Emotional Abuse, unlike physical abuse, can be complicated to identify. While physical abuse often comes with obvious signs, emotional abuse isn’t that obvious especially when you are the victim as you must be in some kind of relationship with the abuser. Emotional abuse can lead to serious mental health conditions such as low self-esteem and confidence and depression. This is why understanding how to recognize emotional abuse could help you overcome this negative behavior on your mental health.
Emotional Abuse is described as the use of emotions to criticize, embarrass, shame, and/or blame others as a way to manipulate and control them.
While emotional abuse is prevalent in married and dating relationships, it can also exist in common relationships amongst family members, friends, and co-workers. A relationship is said to be emotionally abusive when there is consistent emotional bullying and the use of abusive words which derail the victim’s self-esteem and mental health, in extension.
Hardly identified, emotional abuse is a form of domestic violence that goes undetected and should be given much more consideration as a form of abuse. It is degrading, humiliating, and terrifying and leads to a long-lasting feeling of helplessness and worthlessness completely messing with the victim’s mental health.
How to Recognize Emotional Abuse
As stated earlier that emotional abuse can happen in any kind of relationship, it can also happen across all ages, people of any age or gender can abuse or be abused. Nonetheless, it is not your fault and you do not deserve to experience it.
Some behaviors you experience every day can be normal in a relationship but when it happens consistently and with intensity, they can be tools for emotional abuse.
1. They Always Want to Control You
Emotional Abusers use abusive behaviors and sometimes shame in an attempt to control. When you have someone who is overly interested in your social life, trying to limit who you engage with, they want you to do what they want without regard for your desires, then you might just have an emotional abuser.
They mostly try to control you by making threats, monitoring your whereabouts, and depriving you of making your own choices either overtly or covertly.
2. They Isolate You
In their effort to manipulate their victims’ lives easily, emotional abusers often isolate their victims. Isolation keeps the victim dependent on the abuser and prevents them from getting support from their loved ones that could help them recognize emotional abuse. Emotional abusers may isolate you by limiting your access to people who would support you such as family and friends. Also, they often tell you that they are the only ones who care about or can put up with you.
Signs that someone is isolating you could be that they become angry when you contact a loved one, they restrict your social life and they insist on going everywhere with you.
3. They Yell At You
Yelling at someone might seem normal in certain situations but when it becomes often and with great intensity, it can be the early signs of an emotionally abusive relationship. Emotional abusers use yelling as a tactic to create or display an unequal power dynamic, where the person whose voice is essentially louder and more aggressive has more power and can instill fear in the other. The abusers use this fear to control their victims.
When your partner, parent, or boss often yells at you as a way to get you to do something they want, then there’s a great chance you are a victim of emotional abuse.
4. You Are Always In the Defensive
Another way to recognize emotional abuse is that the abusers always feel superior to their victims and try to show the victims that they can’t do anything without them. They seem to always want to find faults in any action or decision the victims make without them in the bid to keep their victims dependent on them, so they question everything the victims do.
As a result of this excessive questioning, you always feel the need to defend yourself and everything you do.
5. They Gaslight You
Another common tactic emotional abusers use is gaslighting. Emotional abusers deny that events their victims talk about have happened to make their victims doubt themselves, and their judgments and question their perception of reality. This helps the abuser maintain control because their word becomes more realistic than the victim’s own beliefs, memory, or experience.
An emotional abuser might use some of these phrases to gaslight you; “I never said that”, “You’re crazy for thinking that” and “You’re making a bid deal out of nothing”.
6. They Use Insulting Language at You
To attack your self-esteem and worth, self-confidence, and value as a person, emotional abusers use insults and name-calling to degrade you. They might say things to you like “I’m the only one that can love you”, “You’re too stupid to earn a degree” and “you’ll never get a job”.
When such phrases are repeatedly said to the victims they might start to believe them, and this can affect the victim’s mental health. This tactic wears down the victim’s self-esteem and value.
7. They Are Extreme Jealousy
In addition, extreme jealousy is another way to recognize an emotional abuse. While jealousy is common in relationships, it is important to know that they are positive and negative levels. When jealousy leads to intense anger or controlling behaviors, it can be a warning sign of emotional abuse.
