Arthur Ciaramicoli

And by that, you're not reacting quickly.

You're not being so overly sensitive to the interaction.

And when we react empathically, when we give our spouse or significant other or friends or colleagues a break because they're a little off in that moment, they tend to be more empathic with us, and we have much more likelihood of having an empathic interchange rather than starting an argument.

I have a chapter in the book on self-talk because we learn how to talk to ourselves very early in life.

If you've been called names or you've been called stupid or told that you're unattractive or if you've been bullied, as a young child you tend to internalize those views of yourself and

And then you don't even realize that that's the way you talk to yourself.

And that's the way you produce stress internally without even being in an interaction with other people because you're repeating interactions of the past.

And early in life, those interactions are very influential and they can have a dramatic effect on how you talk to yourself.

So what's the work?

The work is trying, again, to engage in interactions where you take in rational feedback from other people

to try to get a better sense of who you are because, you know, we all grow up with biases.

We all grow up with inaccuracies about ourselves.

In many ways, it's sort of like when we grow up, we were looking in a circus mirror and we can't see ourselves all that accurately unless we get very clear feedback from others.

And if you didn't get very clear feedback from others growing up, you need to get it as an adult.

You need to engage with other rational people.

That's, you know, when I do group therapy sessions, for instance, that's what we do.

We spend time on giving each other feedback on how people interact with each other so that you can rewrite the old story and create a new story, sort of turning a fiction book into a nonfiction book.

And you have to be open to feedback from other people to change that negative self-talk, especially rational people, people you know will be truthful and tactful with you.

Well, worry and stress and anxiety are all in the same circle because worry usually, not always, but usually is based on projected fears, fears from the past and, again, misperceiving.

We worry about tomorrow when most of us cannot accept the fact that we can't predict tomorrow.