Christine Carter offers tips to avoid getting sucked into unnecessary conflict.

“You are unimaginably cruel. I could never have done something like that to you.”

One of my clients—we’ll call her Sara—received that in a nasty text from her ex-husband, who was angry because their daughter, a young adult, had excluded him from a milestone event. Instead of confronting their daughter, the ex-husband was pinning his daughter’s actions on Sara.

Understandably, the accusation consumed Sara.

Even when we aren’t provoked by such high-emotion personal conflict, these days it’s hard to escape the daily dramas playing out all around us. Personal dramas are served to us via text and email—and if our own lives are peaceful, we need look no further than Twitter for President Trump’s conflicts, or our smartphones for the latest metaphorical (or literal) trainwreck.

Most of us are, at the very least, distracted by drama. Despite our best intentions, we have trouble looking away. Biologically, we are hardwired to love the novelty, stimulation, and social information that a constant feed of drama provides.

But the 24/7 drama isn’t pointing us towards meaningful lives. And it keeps us from the stillness and reflection and deep conversation that make our lives meaningful.

There is another problem with drama. Having a constant source of it leads us, unknowingly, to take on disempowering roles in our own lives, roles that hurt our relationships and foster feelings of powerlessness, shame, and superiority.

How does that happen? In 1968, a psychologist named Stephen Karpman developed a social model, the “Karpman Drama Triangle,” to map the dysfunctional behavior we predictably display when we get sucked into interpersonal drama. Karpman recognized how entertaining and addictive our relationship conflicts could be—despite being psychologically harmful.

Karpman teaches that there tend to be three roles in a conflict, hence the formation of a triangle:

The first and most familiar role is the victim. This is not an actual victim, mind you; it’s just someone who feels like they are being victimized, or someone who is acting like they are being persecuted. Victims often feel oppressed and helpless. Deep down, they tend to feel shame. They are often self-pitying. They act as though they are powerless, and as such are often our neediest (and most toxic and draining) friends and relatives.

Victims typically identify a persecutor, someone whom they believe is victimizing them. Persecutors are made out to be controlling and critical. When we take on the role of persecutor ourselves, often we act angry, rigid, and superior.

Every victim has a rescuer who works diligently to save them from mistreatment. Although it can feel good to play a rescuing role—because attempting to help others can make us feel good—rescuers don’t really help. Although their intentions may be good, they are the ultimate enablers, keeping victims stuck in their roles as victims.

All of these roles are tempting because they give us a sense of power (even if it is false power). Victims get to claim innocence, they gain the doting attention of their rescuer, and they avoid taking responsibility for their own lives and their own outcomes. Persecutors get to sit in the power seat, feeling superior.

Rescuers feel righteous anger and empathy, and so they also get to feel superior to both the victim and the persecutor. And while rescuers avoid the negative shadow that hangs over victims and persecutors, the rescuer role is not healthy, either, because focusing on someone else’s conflicts is usually an excuse to ignore their own problems. Rescuers usually have a stake in keeping the victim feeling helpless and weak. In the end, the rescuer keeps the victim feeling like a victim by giving them permission to avoid changing or taking responsibility for their own lives.

These roles are so ingrained in our cultural milieu that we don’t even see them; we just seamlessly (and unconsciously) step into them. But they are like junk food, providing only temporary stimulation and a quick shot in the arm of power, leaving us weaker in the long run.

So, what can we do instead of taking on these dysfunctional roles?

1. Don’t engage

When Sara got that nasty text from her ex-husband, he was playing a victim role, while making Sara the persecutor. (He had engaged a mutual friend as a rescuer, who was also texting Sara, encouraging her to help her ex repair his relationship with his daughter).

Sara needed reminding that getting involved in a drama like this is always a choice. One option was to just ignore her ex-husband’s nasty text, or opt to send her ex-husband straight to the source, telling him to please talk to their daughter directly. And then Sara could silence the text conversation on her phone.

2. Question the prevailing beliefs
Having been pinned as a villain, Sara understandably had a hard time not engaging. She felt that ignoring the texts coming in by the dozen would only make her ex-husband more justified in his anger. She wanted to defend herself against his unfair accusations.

More than that, though, Sara felt truly sad for her ex-husband, even though she understood (and supported) her daughter’s actions. Sara really felt her ex-husband’s hurt, and she wanted to help him, or at least soothe his pain. She wanted to intervene, even though she’d never been successful in doing so in the past.

Perhaps the most important stress-reduction tactic that anyone has ever taught me is not to believe everything I think. For Sara to stay out of the Karpman Drama Triangle, she would have to question her belief that things would get better if she tried to fix the situation—if she swapped her persecutor role for a rescuing one. I find The Work of Byron Katie, whose simple strategies are similar to cognitive behavioral therapy, works well when we need to question our thoughts and assumptions.

In this case, Sara was a lot less tempted to engage in the conflict when she questioned the assumption that her involvement would actually help. She came to see that her involvement would actually create more distance between her ex and their daughter.

3. Take on a different role in the conflict
We can also always shift the role we are playing in a conflict from a dysfunctional one to a constructive one.

Victims can become creators. Instead of succumbing to the temptation to wallow in the unfairness of it all, we can go from problem-oriented to outcome-oriented. What is it that we want to gain in this situation or relationship? When we take responsibility for the role we play in challenging situations, and for our lives, we trade the false power of victimhood for the real power that comes from creating the life we want.

Persecutors can become, or be seen as, challengers. Persecutors are people (or situations) that force the victim (now a creator) to clarify their needs, and focus on their own learning and personal growth. Challengers always tell the truth, even when it is painful.

