• Grief.

    Suffering is part of human existence.  This is fact.  Every person in the world has lost something of significance and gone into a process of grieving.  Grief takes on different forms for different people.  Some numb pain; some deny through avoidance, and some lean into the pain.  Loss is unavoidable.  Grief comes after loss, and psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross believed that there are 5 stages of grief.  They are: Denial Anger Bargaining Depression Acceptance There has been criticisms of this grief theory among social scientists.  I don’t love it or hate it.  I do think grief is a process, but I don’t necessarily think there is a structure (that we grieve in this consecutive order).  Grief affects…

  • Burn-Out.

    Did you know that burn-out is classified as an “occupational phenomenon” in the International Classification of Diseases by the World Health Organization (WHO)?  It’s in a section describing factors that influence a person’s health without being an illness or injury.   Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life. It’s a syndrome (associated symptoms of opinions, emotions, and behavior) essentially brought to fruition from the unsuccessful management of chronic workplace stress.  It is characterized by three dimensions: Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; Increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; Reduced professional…

  • Heart.

    Have you ever really paid attention to where you feel emotions in your body?  It’s quite an interesting experiment that I recommend you try.  I did it for a week, and I learned that nearly every emotion I feel somewhere in the central portion of my body. But it wasn’t all that surprising when I thought about it.  When my heart breaks, I feel it in my heart.  When I get nervous, I feel it in my stomach.  When I feel joy, I feel it in my heart.  When I feel excitement, I feel it in my stomach.  I don’t feel emotions in my head or my legs.   As you learned, our gut is becoming known in the science community…