In Canada, February is Psychology Month.
So, for today’s post, I decided to list three psychological theories or concepts from 2022 that I found to be most interesting or most applicable to living a balanced life.
Here they are.
3 Psychological Concepts From the Last Year
1. Magnification and Jumping to Conclusions.
This past Christmas, I wrote a post (INSERT) providing strategies for managing awkward or stressful conversations during Holiday functions.
Magnification refers to the idea of “making mountains out of molehills.” For example, whenever we find ourselves in potentially stressful situations, we might magnify a comment or gesture that someone makes, interpreting it to be much more significant than intended.
Or, we might jump to a conclusion about what might happen instead of dealing with a situation that occurred.
It’s important to remind yourself that sometimes you might magnify a particular incident or begin feeling anxious and stressed and jump to conclusions over something that hasn’t even happened or might never happen.
Remember the 2022 Oscars? That’s when Will Smith went on stage and slapped Chris Rock.
As inappropriate as the slap was (it was an assault), many people shook their heads and commented about Smith’s actions.
Fair enough. What Smith did was wrong.
However, we need to avoid judging Smith as an “immoral person” or making similar other judgmental comments because what we saw in Smith’s actions is something we are all capable of doing.
Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, created the concept “Shadow Self.” The Shadow Self essentially refers to the annoying qualities, characteristics, dark impulses, and personality traits we don’t like in ourselves. As a result, we then try to repress those qualities or deny their existence.
As much as we don’t want to admit that we could ever harm or be mean to anyone, Jung theorized that we can. And Smith proved this point. You might never end up slapping anyone for a comment they make, but it doesn’t mean you won’t exhibit any other ‘dark’ or inappropriate actions at different times in your life. We all have a Shadow.
In Western culture, we all grow up socialized with a particular narrative about retirement.
“When I retire, I’m going to travel the world.”
“When I retire, I’m going to volunteer my time to people in need.”
“When I retire, I’m going to …..(insert your dream here).”
However, for many people, these dreams may never become a reality. For many people, retiring from work is impossible because of the decisions they made with their money during their working years.
They may have invested in some get-rich scheme that was short-lived, or they invested in someone (or something) that was fraudulent (e.g., Bernie Madoff and other Ponzi schemes). Or, they may have made solid, reasonable investments, but market forces zapped all their retirement savings away (e.g., the 2008 financial crisis; the Coronavirus crash of 2020).
Researching this topic was interesting because I had never considered applying feelings of grief and loss to a person’s finances. But when you think of what it means to experience a significant loss, you can understand how a person’s financial circumstances can trigger painful emotions and negative thoughts like other losses.
Summary
Psychology is a young science (somewhere between 100 and 150 years old). As a result, there is still a lot to learn about how we think, feel, and act.
I still love learning about psychology and how to apply this knowledge to help a person change, heal, and grow.
Thanks for joining me on this journey as well 😉
Richard