Such extreme jealousy stems from the abuser not feeling like they have power or control over you and your decisions. Some controlling behaviors the abuser may use are; monitoring your calls, texts, or emails, constantly accusing you of cheating, excessively calling you when you are not together, and controlling your appearance, including what you wear.
What To Do When Someone Is Abusing You Emotionally
The most important step in dealing with emotional abuse is identifying and acknowledging the abuse. By being honest to yourself about what you are experiencing you can begin to take back control of your life. Below are practicable steps to reclaim control of your life.
1. Prioritize Yourself
Always put yourself first when it comes to your physical and mental health. Take care of yourself, and stop worrying about pleasing the person abusing you. Be sure to practice self-care by exercising, eating, and resting appropriately. It is also important that you realize you are not to blame for the decisions and behavior of the abuser.
2. Establish Boundaries
Establish achievable boundariesby firmly letting the abuser know that you can’t tolerate their yelling, name-calling, insults, and so on. Also, let them know the consequence if they should choose to re-engage in their abusive behaviors. For example, anytime they call you names, you’ll leave the conversation.
3. Understand You Can’t Fix Them
Remind yourself that the abuser decided to behave in an abusive way and you are not to blame for their decisions. Also, understand that you cannot control their actions but you can control your response.
4. Build a Support Network
Sharing your experience with someone can be difficult but it could also be if great help. Talk to friends and family or even a therapist about your relationship with the abuser. Stay away from the abuser for some time and spend some time with loved ones who will provide you with the support you need. This network of friends and family will help you feel less isolated and their truths can help you put things into perspective.
5. Develop an Exit Plan
If the abuser has no intention of changing or stopping their abusive behavior, know that you can’t stay in this unhealthy relationship forever. You may need to take steps to end the relationship.
Each situation is different, so discuss your exit plan with trusted friends, family, or a therapist. Also, understand that such abuse often escalates when the abused decides to leave the relationship, so make plans for a safety net. You’ll need help from trusted friends, family, and a therapist to heal from the abuse you’ve experienced.
Conclusion
Emotional abuse may not leave scars and scratches but it can be as harmful as physical abuse or even more. How to recognize emotional abuse is important in understanding and addressing emotional abuse. Signs such as gaslighting, yelling, isolation, and others explained above, can be experienced in relationships with partners, family members, or coworkers.
Emotional abuse can be self-consuming, leading to a range of mental health issues. Reaching out to a mental health professional can be lifesaving.
FAQs
What are the effects of emotional abuse?
Emotional abuse directly affects the mental well-being of the victims. The criticism, verbal abuse, gaslighting, and name-calling degrades the victim’s self-esteem, and self-confidence and amplifies self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness and helplessness.
Emotional abuse also leads to health problems like depression and anxiety, stomach ulcers, eating disorders, rapid and irregular heartbeat, and insomnia.
How do I deal with emotional abuse?
Emotional abuse unlike physical abuse is difficult to identify, but when you do, here are some tips to address it; make yourself and how you feel a priority, stop blaming yourself, establish boundaries, work on an exit plan and reach out for support.
Why is emotional abuse difficult to identify?
Most victims of emotional abuse do not know they are being abused because they believe that everything they experience is common in a relationship. They believe everything the abuser says to them as such agreeing that they are being abused is extremely difficult and most times takes the help of a friend or family to recognize the abuse.
When is the right time to leave an abusive relationship?
Once you’ve been able to realize that you are in an emotionally abusive relationship, imagine the kind of relationship you want and compare them with the abusive one. Knowing what you want in a relationship will help you decide when to leave.
How do I help someone in an emotionally abusive relationship?
If you suspect a loved one or friend is in an emotionally abusive relationship, try to be supportive without judging or blaming them for staying. Educate yourself about emotional abuse about what they are going through, you can gently push them towards available resources or professionals that can help, and lastly, know that the decision to leave the relationship isn’t yours.
“I guess it’s part of my destiny to live in this state of despair” “I’ve always known I was the problem of myself, the reason why I don’t get along with others” “why does everything seem to be working against me?”. The above statement has become the norm of our society—people living with pains calling it fate. Perhaps, you’ve heard someone say those words or you have sounded them too. This kind of person is said to be an emotionally damaged person. Unfortunately, they may portray emotionally mature signs but deep down they are emotionally broken.
