Social Sciences
Language (s) of love
I absolutely adore the blogosphere. To find like-minded people with the same need to write about similar ideas as myself, is like finding water in a desert. Today I woke up to a comment from a new friend at the other side of the world, and immediately felt energized and happy. I read her last post, and was even more taken with her, since I learnt something new about her and about psychology. Maybe you will feel the same way? In any case, I want to reblog her post, to show my appreciation.
language(s) of love
by kajoemanis in random thoughts Tags: love, opinion, thought, writing
When you love someone, in terms of romantic relationship
, you tend to focus everything on him. You learn what he likes and dislikes, his hobbies, strengths and weaknesses, moods, insecurities, and… verbal and non-verbal languages. You push and pull, adapt, have breakdowns, but you refuse to give up because you want to have a deep meaningful connection. Why? For a deep meaningful connection provides us security and safety, both physically and mentally.
Basically, it doesn’t only apply to your beloved one. This also applies to those we deal with in our lives on daily basis. They can be your co-workers, acquaintances, neighbors, good friends, siblings, parents and/or children. We do this because we tend to seek a deeper connection with others, albeit it gives us complexities of life. We like to make something meaningful because then it will make us have meaning to others. And on the top of all, it’s simply because we’re humans.
And language is the bridge to connect all relations humans can possibly create and it’s more than something that has linguistic features with structure and sound conveying ideas, meaning and emotion. I’m referring to the non-verbal language that can make others feel loved and secured and later confident about themselves: the language of love.
There’s a good reference about this particular language. It’s entitled The Five Love Languages and written by Dr. Gary Chapman. To sum up, everyone has their own love languages. He divides the love languages into 5 types:
– Words affirmation: they need to hear that they’re wonderful, awesome, beautiful. And if they make something for you, say cooking, they need to hear from you that their cooking is delicious. A simply comment such as ‘yummy!’ can make them happy. And of course a thank you. It will build their self-image and confidence.
– Quality time: they need to spend some intimate moments by doing things together with their loved ones. If they like gardening, they need you to be there doing it with you happily. If they like hiking, they wish you to participate actively in it. Doing things together and focusing on one another in given special time even though it’s only short but consistently is what they see as a way to show their love.
– Giving presents: they believe that giving presents to their loved ones is a language of love. They will remember your birthday, anniversary and other special dates because they think these dates are important to you. If you forget theirs or you do remember but you don’t give presents, they will feel neglected and unloved.
– Acts of service: doing little things in house for your loved ones, such as helping them with dishes, cleaning and dusting are viewed as acts of love. Imagine if they’re busy doing the house chores alone but you’re just sitting there reading or watching TV. They will feel so much unloved and you’re being indifferent.
– Physical touch: They like holding hands, touching your hair, cuddling and even dancing with you. When their partner can be reciprocal speaking this language, they will feel loved and special.
Everyone may speak the same language(s) with their partners or totally different, mostly due to their own background such how they’re raised. Yes, we can’t ignore this important issue because that’s when they learnt their first love languages (a bit of it or not at all). Further, things will collide when people use different language(s) but refuse to learn their partner’s language(s). Imagine if you have the physical touch language but your partner didn’t learn it when s/he was little and so s/he never realizes that it is important to you. On the other hand, picture if your partner ‘speaks’ quality time language, but you’re too busy with your gadgets and works even when you’re at home rather than spending some hours together after a long day. Analogously, when one wants to communicate with someone who speaks a different native language, s/he will do any efforts to use a language that the other can understands, instead of insisting to use his or her own language, or s/he won’t get there. When the connection gets deeper, s/he will learn to speak the other’s native language to understand him or her more for the more you understand, the more things will get easier, the connection gets deeper and the bonding gets tighter. It will make us secure the insecurities and feel safe physically and mentally. For the sake of it, we will do that in any level of relations: business, friendship and even romance.
As for me, apparently I speak at least four languages. The one language that has less importance – not that I don’t think it’s necessary – to me is acts of service simply because of the way I was raised. I never saw my dad there to help my mom with house chores and my mom would whining whole days 24/7 because of tiresome (well, 5 children and doing the house chores alone, it’s automatically understandable). But this language can be replaced with another one: quality time. And I think it’s more valuable and powerful when doing house chores together because you want to have quality time with your partner, than simply as an act of service.