Rescuers can become coaches. The key difference between a rescuer and a coach is that the coach sees the creator as capable of making choices and of solving their own problems. A coach asks questions that help the creator to see the possibilities for positive action, and to focus on what they do want instead of what they do not want.

Sara ultimately decided not to try to protect her ex-husband from the truth by making excuses for their daughter, nor did she try to placate him with pictures from the event. By telling the truth, she’d become a challenger instead of a persecutor. And by refusing to soothe and placate, she declined to be a rescuer, even though this made her ex very angry.

She did offer to take on a coaching role, by asking her ex what type of relationship he wanted with their daughter, and then asking him how he might take steps to get there—but he wasn’t actually looking for coaching or to create a new relationship with their daughter. In the end, because he wasn’t getting what he wanted out of Sara, he kicked her out of his drama triangle, leaving her alone in peaceful silence.

For Sara, that silence was a blissful ending to a painful conflict.

By Christine Carter

The idea of unconditional love in relationships is a noble one. Each of us wants to be loved as we are, without conditions, and to see ourselves as capable of bestowing unconditional love on our partners. However, this type of love, in its narrowest definition, is difficult, if not impossible.

The Meaning of Unconditional Love
Part of the problem with unconditional love in relationships is the lack of understanding of what it means. Most of us will think of a parent’s love for a child, or a child’s love for a parent, as unconditional love. This type of love depends on nothing other than the familial bond and doesn’t break down based on what the child or parent does—at least in an ideal scenario.

In the purest sense, unconditional love is about caring about the happiness of another person without any concern for how it benefits you. Research tells us that the parts of the brain that light up during unconditional love are similar to those involved in romantic love and maternal love, and are linked to the brain’s reward system. This suggests that unconditional love may be rewarding without receiving anything in return.

Unconditional Romantic Love

The question becomes whether adults in relationships can also show each other this type of unconditional love. To feel safe in a relationship, it makes sense that you need to feel as though the other person is not going to abandon you based on a whim. You need to know that person is committed to loving you unconditionally no matter what the future brings.

The problem is that this definition in romantic relationships can break down under numerous conditions and for good reason. As much as you might love an alcoholic, a liar, or a cheater unconditionally, this isn’t healthy for you as a person. This means the definition of unconditional love in romantic relationships needs to be expanded a bit. For love to continue, there must be mutual respect, not an attitude of your partner that “you will put up with me, no matter what I do.”

Unconditional Positive Regard

This brings us to the topic of unconditional positive regard, probably a closer approximation of what we mean by unconditional love in relationships. In this sense, unconditional love doesn’t mean always giving people what they want or always accepting what they do, at the expense of your own needs.

Instead, it is a mature type of love that means treating the other person with love and respect, even while maintaining your boundaries and protecting yourself. Whereas the immature version of unconditional love would have you feeling as though you must be everything to the other person, the mature version has you recognize that your only obligation, in the face of the other’s behavior, is to communicate your message with love and respect.

This means being attentive and attuned, even while you are setting limits and boundaries. It also means honoring the requests of others when you are able to do so without harming yourself.

It means not being harsh or dismissive, as this does not lead to compromise or solutions. At its core, this is assertiveness—letting the other person know where you stand so that together you can work out the best outcome for the two of you together.

How to Love Unconditionally

When we think about how to go about loving someone unconditionally in a relationship, the following points emerge:

Practice open communication, so that both of your needs can be met.
Communicate in a non-defensive way. Express your feelings while listening and taking the other person’s feelings into account.
Don’t let the little annoyances of life override your love. Unconditional love means seeing past the squabbles about the little things in life. If you have a commitment of love that is larger than those things, you will have staying power.
Share power in your relationship. No one person should get everything they want, or this will lead to resentment by the other person.

When Relationships Break Down

We are programmed in life to have conditional love. You love your husband because of his unique traits and qualities that attracted you to him. It’s why you love him and not another man. The question becomes, if he changes, at what point is love withdrawn?

True mature love should come with no strings attached. It is a behavior, rather than a feeling, a point of confusion that can lead to the breakdown of romantic relationships. The satisfaction of unconditional love should come from the act of giving it to the other person, not from what you receive in return.

If we think about unconditional love as the “expression of our kindest self,” it can be maintained even if a relationship does not survive. You might know couples who still love each other but are no longer together. If a relationship is hurting you more than it is good to you, it is okay to feel unconditional love but let the relationship go.

Unconditional love is basic goodness and the total acceptance of someone, but it does not mean tolerating abuse, neglect, or other deal breakers. What about the less clear area of falling out of love with someone? If you still show them unconditional love, you will find a way to kindly and gently end the relationship.

In essence, when we first fall in love, it’s in an unconditional state, and we can’t ever imagine not feeling this way about the other person. But we live in a conditional world, and relationships do end. We all have different tastes and needs, and these can change over time.

One thing is certain; relationships that are completely lacking in unconditional love are unlikely to succeed. Beliefs and lifestyle are likely to change over time, and if you aren’t willing to see your partner go through changes, this could spell the end for the two of you.

By Arlin Cuncic, Reviewed by a board-certified physician

Strategies for traveling without letting your phone keep you from enjoying your trip.

Now that summer is in full swing, a lot of people have been asking me the same question: How can you take your phone with you on vacation without letting your phone ruin your vacation?

It’s a modern quandary: Phones are obviously useful tools, especially when you’re on the road. But too often, a quick check turns into an hourlong scroll session. And if you’re going to spend your trip trolling Instagram or responding to emails, what’s the point of leaving home?
It might seem absurd to have to strategize how to set boundaries with your smartphone. But the reward — a vacation that feels like a vacation — is well worth the work. Here are some useful tips on how to use your phone on vacation, without letting it hijack your trip.

