How good is your conflict resolution skill?

How good is your conflict resolution skill?
Every person will have to learn how to deal with interpersonal conflicts. These conflicts can happen between friends, colleagues, family members, loved ones, or even strangers. Interpersonal conflicts are just a part of life and can be so common that they are unavoidable. Ignoring conflict also is not a very good strategy. It might keep the problem out of mind for a while but tends to boil and has the potential to become toxic and unhealthy.

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3 Benefits of counselling

3 Benefits of counselling

The modern world is a hectic place with many complexities that can be seen and unseen. If you live in a big city like New York, Hong Kong, or Singapore, the pace of life can be incredibly fast and uncompromising. An environment where expectations are high, and where you are expected to perform, do well for your job, and your family/yourself can cause a great deal of stress. Read more

Is listening as important as speaking?

Is listening as important as speaking?

The ability to speak well and verbalise meaning, intent, and feelings is incredibly important. It is how we transmit ideas, thoughts, and feelings to people around us. The better we are able to express ourselves verbally, the better we are at making ourselves understood.

The ability to listen well is just as important as speaking, and sometimes overlooked. Listening is how we are able to accept someone’s speech and intent, and listening well is how we are able to properly understand what the other person is saying. Both verbal communication, and listening are skills to be mastered. Read more

Is there a way to use stress to our own advantage?

Is there a way to use stress to our own advantage?

Many of us feel stress because we are in a hurry. We are faced with this mental schedule which must be achieved by a certain time; obtain your degree, work in a big successful company, get married and have kids. We get upset at ourselves and blame it on stress for failing to meet our goals. But does stress really deter us from realizing our goals? Read more

Can anxiety overwhelm people?

Can anxiety overwhelm people?

Anxiety is an emotion that leads to excessive fear, worry, and apprehension. It’s perfectly normal to experience fear, worry, or apprehension, and doesn’t require too much attention to resolving. These are temporary feelings. However, prolonged anxiety can become a huge problem for a lot of people, either due to mental illness or prolonged exposure to a negative situation and environment. A lot of times, people don’t even know exactly why they feel this way. Read more

Is shame avoidable?

Is shame avoidable?

Shame can be an uncomfortable feeling. It is a painful form of vulnerability that can take a toll on us physically, psychologically and emotionally. Shame can make us believe that we are flawed, thereby creating a barrier between ourselves and people or situations because we feel unwanted and unworthy of their love and attention.

There are different types of shame; self-inflicted or caused by external factors. The common incidences that lead to shame, such as accidentally spilling a drink on yourself in public or being reprimanded by your superior in front of your colleagues, are minor. However, should the shame become too intense and toxic where it affects your mental state, it is advisable for you to address the issue or seek professional help. Read more

Can self-talk ever be beneficial?

Can self-talk ever be beneficial?

You might have heard people say that people who talk to themselves are crazy, or at least identifies someone as absent-minded or eccentric. While some may see this as odd behaviour, self-talk is actually quite normal.

Self-talk is the inner or outer dialogue you might have with yourself. You might self-talk in your own head or you might self-talk out loud. Either way, you’re essentially talking to yourself; sometimes even carrying on entire conversations in this way. Read more

How to overcome self-destructive thoughts

How to overcome self-destructive thoughts

If you find yourself in a constant state of worry and anxiety about the unpleasant things that might happen before the actual events take place; or you repeatedly think of the worst possible scenarios occurring, you could be a victim of your own thoughts.

This term is known as ‘overthinking’ whereby, the person put too much time into thinking or overanalysing in a way that is more harmful than helpful to their situation. In such cases, the emotion of fear plays one of the major roles for us to overthink, which in turn may cause anxiety, panic attacks and/or in severe case, depression. Generally, we will experience two destructive thoughts pattern when it comes to overthinking: negative dwelling on the past or being pessimistic about the future. Read more

What is your emotional safety net?

What is your emotional safety net?

Emotions play an important role in our lives. It can affect how we react to certain situations and influence the decisions we make about our lives, both large and small. While some can cope with adversities in their life, there are others that struggle to overcome it.

Having a ‘safe place’ or safety net, where we can rely on something or someone to cushion the impact, allows us to handle our emotions better. It is inevitable that at some point of our life, we will experience some sort of turmoil or event that can cause us to feel grief, sadness, stress or even depression. This is where the emotional and moral support from loved ones, friends or even professionals plays a crucial part in guiding us to navigate smoothly out of those difficult situations. Read more