UVEITIS PRIMARIAS Y SECUNDARIAS

• Learn to cope with criticism. Receiving criticism causes anxieties. The impact on our mood and body depends more on how we describe the negative feedback to ourselves. Ask yourself: Does this seem reasonable? Is it fact or opinion? Are there others who might confi rm or dispute this view? How would others have behaved?

• Learn to listen. Listening is an active process requiring openness and receptivity. Keep your mind free of distract- ing reactions, responses, judgments, and questions and answers.

• Observed your own body language. Research shows that more than half of what we communicate is con- veyed by BODYLANGUAGE. Smiling, frowning, sighing, touching, or drumming fi ngers give out strong messages. Women tend to smile more than men, nod their heads, and maintain more continuous eye contact while listen- ing and speaking than men. Under stress or in new situations, this tendency becomes even more pronounced. • Recognize and respect differences in conversational styles. Styles of conversing play a major role in triggering misunderstanding. For example, women tend to ask more personal questions than men. Men more often give opinions and make declarations of fact.

• Become more assertive. Speak and act from choice and stand up for your rights without being aggressive. • Learn to say no when you want to. Avoid feeling resenful, frustrated, or guilty. Take time before you respond to

a request. You need not give lengthy explanations for saying no.

explains that women have been socialized from childhood to avoid direct communication about difficult issues, so they often use a sugar-coated approach that other women understand but men do not.

Deborah Tannen, linguistics professor, says gen- der differences put women in a double bind at work that is not as evident in personal relationships. “Workplace communication norms were devel- oped by men, for men, at a time when there were very few women present. The situation is aggra- vated when women hold positions of authority. If they talk in ways expected of women, they may not be respected; if they talk in ways expected of men, they may not be liked,” says Tannen, author of Talking from 9 to 5: How Women’s and Men’s Conver- sational Styles Affect Who Gets Heard, Who Gets Credit and What Gets Done at Work.

Removing the Anxiety and Stress from Your Communication Style

Individuals should apply the old “golden rule” in communicating with others. They should speak the way in which they would like to be spoken to and listen to others the way they hope others will listen to them. It is important that they learn to express their likes and dislikes in a tactful and diplomatic way. They will find that when they are more direct, other people will be more responsive. With slight adaptations, these suggestions may be useful in communicating with children, siblings, parents, coworkers, bosses, or acquaintances and should be helpful in most situations.

See also ASSERTIVENESSTRAINING; BODYLANGUAGE; IMMUNESYSTEM; RELATIONSHIPS; SELF-ESTEEM.

Kahn, Ada P., and Sheila Kimmel, Empower Yourself: Every

Woman’s Guide to Self-Esteem (New York: Avon Books,

1997).

Reardon, Kathleen Kelley, They Don’t Get It, Do They?: Com-

munication in the Workplace—Closing the Gap Between Women and Men (New York: Little, Brown, 1995).

Reinthaler, Bee, “Verbal Communications,” The Profes-

sional Communicator (Fall 1991).

Tannen, Deb, Talking from 9 to 5: How Women’s and Men’s

Conversational Styles Affect Who Gets Heard, Who Gets Credit and What Gets Done at Work (New York: William

Morrow, 1994).

Tingley, Judith C., Genderflex, Men and Women Speaking

Each Other’s Language at Work (New York: Amacom,

1995).

commuter marriage See MARRIAGE, FEAROF.

compensation A defense mechanism by which the individual, either consciously or unconsciously, tries to make up for an imagined or real deficiency, physical or psychological, or both. For example, a person with social phobias or feelings of incompe- tence may excel in music, art, or drama.

competition One of the many dichotomies pres- ent in American life today that induces stress. It encourages individual achievement and the need to win. As such, it is the extreme opposite of another American concept—teamwork—which teaches us to respect others, appreciate their strengths and weaknesses, share our skills and knowledge, and help others meet their goals.

Early in life, children on the playing field expe- rience the contradiction of competition and team- work. Thus begins a source of stress we carry through much of our adulthood. Competition encourages comparisons between ourselves and others, both on a social and economic level; this in turn affects our feeling of self-esteem.

See also AUTONOMY; CONTROL; SELF-ESTEEM; TYPE APATTERN.

complementary therapies A set of practices that, depending on the viewpoint, either complement or compete with conventional medicine in the pre- vention and treatment of stress-related disorders as well as other diseases. Complementary therapies are often referred to as “alternative” therapies.

According to David Edelberg, M.D., writing in The Internist (September 1994), the terms comple- mentary or alternative therapies commonly refer to anything that is not conventionally practiced or taught in medical school. In 1994, there were more than 200 fields of alternative medicine. Alternative fields can be divided into four broad 148 commuter marriage

categories: traditional medicine, such as Chinese or Native American; hands-on bodywork; psy- chological or psychospiritual medicine; and many holdovers from the 19th century, such as chiro- practic and homeopathy.

Complementary therapies for dealing with anxi- eties and healing mind as well as body, include emotional release therapies with or without body manipulation, emotional control or self-regulating therapies, religious or inspirational therapies, cog- nitive-emotional therapies, and emotional expres- sion through creative therapies. Some of these have been known by such names as encounter groups, gestalt therapy, primal therapy, EST, bioenergetic psychotherapy, ROLFING, TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITA- TION, and BIOFEEDBACK.

It is important to note that complementary ther- apies are not subject to scientific scrutiny through controlled efficacy studies with placebo or compari- sons of treatments. They are accepted and promoted as helping on the basis of “anecdotal evidence” stemming from individual reports of success. Some may be truly helpful while others may be useless or ineffectual.

Many individuals find relief for anxiety-induced conditions from one or combinations of comple- mentary therapies either along with or after seek- ing traditional care. For example, mental imagery is rated one of the six most commonly used alternative treatments among cancer patients and is believed by physicians as well as patients to reduce both the pain and distress of symptoms. However, as with other medical conditions, individuals should not overlook traditional psychiatric or medical treat- ments in favor of alternative therapies because they may be robbing themselves of valuable time as their condition progresses.