I personally think it is nice to have someone who understands your language(s). I believe, it feels wonderful and comfortable. You will also feel so much loved and understood without having to be mentally exhausted when relating to others – despite of all possible breakdowns. It will weigh you down when your partner enjoys your company and feels comfortable with you because you understand his or her languages but they don’t strive to use your languages in return. No matter what, we have to admit that everything tends to be reciprocal in general. And when loving someone becomes a noble idea (you give more than take), we must question ourselves how far we are willing to learn and ‘speak’ our loved ones’ language(s) for it will take a lot of efforts, energy and time. Yet, before coming down to the answer, you must love yourself and find the clues of this followingquestion for yourself:
What is your love language(s)?
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The sound of death
When I started this blog, I had a vague idea of what I wanted: To share some of the knowledge collected over a lifetime with the readers, and maybe find others who wanted to do the same. I love to find and share post I find inspirational.
Suicide is a topic that never can be talked enough about. Psychologists in Norway are taught (but not enough) to ask questions related to killing yourself, and most luckily take this seriously. Most therapists will once in their lives lose a client (I am dreading when it happens to me) and it is a real trauma when and if it happens. I have talked with therapists who have lost somebody, and they never forget it. Considering how much I care for many of my patients, I know how much it would hurt if they were not here anymore, and I have seen and read enough to know that the pain never seizes completely. For this reason everything I learn that can make me a better therapist, is extremely valuable. For this reason, I want to share some interesting research I`ve stumbled into lately.
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In 2003, during his first year teaching at Harvard, Nock approached his colleague Mahzarin Banaji with a proposal. Banaji had helped develop the Implicit Association Test, which was introduced to social psychology five years earlier and has become famous for its ability to measure biases that subjects either don’t care to acknowledge or don’t realize they have on topics like race, sexuality, gender and age. Nock wondered if the I.A.T. could be configured to measure people’s bias for and against being alive and being dead, and Banaji thought it was worth a try. They experimented with several versions in Nock’s lab and at the psychiatric-emergency department at Mass General. Then they put their best one on a laptop and offered it to Mass General patients, many of whom had recently threatened or attempted suicide; 157 agreed to take it. Hunched in plastic waiting-room chairs or propped up in cots as they waited for a clinician to admit or discharge them, they were often grateful for a distraction.
Balancing the computer on their thighs, the patients held their pointer fingers over left and right keyboard keys. The heading “Life” appeared in the upper left corner of the screen, “Death” in the upper right. In the center, words associated with one of the headings popped up one at a time. Patients jabbed the left key to link “alive,” “survive,” “breathing,” “thrive” and “live” with “Life”; the right key matched “funeral,” “lifeless,” “die,” “deceased” and “suicide” with “Death.” The researchers asked the volunteers to do this as quickly as they could. Each word had a correct response. If patients put “thrive” with “Death,” for instance, a red X appeared, and the test paused until they hit the proper key. The sorting continued as the words reappeared randomly. After about a minute, the headers switched sides, and the process repeated. Then new rubrics popped up — “Me,” “Not Me” — along with new words to sort: “self,” “I,” “myself,” “my,” “mine,” “other,” “theirs,” “they,” “them,” “their.” Again the headers flipped places, and the sorting continued.
Once the patients had established a rhythm, the test began to measure bias. The headers doubled up: “Life” above “Me” and “Death” above “Not Me,” forcing test-takers to hit the same button to group “thrive” and “breathing” with “self,” “my” and “myself.” “Die” and “funeral” went with “theirs,” “they,” “them.” Theoretically, the faster the patients were and the fewer mistakes they made on this part of the test, the more they associated themselves with living.
Then “Life” and “Death” switched places, swapping the associations; the same key grouped “myself” and “my” with “funeral,” “suicide,” “die,” “deceased.” Agility on this part of the test would suggest an association with dying.