Being emotionally damaged is a state where one’s feelings have been seared by past happenings or emotional neglect from those they had presumed to have loved and trusted. These occurrences often leave the victim hurt, broken, pained, frustrated, and depressed. Such a state is harmful to the well-being of any person, hence, the majority believes hurting others in return would cure their emotional suffering. However, it only makes it grow worse.
1. Emotionally Damaged People Have Love Disorder Problems
Over the years in the state of brokenness, many develop toxic ideology towards love and the opposite sex. Some feel there is no such thing as love and find it difficult to love again. Also, they can’t relate well with their fellow humans and have poor communication skills. Subsequently, they breed unhealthy relationships due to their fears of being hurt again, such as lack of trust and commitment, suspicious attitude, and carefree attitude.
2. Negative Thought Pattern is Normal to Emotionally Damaged Persons
It’s already registered in their subconscious mind that nothing good can happen to them. Hence, they are pessimistic in their thought patterns, expecting bad things to occur sooner or later. Most times, they struggle to accept pleasant things when given to them. They are the types that always doubt every good compliment said to them. In addition, they prefer reading books that encourage such behavior rather than reading self-improvement books.
3. Poor Self Care Habits
An emotionally damaged person experiences a feeling of worthlessness. Hence, they believe they have nothing to live or hope for. Therefore, they don’t take proper care of themselves, have poor nutrition, live in an untidy environment, and look unkempt. Sadly, many of them engage in harmful habits like taking hard drugs to forget about their pains which gradually affects their memory retention ability.
Interestingly, they won’t encourage others to take hard drugs to showcase emotionally mature signs whereas they aren’t matured.
4. Those Who Are Brokenhearted Enjoy Being Alone
It’s likely to see an emotionally damaged person deserted from others, they don’t associate and have no one to talk with. Even if someone wants to associate with them, they quickly assume the person is there to cause them more pain. Their daily life schedule is built upon a pattern of boredom. One of their greatest fears is rejection, hence they rather don’t associate than suffer rejection.
5. An Emotionally Damaged Person Live with the Feeling of Guilt, Shame, and Regret
A vast majority of those who have been hurt emotionally think that what happened to them was their fault to some extent. Therefore, they are caged in perpetual guilt, shame, and regret, wishing they could turn back the hands of the clock. This attitude deprives them of enjoying life, and they can’t stay happy at their workplace which reduces their productivity at work.
6. Unexplainable Anger Revolves Around Emotionally Damaged Persons
Being brokenhearted makes one naturally angry with themselves and life in general. This kind of anger can be destructive because it’s backed up by pain, hurt, and revenge. This set of people are yet to learn how to recognize their emotions. Hence, they experience mood swings, this minute they are sad, next they are angry, changing from one negative emotion to another.
7. Emotionally Damaged Persons Are Hunted by their Past
Emotionally matured signs include one’s ability to forget the past and move on to a better tomorrow. However, the case is different when it comes to those who are emotionally damaged, they are always seeing flashbacks from their past. This is because they have intentionally refused to let go of the past and are always reliving the past. Hence, they can’t enjoy the present or look forward to a better tomorrow.
8. They Suffer From Low Self-esteem
Oftentimes those who have been hurt emotionally develop low self-esteem. They think less of themselves and deprive themselves of the necessity of life. Unfortunately, we dictate how others should think or treat us by the way we treat ourselves. Hence, it appears as though everyone they come in contact with has a problem with them, and regards them with less or no value at all.
This mindset keeps them from trying something new or going after their goals due to fear of failure. Therefore, they enjoy living the life of a mediocre or an average person.
9. An Emotionally Damaged PersonsHarbors Unforgiveness and Resentment
People who have experienced hurt and pain find it so difficult to forgive those who have caused them pain. Sadly, unforgiveness and resentment are dangerous to one’s mental health and well-being in general. It makes them resentful towards others who haven’t done them wrong but have a connection or similarity to those who have wronged them.
10. Emotionally Hurt Person Are Caged in the Web of Insomnia
A vast majority of those with shattered emotions may disguise and show emotionally mature signs in public, but one thing they can’t pretend with is their inability to have a sound sleep. The inability to sleep comfortably is term insomnia. For emotionally damaged persons they spend most of their night thinking of their past which can’t be changed or devising a means of revenge. Oftentimes, since they are hunted by their past life many of them do have nightmares.
