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DEALING WITH CRITICISM BY DIGGING DEEPER

“I’ve been reading your blog posts, Dr. Rubin,” Judy says sounding annoyed. “You are making everything sound way too complicated.” “I’m pleased that you’ve been checking it out,” I reply.  “I’d love to hear more about your reactions.” “Well, yesterday I went over to pick up my friend, Sue, to go to a party.  She was wearing an outfit that was almost identical to mine. So I…

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INTRAPERSONAL CONFLICTS AND CHARLIE BROWN: ADVANCE LESSON

A few weeks ago I published a post titled CONFLICTS WITH OURSELVES: LESSONS FROM CHARLIE BROWN.  Today, let’s quickly review the ideas presented there, and then move on to discuss a few more. Review When one person has a conflict with another person, we call this an interpersonal conflict.  An intrapersonal conflict occurs when a person has a conflict with himself or herself. When we…

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CONFLICTS WITH OURSELVES: LESSONS FROM CHARLIE BROWN

Lately, we have been focusing largely on conflicts that deal with one person having a conflict with another person.  We call these interpersonal conflicts. Today we begin to turn our attention to intrapersonal conflicts.  This type of conflict occurs when a person has a conflict with himself or herself. We can see both of these types of conflicts occurring in the following Peanuts comic.  If…

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CONFLICTS: LESSONS FROM ROMEO AND JULIET

If you have been following this blog, you will have noticed that for the past few weeks I have relied heavily on humor to teach some of the main principles of conflicts (see for examples, ANGER: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE and INSULTS: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE. But a blog such as this, if it is to be a source of wisdom, must keep…

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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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