Sharpening Thinking and Making Safer More Insightful Judgments and Decisions
Instalment One: Some of the Most Important Decisions People Will Ever Make, How Emotions Can Influence Them, And Trying Not to Make Overly-Hasty Judgments

The Main Contents

The Self-Help Information in the Article

Part One
Things That Seem Nice on the Surface Can Have Unforeseen Costly Pitfalls, so Think Deeply Before Making Big Decisions

Nicholas thinks:

There are a whole load of things I'd like to say to my kids. If I can ever persuade them to listen for long enough, I think I'll say things like these:

Naturally, people will fairly often make decisions that turnout to be bad when they can't be held to blame in any way, because they made them simply not having any way of foreseeing what would go wrong. But it's been found that often, people make bad decisions partly because of mistakes they make in their thinking, that mean they don't consider things that might change their minds that they would if they thought more deeply. Here are a number of reasons bad decisions can be made and situations where good decisions can make the difference between happiness and lasting regret, and advice on ways of making better decisions:

Buying a House

Perhaps the most financially costly decision a lot of people ever make is buying a house. Much as it might be tempting sometimes, it's important not to go with gut instinct or a feeling of love at first sight, but to look at as many pros and cons as you can think of as to whether a particular one you're looking at is suitable.

A combination of enthusiastic sales patter and being quickly impressed with outward appearances can lead to costly decisions later regretted.

For instance, when buying a house, an estate agent showing a family around might brim over with enthusiasm about the 'bargain' they're getting, and point out things that would genuinely be real advantages, such as having a school nearby for the children, the house being in a low-crime quiet area, and it having a big garage. The family might really like the look of the house, and be swayed to buy it by their liking for certain lovable characteristics it has, and by thinking about the genuine advantages. But it needs to be remembered that the estate agent will be working for the house seller, so it's in their interests to put it in the best light they can, to try and sell it and get a good deal for themselves and the seller, rather than pointing out things that would make it seem less attractive and so harder to sell. They might well mention some unattractive aspects, but perhaps play them down a bit, making much more of the good points.

So the family might have positive feelings about the house; and if they don't try to think about possible downsides, but just allow their feelings and the real advantages to sway them into buying, they might spend a huge amount of money on something that turns out to have damp patches and dry rot, and rooms that are a bit too small, where the neighbours blast them out with loud parties at weekends, or equally unpleasant things.

It's also worth checking the prices of other houses in the neighbourhood to see how the one being viewed compares with them, since a person might be told they're getting a really good deal at the price, when really they're not, because it's actually more expensive than some others of the same size, or it's a similar price but a lot more needs doing to it to make it respectable.

So it's as well to try not to be too influenced by feelings, or by a few things that sound really impressive, when everything else hasn't been examined yet.

When making a big decision such as what house to buy, it can help make a good decision more certain if the person who will have to make it first writes a list of all the things they want from a house, or whatever it is, and all the things that would put them off. They can take a copy of the list with them when they go to see it, and tick off the things on the list that meet the criteria. That way, they can remember everything they want or that will put them off, so it'll be easy to check for them, and so they might be much less likely to be carried along by the enthusiasm of the person selling it into making an impulse-buy that they might later regret when they discover it isn't as good as it seemed.

In fact, it can make for an even better decision if people number each thing on the list when they write it, giving it a score from one to five (or it could be one to ten if preferred, or anything else), according to how important it is for them, with one being not very important, and the top number being essential. That way, if the house doesn't possess certain characteristics they'd have liked but they're only classified as ones and twos, the lack of them can be brushed off. But if they score highly, it might well influence the buying decision, and it'll be remembered, since it's been noted down.

If all the lists are kept, then if no perfectly satisfactory house is found, the important scores on each list can be added up, and then the resulting scores for both the off-putting factors and the desirable ones from each list can be compared with each other, as a way of quickly trying to tell which house seems to have got most going for it and least truly off-putting things, and the person can go for that one, unless they think of other things that matter that they forgot to put on the list before.

The Pitfalls of Following a Dream Without Thinking Things Through

If you're thinking of following a dream, be aware that you might be focusing on the most attractive aspects of it without thinking about things that would come with it.

For instance, some Americans move to California because they long for better weather, only to find that there are things they value more than that, where they're actually at a disadvantage compared with where they used to live. For instance, if they can't afford to live in a wealthy neighbourhood, they might find themselves living in a high-crime area of California, where the schools aren't very good so their children aren't getting as good an education as they should be. The thing that seems the most important can be the one that stirs up the strongest emotions, such as longing for good weather and thinking of how cheering sunshine can be; but focusing on the feelings filling the mind can mean more important considerations are put to the back of the mind or can even be forgotten, such as finding out what the schools are like for any future children who come along.

Buying a Car

When a person likes the look of a car, or is impressed by a rave review - which might actually have been written by someone who hasn't driven it all that much, for all they know, - they can buy the car without looking closely enough at what it's really like. Going with the first thing that seems like a good idea without looking at other options that might turn out to be better can mean people are more easily duped, since, for instance, a car salesman could make a car sound so impressive that someone buying it gets really enthusiastic and goes for it, only to find it isn't really what they wanted, because perhaps there were a few features they wanted that it hasn't got, and it has faults they weren't told about.

That person might know in principle, even before they buy it, that it would have been a good idea to read consumer magazines first to find out which cars are recommended by experts, or to look around at other cars to find one that really fits all their needs before buying, but they're so impressed by someone's description of one particular one that they decide to get it without looking further, when giving the matter more thought could have led to them buying something better for themselves.

For instance, they might have been carried along with enthusiasm to buy one that, - though it had some great features, - was a bit smaller than they'd originally wanted, when if they'd looked for longer rather than being swayed by the salesman's talk, they might have found a good one that was just the size they wanted.

There's a biblical proverb: "The first person to speak in an argument always seems right ... until you hear the other side of the story."

Mistaken Thinking Can Lead to Bad Buying Decisions in General

People sometimes limit their own buying choices by not shopping around when it would be better if they did, and when it wouldn't take much extra time at all to find better bargains. For instance, someone might see an advert for something that seems nice, and go for that product when they're out shopping next, when there might be lots of similar products nearby on the shelves that are actually cheaper. It's possible they might just not realise that, or not have the time to search; but they might be aware there are likely to be cheaper products in theory, but not stop to think about that, and go for the one they saw advertised without looking, because the advert, rather than the theory, is uppermost in their minds.

Or often, people go for the first product they see that's like something they like the idea of having in the shop, or the one that's the most attractively packaged, when there are actually ones that are just as good that are quite a bit cheaper on a shelf below or somewhere else nearby. It's worth shopping around a bit.

Advertisers, salespeople and the like know people are influenced to make quick decisions by what becomes uppermost in their minds, and they use it to their advantage.

For instance, supermarkets can put more expensive things at eye level, so they're spotted most quickly. Lotteries are advertised by people tempting the public with the thought of a big win, trying to raise their hopes so they'll be enthusiastic about buying tickets. They don't say a word about the fact that almost everybody who plays doesn't win a big prize, since they know that would dampen enthusiasm; and while it should be obvious to everyone that their chances of winning are miniscule, most don't seem to weigh up the pros and cons of playing in a rational way, and conclude that it'll probably be a waste of money; they play on the off-chance of an unlikely dream coming true. Adverts for it are really appealing to people's emotions, like greed, excitement, longing and such things; and emotions can be a big influence on people; when people are carried along and tempted by emotion, they can do things that common sense would tell them not to do.

