Casual friends: acquaintances, people that you know from school or work that you don't have deep conversations with.

Close Friends: you might be more inclined to share your childhood stories, dreams, concerns about life, goals, and beliefs.  

Friendship includes:

• Loyalty
• honesty
• empathy
• reliability

The best way to be compatible with great friends is to be a great friend. 
Check yourself and everything else will follow.

Friends listen to each other and support each other, it is however, alright for a friend to set boundaries and ask you to not vent as much or talk about a difficult situation as often.  You can go over what you are doing to resolve the issue or focus on self care and then talk about other topics.  One can become overwhelmed by a friend's problems; especially if they truly care and would take to fix everything but know that doing so is not possible.  Share the time with your friends wisely, there are many other things to talk about and distraction can be a constructive part of self care.

Friends of the opposite sex: A friend can be of the opposite sex, this has been problematic in our history due to ideas around gender norms.  We know that people of all genders are the same and can share interests, world views and perspectives.  What matters is that you respect each others' boundaries.  It is completely alright for you to keep your friends if you enter a relationship, only an abusive partner will try to tell you that you can no longer speak to your friends no matter what their gender is.

pg 148

Infatuation: Intense feelings of attraction toward someone, a normal experience that usually begin in the teenage years, we call it a "crush".

Many people meet up for activities like bowling or practicing a sport, dating often grows out of group activities. dating helps us learn more about the other person's personality, interests, abilities, and values, it is a healthy way to get to know them better while staying in a public place.

group activities can help you see how the person interact with others, how they treat the workers at a place that you visit, or how funny they are.  

After a date one may decide that they would rather keep spending time with the group or that they would like to have both group and date activities.

• It is important for each person to decide what relationship they would like to keep with their friends.
• They might not want to spend all of their free time with one person. 
• People can be part of a couple within a group of people and continue to have their group activities. 
• What matters is that all people involved have a say in what they do

The Cycle of Violence:
There is generally a three stage cycle:

• Tension Building: 
  
  • The person going through the abuse may try to prevent a violent outbreak by doing what the abuser wants or reason with the abuser
    
  • Violent Episode:
    
    • The tension is broken and the abuser behaves in a way that lead the survivor to feel unsafe.
      
• Calm Stage: 
  • ​Abuser usually apologizes and says that it won't happen again, presents excuses and expects the survivor to eat it all up.   
    
  • The abuser may subtly blame the victim for the abuse.

Many movies show abusive behaviors as romantic. 

• Sometimes we are taught that aggression is a sign of masculinity or that men are entitled to control women
• Sometimes we are taught that if we are not the abuser we will be abused

It is ok to break up with someone, you don't owe them an explanation, if you tell them how you feel and it is not helping because the person does not help, it's ok to just cut them off and surround yourself with good friends.

This topic is complex because there are so many possibilities for family dynamics and what well being can look like.  Our book covers some of the changes that we have seen in recent years, on pg 113 it goes over the rising presence of women in the workforce.  More than half of women with pre-school children work outside their home, sometimes as single moms, over 86% of single parents are women. 

nuclear family- a couple and their children

Adoption- the legal process through which a couple will take another persons child into their family

Single parent family- only one parent lives with children

Extended family- group of close relatives living together or near each other, grandparents, teachers, uncles, aunts, or cousins

Blended family- when parents remarry and children from both parents live together

Foster family- when people take care of a child when their biological family is not able to take care of them 

All members of the family are meant to share responsibilities, chores and responsibilities can be adjusted according to age.  Youth can help with cleaning and cooking regardless of gender. 

pg 126

Resolving Conflicts: by focusing on collaboration and compromise

Expressing Emotions: being a safe space for elf expression is critical 

Making decisions: as an egalitarian family unit where all members have an equal share in the decision making process

Managing Time: creating goals with timelines that are broken down into smaller steps so the members of the family can keep track of the progress 

When the family needs help: family therapy, support groups, community involvement, individual counseling aside from family therapy 

Passive Aggressive Behavior 

We have many social cues 

Chapter 3, pg. 56

​Stress is the response of your body and mind to being challenged or threatened.

• Positive stress is eustress
  • awkward situations that help us grow, they cause stress but the result is beneficial for our overall well being
  • getting to know someone
  • telling someone that you like them and getting to know them more
  • networking and connecting with possible employers
  • competitive sports
  • public presentations
  • developing new skills
  • preparing for bigger goals
• Negative stress is distress
  • can be debilitating and reinforce fear, when we are not getting our needs met
  • loss of a job or job insecurity
  • loss of home
  • loss of relationships
  • hunger
  • problems at school or work
  • bullying or drama
  • sleep problems
• Stressor: event or situation that causes stress 
  • Any change: some changes are harder to adapt to than others and some changes are harder to adapt to for one person vs another
  • Prior experience with a stressor helps us adapt but it is best to find ways to make like less stressful.
    
