Emotional Debt

Many people today live under the weight of debt from loans or credit cards. As harmful as financial debt is, there is another form of debt that is even more damaging－emotional debt.

【小题1】But unsolved pain can appear, causing us to respond in ways that aren’t reasonable, resulting in destroyed relationships and lost opportunities. Another negative result of emotional debt is that our friends and loved ones are affected by it and pay a high price. 【小题2】Unfortunately our unsettled problems sometimes become too much for them to handle, causing them to abandon the relationship.

【小题3】You may be holding onto painful memories of controlling parents or very demanding teachers, also you may not have dealt with the pain of a broken relationship or the death of a loved one. Any negative emotion that you have controlled over the year can come back to cause harm when you least expect it.

【小题4】Acknowledging and challenging your pain is difficult, but recognizing it is the first step toward dealing with it. Admit you are angry about the past, and discuss it with someone you trust, or write it down because this will ease some of the danger and hatred you’ve kept covered up for years. Refuse to be a victim and accept responsibility for dealing with your painful past. 【小题5】

Take specific steps to solve your emotional debt now instead of dealing with the consequences later.

Numbers of people find themselves waking up in the middle of the night, unusually awake and excited. 【小题1】 That’s really frustrating. However, there is no need to worry. Here are some effective ways to help you fall asleep again.

Remain in bed. For falling asleep, your heart rate needs to slow down. When you get up, your heart rate goes up. So, avoid going to the bathroom during the night if you can. Do not eat too little or too much for dinner. Do not drink and fill your bladder(膀胱)before bed. 【小题2】 It may make you fall asleep faster, but it may also disrupt your sleep later in the night.

Stay in the dark. When you cannot sleep, LED lights on printers and cable boxes may be the reason. The same is true for light streaming in through cracks in the curtains. 【小题3】 You should cover lights with tape or wear a sleep mask. A popular choice is to wear eyeshades(遮光眼罩) that allow your eyes to open and shut while you wear them.

Quiet your mind. Try some ways to relax, such as deep breathing, meditation, and mindfulness exercise. 【小题4】 The point is to keep your brain busy with something that is not demanding but relaxing.

【小题5】 If your wake-up time is 6:30 a.m. and your clock reads 3:00 a.m., do not think “Oh no! I have only three hours left!” Instead, say to yourself, “Oh great! I have three more hours to sleep!”

Maybe you have some problems if you wake three times a week during the night for more than three months. It may affect your quality of life. You need to find a sleep expert who can help identify the cause and fix it.

Before the Internet age, critical thinking was the most important skill of people. But in the digital age, according to Anastasia Kozyreva, a famous psychologist, a more important skill is critical ignoring (批判性忽略).

As researchers point out, we live in an attention economy where content producers on the Internet compete for our attention. They attract us with many eye-catching stories while providing little useful information, so they can offer us advertisements producing profit (利润). So we are not customers but products, and each link we click is a sale of our time and attention. To protect ourselves from this, Kozyreva calls on us to learn the skill of critical ignoring, in which readers can control their information environment to reduce exposure (接触) to false information.

According to Kozyreva, critical ignoring includes three strategies. The first is to design our environments, which includes removing low- quality y et hard-to-resist (难以抵制的) information from around. Successful dieters need to keep unhealthy food out of their homes.’ Similarly, we need to set up a digital environment where attention-catching items are kept out of sight: Like dieting, if one tries to depend on willpower not to click eye-catching “news”, he’ll surely fail. So, it’s better to keep them out of sight at first!

The next is to judge the reliability (可靠) of information, whose purpose is to protect you from false information. It can be realized by checking the source in the mainstream, which can be reliable.

The last is: “never feed the trolls.” Trolls are some people who spread false information online to cause harm. Do not correct them, because they do not care about whether the information is correct. Annoying others is their goal. So, ignore their bad behaviour.

By using the above critical ignoring skills, we can make the most of the Internet while avoiding being harmed by those who try to control our attention, time, and minds.