and it is the interplay of these feelings that enables us to move toward the world as we would wish it to be. Acceptance of what is is not the same as fatalism about what comes next. What is one small thing that you can do to get started on your quest? Maybe it's forcing yourself to take 3 short breaks during your week to reinvest your energy. Maybe you want to start keeping a little notearticle with you to use as a thought log through your day. Maybe you even want to finally use that gym membership you've had for half a year and listen to that catchy ass new T-Swift song on the elliptical. The point I'm trying to make is this: you can start now and be super stoked about taking these first steps toward really creating some enduring change in your life. You may even find that you have now given yourself permission to change and you will begin to naturally improve on your own. I promise you that there will be days when you feel crazy motivated and resilient and others where you feel like you are losing the uphill battle. These are normal things. The graph of improvement over time is never a perfect line. There will be ups and downs, but you will be trending upward. Prevention-focused people are persuaded by messages about avoiding negative outcomes. Resistance to Persuasion

Learning Outcomes Prepare a strategic list of ways to resist persuasion while retaining the ability to recognize legitimate efforts to persuade. Throughout this article, we have discussed how, as motivated animals, people are far from objective consumers of information. Rather, we filter information through our own preconceptions and biases. These motivated biases give us a measure of resistance when we encounter persuasion attempts that conflict with our preexisting beliefs (Lord et al. Further, when we're exposed to mixed evidence on a given issue, we often focus on the information that supports, and as a consequence bolsters, our preexisting beliefs (Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987b). This helps us to understand why it can be so hard to convince people of something they are set against. Just think about the resistance that scientists encounter when arguing to some government officials that the mounting evidence for global climate change indicates difficulty for the future viability of life as we know it. We need to be wary of seeing climate demise as a foregone conclusion. A 2018 study of fifty thousand people from forty-eight countries, reported in the journal Climate Policy, found that people who believe climate change is unstoppable were less likely to engage in personal behaviors or to support policies to address climate change. Recognizing both the threat and the potential solvability of the climate crisis is paramount to mobilizing action. Fatalistic forecasts are also being co-opted and used for ulterior motives. Climate doom, according to Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State, is the new climate war--and it's just as dangerous as the old one, which focused on the denial of the science. If people aren't causing climate change, as the deniers purport, then there is no reason to limit the use of fossil fuels or make the societal-level transformations necessary to achieve a zero-carbon economy. Likewise, if it's already too late to make change or we're past the point of no return, as those expressing climate doom say, then there's no point to policy reform or for the largest emitters to change their ways. In a 2019 interview for the Guardian, Mann says that propagating frightening environmental narratives leads people down a path of despair and hopelessness and finally inaction, which actually leads us to the same place as outright climate-change denialism. Dire predictions and apocalyptic claims from the past are also being used to undermine the need for urgent climate action now. President Trump did just that when he dismissed environmental activists as fearmongering prophets of doom in his 2020 speech to the World Economic Forum: They predicted an overpopulation crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the 70s, and an end of oil in the 1990s, he said. My best advice to you is to try to be enthusiastic about the journey in a way that makes sense to you. I'll tell you how I stay motivated.