  • Each person gets to decide what stresses them out, nobody can tell them that their experience of stress is not valid 

Stages of Stress:

• Alarm Stage: during the alarm stage, your body releases adrenaline into your blood, it causes an immediate change in your body: heart rate speeds up, muscles tense up, breathing speeds up, your attention narrows and you focus on the stressor. (Life hack [as long as alarm stage is not alerting you to something that you need to react to to save your life]: look at your surroundings and notice four items, take note of sounds around you, take your mind off the stressor)
• Resistance Stage: you feel that it is all good because the alarm stage is gone but you still experience the stress, you try to adapt to it and go by your day.  Sometimes we react with bottled up, accumulated stress and [small things] set us off.  Your body is working hard to cope during the resistance stage and you may be inexplicably irritated, tired, and less able to handle additional stress.  Traffic is a common cause of this state or resistance.
• Exhaustion Stage: Your body can no longer keep up with the demands placed on it, depleted emotional and or physical state.  this happens after a long time of resistance stage, it can happen when we lose a loved one.  It is not permanent but it can last years.

Signs of stress, pg. 63:

• Stomachaches: can occur in stomach, small or large intestine.  Stress disrupts the movement of food through the digestive system.  Food might move too fast or too slow and you might feel gas, cramps, diarrhea, or constipation.  Stress increases stomach acid making an ulcer more likely to occur.
• ​Breathing problems: Asthma may be triggered by stress, it also increases breathing rate and heart rate which can least to feeling short of breath.
• Headaches: Tension in muscles around scalp, face, and neck can cause aches, a migraine begins when blood vessels in the brain and scalp narrow which limits the supply of oxygen to the brain. You can keep a log to see when you experience aches.
• Lowered resistance to disease: Stress may lower your immune system, During the alarms stage some parts of the immune system function better than usual to protect you but prolonged stress can slow the immune system down.
• Heart disease: Your heart can suffer from prolonged or frequent stress because your blood vessels narrow and your blood pressure rises. 

 
Responses to stress: 

• Optimism and pessimism
• Aiming for perfection
• Resilience

Book: Health, Prenctice Hall

Review the concepts found in your book:

• Health: overall well being of you body, mind, and relationships with other people 

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• Life expectancy: the number of years a person can expect to live

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• Quality of life: the degree of overall satisfaction that a person gets from life

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• Goals: a result that a person aims for and works hard to reach 

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• Physical health: how well your body function

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• Mental health: the state of being comfortable with yourself, with others, and with your surroundings 

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• Emotional health: how you react to events in your life, your mind is alert, you can learn from your mistakes, and recognize your achievements

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• Social health: how well you get along with others, have loving relationships, respect the rights of others, give and accept help

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• Wellness: ideal level of health 

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• Risk factors: any action or condition that increases the likelihood of injury, disease, or other negative outcome

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• Habits and behavior: habits and behaviors are repeated so often that they become almost automatic

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• Advocacy: using communication to influence and support others in making positive decisions

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• Influences: anything that can affect your decisions, habits and behaviors

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• Advertising: any effort to sell you products or services

• What is personality? Behaviors, attitudes, feelings, and ways of thinking that make you an individual. 
• Psychologist: Studies how people think, feel, and behave.  Goes to school for 8 years or more after high school.

Personality Traits

• Extroversion vs Introversion: These words are used to describe extremes; we are not just one or the other and we might behave differently in different situations. If you just met a group of people, you might want to get to know them a bit better before you talk to them more, you might also be interested in learning more about what they like to talk about before deciding what conversations to bring up. 

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• An extrovert tends to be seen as talkative and sociable while an introvert is identified as shy, quiet, and reserved.  Extroverts tend to seek out other people while introverts are more comfortable spending time on their own.

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• Agreeableness: your tendency to relate to other people in a friendly way, people who are agreeable tend to cooperate more, are more forgiving, and assume that other people are honest and trustworthy. 
• 
  
  • People who are disagreeable tend to be suspicious and assume that other people are unreliable or ready to take advantage of them. 
  • Oftentimes due to past experience 
  • It is ok to not be agreeable if you feel that it is time to hold back on blind trust, it is ok to question everything and follow your intuition, nobody can tell you how to feel about a situation as you find an environments where you feel safe to be agreeable. 