Conclusion
The aim of this post isn’t to make you feel guilty but that you seek help to break free from the grip of emotional pains and regrets. You should associate with helpful friends, take your self-care seriously, allow yourself to be loved again, and stay away from things that remind you of your pains. Most importantly, endeavor to see a therapist who will guide you through complete recovery and help you develop emotionally mature signs.
Perhaps, you’ve been emotionally damaged before and have overcome, what was your experience like and how did you scale through?
Extremely stressful events we experience such as being in an accident, watching a loved one die or a natural disaster might have their toll on our physical and mental health as a response to the experience. This response is called “Trauma”. If you’ve experienced such traumatic events, here are signs that you are living with trauma.
Trauma develops when you experience highly stressful or life-threatening events that cause physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological harm. This leads to feelings of physical threat or extreme fright.
Examples of such traumatic events include:
Witnessing a death
Rape
Domestic abuse
Physical injury
Witnessing a natural disaster
Chronic illness
A difficult divorce
War
Parental abandonment
Trauma can have a long-term effect on the well-being of a person. If symptoms do not decrease, it might be that the trauma has developed into a mental health disorder called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd).
Types of Trauma
1. Acute Trauma
This trauma develops as a result of a single stressful or life-threatening experience. Examples are accidents or the loss of a loved one.
2. Chronic Trauma
This results from prolonged exposure to extremely stressful events repeatedly. Examples include domestic abuse, bullying, or child abuse.
3. Complex Trauma
This trauma develops as a result of exposure to multiple traumatic events.
4. Vicarious Trauma
Vicarious Trauma also known as secondary trauma, this occurs when an individual develops trauma symptoms from close contact with someone who experienced a traumatic event. Mental health providers, families, and those who provide care to traumatised people are at risk of this form of trauma.
Signs That Show You Are Living With Trauma
The way people respond to trauma is different ranging from mild to severe. There are no obvious signs mostly, but people may have serious emotional reactions.
People tend to use shock and denial to protect themselves from the emotional impact of the event. You may feel numb or detached and chances are you might not feel the intensity of the event immediately.
Once you are past the initial shock and denial, the signs you are living with trauma settle in. These signs are:
1. You Avoid Anything That Reminds You of the Event
When you experience a life-threatening situation, you do everything you cannot feel as you did in the course of the event. You’ll find yourself staying away from the environment, places, people, and things that would remind you of the traumatic event. You shy away from people or activities related to the event.
An example is staying away from the family of a lost spouse or engaging in activities that’ll take your mind off the traumatic experience.
2. You Have Flooding Intrusive Thoughts About the Event
Some people, especially those with highly creative minds recreate the traumatic event over and over in their minds, some experience the event again through repeated nightmares and others can’t get their minds off the event. If you find yourself amongst these, you are exhibiting one of the signs you are living with trauma.
3. You Are Constantly on Edge
Traumatic events make people emotionally vulnerable. And in your effort to prevent yourself from such feelings, you feel unsafe and become paranoid even in normal environments. This makes you struggle to feel safe amongst friends and families.
4. You Feel Disconnected From People Around You
Having gone through something you feel most people around you haven’t experienced makes it difficult for you to communicate with them. You feel they cannot relate to what you are going through and as such withdraw from them, thereby isolating yourself from day-to-day activities.
5. You Try to Stop Thinking About the Event
When you find yourself walking away from a conversation about an event because it is distressing, it might be a sign that you are living with trauma. People who have had a traumatic experience find it difficult to stop thinking about the event yet try to. They try to avoid talking about the event to anyone, including mental health providers.
6. You Have Developed Unhealthy Behaviours to Help With the Negative Feelings
As explained earlier, people who experience traumatic events try to numb the distressing feeling they have as a result of the experience. Some people turn to drugs, alcohol, and even binge-eating in an attempt to do away or reduce the symptoms of the trauma they experience.
7. You Develop Some Physical Symptom
Since trauma occurs as a result of highly stressful events, victim exhibit certain physical symptoms of stress. Fatigue, headaches, digestive symptoms, sweating, and nausea are common physical effects of trauma.
Also, traumatic experience tends to worsen an existing medical condition of people.
