October 2010

What are your triggers? Three little exercises to discover them

Everyone has little things that irk them. I do, and I experience at least one every day and usually many more than I can count. For people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or have had extremely difficult experiences like abuse of one kind or another, a “trigger” can produce reactions like panic attacks, crying [...]

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Feel The Fear–and Do It Anyway

That title isn’t original; I confess. It’s the title of a book, which you may know, by the very same name: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, by Susan Jeffers. I think I still have it somewhere. I first discovered it when I worked at a bookstore right after college where—you guessed it—I was [...]

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Bullies Aren’t Born That Way–They’re Made

In sixth grade, I became aware of a girl—let’s call her Gina—who seemed troubled. It was my first year on the “big kid” school bus that brought all of us “valley” kids up to town to go to school, and it took at least a half-hour or more, depending on how far out you lived. [...]

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Who Do You Think You’re Talking To? 7 Tips for Better Conversations

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people. —William Butler Yeats In first-year college writing classes—and probably high school, too—students are instructed to write for “a general audience”: the average, intelligent, half-decently-well-read adult who may or may not know anything about the subject. The goal is to help students develop [...]

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