 

• Conscientiousness: how responsible and self-disciplined you are, think through decisions, think of consequences, follow through

 

• Stability: Ability to cope with change, people who are emotionally stable tend to be relaxed, secure, and calm, even during difficult situations. On the other end of the scale are people who are fearful, worried, and angry.  They tend to focus on the negative and expect the worst in most situations.

 

• Openness to experiences: curious, imaginative, and creative, likely to have a wide range of interests and may be less predictable, more independent, and be less likely to do what everyone else is doing

 

• Environment

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• Friends: affect our healthy behaviors, levels of collaboration, what we consider acceptable humor, topics of conversation, how we respond when someone in the group is struggling.

 

• Family: children learn about attitudes, feelings and ways to behave from their families, we are constantly reevaluating what we learned as children.

 

• Culture: Personality traits that are valued in one culture might not be as valued in another culture.  Some cultures encourage people to be independent while some encourage people to fit in.  In some cultures you can show your feelings in public more.  We are constantly creating culture. 

Personality development

• Develop trust: An infant depends on others for food, clean diaper, and affection.  If these needs are met, the child learns to trust other people.  If these needs are not met, the child learns to mistrust and withdraw.

 

• Learn to be independent: We learn to do things on our own, if we master our goals we might feel a healthy sense of power and control within our reality, if we fail and have support, we try again and thrive, if we fail and are ridiculed we might develop self-doubt, insecurity or shame.   Setting new goals and learning new skills can help us overcome self-doubt and regain a balanced sense of power and control.  

 

• Take initiative: We start to plan our own activities and set our own goals that are based on our personal interests.  As we develop a sense of right and wrong we might take initiative to speak up against oppression and inequity.  We think of new clubs, bands, web sites, dreams.
• Develop skills: As we grow we learn how to take care of ourselves and others, how to have our needs met, study skills, learning skills, social skills, our skills help us feel competent, we know that we are closer to reaching our goals because we worked on gaining the skills that we will use to get there.

 

• Search for identity: Sense of self and what motivates you to keep on going.  Your frame of mind or topics of conversation, what you like to do with your free time, what we are working on for ourselves and for others.

 

• Establish intimacy: We establish close bonds with others and know that it won’t always go the way we expected but find ways to honor our boundaries and not give up on the possibility of building a large network of healthy relationships.  If we support others and expect the same in return we build healthy rapport and a culture of showing up and following through.  

 

• Create and nurture: Help your friends and family-thrive, tell them how they can help you thrive.  Nurture vulnerable populations such as children and the elderly.  Stay up to date with the agencies that serve them, monitor progress and funding sources for public health programs.  Advocate for policies that protect them such as rigorous background checks for anyone that works with them.  Build community events around raising awareness to hold space for artists and musicians.

 

• Look back with acceptance: Celebrate your success and work on new skills every step of the way.  Take risks that you feel comfortable taking and consider the negative possibilities of the risk to see what you can do to avoid them or feel more prepared to face them.  Look up articles and web sites that share tips and tricks.  All we can do is try our best and if things don’t go well, it is not our fault.  Older people tend to regret what they did not do more than what they did do.  Failure is natural and part of the process of growing.

 
Activity: work in groups of three or four, and write about what personality is and where it comes from. 

​Then share with the class:

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• Stop using oppressive language: racism and sexism, all the -isms.  ​This will help people decide that they like you more often, being oppressive is simply not peaceful and chill.

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​Thinking of what you are thankful for immediately puts you in a good state of mind.  Telling people that you are thankful for their existence immediately puts them in a good state of mind, it is easy, and it is free.
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• Maintain a positive attitude: when possible, you don't have to do this all the time, it's ok to feel what you feel, focus on peace and whether or not what you do will help resolve an issue

• Focus on your strengths: ask yourself what you did well today

• Form close relationships: to the best of our ability, set your bondaries and respect the boundaries of others

• Set goals for yourself: if you have a really big goal, think of smaller steps that can help you reach that goal (more on that later), see if there are people that you can collaborate with

• Avoid risky behaviors: we all take risks but are you eating pizza off the floor or taking a mystery pill? Is there a chance that a dog peed where the pizza fell?