It's the same with prices in shops. Shop owners are very well aware that the first part of a price is going to be the one people's minds - perfectly reasonably - automatically categorise as the most relevant. People aren't going to think so much about the number of pennies they're paying as the number of pounds/dollars/whatever. So if shops charge $4.99, people can think it sounds a lot cheaper than if they charge $5, which is in reality only one penny more. People can know that in principle, and yet still their automatic instant reaction can be to think it's a fair bit cheaper, because they're paying more attention to the number of the more important bits of money they have to pay, and a jump from four to five sounds quite big.

So it must be best to stop for a few seconds before buying, and think about what the real price is.

Fleeting Emotions Can Influence Big Buying Decisions That Might be Later Regretted

Some mistakes are made because people make a decision in certain moods, not realising they'll think differently when they're in other moods, which might come on only hours later, or that their particular mood is making them feel over-confident, greedy, extravagant, or some other strong emotion. Feelings can influence thoughts and even big decisions.

For instance, if someone's just been to the gym and they're full of endorphins and adrenaline from the effects of the exercise, they might feel so good they're sure they'll want to come to the gym much more often, feeling sure it'll do them good too. They can feel so good, they're not in any mood to sit down and weigh up costs against benefits, or it might not even cross their minds that it would be a good idea to do that, but they can feel sure things will go well; so they can blow far more of their earnings right there and then than they should on a year's gym membership, that it'll turn out that they'll rarely use, because though a gym session makes them feel good, it'll be difficult to motivate themselves to get out of the house and go to the gym when they're sitting comfortably in a warm room, tired out from work, it's cold and rainy outside, they'll have to make the effort of driving there, and it seems far more satisfying in that moment to have a refreshing drink and relax in front of the television, for example.

And things like that might happen a lot. They might not foresee that such things will happen, but they might have suspected that they might happen if they'd really thought about it.

Also, people can forget the number of times there can be demands on their time that they hadn't expected beforehand, such as long phone calls, an unwell child, and so on.

Another reason people can sign up for expensive gym memberships and other things they likely won't use is if they feel pressured and enticed because they're invited on the spot after a session to go there more often, with the option of paying a lot in one go for an annual subscription, but where they know that if they manage to get there often enough, they'll be paying less money over a year than they would be if they went there the same amount of time and paid for one session each time. If there are people behind them in a queue, they might make up their minds to pay for a year's membership in one go more quickly than they'd like to, because they don't want to hold the queue up and feel like a nuisance while they decide how to pay; so they'll go with an offer that sounds attractive at first glance, without taking time to think things through.

But when large sums of money are involved, it's usually best to go away and think about things rather than making a commitment on the spur of the moment, even if it means missing out on a small saving they might have got by signing up right then and there.

Gyms and other organisations may offer attractive discounts for a year's membership that entice people to sign up; but you're not really saving money if you don't make nearly as much use of the opportunity to go as you optimistically have an ambition to do the moment when you decide, when you're on a high, feeling very different from how you might later feel when you have to make the effort to drag yourself out of the house to go, when you might be getting bored of going by then, and it might not give you such a high anymore.

Supermarkets make offers that are similar in a way: For example, they might offer a discount if four of a particular product are bought instead of one; - individually the four would be more expensive to buy than buying the four together; but it's not really saving money if despite the discount, the four together are quite a bit more expensive than the mere one you'd have bought if it wasn't for the offer, especially if realistically, you're not likely to use them all, because for instance, some food will be well past its sell-by date before you'll likely want to eat it. When people buy on impulse, they can make decisions they later regret.

Similarly with diet plans: Desperation and hope for something better might compel some people to sign up for expensive diet plans, and they can do so on impulse, not investigating whether the plans have anything like an encouraging success rate, especially a long-term one. Weeks later, when they're not feeling so desperate to lose weight, but perhaps they've become apathetic, partly because their hope of success has faded because they're not seeing any progress, they can give up in dismay, and realise they've wasted their money. If both those signing up for gym membership and those signing up for expensive diet plans, and all kinds of other people signing up for expensive things and making other commitments, stop first and try to imagine how they might feel about what they want to do weeks into the future, they might often change their minds, although how much they might is uncertain, since it's sometimes impossible to predict how one might feel weeks in advance, especially if a person has no experience of having done what they want to do before.

Another thing it's worth wondering about is whether there's an alternative way of getting the same benefits which is actually much cheaper, such as running around the local park instead of running on a treadmill in a gym.

A similar thing can happen to buying something on a high while not realising it'll seem different later, but the other way around: For instance, someone might feel too tired and out of sorts to get up and make dinner sometimes, and feel as if the only way they'll bother to eat is if they call for someone to bring round a takeaway, even though they're on a tight budget so they could do without the expense. They may buy it, when really, their feelings are making them assume that their low energy levels will last all evening, when they might not; it's possible to feel lethargic and down one minute, and much better the next, after a cup of tea or something; so if they can motivate themselves to do as much as get a cup of tea, or nibble on something little in the house that doesn't need cooking, or even stick their head out of the window and breathe in a few big breaths of fresh air, they might find their energy levels and spirits improve enough to get something out of the freezer that doesn't need much preparation and cook that.

When thinking of booking up for a holiday, to give another example, the mood of the moment can determine what price people are willing to pay, and what kind of holiday they book. If someone's feeling happy and confident, it can be a bit of a bother and a bit dismaying to feel they ought to be thinking of the possible drawbacks of each holiday on offer, as well as what's attractive about it. Of course there will also be a lot of unknowns about each holiday that people won't find out about till they get there. Yet before paying out a lot of money, it's worth thinking through issues like:

• Is it really worth paying this amount of money to go, given that just a week or so after the holiday, I might have almost forgotten it?
• Yes I enjoyed going there once before and that's making me think it would be lovely to go again; but am I likely to feel the same way this time, given that I'm familiar with the area now so it won't be new and interesting like it was before, I was with a friend last time and that contributed a lot to my sense of enjoyment rather than the holiday itself, the weather's more likely to be bad there at this time of the year, and I might start worrying about whether I should be there, given I can't afford it as much as I used to?
• Is it worth the money? What if I could do something else that's just as enjoyable for a fraction of the price? Not necessarily going away at all? A month after I've come back, will I regret having spent that amount of money on it, given that I could spend it instead on things I might still be making good use of and glad to have two decades from now, such as sound systems and other technology, or household equipment or improvements?
• What other holidays are on offer? If I pick this one rather than looking at more of them, could I be missing out on something even better?

And so on. The same goes when considering blowing a lot of money on a night out, and other such things.

Companies know people will likely be over-optimistic when they book something, so they know they can get away with selling plans and other things that people have an unrealistic chance of keeping up their interest in, and they can even encourage people's over-confidence, to get more sales. For instance, there was a shop that sold golf equipment, where people could try out their skills on miniature putting greens, and people would find it easy to score because they were so small, not realising they'd have a lot more difficulty on normal-sized greens, where they'd be hitting the ball from much further away; so they often bought more expensive equipment, feeling sure they must be good at golf so it was a hobby worth taking seriously. It's been claimed that that was calculated to happen, and that's why the little mock greens were there. An experiment found that people who played on them assumed they must be better at golf than those who hadn't.

Credit card and other companies can take advantage of people's eye for a bargain, by giving them offers that seem like bargains but really aren't. For instance, a credit card could be almost interest-free for the first six months, but then there's a high interest rate. People can be so attracted by the idea of something free or cheap that they ignore the later charges, particularly if they think they could always switch to another plan when the time's up; in reality, a lot of people don't bother or forget the time's up, and companies know that, which is one reason they make the offers. Or people can think six months sounds like a long time, so they can feel sure they're bound to pay off all the debts they accumulate in that time, before they get switched to the higher interest rate, but over time, they forget how long they've got, so the time limit creeps up on them without them realising they were getting so close to it.