8. You Have Difficulty Sleeping/Insomnia
As a result of the repeated nightmares and flashbacks of the traumatic event traumatised people experience, having a healthy sleep becomes difficult. The fear of reliving the traumatic event again while sleeping often leads to anxiety which in turn triggers Insomnia. If you are having difficulty having a good night’s rest as a result of a nightmare about a stressful event you experienced, it is one of the signs you are living with trauma.
9. You Are Having Difficulty Concentrating After a Traumatic Event
The lack of sleep, mental exhaustion as a result of trying to avoid the thoughts of a traumatic event renders traumatised people tired. This exhaustion makes it difficult for you to concentrate on your work, school, family, and your day to day activities.
10. You Experience Emotional Outbursts
Experiencing emotional outburst is one of the signs you are living with trauma. Carrying the constant thoughts of the traumatic experience and not being able to share these thoughts will someone else, leads to emotional outbursts in an attempt to ease the mind of pent-up emotions. These outbursts could be sudden and excessive crying, laughter, or anger.
How Do You Manage Trauma?
They’re many behaviors you could adopt to help with the symptoms of trauma. such behaviours include:
Spend time with others to help with withdrawal.
Talk about the traumatic experience with your family, friends, journal, or diary.
Recognise you can’t control everything.
Try to eat well, exercise frequently, sleep well and avoid alcohol or drug use.
Maintain a routine.
All of the above mention behavior adjustments could help with your symptoms. However, it is advised and even more appropriate to reach out to a mental healthcare provider for professional help. Psychologists and other mental health professionals can help you find ways to cope and manage trauma effectively.
Conclusion
At one point or another, some people will experience traumatic events in their lives. Some may respond to it for a short while in the form of shock and distress and can easily recover from it. However, a minority of people will respond to traumatic events for a long term, as in the development of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This involves a lengthy process of recovery.
Understanding the symptoms and signs you are living with trauma, self-care and therapy can help you cope and manage symptoms from a traumatic event and improve your quality of life.
Humans react differently to things and situations happening around them or to them. However, irrespective of the differences, it can be broadly classified into positive and negative reactions. For instance, when challenges occur with no hope of a solution, the vast majority will lose focus and give in to fear and tears. On the other hand, there are still a few individuals out there, who can cope fine despite their current situation. These categories have learned how to understand their emotions and choose the positive over the negative. This article seeks to tell you about activities to help your child grow emotionally.
Interestingly, growing to such a stage of emotional maturity doesn’t happen overnight or within a twinkle of an eye, in essence, it’s a process that requires time – It begins from childhood. Therefore, as a parent there are a series of activities to help your kids grow emotionally mature; this process eases their growth stage unto adulthood.
What is Emotional Maturity?
Emotional maturity is a state where a person has gained the ability to understand his/her emotions, and beyond understanding has the power to manage their emotions no matter their circumstances – either pleasant or unpleasant. As earlier established it doesn’t happen in a day, but it’s a skill that is developed through consistent work overtime. Furthermore, growing to the stage of emotional maturity begins with the development of one’s emotional intelligence by having vivid knowledge of one’s thoughts and behavior.
Subsequently, this lays the foundation for emotional maturity and helps one decide how best to approach a situation. Sadly, most parents don’t feel the need to help their kids grow emotionally, because they have experienced a series of emotional neglect in the past. However, instead of depriving your children, you can choose to learn how to overcome childhood emotional neglect.
What Are the Benefits of Emotional Maturity?
1. Emotional Maturity Helps One Provide Productive Solutions to Problems
Problems are certainly unavoidable in life, arising from people, situations, and things. But what matters most is how we can handle those problems by providing a productive solution. In response to this, being emotionally mature keeps one calm despite the turbulence around. Also, in a state of calmness, a person can think straight and provide constructive solutions.
2. It Helps Kids Associate Socially With Peers
As a parent don’t hesitate to learn about those activities to help your kids grow emotionally, this is because this activity enables them to associate with their peers positively. Kids who are damaged emotionally have poor self-esteem about themselves and feel left out among their peers. In contrast, when your child is matured emotionally they feel good about themselves and mingle with their peers to learn more.
3. Emotional Maturity Empowers One to Seek Help
Those who are mature emotionally know that life isn’t about themselves alone. Rather a connected network of valuable people, who serves as a propeller towards the actualization of their goals. Hence, when they are exhausted they don’t keep the pain to themselves or die in silence, on the contrary, they are quick to ask for help if need be. In essence, kids who are mature emotionally feel free to tell their parents things about themselves especially when they are suffering from bullying at school.