Before You Leave: Prepare Yourself

Define your goal. Ask yourself — and your companions — what’s the point of the trip? To relax? To experience new things? To spend time together? To escape your routine? In other words, what do you actually want to spend your time doing? (I’m willing to bet that you won’t say “obsessively checking my work email.”) Write down your goal, take a photo of it, and set it as your lock screen image (or use one of these) so that you’re reminded of it when you instinctively reach for your phone.

Identify what you want to use your phone for. To take photos? Navigate? Check in with the office? Knowing what you want to use your phone for makes it easier to catch yourself when you’re using your phone for something that’s not on your list.

Don’t fall for your brain’s tricks. It is likely that your brain is going to concoct all sorts of “reasons” you have to check, or scroll, or post while you’re on vacation. That’s because checking our phones triggers the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that encourages us to repeat behaviors that our brains have judged to be rewarding (it’s no coincidence that dopamine plays a major role in addictions). What’s more, not checking your phone can cause your body to release stress hormones such as cortisol — a double whammy. So whenever you feel yourself reaching for your phone because you “need” to do something, ask yourself whether it’s an actual need — or if it’s an excuse.

Every time you find yourself about to check your phone on vacation, ask yourself: What is the best thing that could be waiting for you? At the very least, checking your phone will distract you. And if you find bad news waiting for you, it can ruin your day.

Remember: when you “check in,” you check out. Mentally and physically, we can’t be two places at once. So every time you turn your attention to your phone, you are turning your attention away from everything else.

Before You Leave: Prepare Your Phone
Delete your “problem apps”— that is, the ones that often leave you wondering what happened to the last 45 minutes of your life. The most likely culprits are social media, email, dating, games, shopping and the news, all of which offer novelty, unpredictability and the potential for a reward — just like slot machines. (If your phone won’t let you delete them, hide them in a folder off your home screen.)

You can always check these platforms through your phone’s internet browser if you must, and you can reinstall them at any time — but why not use your vacation as a chance to see what life is like without Facebook?

Create a temptation-free home screen. Rearrange your apps so that your home screen contains only practical apps that won’t suck you in (for example, the camera, maps or a translation app). Those are your “tools,” and you can use them freely.

Put your other apps into folders on an interior page to prevent yourself from being tempted by their icons.

Turn off all notifications, except for the ones you actually want to receive while you’re on vacation. (I particularly recommend disabling the news.) Note: those little red circles that pop up on apps’ icons are also notifications, called “badges.” Turn those off, too — including for email.

Reduce FOMO (the fear of missing out) by setting up vacation auto-responses for your email, voice mail and text messages. (To set up an automatic text message response on iPhones, use the customized option for “Do Not Disturb While Driving”; for Android, download a third-party app such as Lilspace.) Update your status on social media accounts so that your friends and followers know that you’re away. Then shed a tear for the fact that this is a cause of anxiety to begin with. To read more from Catherine Price, click here.

It’s possible to fake emotional intelligence. Similar to knockoffs of luxury watches or handbags, there are emotions and actions that look like the real thing but really aren’t. With the best of intentions, I’ve seen smart leaders charge into sensitive interactions armed with what they believed was a combination of deep empathy, attuned listening, and self-awareness but was, in fact, a way to serve their own emotional needs. It’s important to learn to spot these forgeries, especially if you’re the forger.

Plenty of research has documented manipulative misuses of emotional intelligence — the intentionally subtle regulating of one’s emotions to engineer responses from others that might not be in their best interest. Given that most people aren’t sociopaths, in my experience, the more common misuses of emotional intelligence are subconscious. To safeguard against inadvertently falling prey to them, we need deeper levels of self-examination. Here are three of the more common counterfeits I’ve seen snare well-intended leaders.

A need to be the hero disguised as empathy. Empathy is one of the key components of emotional intelligence. The capacity to understand and share others’ feelings creates authentic connection and deepens trust. But a leader’s genuine desire to demonstrate care can transcend healthy boundaries in unintended ways. I saw this play out when debriefing with the Chief Operating Officer of a $20 billion global company. I’d helped him prepare for a potentially volatile conversation with his direct report, who was behind on the implementation plan of a major initiative. The project costs had ballooned, and the direct report was emotionally frayed. Some of the issues were legitimately outside her control, but some were the result of her mistakes. The goal of the conversation was to agree on how she would get the project back on track. When I asked him how the conversation went, he responded with exuberant relief, “Better than I could have expected.” He went on to explain: “I was sure to start with empathy the way you coached me, and when I felt it was time, we moved into problem solving.” When I asked about the resolutions they’d agreed to, he told me, “We’ve agreed to push out the completion date by a year, I’ve given her the extra $40k she needs for the consultants, and at her request, I’ve agreed to step in as co-leader of the initiative.”

Over the next two hours, we unpacked the conversation to reveal how his need to feel indispensable completely overshadowed what she actually needed: accountability, coaching, and guidance. He felt the conversation had gone well because he felt needed by her. She thought it went great because she was no longer on the hook alone. At first, he defended his intention of being a caring and compassionate leader. But eventually he was able to see that when his expression of care turned to rescuing her from a difficult situation, it stopped being compassionate, and became selfish. When a leader indulges a codependent need to feel central to another person’s success, it takes away the other person’s power, making them weaker instead of stronger.

When expressing empathy for those you lead, pay attention to any need you might have to be the hero. Compassionate understanding for the challenges of others is emotionally intelligent. Rescuing them from the consequences of those challenges may be more cruel than kind.