Thinking Very Carefully Before Marrying or Moving In With Someone

Some marriages break up because the couple realise after they marry that they disagree on things so important to them that they don't feel they can stay together, knowing they're conflicted over the issues.

It might not seem romantic at the time, and people might be worried about finding out something they'd rather not know because they want the relationship to carry on, but it's worth finding out a lot about a partner's views on things and their personality before committing to a decision anywhere near as big as marrying them. So questions need to be asked before a relationship gets so serious it would be downright painful to break off, such as:

• Do you want children? If so, how many, and how long would you want to wait first?
• Do you believe in saving a lot of the money you earn, do you tend to spend it all quickly and not have much to live on sometimes, or something in between? What kind of things would you refuse to spend money on because you thought it was too extravagant? Or wouldn't you ever think that? Do you like gambling?
• What's your attitude to pornography and affairs? If you had to put up with not having sex for weeks, how would you feel about it? Do you think that would give you justification to look elsewhere or make you tempted to?
• What's your attitude to doing a share of the housework? Do you think there are some things in a marriage that are one person's job and the other one shouldn't be expected to help or shouldn't interfere?
• How can you see yourself spending your free time? How much of it do you think you'll want to spend doing your own thing, or going out with your mates or visiting your family without me?
• How much do you drink and smoke?
• What kind of things make you angry, and what do you tend to do when you get angry? Have you ever hit someone? Do you enjoy a blazing row or find yourself having them often?
• What do you imagine we might be doing in 30 or 40 years' time? How does the idea of us still being married then make you feel?

The answers to such questions could be clues as to how happy and long-lasting a marriage might be.

People sometimes make the mistake of assuming that the way they feel and what they're doing currently will be similar to the way they feel and what they're doing five years into the future. For instance, someone who thinks they love another person enough to marry them might assume they're bound to always be happy, given how happy they are right then with the person. But perhaps they should ask themselves how they might think in five years' time, when perhaps the kitchen's always full of dirty washing-up, they're often sleep-deprived because there's a baby who screams every night, the one they love has put on weight and their hair's beginning to go grey, there's never enough money to do everything they want to, and so on. Thinking of things like that could make some people more cautious about making decisions they might later regret.

Couples can also make the mistake of thinking their marriage is worse than it is, because the times when their spouse didn't want to be with them or wasn't interested in getting passionate can stick in the mind more than when they did, and things went smoothly. The times when they wanted to do something when their spouse didn't, or when they felt like doing one thing and their spouse wanted to do another, can stick in the mind more because it can cause frustration, that can hang around making a person irritable for a while. When things go smoothly, the lack of conflict will be more likely to mean those times are forgotten, because there's less to make them stick in the mind. Or if a few of the times when things went well do stick there, they might be remembered as nice exceptions to the rule, because they'll likely be the especially good things, or just a few examples of things that have in reality happened much more often. So the bad things might be thought of as more significant than the good ones, when a person's thinking about how good or bad their marriage is.

Affairs can seem an attractive option if the marriage is unhappy, and once one starts, the other woman or man can seem more attractive than the husband or wife. But before people really get to know each other, - or if they only see each other when they're doing nice things together, rather than during the daily grind of boring housework, looking after screaming kids together and so on, the bad points of the other person quite possibly won't show up nearly so much, and life with them can be imagined to be more interesting than it really would be if those things were going on while they were with them, so a person can think they know someone, but really be fantasizing that they're their dream person, and it's only as they get to know them better that they realise they'd have problems living with them, just as they do with their husband or wife.

So really, a person comparing a new fancy person favourably with their husband or wife is making a false comparison, because they're comparing someone they know well with someone they're idealising, not knowing them well enough to have a good idea of how things would be after years of marriage to them. Also, strong emotion such as intense attraction clouds the mind anyway, so it's harder to make a fair judgment.

Applying the mind to trying to think of ways the marriage could be improved can be a far more satisfactory option long-term than escaping into an affair.

Being Too Influenced By First Impressions

Unfortunately, people can sometimes be swayed by first impressions more than they should be, although there are often other things going on too.

For instance, if a young woman starts going out with a man who seems charming at first but then turns abusive, with charming interludes between the abuse, she might, at least for some while, be more likely to think during the times when he's abusive, "I want that lovely person back that I know he is really," than, "My gosh, that charm must have been an act to hook me in!" In reality the charm may well have been an act, just a strategy; but if the person deceived by it has at first been led to sincerely believe their first impression was the correct one, then rather than abandoning it, they can try to make sense of the nasty thing that's currently happening with the starting assumption that their first impression is the way things really are, so they try to find possible reasons for the unpleasant behaviour they think must be abnormal, rather than it crossing their minds that the dismaying truth is that the charm might be the abnormal thing, and the abuse might be the norm.

That will be especially true if they've become emotionally attached to the person the way they imagine them to be, and really want to believe they're the nice person they seemed to be at first. Their hope that things can go back to the way they were might be a powerful influence on their behaviour, so they'll stay with them during the times of abuse for longer than they should.

The possibility that bad things will happen is a very good reason for getting to know a person very well before settling down with them, finding out what they're like in lots of different circumstances, such as under provocation and stress, since some people can be good-natured when things are going well, but show a nasty side of their character when they're provoked by an argumentative person, or not getting their way, or if they're having difficulties in another part of life so they're tense and frustrated or something. In fact, deliberately provoking someone in the first stages of a relationship by disagreeing with them and refusing to do things their way can reveal quite a bit about what they're like, before it gets to the stage where people are becoming emotionally attached so it's harder to break free if unpleasant things are discovered about the person then.

Being Overly-Impressed by Someone

Having opinions influenced by first impressions more than by things that happen later is related to another thing that can lead to false impressions, that psychologists call the 'halo effect', which is where if there's one striking good thing about someone, people can imagine they must be a generally lovely person. For instance, if someone has a boyfriend who's impressively athletic, handsome and good for a laugh, they might be under the impression they'd be a great person to live with for the rest of their lives. That might be especially true if they feel emotionally attached to them, which they're particularly likely to do if they' getting physically close so good feelings might be being generated. So they might want to marry the person. But it would be better if they had a think about the future and how things might change in the coming decade, and ask themselves such questions as:

• Would he make a good father to any children we have together, given that children need things like patience and someone to teach them right from wrong to turn them into good people, not just someone to have good fun with sometimes?
• Do we have the same ideas on child discipline, or do our views differ in such a way that we could have a lot of major arguments about it?
• Do we have the same ideas on how to handle money? Or could there be a lot of arguments because one of us likes to save and be sensible and the other one spends spends spends?
• When we disagree over something, can we resolve it in a fairly friendly way, or do we end up shouting and yelling, in a way that'll get stressful after we've spent some time together? If so, is there any way we can try to argue differently, or is this whole relationship really not a good idea?
• Has he shown any signs of possible violence or a desire to be controlling that could turn into bullying if it gets worse?
• Have I seen him in enough different circumstances to know whether it would always be good to be with him, or whether he can get nasty when he feels provoked or under stress, or anything else I seriously wouldn't be happy with?

If all the answers still make him look favourable, that's still no guarantee of success, naturally. But it'll help.