4. Emotional Maturity Enablesa Person to Cope with Difficult Situations
Hard times are what make the journey of life worthwhile. They build us into becoming the best version of ourselves because the comfort zone slows down progress. However, those who are not yet mature emotionally easily get overwhelmed by their difficult times, but the reverse becomes the case when such a person is emotionally matured – they overcome difficult times. Therefore, you must be determined to learn about activities to help your kids grow emotionally which enables them to cope with difficult circumstances.
5. Control the Effects of Negative Emotions
The vast majority don’t know how to curtail their negative emotions and similarly don’t care about the aftermath of such emotions. Those who struggle with anger or other negative emotions must learn to excuse themselves from amidst people to avoid taking regrettable actions. This is why everyone must learn how to be emotionally mature to avoid hurting themselves and others by venting negative emotions wrongly.
Activities to Help Your Child Grow Emotionally
1. Spend Quality Time with Your Kids by Hanging Out Together
It’s wrong to abandon your kids all in the name of a quest for money, a career, or an accomplishment. When kids are left alone they begin to feel unwanted and think less of themselves. In contrast, learn how to balance work and family to be able to spend quality time with your kids. Hanging out with your kids helps them realize that survival is tired of social connection and they wouldn’t hesitate to seek help when needed instead of keeping the pain to themselves.
2. Practice More Relaxation and Meditation
Among those activities to help your child grow emotionally mature is the frequent practice of relaxation. Kids shouldn’t be exempted from this practice. This is because both of them are healthy practices that help bring the body to a state of calmness and focus. Interestingly, the more your kids give in to the act of meditation the more they can maintain a calm state when unpleasant things happen. Constructive solutions are birthed from the state of serenity and focus. Also, encourage them to cultivate the habit of listening to calm music.
3. Encourage Your Kids to Practice Healthy Habits
The practice of healthy habits is what enables kids to value themselves and learn to become more empathetic towards others. In essence, they become mindful of all their actions and decisions to avoid causing harm to themselves and others. Healthy practices include obedience to instructions, keeping good company, proper eating routine, dedication to academic work, and being truthful and honest among others. In addition, ensure you inculcate the right morals into your kids because kids who are morally unsound easily give in to negative emotions.
4. Decisions Making Helps Kids Grow Emotionally
Your kids begin to take responsibility for their actions when they are allowed to make decisions by themselves. Responsible kids will always manage their emotions irrespective of the situation. The importance of allowing kids to make their own decisions can’t be overemphasized as it helps them see the bigger picture of life. This way, they can choose what’s right over what’s wrong without feeling controlled or forced. At times, as a parent, you may feel they don’t know what’s best, however, feel free to tell them the pros and cons of every action they intend to take and allow them to decide.
5. Kids Who Engage in Worthwhile Activities Grow Emotionally
Productive activities are one of those activities to help your child grow emotionally. This is because these kinds of activities boost their creativity and brain coordination and; in turn influence their emotions positively, especially when done within a group like academic activities and participation in sports. In addition, be committed to discovering your kid’s talent and supporting them as much as possible. Furthermore, they should grow their talent by learning a skill that’s related to their talent.
Kids who get everything done for them by others find it difficult to coordinate themselves. In other words, they don’t know the value of things because they aren’t aware of the effort put together to achieve that thing. Therefore, you would do your kids lots more good by assigning them household chores for kids. Engaging in such activities teaches them about hard work and boosts their problem-solving skillswhen a task requiring their reasoning is assigned to them.
7. It’s Okay For Your Kids to Make Mistakes
Oftentimes, people get confused when they make mistakes or give in to depression when they fail because they have been taught that failure is the end of the tunnel for them. This mindset is often gotten from childhood as parents make their children feel bad when they make mistakes. However, this approach is wrong as it limits the growth of any child. Failures and mistakes are part of life and are stepping stones to greater heights. Hence, allow your kids to make mistakes so they can learn and avoid such occurrences in the future.
