Week of August 6 to August 10: What health is, personality, human emotions

Chapter 1: What is health?

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

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web site on Setting goals, smart goals
​www.mindtools.com

To make sure your goals are clear and reachable, each one should be:
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• Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
• Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
• Achievable (agreed, attainable).
• Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
• Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).

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Chapter 2: Personality

• 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. 
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  • 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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Self-esteem and your health

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• Body positivity: All bodies are beautiful, capitalism just tells us to buy things to feel "better".  Yes, movies, magazines, and media have literally and consciously been emotionally abusing us to sell us stuff this whole time.

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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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​Gratitude

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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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maslow's hierarchy of needs

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• Hierarchy of needs
  • Physical needs: food, water, sleep
  • Safety: shelter from elements such as heat, cold, and rain, to feel safe from violence at home or in their community
  • Belonging: connection with other people, we need acceptance and love needed for emotional health
  • Esteem: approval, recognition, respect, appreciation, and attention 

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Achieving your potential

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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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Expressing anger in healthy ways

pg.42 in our book

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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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Primary Emotions:

• Happiness
• Sadness
• Anger
• Fear
• Learned emotion

​Love:

• We learn what love looks like through our culture

Healthy Relationship Information:

• loveisrespect.org

• Dating Abuse Stats

• Center for Disease Control (CDC) wants us all to learn about healthy relationships

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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​

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Recognizing your emotions

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• 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.  

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Common defense mechanisms

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• 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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​Coping

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• Confront the situation
• Release excess energy
• Take a break
• Talk through feelings 

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Sometimes the way you feel is a response to abuse