Lifestyle Choices Such as How to Spend Leisure-Time Can Have a Dramatic and Unforeseen Influence on People's Futures

Even a decision to go out for one night and get drunk could be life-changing, if, for instance, it leads to reckless behaviour that results in an accident, or to impaired judgment and relaxation of inhibitions, that results in inadvisable sexual behaviour that leads to an unwanted pregnancy. People have dedicated the next couple of decades of their life to caring for a child that's come along as a result of just a few ill-judged decisions.

Sometimes teenagers feel under peer pressure to start drinking; - friends give the impression it's the cool thing to do, and that they have such a good time when they go out that those who don't are really missing out. When they do start drinking, they can like it and want to carry on from then on. But it's worth them considering that part of the reason people feel as if they're enjoying themselves is that getting drunk temporarily knocks out the part of the brain responsible for sensible thought that monitors whether what you're doing and saying is a good idea. And people can feel more relaxed. So they stop caring about what others think of them, and can talk nonsense or do foolish things without even realising their brain isn't functioning as it should; or if they realise, they might not care. So they can agree to do things they'd never agree to do sober. And some people who know others will do that will take advantage of it, such as those hoping for a casual one-night-stand.

But besides the risks, it's worth considering that though you might have forgotten what you said and some of what you did the next day, there may be people whose opinions you care about who see you and still remember it years later; and all that time later, they might have a lowered opinion of you.

For instance, if someone really irritates you and you've had fleeting fantasies about pushing them off a cliff, when you're drunk, you might see nothing wrong with just going ahead and laughing in front of everyone about how you'd like to. If you tell a relative who's always been fond of you, they might shudder and have a different attitude towards you from then on.

And if you yourself recorded the conversations you had when you were drunk and listened to them yourself the next day, while you might have been under the impression that you were thoroughly enjoying yourself while you were drunk, you might be very embarrassed and wonder why you took enjoyment in such things. When people are drunk, they can talk nonsense without actually realising they're doing it; they can assume they're just talking normally, perhaps having more of a good time than usual, but still not saying anything they'd be embarrassed to say while sober.

If they anticipate that that might happen when they start drinking, because they know from experience and what people have said that it's happened before so it might happen again, they can be more cautious; but if they don't know it's going to happen, they're unlikely to stop and reflect on what they're saying or doing while it's going on, unless something dramatic happens.

Drinking Alcohol, and Peer Pressure to do Such Things as Get Drunk

But also, if a friend, classmate or someone like that is giving the impression that it's cool to get drunk, and not cool not to, it's worth guessing whether they'll have the same opinion in 25 years' time when they'll maybe have children the age they themselves are now, having put time and effort into bringing them up, and thinking of them as precious. Will they be telling their children it's cool to get drunk? Or might they be advising them not to, worried they'll get liver damage, the drink will kill some of their brain cells, and they'll get involved in risky things that might harm them?

When I was eleven, some of my classmates thought they were cool and clued up about life and knew better than a lot of others, thinking others ought to behave like them. Now, all these years on, it seems laughable to me that I might think someone of that age might know better than I do about things and go to an eleven-year-old for advice when making important decisions, or even an eighteen-year-old. But when people are teenagers, they don't realise they'll end up thinking like that - they really do think their schoolmates know best, because they don't realise that as they grow more mature, their perspectives will change as they grow wiser. It's worth teenagers bearing in mind that their views might well change a lot over time, as they come to take the risks of doing things more seriously.

A little alcohol every now and then can improve people's sense of well-being and enjoyment fairly harmlessly; it can take the edge off a bad mood, and help people relax, or even aid concentration on something if emotions are getting in the way of getting it done, such as boredom or feeling a bit down; because alcohol can dull the senses, a little can dull the feelings getting in the way of getting on with doing something, so it can be easier. In fact, just a little can sharpen thinking a bit, partly because it dulls the emotions clouding the mind and getting in the way. The trouble is if people want more and more, since quicker thinking soon turns into careless thinking, and that can be risky. Or drinking can become a problem if people come to rely on alcohol for soothing the emotions, forgetting other strategies they might have used at one time.

For instance, the other day I felt a bit depressed and thought I could really do with some alcohol to feel better; but then I had a good hot meal, and then I felt better, even though I hadn't had any alcohol.

Also, the environment a person's in when they drink alcohol will have a lot to do with the effects it has: If they're having an argument with someone, stopping briefly to have a drink won't make them less angry, unless they get out of the situation and relax; as long as the argument's still going on, the adrenaline released because of the anger, plus a bit of alcohol, can make people more likely to get more unpleasant than they would have done if they hadn't been drinking, since their inhibitions and ability to think carefully will be diminished.

Thinking About a Future Career and Higher Education

One thing some people ought to bear in mind when making decisions is how the decision might affect them years into the future.

For instance, someone in their last year at school might decide what subject to do at university based on what sounds fun or interesting, not thinking about how it might affect them five or ten or twenty years into the future, or only thinking about that in a vague way. Later they can regret not having made a different choice, though naturally if they did, things wouldn't necessarily have turned out better in the end. But since that one decision of what to do and not to do at university could change the entire course of their lives, it shouldn't be made without people considering a number of questions, such as:

• This course might look fun, but what will it look like on my CV in ten years' time? Is it considered a respectable course among most employers? Would it be worth looking on the Internet for information about general attitudes towards it in the workforce?
• Which universities have the best reputations? Where is the quality of teaching best and worst? Would it be worth looking for information about their reputations?
• Is the course I'm thinking of going on likely to lead to a career that I enjoy, find satisfying, and where I have a realistic chance of getting a job? Would it be worth looking on the Internet for information about how much competition for jobs there is in that career, how plentiful jobs in it are, and what kind of training I'd need after doing a degree?
• What would it be like to do the job from day to day? Would I really like it? What kind of normal day-to-day experiences would I have, and what might be the worst things I could expect to face as part of the job? How would I handle them? Is this really the job I'd like to do? Would it be worth looking up people's experiences of the job to find out more about what it's like for them?
• If I'm not sure I want to do that job, would the course I'm thinking of doing at university still be the best one, or would another one be better?

Schools ought to encourage pupils to put a lot of thought into decisions like that.

It might be a hassle to spend time investigating all those things, but since choices made with very little thought can affect people's whole lives, it's worth it.

Naturally there are things that can increase the chances of someone making a wrong decision that are either beyond their control, or that make the decision harder, such as time limits, lack of information, inexperience, and so on. If asking others to make a decision, it's worth thinking through whether there are things that could make it easier for them, for instance giving them time where possible, and a chance to discuss things with others.

I once made a decision about whether to study a particular subject at school, based purely on the fact that the teacher had come to talk about it and had made me laugh, and I thought the lessons would be fun if she would be like that. She wasn't. Not once during the two years I studied the subject did she ever put on an act like the one that had amused me; not once did I laugh. More to the point, looking back, it was a silly reason to choose that subject above others. I don't regret the choice I made - it was interesting; but other choices might have been better - though that wasn't at all clear at the time. Much as I could have done with more fun, considerations such as what subjects might have benefited me most in future should have entered my mind more. Given more time to think about it and encouragement to discuss it with others, perhaps they would have done. But we weren't given much time or any encouragement to discuss it before making the decision.

The Importance of Finding Out About the Day-to-Day Realities of a Career or Course Before Deciding on it

When thinking about what to do when leaving school, it's worth bearing in mind that jobs that seem appealing on the surface can in reality be full of pitfalls that make them stressful and dispiriting. So before planning a career path, it's best to find information about the day-to-day realities of a job that seems attractive. It's best to look on the Internet and elsewhere for the pros and the cons of doing it, and people's experiences of what it's like.

Also, it's a mistake to get carried along with enthusiasm by what a mere one or two people say, because even if they're being as truthful as they know how, their experiences might not be typical for people in that career.