A need to be right masquerading as active listening. A fundamental social skill of emotional intelligence is being an effective listener. Being attuned to the spoken and unspoken concerns of others demonstrates an openness to their views, a willingness to engage ideas different from ours, and honors the courage of others to express divergent perspectives. Most leaders I’ve worked with claim to want pushback, believe they listen to dissenting ideas, and are willing to have their minds changed when stronger beliefs and facts are presented. But many would also admit, if they were being honest, that letting go of being right is painful, and relinquishing their views to those of others feels like a loss of control and influence.

But unaware of the tension between a genuine desire to take in others’ views and a need to be right, leaders can feign listening while actually trying to lure others to their side without realizing they’re doing it. I watched this happen in a leadership team meeting as the heads of marketing and sales tried to resolve a common stalemate. Trying to sound conciliatory and open-minded, each would attempt to “summarize” the other’s views with statements like, “So what I hear you saying is the only way you’ll agree to those quotas is if….” and “I’m really trying to understand your view on this, given that last month you seemed to be more aligned with….” and “I sense that you’re really frustrated right now, and I’d love to find a solution that can work for both of us, if we could just agree that…” Both believed they were genuinely interested in finding a mutually acceptable compromise. But nobody in the room saw it that way and neither of them believed it about the other. If you have strong views or a critical agenda, own it. It doesn’t mean you don’t care what others think. Working to suppress your strong views to appear as if you’re engaging others never works, even if you mean well. People are more likely to believe you’re open to hearing their ideas if they feel you’ve been straightforward about where you stand on yours.

A need for approval dressed up as self-awareness. Keenly self-aware leaders detect how others experience them, actively solicit critical feedback from others, and accurately acknowledge their strengths and shortfalls. But when fueled by an unquenched desire for approval, self-awareness can warp into self-involvement. One executive, who prided himself on his astute self-awareness, regularly asked his team for feedback, believing he really wanted it (and on some level, he probably did). But what they saw was a neurotic plea for affirmation. In a diagnostic interview, one direct-report said to me, “Every time he asks how I’m doing, we all know the best thing to do is just say ‘Great,’ so we can get on with our day.” I’ve seen leaders begin lengthy speeches with declarations like, “I know sometimes I get impatient. When I do, I want you to call me on it,” and then obsessively ask, “Am I being too impatient?” even when impatience may actually be warranted. Every leader is insecure about something. Genuinely self-aware leaders face that insecurity head on, and don’t put the burden of soothing it on others.

Our ability to express emotional intelligence is sometimes impaired by unacknowledged, unhealthy, emotional needs. If you want to genuinely employ effective emotional intelligence skills, pay attention to the unaddressed scars and voids lurking beneath the surface of your inner emotional landscape. Tend to those honestly and carefully, and you’ll better be able to maintain credibility and strong relationships with others.

Ron Carucci is co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, working with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations, leaders, and industries. He is the best-selling author of eight books, including the recent Amazon #1 Rising to Power.

Connecting with nature just feels good. Nothing matches the feeling of serenity experienced when taking a quiet walk in the woods, listening to water flow over rocks in a stream, or taking in the enormity of a beautiful panoramic natural view. Obviously, in the moment, such tranquil settings do wonders for us. But does connecting with nature have longer-term effects by carrying over into other aspects of our lives after this exposure to nature? And how would this happen? Does nature affect our mood or our motivation to act prosocially?

It’s hard to conduct empirical work that addresses these questions directly, but a team of researchers recently created a series of three clever laboratory experiments mimicking real world dilemmas to provide help determine whether connecting with nature affects our future behavior.

Study participants were asked to play a “fishing game”, an environmentally-themed computer task that had both elements of cooperation and competition in the task. Essentially, participants had to choose between elements of conservation (maintaining the fish population) and self-gain (making a profit off of the fishing). The participants, whose opponent was the computer, had to find the ‘best’ balance for how they played the game. While they were encouraged to play cooperatively so that the fish would not go extinct from overfishing, they also had to weigh their own profit potential (i.e., they would pay a small fee to catch a fish but receive a larger amount back from every fish caught). Essentially the behaviors involved in the game promoted either sustainability or greed.

Importantly, the researchers separated study participants into two groups, each of which was exposed to a slightly different video prior to playing the fishing game. One group watched a nature video (in two experiments, a video about the Earth; in one experiment, a video promoting positive emotion vs. a video promoting negative emotion) before playing the game, whereas the other group in all experiments watched neutral (architectural-themed) videos before playing the game.

Did watching the nature video affect how the participants played the game? Indeed it did! Participants exposed to the nature video behaved more cooperatively than did those participants exposed to the neutral architectural video. This increase in cooperative behavior occurred regardless of the type of nature scene viewed, whether it was the Earth video or one promoting positive or negative emotion. Thus, it was not the mood elicited by being in nature, simply that it was a connection with nature. And keep in mind that those in the nature video group simply watched a video of nature – they weren’t actually exposed to ‘real’ nature situations. Furthermore, those watching nature videos before the game were less likely to experience fish “extinction” (in the experimental condition in which there were many rounds of the game) than those watching the neutral videos.

This research has big implications for how we get along with each other (and nature) and the role of nature in the decisions we make. The findings suggest that connecting with nature primes us to act in ways that are generally more considerate of the ecosystem (and by extension, others with whom we share a planet) others and can drive us to become less self-centered. We see how our actions can have an effect on things greater than ourselves. Granted, this study focused on individuals’ behaviors while “playing” a computer as an opponent; imagine if there were more human interaction involved in the game or the interaction, like communicating directly with another person. Or if this game took place after a real-life connection with nature (and not just a brief video), like after a restorative hike in the woods.