• Ask for help: resources are there for you, you can also ask your friends to crowdfund to replace your stolen bike or ask for tutoring

• Help others: see what people need, tell them to let you know how you can support them

How self-esteem develops:
 

• Childhood: Children need support and encouragement from family and peers

 

• Adolescent: It is normal to be a bit self-conscious, hopefully we won't judge ourselves too harshly, you deserve love from yourself, media tries to set "beauty standards" to make everyone look somewhat similar by buying the same products, peculiarities rule

 

• Adulthood: adults struggle with the same things youth do, don't let them fool you, encourage them to have a healthy self-esteem along with you instead

 
Activity: look at page 39
 

• Make a list of your strengths and weaknesses
• Set ambitious but healthy goals for yourself
• Remember to not be too hard on yourself
• Rely on your values: what does that mean?
• Reflect on how you accept compliments
• Look beyond your own concerns
• Do not focus too much on appearance   

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• Self actualization:
  • The ongoing journey of being happy with who we are and what we do on the planet.
• Personality traits of Self-Actualized People according to Maslow's studies:


• 1. Realistic and accepting: sometimes we don't have all of these needs met so we focus on what we can do to be in a situation where the needs are met instead of being crushed by a reality that we are not completely happy with.
  2. Independent and self sufficient: bring your own supplies and take care of your own emotions, this makes it easier to be thankful for the support of others.
  3. Appreciative of life: recognize your opportunities and privileges and help foster a world where other people have them too. Recognize anything that is going well.
  4. Concerned about humankind: practice empathy, know that injustice is not necessary and support efforts to reach peace and equilibrium/ balance.
  5. Capable of loving others: realizing that other people are real and deserve love and respect as well as resources that will help them meet their needs.
  6. Fair, unprejudiced: reflect on how we have normalized oppression but don't need to continue to reinforce oppression, reflect on misogyny and misandry with an open mind.
  7. Creative and hard-working: We do not need to hold back from doing good work and showing that we care, we can always create something for someone.
  8. Not afraid to be different: When people are simply happy to be themselves. 

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• Accept your feelings: It is ok to feel anger, denying your anger will not make it go away, and ignoring your anger can lead to more destructive behaviors later on.  Once you accept your anger you can work on expressing your anger in healthy ways. 

 

• Identify your triggers: Know what makes you angry, it might be a particular person or situation, thinking about events in your past, or thinking about your future, you can write down what you feel in a journal.  Know that your feelings are valid.  

 

• Describe your response: Reflect on or write down what you did in response to your anger, and what happened after you responded.  Reflect on whether or nor it helped relieve or process that anger.

 
Find constructive alternatives: ​​

• Talk about it: After you feel better, try to discuss the problem.  Let the person know how you feel without blaming them, listen, with respect to what the other person has to say.  Even if talking does not fix the problem, you may feel ready to move on and see if they stop doing the thing that made you angry.  If you told them how you feel and they still continue to hurt you there is a possibility that they are trying to hurt you and you can consider setting boundaries with the person.  You can chose to talk to them less or only in certain places such as school or work.  You have the right to do whatever helps you feel safe.  

• Release excess energy: Physical activity to get the energy out, even a walk can be very helpful but punching things (soft inanimate things) works too, there is also dance and hiking. 

• Avoid certain situations: Leave a situation when you start to feel angry or change your activities if there is no other way to avoid the trigger.

• Avoid destructive behaviors: think of healthy alternatives such as art and music

• Ask for help: get feedback from supportive friends and family, look up community resources.

• Social issue anger: Start a nonprofit organization or get involved in the solution, support organizations that are part of the solution

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• Happiness
• Sadness
• Anger
• Fear
• Learned emotion

​Love:

• We learn what love looks like through our culture

Guilt and shame:

• When people in our life lead us to feel bad instead of being supportive we learn to feel guilt and shame instead of learning alternative actions, it can be helpful to feel these to some extent but if we linger in these emotions we could feel down and will be less likely to seek constructive solution​

• Sometimes anger can mask fear guilt and shame when we don't know how to express our frustration; we might appear to be angry.  

• Ask yourself what led you to feel the imbalance of emotion and how to cope with the trigger to bypass having to label your feelings.

​Coping with emotions​:​

• Coping strategies help you process what you feel in a healthy or constructive way.

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• Examples include: talking to someone who won't judge you, taking a break by reading or going to an event, doing something nice to yourself to nurture yourself back to a state of equilibrium (be your own baby bird and baby bird caregiver), do something new to break out of the usual routine, art or music, connect to your hobbies and things that you love.  

• Denial: refusing to recognize an emotion or problem, acting as though nothing is wrong

• Compensation: making up for weakness in one area by excelling in another area

• Rationalization: Making excuses for actions of feelings

• Reaction formation: behaving in a way opposite to the way you feel

• Projection: putting your own faults onto another person

• Regression: returning to immature behaviors to express emotion 

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