Job interviewers sometimes make the mistake of thinking a candidate is better than they really are, because the one they interviewed before was so bad the current one looks good by contrast.

People can get different impressions of college courses, too, according to how they compare with other ones they've done. Some people can think a course is very good, while others can think it's useless, because the ones that don't like it are more highly-educated and used to better things. So they feel under-stimulated and can see flaws in a lot of things, whereas the less educated people for whom such things are new might not detect so many problems, and will be more interested in what they hear because they've never heard such things before.

So testimonials praising courses or books or anything else can't be fully trusted, unless they go into detail about exactly what's good about them, - although even then, there can be a problem, because people giving both good and bad reviews can give false impressions of what the thing they're reviewing's really like; so it's best to get several people's views before judging. But also, apart from the fact that some people who write reviews and testimonials may have been paid to do so, or bribed or cajoled in some way, some people are just more easily impressed than others. People just have to make the best judgments they can with what they've got to go on; but when it comes to something important, the more information from different sources that can be gained, the better. And if it's something where the opportunity can arise to 'try it before buying', it's naturally worth taking advantage of it.

Job Interviewers Can Get Stuck With Bad Employees When Different Recruitment Methods Could Have Weeded Them Out Before They Were Employed

Job interviews where people aren't assessed directly on their ability to do the job can fail, partly because managers can be caught up trying to find out whether candidates would be people they could get on with, which is reasonable up to a point, because they'll have to spend so much time with them; but if the person turns out not to be able to do the job, liking might wear off; and people are on their best behaviour at job interviews anyway, so they might be giving a false impression. Besides that, interviews tend to be too short for a lot of characteristics that are liable to show themselves on the job to show up.

Job interviewers need to be careful they're not being influenced in their choice by things about a candidate that seem nice but are nothing to do with how good their ability to do the job is.

But not only that: Since some job interview questions are so common, people can rehearse answers to them in advance, planning how to make themselves look better than they really are. Questions that make it clearer who really would be the best employee are ones that build on the basic questions interviewers will want to know the answers to; instead of just asking them, interviewers can ask them in a way that applies them to specific situations that are individual to that company, or else ask more in-depth questions than are customary, so people really need to think. For instance, instead of asking something like, "Do you work well in a team?", they could ask questions that begin, "What would you do if ...", such as, "What would you do if you were in a group discussion, and one person was hogging the conversation and wouldn't let others get a word in edgeways?"

Apparently, it's been found that the best style of job interview is one where all the candidates get asked exactly the same questions, so a proper comparison can be made, to eliminate the chance that the candidate who isn't really the best for the job does best at interview, so they get the job, just because they have easier questions.

And if there's a chance to give the employee some of the tasks they would actually be doing on the job to see how they do, all the better. In fact, it's the surest way of finding a good candidate; lots of people can make up impressive-sounding answers to interview questions, but testing them by giving them tasks that are as close as possible to ones they'd actually be doing if they got the job can help employers make a better estimation of how good they'd be at the real thing.

Some people who've studied job interview techniques and how effective they are at finding employees who'll actually turn out to be good ones have observed that a lot of the questions employers ask are actually irrelevant to how well employees will do on the job, and have no power to predict it, so it's best to ask different ones instead. The information the questions often asked are designed to discover is information meant to give an idea of an interviewee's capabilities, interests and ambitions; but they don't really do a good job of predicting how well someone will do the job, both because they can be rehearsed for in advance and answers can be made up, and because they're not relevant to the job requirements.

For instance, common questions include things about the future and the past, and the interviewee's motives, which a lot of people will have planned in advance to present in the best light possible, leaving out unflattering things. For example, when asked, "Why did you decide to apply for this job?" no candidate's going to say they just need the money, which is what a lot of them might want it for. A lot will likely have made something up in advance that sounds good.

It's best to find ways of testing - or at least asking about - the skills they'll actually be using on the job, if they get it. So, for instance, rather than asking things such as, "What are your strengths and weaknesses", which people will probably have looked for information on how to answer, more job-specific questions can work better, such as:

• What experience do you have in using the kind of computer programs we use in this company?
• What success have you had in running the kind of campaigns you might be asked to run here?
• How would you improve our company's productivity?

And so on, related directly to what they're actually applying to do.

Even then though, employers can end up with people who know how to present themselves best, rather than people who'll do the job best. Studies have found that written aptitude tests, when given as substitutes for job interviews, are just as good as the best of interviews at predicting job performance. Giving people samples of the types of work they would be required to do, and testing their mental ability in a written test, can give a clearer picture of their suitability.

Interviews can still be valuable, but it can be best to use them not for making initial hiring decisions, but after top candidates have been chosen, to make a final decision, and to get them fired up with enthusiasm about doing the job if possible.

Not Just Trusting That Others Know Best, Especially Where Children Are Involved

Talking of 'trying before buying', naturally that applies to as wide a range of things as possible.

Certainly when it comes to decisions like choosing a nursery school for little children, it's best if parents stay with their child for a while rather than leaving them there, partly for the reassurance and comfort of the child, but also to get a better idea of what goes on there, since unfortunately, not all of them are good places to be - some staff can't be trusted to look after the children well.

And even if the staff have the best of intentions, distraction, absent-mindedness, inexperience and other such things can lead to problems, as they can in the home.

People tend to learn as they're growing up to rely on and trust authority figures to know what they're doing and know what they're talking about, so obeying them or trusting their judgment can become instinctive, except where there's good evidence they're not to be trusted. But relying on authority figures to know what they're doing, and just leaving them to make the decisions, to the extent that you trust them even when you notice things seem wrong, can be dangerous.

A first-time mother was going out one day, and her mother-in-law agreed to baby-sit her toddler son. Before she went out, she had a chat with her mother-in-law in the kitchen. Her son was at the other end of the room, standing on the window sill, looking into the garden at the birds, and they were absorbed in their conversation and not thinking about him. Suddenly, he stepped backwards and fell off the windowsill. Thankfully he didn't fall far, just into the fruit bowl, which was on a work surface underneath. The mother was upset and protested to the mother-in-law, blaming her, saying she'd thought she was in charge. Really, both should have been paying more attention.

Not Making Hasty Decisions Without Thinking of Alternative Courses of Action

When someone's in an unpleasant life situation, the only solution they might be able to think of is getting out of it as quickly as possible if they can. But getting out of it in itself won't necessarily make things better for them, (depending on the type of situation it is, of course), because what they get themselves into as a result might be just as bad or worse; so it's wisest to think about the future before making any decision, (unless the situation's one where they're in some danger, naturally). Though it's impossible to predict it, there are things that can help people guess how things are most likely to turn out.

For instance, someone on a university course who doesn't like it might long to drop out. But before making such a decision, it's worth pondering on questions such as:

• What would I do instead?
• What would my job prospects be?
• Given that in a year or two I'd have a qualification for life that I'd always be able to put on my CV if I stayed on, is it really worth giving it all up?
• What's the job market like at the moment - how much competition would I have for jobs I went for?
• Would I like any job I'd have a realistic chance of getting if I dropped out, as much as I might like a job I could hope to get if I completed the course and got the certificate?
• What am I going to do while I'm looking for a job, especially given it could take a while?
• Instead of dropping out, would it be possible to stay here or move to another college and do some other course, or are there certain things about my course that could be rearranged to make it more bearable?

It's important to think about how your actions might affect you long-term, rather than just focusing on your immediate goals, which might turn out to disadvantage you long-term even though they seem good at the time, if you haven't really thought about what comes next.