This article was first published by the Science of Relationships.

By, Marni Amsellem, Ph.D.,

Do you ever dream of living in the perfectly clean and organized rooms of a home decor catalog? Or would you rather spend your time in a room cluttered with objects, souvenirs, books, art, and items that make up your daily life.

For some people, a tidy room can be soothing. An orderly retreat in an often disorderly world. For others, such rooms can be sterile, bland, and uninspiring.

Some people feel anxious in a cluttered room, while others feel their most creative amid the squalor.

Organization is big business these days. From books to seminars to organizational systems, everyone seems to want to find some way to perfectly arrange every aspect of their lives. Messiness has long been viewed as something of a character flaw or a sign of laziness. Cleanliness and organization are presented as the ideal—both a sign of and path to success.

But what about those that are a little bit messier or more cluttered? What does a messy room say about you? What exactly is behind messy room psychology?

Your Mental Health

Having a messy room might be the result of a lot of factors. It might mean you are busy and have little time to clean and organize. It might be a sign that you have too much stuff. Or it might be the result of having young kids in the house who are usually not motivated to clean up after themselves.

But if your room is just habitually messy, does it say anything about the state of your mental health?

In some instances, the state of your room might be linked to a psychiatric condition. People with obsessive-compulsive disorder, for example, may become so preoccupied with keeping things clean that any amount of disorder can become a significant source of anxiety. In other instances, people hoard items to the point that they cannot part with even the most trivial objects. Their homes fill with years and years worth of useless items, from old newspapers to plastic containers.

Beyond these and other serious conditions, the psychology behind a messy room can hinge on a few key factors:

If having a messy room is a new phenomenon
If the mess is something that actually bothers you
If it is a sign of something deeper going on in your life

Messiness Might be Normal

Is your messiness habitual? Some people simply do not place a high priority on having everything clean, organized, and in its place. In this case, messiness is simply a normal state of affairs. If the house is cluttered and it’s just fine with you, then it’s probably more a sign of your personality and preferences.

Messiness From Feeling Overwhelmed

Does the mess bother you? If you are frustrated, angry, or overwhelmed by the clutter and disarray, then it’s a clear sign that something needs to be addressed. Sometimes a mess might be frustrating, but figuring out where to start and how to tackle the problem can seem overwhelming. This might mean eliminating some things, learning new organizational tactics, or getting other household members to help with the cleanup.

Messiness as a Sign of Depression

Is the messy room something new and unusual? If you are typically neat and organized, suddenly not caring about a messy room might be a sign that something is going on in your life. For example, messiness can sometimes be a sign of depression. Depressed people often feel too fatigued or hopeless to keep up with routine household tasks.

Depression can also make it harder to stay focused and have the energy to straighten up a room. If you struggle to stay on task, it can be hard to devote the time and attention needed to keep things tidy. So while you might notice that the room is messy and have intentions to clean it up, finding the concentration and energy levels needed to do the task can be difficult or even impossible.

If you suspect that your messy room might be a sign of problems in your life or a result of depression, don’t be afraid to reach out. Talk about what is going on with your doctor or consult a mental health professional to get specific advice for your situation. A counselor, therapist, or doctor can help you get to the bottom of what’s going on and assist you in coming up with a plan of action to address the problem.

Your Personality

So what makes tidy and messy people different? Are some people just born with personalities that prefer order while other thrive on chaos?

While some might suggest that a cluttered room is a sign of a cluttered mind, those who prefer this type of environment are not necessarily disorganized. Their desks might look like a jumbled mess, strewn with papers, envelopes, and files. Yet they always seem to know exactly where each and every item is when they need it. The famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was once attributed as saying, “Don’t clean up the mess. I know exactly where everything is.”

In fact, some people seem to thrive in this type of environment. Some of the most creative and productive people seem to be incurable slobs.

If having a perfectly neat and tidy room is what inspires you and helps you feel productive and creative, it might mean that you tend to have more of what is known as a Type A personality. People with this personality type tend to be perfectionists. Having everything in its place helps fulfill their need for order and control.

But if you tend to be more laid back in your approach to housework and tidying up, it might mean that you have more of a Type B personality type. People with this personality type are more relaxed than their Type A counterparts. Rather than focusing on achieving perfection, they are more attracted to ideas, experiences, and creativity.

Advantages

And there is research that supports the idea that messiness also has an upside. Researchers found that while working in an orderly room encouraged behavior such as generosity and healthy eating, working in a messy environment actually led to greater creativity.

Increased Generosity

In the study, participants were asked to fill out questionnaires in a room. For some of the participants, the room was very clean and organized. For other subjects, they completed the questionnaire in a very messy, disorganized space.

As they left the room, participants were offered a few choices. First, they were asked if they wanted to donate money to a charity. Then they were offered a snack: either an apple or a candy bar. Those who completed the survey in a tidy room were more likely to donate more of their own money to a charity. They were also more likely to choose the apple over the candy bar.

Increased Creativity

The researchers believe that doing work in a clean and tidy space activates social norms encouraging people to do what is expected of them. Working in a messy space, on the other hand, relaxes that need and allows people to break free of social norms and expectations.

In a separate experiment, participants were again placed in either clean or messy rooms and then asked to complete a task, which involved finding new uses for ping-pong balls. The participants were in the messy room condition were rated by impartial judges as coming up with more creative and innovative ideas than those who are in the clean room condition.

Such findings may have implications when designing workspaces, particularly for professions that require a great deal of innovation and creativity. Employers might be encouraged to allow their workers to design and create workspaces that are more highly personalized, even if that means they might be less tidy.