8. Reading Valuable Books Boost Emotional Growth
Reading books is one of those activities to help your child grow emotionally when applied currently. Kids can learn about different types of emotions and the effects of reading books related to emotional growth. Oftentimes, this book comes in children’s novel format telling stories about things, animals, and humans. However, within these storylines are moral lessons for kids to learn and apply to their own lives. So, instead of allowing your kids to play around or spend unnecessary time in front of the screen, buy them this set of books and watch them grow emotionally.
Conclusion
Growing emotionally isn’t a day job but rather a continuous process of growth beginning from childhood. Therefore, take all those activities to help your kids grow emotionally outlined above one at a time. In addition, encourage your kids to familiarize themselves with a positive affirmation attitude. In essence, they should learn how to always say something positive about themselves, as it influences their mindset and reactions towards situations that happen around them.
The ability to analyze arguments, evaluate evidence, and distinguish between fact and opinion is a valuable skill that most people term critical thinking. In this article, I will be tutoring you on learning how to think critically. Stay with me.
What Does Critical Thinking Mean?
A simple definition is that critical thinking is the analysis of factual evidence to form a judgment. However, a closer inspection of the term and its meaning shows there are other meanings. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy defines critical thinking as the core concepts of the process of ‘careful goal-directed thinking’. Another university’s definition is that ‘good critical thinking includes recognizing good arguments even when we disagree with them, and poor arguments even when these support our point of view’.
In my opinion, I can say that critical thinking is the art and act of analyzing, interpreting, inference, explaining, self-regulating, open-mindedness, and problem-solving skills one acquires to tackle a situation.
There are some benefits of critical thinking and some of them include:
Question assumptions
Make better decisions
Exercise curiosity
Create compelling arguments
Reflect on yourself and your life
There are other benefits of critical thinking and some of them include increasing memory and retention capabilities, open-mindedness, emotional control, handling criticism especially criticisms at the workplace, schools, home amongst others. Critical thinking has a million sides to it and there are lots of benefits to learning how to think critically.
How to Think Critically
1. Identify the Issue
When faced with a situation or problem, determine what has caused it.
2. Analyze the Arguments
There will usually be several sides to an argument, so it’s important to understand who is saying what and how valid each position is.
3. Discover the Facts
It’s essential to separate the facts from the opinions and assess how accurately the evidence is presented.
4. Challenge Your Biases
Ask yourself whether or not you’re making assumptions, why you believe a certain point, and whether you’re letting confirmation bias, heuristics, framing, or common fallacies impact your thinking.
5. Decide on Significance
Each side of an argument will likely have supporting evidence. Deciding which information is most important, deductive, valid, and has a sound premise will help decide the significance of each.
6. Draw Conclusions
The various steps above will lead and help you to decide which option or argument (if any) is the most relevant. You can also weigh up the strengths and weaknesses of all options.
Honestly, learning how to think critically is very essential in our daily lives and there are a million and one ways to think critically.
After you must have reached this column and understood what critical thinking entails, your question then shifts from ‘what does critical thinking mean?’ to ‘how do I improve critical thinking skills?’
How to Improve Critical Thinking Skills
There are several ways that you can achieve the benefits of critical thinking, including:
1. Use Scrutiny and Skepticism
Requires little effort to accept things at face value and believe what you’re being told.
2. Eliminate the Less Useful and Unreliable Information
Can be difficult to make effective decisions or draw informed conclusions when you’re surrounded by inaccurate information.
3. Use Reliable Sources
When you’re researching a topic to make an informed decision, always pay attention to the source. Look at evidence-based information from reliable outlets and be careful of how statistics are presented to you.
4. Listen Actively
Active Listening is a technique that ensures the listener concentrates, understands, responds to, and remembers what’s being said. It’s also about observing behaviour and body language.
5. Develop More Empathy
Being able to put yourself in the shoes of another person allows you to understand their point of view, motivations, and aspirations.
Most people fail to realize that critical thinking has its root ineffective communication. Communicating well helps one to look at not only the speech of an individual but also the body language and tone of that individual to know your next words. Critical thinking uses communication as a skill to make better decisions.
Final thoughts…
As I said earlier, critical thinking as a skillis a valuable skill that can help us make better decisions and judgments. It helps us as individuals make life-changing decisions and also see through things that aren’t real.
Critical thinking should not be seen as a concept, but as a skill to acquire, it’s very relevant in our lives and should be treated as such.