Even the American leadership - who you'd hope would know better - have made big plans without thinking of the future; - one criticism of their invasion of Iraq in 2003 was that though they put a lot of work into planning how to topple Saddam Hussein, it somehow didn't occur to them to plan much at all for what to do to stabilise the country again afterwards, and as we know, things went wrong. People can get so caught up in their immediate goals that they forget to - or don't bother to - think and plan very far ahead.

So basically, though something might have attractive features on the surface, it's important to consider in detail what the day-to-day realities of actually being there or doing it are likely to be. Too many people have made decisions they regretted, carried away with longing or interest in a particular feature of something that turned out to be unimportant in comparison with the downsides that were only discovered afterwards.

Part Two
Emotions Can Have a Big Influence on Decisions, for Good or Ill

Emotions Sometimes Spur People to Action When Reasoning Won't

Things that grab the emotions can influence a person's thought processes far more than hard facts, even though it's usually best to make decisions based on hard facts.

For instance, a driver who typically drives too close to the car in front, so they might not have time to stop before crashing if the car in front brakes suddenly, might slow down quite a bit after the shock of witnessing an accident, because they realise they could be in one themselves if they're not more careful; but when the disturbing emotion dies down, as it might within minutes, they can go back to driving too close to the car in front again. Realistically, they probably still have just as much chance of having an accident as they did at the time when they saw the other one. But they might have slowed down when they did because the shock of seeing one brought it home to them that they might have one, but they didn't really think through with the reasoning part of their mind the fact that they themselves are more likely to be in one if they drive too close; as the shock dies down, they behave as if they think there isn't much possibility of it happening after all, and start driving too close again out of habit, when actually, a look at the facts will tell them that it could still be them next time, so they should still stay a safe distance behind the car in front.

Another example is that some people who give up smoking can have ignored for years statistics about how much smoking increases lung cancer and emphysema, - emphysema being a frightening condition where people get breathless very very easily because their lungs are damaged, and not being able to get enough breath can tire a person out easily, so when they start walking, it's more difficult to get where they want to go, - but it can all seem quite remote to someone who only knows about it through reading or hearing about it, till they have a scare themselves, which brings it home to them that they could get real problems; and the emotional reaction they have can spur them on to really want to give up smoking and try much harder than they ever have before. Logically, they should have been influenced by the statistics long before things ever got to that stage; but emotion can have a far more powerful influence over people than plain facts.

Emotion Can Overpower Reason

People can have an irrational assumption that the bad things that happen to some people who take risks won't happen to them. There's no reason for them to believe that; but when nothing has yet grabbed their emotions and brought it home to them that something bad could happen, they can feel apathetic about the risks, unwisely brushing them off.

And if an emotion is making them want to do the thing, that emotion will have far more sway over them than any thoughts about bad things happening, that might seem remote.

So, for instance, teenagers can go out every weekend binge drinking and sleeping around, not caring about the possibility that they might get pregnant or get others pregnant, or catch nasty diseases, or get health problems from drinking too much, or be put in danger of accidents or making stupid decisions, or of being taken advantage of because the drink has impaired their judgments so they just don't realise it or don't care when they're put in possible danger. The emotional draw of the fun of going out for an evening of enjoyment, and past memories of having a good time before, can be far stronger than any theoretical ideas about how they might one day get hurt. The desire for fun, or for a hormonal release, or to fit in, and so on, can be strong influences over people that can be far more powerful than sensible advice, because sensible advice can seem boring, and the risks can seem small, if the thought of behaving sensibly goes against all the good feelings associated with doing what they want.

There's also the fact that, like it or not, the thinking/reasoning part of a teenager's brain develops after the emotional part anyway, so emotions and impulses to do things can hold even more sway over them than they would over an adult, because they often won't so readily think through the risks unless they've experienced something bad while doing the thing they're thinking of doing, and desires to do things can seem stronger sometimes, because they're not being inhibited by the impulse controls that come from life experience, growing wisdom and serious thinking.

Harnessing Emotions to Work For You

There's often a greater chance that teenagers will be influenced to behave sensibly if opposite emotions are swaying them, such as pride in doing the right thing, self-respect, concern for people who might be hurt by their behaviour, horror at what might happen if they behave irresponsibly, and so on. If someone takes the time to talk through with them in a vivid way the things that could happen if they do irresponsible things, but also imprints on their minds the respectability of behaving well, as well as helping them to develop good feelings of camaraderie with other teenagers who don't behave badly, if possible, by introducing them to fun things to do with such people, where they're doing enjoyable things with people who might become new friends, as alternatives to old friends who behaved in risky ways, they're more likely to stay away from unhealthy behaviours.

So, for instance, if there's a group of teenagers who spend their Friday and Saturday evenings going swimming or playing some other kind of sport, or putting on plays in a drama group, and so on, and they have ambitions to do good things with their lives, it could be well worth trying to interest another teenager in what they're doing, and taking them to be with them, where friendships can develop.

Emotions Can Combine With Thoughts to Create Unnecessary Anxiety

Naturally, it's not as simple as just being swayed by emotion, since thoughts will always be going through the mind alongside emotion, and some will be perfectly valid. For instance, a person might not want to stand up at the front of their class and read something for fear they'll mess it up, thinking that if they do, people will laugh and taunt them afterwards. That may well happen; sometimes refusing to allow thoughts to be swayed by emotions such as anxiety can lead to doing something that can have genuinely bad real-world consequences for a person's reputation or something else.

Still, often people over-estimate the harm that might be done, or are worried by things that wouldn't cause any harm if they had a good idea of how to deal with them.

For example, if someone's lost, and they're scared to ask for directions, for fear of looking a fool, it's unlikely, but it might actually happen that the person they ask does think they're a fool, and yet the person who thought that might have forgotten the whole incident a minute later, while the person who asked for directions is still worrying about what they thought half an hour afterwards.

Or a teenager who doesn't really want to go out with a group of friends who might take drugs or end up all having sex with strangers might fear what her friends will think if she refuses; but they're not so likely to think anything bad if rather than saying she doesn't approve of that kind of behaviour, she tells them what she's doing instead, or she does tell them she disapproves of that kind of behaviour, but instead of wilting under their taunts, she's learned to stand up for herself proudly and make a good case for why she doesn't approve of it, that might actually lead to a thoughtful discussion and cause some of the others to think twice about what they're doing.

Influencing Others for Good

The upside of being influenced by what others think is that people can influence others in ways that benefit them.

It seems people can sometimes be influenced to do good things most effectively by people most similar to them: Children who are a bit scared of dogs or dentists or other things can stop being anxious if they spend some time watching other children of their own age being around such people and things with no problem; they can be reassured that they'll cope and things will most probably be allright. Watching an adult might not have such an effect - (although it might help) - because the children might assume that since adults are much bigger and stronger than they are, they're bound to cope better.

Also if trying to convince teenagers not to smoke or have casual sex, or sex with new boyfriends they barely know, and so on, they can be more likely to take the messages on board if they're being given by teenagers like them who seem cool despite not doing such things, than if they think they're being lectured by some remote adult.

Being Too Influenced By Gut Instinct and What's Uppermost in the Mind

It's not just teenagers who don't think things through enough sometimes. Everyone can fail to do so, even people who are well aware in principle of the trap of being swayed too much by emotions or by other things, rather than facts.

One mistake people can make is letting their judgments be swayed by what happens to be uppermost in their minds because it's been happening a lot recently.