Obviously, as the researchers explain, this doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone who is exposed to a messy environment will become more creative. Some people tend to work better in highly organized spaces while others work better in less organized environments. Personality and preferences are things that come in to play in such situations.

Forcing a person who prefers a tidy space to work in a disorderly environment, for example, might actually result in less creativity and lower productivity. And jobs that are focused on efficiency and fast decision-making might be better geared toward tidy workspaces, while those that hinge on creativity might be better suited to less tidy spaces.

So while orderliness might be the most aspirational quality, research has also shown that there are some advantages to being messy. If you tend to have a messy room, here are some possible advantages backed by psychology research.

Increased Willingness to Try New Things

One study found that subjects in a messy room were capable of solving brainteasers more quickly than those seated in an organized room. The scientist Albert Einstein, famous for his genius and creative thinking, was known for having a messy desk. “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?” he once asked in response to comments on his workspace.

In another experiment by Vohs and her colleagues, participants were randomly assigned to either a messy or tidy room. They were then given a smoothie menu and told they were taking part in a consumer-choice study. They were told to select one of three smoothie options: a health, wellness, or vitamin boost.

Half of the menus referenced the health option as “classic.” The other half of the menus described it as “new.” The results revealed that people in the tidy room condition were twice as likely to choose the classic option, while those in the messy room were twice as likely to choose the option described as new.

The results suggest that people in neat and tidy environments are more likely to stick with the conventional, while people in messier environments are more likely to prefer novelty.

While minimalism might be trendy, it might also be crushing your creativity. If keeping a tidy desk or room is causing you more stress than the mess itself, trying relaxing for a while, live with the mess a little, and see if it helps open up your creative abilities.

Disadvantages

Of course, habitual messiness also has its downsides. A messy room can make it harder to find things when they are needed, and in professional settings, it might result in missed deadlines or losing important documents.

But there are other possible downsides.

Less Charitable Leanings

Vohs and her colleagues found that people who had spent time in a messy room were less likely to contribute money to charity. Eighty-two percent of participants who spent time in a well-organized room were willing to contribute their own money to charity, only 47 percent of people who had spent time in a messy room we’re willing to give money.

Decreased Willingness to Follow Rules

Previous research has shown that people who are exposed to an disordered environment are more likely to commit crimes. This does not necessarily mean that neatniks are more moral than sloppier folks. It simply means of being exposed to an orderly environment seems to encourage rule following.This can, of course, have its upsides and downsides. In situations where following orders is important, however, it might be beneficial to keep things tidy.

Less Healthy Choices?

In the study mentioned previously, researchers found the participants who had been in an organized room were more likely to make good health choices. Instead of choosing a candy bar, they selected an apple. These findings suggest if you were trying to improve your health, you might want to start by cleaning and organizing your space.

By Kendra Cherry, Reviewed by a board-certified physician

What are your personal strategies for happiness?

Nearly 1,200 Germans explored this question in a recent study—and then Julia M. Rohrer and her colleagues followed up with them a year later to find out how happy they felt. The researchers found not all roads lead to happiness.

In surveys, study participants first identified how satisfied they were with their life on a scale of 0-10, and then wrote down their ideas for maintaining or boosting their life satisfaction in the future. After a year, they reported their life satisfaction again and answered some questions about how they had spent their time.

Analyzing the data, the researchers could distinguish between two different types of happiness strategies: social and individual. Some goals—like seeing friends and family more, joining a nonprofit, or helping people in need—put participants into contact with other people. The other type of goal includes staying healthy, finding a better job, or quitting smoking—things that don’t necessarily involve spending time with people.

Ultimately, people who wrote down at least one social strategy tended to follow through and spend more time socializing that year, and they (in turn) became more satisfied with their lives. They were the people who committed to teach their son to swim or be more understanding of others, to go on a trip with their partner or meet new people.

Meanwhile, people who focused on individual goals didn’t improve their life satisfaction over the year. In fact, the self-focused road to happiness was even less effective than having no plans for action at all, which was the case for about half the participants. Those people were either relatively content—writing “Everything is fine” or “I wouldn’t change much”—or they hoped for changes in external circumstances, like the country’s politicians. They actually fared better when compared to people who pursued individual strategies.

These findings back up an earlier study, which suggested that people who intensely pursue happiness aren’t always more content. That was only true in cultures that define happiness in terms of social engagement and helping others (like East Asia and Russia, but not Germany or the United States).

What seems true across cultures is that social connections are key to well-being. For example, very happy people are highly social and tend to have strong relationships; kids with a richer network of connections grow up to be happier adults; and socializing is one of the most positive everyday activities. But this is one of the few studies to actually compare social and individual paths to happiness—and find that connecting with others might be inherently more rewarding.

Or, the researchers suggest, perhaps social goals are simply easier to attain. You could argue that it only takes a few phone calls to start spending more time with friends, but eating healthier requires constant and repeated effort—and goals like finding a new job aren’t entirely under your individual control. People who focus on social goals might just achieve them more often, deriving some contentment from that.

By KIRA M. NEWMAN

Doug’s amateur soccer team had just lost their playoff game and he needed a pick-me-up. So he decided to stop by the local animal shelter on his way home. He was by no means looking to adopt an animal but puppies always put a smile on his face. “Rookie mistake,” he told me in our psychotherapy session. “You set foot in one of these places and no way you’re not leaving with a puppy.” Delia, the puppy in question, was a five-month-old mutt. “I had her for seventeen years,” Doug said, wiping tears from his eyes, “Almost my entire adult life. I knew it would be rough when she died but I had no idea…I was a total wreck. I cried for days. I couldn’t get any work done. And worst of all, I was too embarrassed about it to tell anyone, even my old soccer teammates who loved Delia. I spent days at work crying in private and muttering “allergies” whenever someone glanced at my puffy eyes.”