Doctors of all kinds, including psychologists, do no better than pure chance at predicting who will attempt suicide and who won’t. Their patients often lie about their feelings to avoid hospitalization. Many also appear to mislead by accident, not realizing they are a risk to themselves or realizing but not knowing how to say so. Some 90 percent of young people who kill themselves have visited their primary-care doctors within a year; nearly 40 percent of adults have within a month. The opportunity to help them seems enormous, if only there were a way to see past appearances and identify an inclination they might be hiding — perhaps even from themselves.
The Mass General patients and their clinicians rated on separate scales how likely they thought they were to try to kill themselves in the future. When researchers checked on each patient six months later, they discovered that, as expected, clinicians had fared no better than 50-50 in their predictions. Patients themselves, it turned out, were only slightly more accurate. The I.A.T., to everyone’s surprise, bested them both. People who sorted words more quickly when “Death” was paired with “Me” than with “Not Me” proved three times as likely to try to kill themselves as people who sorted words more quickly when “Life” was paired with “Me.” The I.A.T., it seemed, was picking up a heightened signal of suicidal tendencies that the most commonly used method for assessing risk — a clinical interview — had been powerless to detect.
One of the comment (there were many) to this post was:
A letter written by my daughter,16,on tumbler
Dear you,
i’ve been there, okay? i’ve been in the position you are right now. you want to do it, you want everything to end. you think that this world is going to be so much better without you. you think that it won’t matter if you’re gone. you figure people can just go on with their lives, and eventually you’ll be nothing but a memory. it’s better for yourself, and everyone around you.
i’m here to tell you that you’re dead wrong.
Suicide is never the answer. Even though it may feel like the one thing you have control over, the one thing you can take, you can never take it back. There are no do overs. You can’t commit, die, and then decide you want to be back here again. It doesn’t work that way.
Your mom’s smile slowly withers away after the years of your passing. She clamps her hand over her mouth as she rereads those same familiar words, “It’s not your fault, Mom.” Even though she wants to believe you, she can’t.
Remember the guy who would never cry? That was your father. But that was the past. He needs to convince everyone—and himself—that he’s okay. He constantly thinks about what would have happened if he walked into your room, only a half hour before it happened. In his mind,it was his fault.
Remember.You are beautiful. I don’t need to see a photo of you to know that. You’re so much more than what you’ve become. You are so loved.
Stay strong. Keep holding on. Everything is going to be okay.
With love,
Me
The sound of something old being replaced
This day, full of memories pulled together at one time. If one could measure them, they would add up and tell something about humanity. We need to recollect, finding meaning it what happens so that the future makes sense. Most of us struggle, putting one foot in front of the other, stopping at some post showing beauty, and some where we just want to walk and walk even if it’s impossible since the fence in front of us, is too steep to climb,
I once read a book by Stephen king that was about a guy just running, walking and running. He was in a game, where just a few stayed alive. since it was a tv-show everyone could watch every movement.
Some of our daily rituals are done privately, some together with others.
This year have been both lonely and public moment; I’ve been in turmoils and moments that always will stay with me. It’s the transformation of somebody grabbing their dreams, looking them in the eye, and saying with confidence that I CAN follow you, and also learning to step back, knowing that loss will be felt.
It’s not true that you just lose when you’ve run over the finish line at the end with a second or third place. You’ve felt the experience and hope.
It’s not true that if you loose your favorite toy, you wish you never had it in the first place, that the good things counted for nothing. Even if year 2012 holds memories in its arms that you rather forget, they are still worthy.
Its possible to crown them and give them their space, even if the events were not pretty when they happened. That makes it all so much clearer what to avoid in the future, and also what to keep.
Embrace the new year with eyes still willing to see. There might be another person around corner, that you’ve never knew you wanted to meet. It might be hurt and loss, and it might be you following your dreams. If you shut your eyes, keep them closed with regret, moments will not knock on your door, even if they were blinking and shouting: See me!
the next day will soon put its toes in fresh water, and its inviting you to try the same.
2013 is its name, and you can either forget it, or see that the sound of the unknown presenting itself.
;
;
Mirrorgirl 
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