For instance, according to the book Irrationality, doctors who have seen a spate of people with a particular disease can sometimes start diagnosing more people with it who haven't got it than they would normally. Not just with contagious diseases, but also with things like appendicitis. It's as if their gut feeling tells them they recognise the signs again because they've become familiar with them, so they jump to the conclusion that a new person they see with symptoms that look pretty similar must have it as well, rather than examining them as thoroughly as they would if the symptoms were less familiar. There are lots of diseases with similar symptoms. The most likely explanation for something is often the correct one, but by no means always. So when making a diagnosis, doctors should be careful to pay just as much attention to symptoms that differ from the norm as to the ones that are similar to those of the disease they have in mind.

It's easy for people in general to fall into the trap of just looking for things that confirm their first impressions, rather than also looking for things that might disprove them, when they're trying to confirm whether they're correct or not.

Over-confidence in a person's own judgment is one reason mistakes like that can be made.

Over-Confidence

Over-confidence can lead to making bad decisions, because it leads to people doing things without taking precautions to ensure safety, or rashly deciding to do something and going ahead, rather than thinking about whether doing something else instead would be better.

For instance, if it's hot and sunny one day, and it looks sunny out the window the next morning, it's easy to assume it's just bound to be just as hot as it was the day before, and not to be cautious enough to check. So some people might go out without putting many layers of clothing on or taking extra ones just in case the sun goes in and it starts to feel chilly. Even if the weather forecast says the sun might go in later, a person can confidently decide to happily take a chance, to regret it later when they get cold.

It can happen in much more serious ways too, such as if a government has taken its country through several little wars where the outcome has always been good, so when there's the prospect of a much bigger one on the horizon, the politicians can feel sure it's just bound to end well, and think far too little about the possible consequences, or even whether it's a good idea, before sending troops to fight in it.

But ordinary people's lives can be wrecked or changed a lot because of decisions they make during a mere moment where over-confidence contributes to what they do, such as a driver feeling sure they can look away from the road to do something else for a few seconds before anything happens that they need to be concerned about.

Well-educated people are no exceptions; someone who feels sure they're too wise and intelligent to be conned might still fall for a trick if the method used is something they weren't expecting.

Because feelings can influence what people do, and create powerful temptations, and because they can come on so quickly, the solution isn't as simple as a person just making up their minds to be more cautious about things, because feelings will often carry people along into doing things before they've given a matter any serious thought. So it's worth people observing what feelings tend to come before any actions they take that they realise afterwards might have been a bit rash, trying to remember what they're like, and remembering if they can to stop and think for a few seconds at the very first sign that they're happening again, to ask themselves if they're good impulses, or whether it might be best to try to resist the temptation to do what they're making them feel like doing.

Over-confidence naturally isn't the only thing where feelings can carry people away into decisions they regret. All kinds of things can. Anger's one. It's difficult to stop and think when a feeling takes hold, but if a person can recognise the signs of it when it's just beginning, it might be easier to stop and think something like, "Hang on, I remember this is the feeling I get before I do things I can regret."

Feelings That Cause Cravings and Temptations

When a craving for something like alcohol or chocolate comes on, it's worth trying to work out whether it really is something we want, or whether we're craving it because we've been conditioned to: That is, If someone has an alcoholic drink or bar of chocolate and so on when they feel miserable a few times and feels better afterwards, the brain will remember that, so the next few times they feel miserable, the brain will automatically bring the thought of alcohol or the other thing to mind, so they start craving it again. The brain's trying to help, to come up with a tempting solution. But it's as well to think about whether that's really the best thing to have, or whether something less fattening or bad for the liver, or better in some other way, would do just as well, and whether the only reason the craving's come on is because the brain's just used to thinking, "alcohol!" or whatever it is, when a certain thing happens, as if it's programmed to.

It might be that some things will be more satisfying, such as reading something amusing, putting on some nice music, doing a task that's mentally stimulating so it gives pleasure, seeking out companionship for a little while, doing some exercise which will get the adrenaline flowing around the system, which will often make a person feel more perky, reading cheering news about someone's achievements, doing something to try sorting out the problem that's causing the bad feeling, and so on.

Once a person's used to doing something else in the situations where the brain's been thinking alcohol or comfort food is the solution, it might well be that it'll be programmed to want that instead.

The exception is where a real addiction's taken hold.

Cravings for food or drink can sometimes come on when we smell something we like, and we can sometimes start thinking we want it even before it registers in our minds that we can smell it, so we can just want it without knowing why, till we realise. Trying to work out what's triggered the craving off can sometimes calm it.

Or it can be that something else can trigger off a craving, even such a thing as looking at the time and finding out it's the time we normally have an alcoholic drink, fattening snack or whatever. Thinking of something equally rewarding but healthier to do at those times and doing it for several days in a row can help break a habit someone would like to get out of.

If it's smoking, for example, there might be a dozen times a day when a craving comes on that they usually immediately satisfy with a cigarette. If a smoker can think about when all the times are that a craving normally comes on, and think of some other little rewarding thing to do at each of those times, and especially if they then spend some time looking forward to it, thinking about how they'll enjoy it, it might well be easier for them to give up smoking.

Feeling a Bit Down

Sometimes, the body can be in states that make it more likely that people will feel irritable or depressed about little things, in situations where it's quite easy to change things. For instance, people can get more irritable when they're hungry than they would otherwise. So when feeling irritable or depressed or worried about what is really quite a little thing, it's worth thinking something like, "Is this worth getting so bothered about, or is it something where I might feel better about it if I have something nice to eat, or do some exercise to get some adrenaline and endorphins pumping around my system, that'll give me more of a feeling of vitality, or if I relax with a nice cup of tea, or get some sunshine, or have a sleep, or find something entertaining on the Internet for a while, or have a chat to a friend, or if I go out and do something nice to give myself a break and change of scene, or something else?"

Obviously, time considerations will dictate what people can do, to some extent. But some things can seem much less bothersome when people are in a happier mood, and then people can find it easier to think up creative solutions to their problems, instead of just feeling irritated or worrying about them.

Emotions like depression and irritability and so on are signs from the brain that mean something needs to change. If the emotion's persistent, the problem that needs changing could be some kind of life circumstance. Or sometimes it can mean something's physically the matter, such as a vitamin or mineral deficiency, or a hormone imbalance, like an underactive thyroid. It might need medical attention. Or sometimes eating regularly and having a balanced healthy diet helps, because the healthiness of the diet doesn't just affect things like the risk of heart disease, and other physical things like that, but it also affects the mood.

Emotions Leading to Drastic Decisions in Relationships With Others

Feelings can carry people along into making really life-changing decisions they regret later. For instance, if someone's been arguing a lot with their husband or wife and they're not happy, they might decide they want a divorce, and because all the recent negative things are uppermost in their mind and making them angry, it can be easy to forget or push from the mind the times when the marriage has been happy, and the good things about the husband or wife that might be missed after a separation.

So whatever a person feels like doing, unless there's danger in the marriage, it can be best to try and recall good things that could be missed, and also to think about or try to find out about whether there are ways of changing things so the marriage improves, before considering such a drastic thing as divorce.

That's not a natural thing to do, because it's a human instinct to want to get away from unpleasant things quickly. That basic instinct is, after all, what helped our ancestors survive when wild animals came after them and they had to run. But if it's a marriage, if it was entered into voluntarily, it must have been good once, so perhaps it could be again. Even though bad feeling might make it tempting to just abandon it, the loss of it would mean quite a dramatic life change, and not necessarily for the better in the long run, for any children as well as for the divorcing couple, so serious thought should first be given as to whether it could be made happier instead.

Thinking about whether it can be improved doesn't have to be tried while in the heat of anger, but at a time when it's possible to be more calm and clear-headed, even if that means spending a little time alone away from home. It's easier to think of good ideas and plan for the future while calmer anyway.