Losing a beloved pet is often an emotionally devastating experience. Yet, as a society, we do not recognize how painful pet loss can be and how much it can impair our emotional and physical health. Symptoms of acute grief after the loss of a pet can last from one to two months with symptoms of grief persisting up to a full year (on average). The New England Journal of Medicine recently reported that a woman whose dog died experienced Broken Heart Syndrome—a condition in which a person’s response to grief and heartbreak is so severe, they exhibits symptoms that mimic a heart attack, including elevated hormone levels that can be thirty times greater than normal.

While grief over the loss of a cherished pet may be as intense and even as lengthy as when a significant person in our life dies, our process of mourning is quite different. Because pet loss is disenfranchised, many of the societal mechanisms of social and community support are absent when a cherished pet dies. Few of us ask our employers for time off to grieve a beloved cat or dog as we fear doing so would paint us as overly sentimental, lacking in maturity or emotionally weak. And few employers would grant such requests were we to make them. Studies have found that social support is a crucial ingredient in recovering from grief of all kinds. Thus, we are not only robbed of crucial support systems when our pet dies, but our own perceptions of our emotional responses are likely to add an additional layer of emotional distress. We may feel embarrassed and even ashamed about the severity of the heartbreak we feel and consequently, hesitate to disclose our distress to our loved ones. We might even wonder what is wrong with us and question why we are responding in such ‘disproportional’ ways to the loss. To read more from Guy Winch, click here.

The idea of unconditional love in relationships is a noble one. Each of us wants to be loved as we are, without conditions, and to see ourselves as capable of bestowing unconditional love on our partners. However, this type of love, in its narrowest definition, is difficult, if not impossible.

The Meaning of Unconditional Love

Part of the problem with unconditional love in relationships is the lack of understanding of what it means.

Most of us will think of a parent’s love for a child, or a child’s love for a parent, as unconditional love. This type of love depends on nothing other than the familial bond and doesn’t break down based on what the child or parent does—at least in an ideal scenario.

In the purest sense, unconditional love is about caring about the happiness of another person without any concern for how it benefits you. Research tells us that the parts of the brain that light up during unconditional love are similar to those involved in romantic love and maternal love, and are linked to the brain’s reward system. This suggests that unconditional love may be rewarding without receiving anything in return.

Unconditional Romantic Love

The question becomes whether adults in relationships can also show each other this type of unconditional love. To feel safe in a relationship, it makes sense that you need to feel as though the other person is not going to abandon you based on a whim.

You need to know that person is committed to loving you unconditionally no matter what the future brings.

The problem is that this definition in romantic relationships can break down under numerous conditions and for good reason. As much as you might love an alcoholic, a liar, or a cheater unconditionally, this isn’t healthy for you as a person.

This means the definition of unconditional love in romantic relationships needs to be expanded a bit. For love to continue, there must be mutual respect, not an attitude of your partner that “you will put up with me, no matter what I do.”

Unconditional Positive Regard

This brings us to the topic of unconditional positive regard, probably a closer approximation of what we mean by unconditional love in relationships. In this sense, unconditional love doesn’t mean always giving people what they want or always accepting what they do, at the expense of your own needs.

Instead, it is a mature type of love that means treating the other person with love and respect, even while maintaining your boundaries and protecting yourself. Whereas the immature version of unconditional love would have you feeling as though you must be everything to the other person, the mature version has you recognize that your only obligation, in the face of the other’s behavior, is to communicate your message with love and respect.

This means being attentive and attuned, even while you are setting limits and boundaries. It also means honoring the requests of others when you are able to do so without harming yourself.

It means not being harsh or dismissive, as this does not lead to compromise or solutions.

At its core, this is assertiveness—letting the other person know where you stand so that together you can work out the best outcome for the two of you together.

How to Love Unconditionally

When we think about how to go about loving someone unconditionally in a relationship, the following points emerge:

Practice open communication, so that both of your needs can be met.
Communicate in a non-defensive way. Express your feelings while listening and taking the other person’s feelings into account.

Don’t let the little annoyances of life override your love. Unconditional love means seeing past the squabbles about the little things in life. If you have a commitment of love that is larger than those things, you will have staying power.

Share power in your relationship. No one person should get everything they want, or this will lead to resentment by the other person.

When Relationships Break Down

We are programmed in life to have conditional love. You love your husband because of his unique traits and qualities that attracted you to him. It’s why you love him and not another man. The question becomes, if he changes, at what point is love withdrawn?

True mature love should come with no strings attached. It is a behavior, rather than a feeling, a point of confusion that can lead to the breakdown of romantic relationships. The satisfaction of unconditional love should come from the act of giving it to the other person, not from what you receive in return.

If we think about unconditional love as the “expression of our kindest self,” it can be maintained even if a relationship does not survive. You might know couples who still love each other but are no longer together. If a relationship is hurting you more than it is good to you, it is okay to feel unconditional love but let the relationship go.

Unconditional love is basic goodness and the total acceptance of someone, but it does not mean tolerating abuse, neglect, or other deal breakers. What about the less clear area of falling out of love with someone? If you still show them unconditional love, you will find a way to kindly and gently end the relationship.

In essence, when we first fall in love, it’s in an unconditional state, and we can’t ever imagine not feeling this way about the other person. But we live in a conditional world, and relationships do end. We all have different tastes and needs, and these can change over time.

One thing is certain; relationships that are completely lacking in unconditional love are unlikely to succeed. Beliefs and lifestyle are likely to change over time, and if you aren’t willing to see your partner go through changes, this could spell the end for the two of you.

