Coping With a Pessimist
by Susan
Coping with a pessimist can be frustrating to say the least. When we have a tendency to be depressed, pessimists pose a real threat to our own mental health. We may even find ourselves becoming more negative and pessimistic in our own thinking thus increasing our depression. It can also increase our anxiety as we worry whether the pessimist was right and whether the sky will fall if we continue on this path.
According to the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, pessimism from the Latin pessimus (worst), is a painful state of mind which negatively colours the perception of life, specially with regard to future events. Value judgements may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "is the glass half empty or half full?" situation. The degree in which situations like these are evaluated as something good or something bad can be described in terms of one's optimism or pessimism respectively. Throughout history, the pessimistic disposition has had effects on all major areas of thinking.
I can remember my dad being pessimistic about many things. He was always telling us things like, "don't climb the trees, you might fall out and get hurt". My husband also has a real tendency to be pessimistic and thereby put a damper on some of the things I have wanted to do. I try to consider his point of view and weigh it against my own.....being careful not to automatically discard my own. This keeps me on the ball and makes me think....sometimes more than I wanted to. Sometimes it would be nice not to listen to warnings of doom and gloom.
I suppose a balance of optimism and pessimism makes for good judgements. I believe we have to stay on our toes and keep our wits about us in order to remain optimistic when we are trying to cope with a pessimist. Don't let their negativity start coloring your thoughts and bring you down. It can be a battle so stay alert!
Posted by ozzieblackcat at 2/27/2009 9:49 AM 
Categories: depression, mental health, Wikipedia, anxiety, His and Hers, optimism, pessimism, ozzieblackcat
Tags: ozzieblackcat depression mental health His and Hers
Categories: depression, mental health, Wikipedia, anxiety, His and Hers, optimism, pessimism, ozzieblackcat
Tags: ozzieblackcat depression mental health His and Hers
This is good advice. With all the focus on problems with economics on TV
in the paper, it is awfull hard to maintain a balance of optimism and pessimism that the article says should
lead to good judgements.
I'm afraid I am the pessimist I
have to deal with. Even though I know
I need to be more upbeat and to see both sides, I sometimes seek out things
to worry about. I do think that the suggestion of doom by someone we trust actually changes the reacton of great numbers of people and can create a situation that is not based on fact and could be part of the mystery about what is going wrong with our economy.
Donald Trump said tonight that Opec is
really the problem--said to watch--when interest rates go down, Opec goes up--that they meet to decide what the rate witll be. Another program earlier, a religious program, was promoting a book that described how some people plan economic situations that will benefit certain people, but
my son says he believes they genuinely do not know what is wrong, but they are moving too fast without making safeguards so that we don't compound the problems.
One thing that I try to do is to
focus on things in nature that please
me. On that really warm day, I went
out to the garden and I found some
really nice carrots that were large
and edible. I knew there was a storm
predicted for the next day, but as I
drove to my appointment, I was planning
my next trip to the garden when it is
supposed to warm up. Someone on my car radio was saying that he thought
the market would go up and down in the
next months, but would really tank at
the end of the year. I just thought
"That's interesting, but I'm really
glad nobody expects me to make such a prediction." I will try to balance
what I listen to and not take on
problems that don't really affect me that much.
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Thank you for a very interesting comment. I agree with your son in that I don't think the experts know what the problem really is and they aren't putting safeguards into their solutions. I wasn't really thinking about the economy when I wrote this article but it fits nicely with the pessimism theme. I hope we have lots of warm days soon and I'll be getting out in my garden too.
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Great article as always. You want to know something if I had not read this article I wold have never known what pessimism was? Honest I hardly ever heard that word mention around me so I guess that was good. Smile I mean maybe their were no pessimist around me? Anyway I always have said you never get to old to learn something new.. I also read some of yur other articles and listen stop by soon and vsit my blogs do not worry about that script warning all you do is click yes and the script will be removed while your visitng and theres no problem. Its to much of a hazzle to track the script down to remove so all I do is click the yes when it says do you want this script removed and thats it. So do not worry. Hugs and Im so happy for you getting so close to your goal..Hugs..not me not yet!
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yes, I agree with you on this "I suppose a balance of optimism and pessimism makes for good judgements. I believe we have to stay on our toes and keep our wits about us in order to remain optimistic when we are trying to cope with a pessimist. Don't let their negativity start coloring your thoughts and bring you down. It can be a battle so stay alert! "
Thanks for the nice post!
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Thanks so much for your comment. It sounds like you really do understand.
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According to the online encyclopedia
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