You can be more to your partner when you offer unconditional love in the mature sense. One way to tap into this is to be mindful of the present moment. If you struggle with this, consider practicing mindfulness meditation. This will help you slow down and become aware of your relationship needs.

It can also be helpful to learn how to show yourself the same unconditional love that you are trying to show to your partner. If you don’t show it to yourself, you might be looking for too much from your partner—looking for him or her to prop you up.

By Arlin Cuncic | Reviewed by a board-certified physician

Sources:

Beauregard M, Courtemanch J, Paquette V, St-Pieere EL. The neural basis of unconditional love. Psychiatry Res. 2009;172(2):93-8.

Hales SD. The impossibility of unconditional love. Pub Aff Quart. 1995;9:4.

Saybrook University. Unconditional Love.

If you’re like many people, you may feel that certain stress relief techniques don’t work for you while others work quite well. There are reasons that the same stress relievers can work so differently for various people. Often the techniques that don’t seem to work for a particular person are ineffective for one of two reasons: either they are a poor match for the person’s personality or for the situation. For example, breathing exercises can effectively relieve stress, but may not be a powerful enough technique to be the sole coping strategy for someone experiencing caregiver stress, chronic job stress, or another type of chronically-occurring stress.

There are so many different ways to relieve stress that sometimes finding the right technique for your personality and situation may seem overwhelming, or at least like more work than you want to tackle when you’re already feeling stressed. Finding stress relievers that work for you, however, can be well worth the effort in that the work you do to try different techniques that work for you can ultimately change your whole experience of stress.

Whether you have a few techniques that work for you and are just looking to add one or two, or need to overhaul your way of dealing with stress and create a whole new system, the following list can help. These stress relief techniques are grouped according to various categories you may be looking at when deciding how to best manage your stress.

Acute Stress

Acute stress is the type of stress that throws you off-balance momentarily. This is the type of stress that comes on quickly and often unexpectedly and doesn’t last too long, but requires a response and shakes you up a bit, like an argument with someone in your life, or an exam for which you don’t feel adequately prepared.

Your body’s stress response is triggered with acute stress, but you can reverse it with quick relaxation techniques, and then go back to your day feeling less stressed again. These stress relievers can help you to relax and more quickly recover from acute stress.

Breathing Exercises: Great for acute stress because they work quickly.
Cognitive Reframing: Learn to change the way you look at the situation to manage your stress levels.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Like breathing exercises, PMR will give you a moment to regroup and calm down.
Mini-Meditation: Take breathing exercises a step further with this quick, 5-minute meditation technique to calm down in the moment.

Chronic Stress

Chronic stress is the type of stress that tends to occur on a regular basis. This type of stress may leave you feeling drained, and can lead to burnout if it’s not effectively managed. This is because, when the stress response is chronically triggered and the body is not brought back to a relaxed state before the next wave of stress hits, the body can stay triggered indefinitely.

This can lead to the host of health issues that are generally associated with stress, including cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal issues, anxiety, depression, and a host of other conditions. This is why it is important to effectively manage chronic stress.

Managing this type of stress often requires a combination approach, with some short-term stress relievers (like those for acute stress), and some long-term stress relief habits that relieve overall stress. (Different emotion-focused coping techniques and solution-focused coping techniques are important as well.)

The following long-term habits can help you to better manage general stress that you may feel from the chronic stressors in your life.

Exercise Regularly: Exercise and stress management are closely linked for several reasons.
Maintain a Healthy Diet: Fueling your body well can help with overall stress levels because your entire system will function better.
Cultivate Supportive Relationships: Having a solid support system is a crucial coping mechanism.
Meditate Regularly: While quick meditations are great for dealing with acute stress, a regular meditation practice will help build your overall resilience to stress.
Listen to Music: Music can act as a wonderful, stress-reducing backdrop to everyday tasks.

The pain of emotional stress can hit harder than some other types of stress. For example, the stress that comes from a conflicted relationship tends to bring a greater physical reaction and a stronger sense of distress than the stress that comes from being busy at work.

Therefore, it is important to be able to manage emotional stress in effective ways. Strategies that help you to process, diffuse, and build resilience toward emotional stress can all work well, and different approaches can work in different situations. Here are some ways to manage emotional stress.

Write in a Journal: There are several different journaling strategies to try, all with benefits.
Talk to a Friend: Learn about the several different types of social support friends can offer you.
Listen to Music
Practice Mindfulness: Mindfulness can help keep you rooted in the present moment.
Talk to a Therapist

Battling Burnout

Burnout is the result of the prolonged chronic stress of situations that leave people feeling a lack of control in their lives. Certain conditions of a job can create a greater risk of burnout, including not only a high level of demands, but also unclear expectations, lack of recognition for achievements, and a high level of risk of negative consequences when mistakes are made.

Once you reach a state of burnout, it is difficult to maintain motivation to work and accomplish what you need to accomplish, and you can feel chronically overwhelmed. In addition to the strategies that work well for chronic stress and emotional stress, the following strategies can help you to come back from a state of burnout—or prevent it entirely.

Take Some Time Off: If you never take your vacation time, here’s why you should start.
Get More Laughter Into Your Life: Laughter can lead to better overall health and bring joy into your day.
Indulge in Hobbies: Don’t wait until your life calms down to engage in your hobbies.
Get More Enjoyment Out of Your Current Job: If you landed in a job you don’t love, all is not lost. Learn how to make your job more fulfilling.
Make Your Weekends Count: Learn how to bring some of your weekend into your work week for less stress.

By Elizabeth Scott, MS