Even highly educated businessmen and politicians aren't immune from being swayed by emotions into making very bad decisions. Unfortunately, when they do, a lot of people can suffer. Emotions of greed, pride, fear of disgrace, and a number of other things, can carry people away into making bad decisions that contribute to wars, financial crises, and other things that cause suffering for millions.

Part Three
The Same Thing Can Seem Very Different According to How It's Interpreted, and Have a Big Effect on Mood and Behaviour

Attitudes Learned in Childhood Can Have a Big Impact on Opinions All Through Life for Better or Worse

People's attitudes can often be a result of things they were taught before they were even old enough to think about the rights and wrongs of what they were learning, and yet they can hold them very firmly.

If you hear something and immediately feel indignant, or some other strong emotion, it might slow down your reaction enough for you to think before you act on it if you ask yourself whether the thing really is as annoying as you assume it is, or whether you might just think it is because of your background. For instance:

• When someone insults your religion, are you really getting annoyed because it's wrong to insult it, or could it be for reasons such as that you've been brought up to believe it's sacred, and that someone who questions it is a threat; if you'd been brought up in a completely different religion, you'd believe that firmly instead, and wouldn't mind a bit that the religion currently being criticised is being ridiculed; if you'd been brought up in a different country by different parents, it would be a different religion entirely you'd want to defend, or else you yourself would be fiercely critical of religion, maybe because you were brought up to be.
• If you're fiercely angry and ready to automatically blame the government or big business the moment you hear a news story about job losses, can you really be sure you're laying the blame where it belongs, or might you be so quick to lay blame because over the years, you've developed a quick temper, and/or a thinking style that doesn't look for all sides of the story or search carefully into the causes of things, but assumes the worst automatically, or an anti-government/corporate ideology that gives you a set of assumptions about the way things are, that you've never thought to question, that governs the way you apportion blame whenever things like that happen?
• Do you discipline your children in the way you really think is best, or have you automatically slipped into disciplining them the way your parents disciplined you, because that's the way you learned to over the years; and would you even defend that way of disciplining them automatically if someone criticised it, even though there might be a much better way out there you haven't looked into? - Granted it would be hard to learn a new technique when old ones come automatically; but do you think the ones you use are the right techniques, just because they happen to be the ones you've been brought up with, rather than because you've looked into it and decided they're the best?
• You might be disgusted at the sight of gay men embracing; but is that because it genuinely is disgusting, or is it because you've developed the attitude that it's bad over the years from things you've heard, but you've never really thought about it yourself much? What if you'd been brought up all your life since you were very little to believe that one day you'd meet a nice person of the same sex, fall in love and marry, and everyone around you was brought up that way too, so you weren't aware there was any different view? Is it possible you'd be of a different sexual orientation yourself now? No one could ever say for sure. But is there a possibility? Or at least that you'd be more tolerant of people who are, and would smile indulgently on those who publicly embraced?
• If you automatically feel a sense of dislike when you meet people of a different race, is there a good reason for it, or could you just have picked up attitudes from some of the people you've spent time around? What if you'd been born into that race? You might have been if things had turned out differently. And then things would look very different to you; you yourself would enjoy being around some of those people; you'd completely identify with that race, and might even have an unreasonable prejudice against people of the race you are now, depending on the attitudes you've picked up from others.
• If you get angry with your children and sharply tell them off when they do things you consider bad manners, are they really doing something bad, or are you annoyed just because you've grown up being taught it's bad, so you believe it, but you haven't thought about it yourself? For instance, nowadays if a child picked up their plate after they'd eaten dinner and licked the gravy or sauce and last bits off, they'd be considered bad-mannered or disgusting, but in the old days in some parts, children normally licked their plates, and it was considered a compliment to their mothers' cooking. Burping is considered rude in this country, but in some parts of the world, it's apparently considered a sign of appreciation for the meal. Also, nowadays if a child doesn't finish their dinner, they're told off for wasting food; but in Victorian times, there was a tradition among some people who wanted their families to be considered genteel to tell their children that they should leave food on the plate when they visited the homes of others, so the girls at least would be considered delicate dainty things who didn't over-eat. And if someone takes off the top of a yoghurt and licks it, they'll be considered disgusting by a lot of people, but really, so long as they're not going to leave it around for someone else to pick up and throw away, is there really a good reason why they shouldn't be doing it? After all, there's often a thick layer of yoghurt on it, and it's just wasted if it's left.
  
  Certainly it's reasonable to tell children not to do things even though there's nothing really wrong with them if it'll save them from being thought disgusting by others outside the family if they do something similar in front of them. Also if something's unhygienic or bad for another reason, naturally children ought to be instructed not to do it. But anyone who feels personally disgusted or angered by such things just because they seem disgusting could ask themselves if there's really a reason they're a bad thing to do, or if they're just feeling angry because they've learned that they're bad things to do, and they just accepted that without question, so they don't in reality have a practical reason for thinking it. Anyone who realises they seem to be getting angry just because they've learned to believe some things are wrong but haven't thought things through themselves could perhaps think about whether their attitudes are really fair, or whether they're harder on their children than they should be.

To a large extent, people are products of their surroundings, upbringing and what they've been fed by the media all their lives. While a lot of good things might have come from that, it can mean that sometimes people have strong reactions to things that they assume are to do with the rights and wrongs of the matter, but in reality they're to do with the way they've learned to think over the years, because other people told them certain things were right or wrong, rather than what they've come to think based on a thoughtful contemplation of the issues.

The Way Things are Interpreted Can Make the Difference Between Glory and Tragedy

So much suffering is caused because of things that go on in people's minds, caused by attitudes they have or the way they've misunderstood things, or their failure to realise what opportunities they have. An overly-hopeless attitude can contribute to months of depression. Bad ways of thinking can eventually even lead people to commit suicide, or kill. Even small changes in their thoughts could sometimes spark off new thinking that leads to different attitudes that could prevent that.

A Famous Example

To give an example, when the wife of Prince William, Kate, became pregnant in 2012 and was in hospital for a little while with severe morning sickness, a hoax call by two Australian DJ's resulted in tragedy; but things could have been so different. If people had thought differently about it, it could have led to something fantastic that helped a lot of people:

The DJ's pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, asking how Kate was. They probably just thought it was a bit of fun.

There was nothing that bad about the prank call itself; no especially personal details were asked for or revealed - the callers only asked how Kate was and how her night had been, and the only thing the nurse who reported on Kate's condition told them was that she was having what were actually the kind of problems any woman at all with morning sickness might have! The kind of thing any pregnant woman might feel free to tell another on the bus! The call wasn't a major intrusion into Kate's privacy at all.

Yet the media made a sensation out of it. Instead of being concerned at the security breach, putting their minds to thinking up ways to make sure it couldn't happen again, journalists throughout the world may have been joyous that they had such a good story. So of course they publicised it. Worldwide, it would have been broadcast that there had been a security breach at the hospital where Prince William's wife Kate was being treated, and it might not have been long before the identity of the nurse who put the call through to the one who reported to the DJ's on Kate's condition was known. She probably feared a worldwide storm of ridicule and condemnation.

And she may have been laughed at by staff from the radio station who phoned her afterwards to tell her the call had been a hoax, and to ask if she minded it being broadcast; - apparently they tried to get permission, but it seems she didn't grant it, and then they decided they didn't need it after all.

Everyone soon found out the identity of the nurse who put the call through, because of the tragedy that followed - she committed suicide; her name was Jacintha Suldanha, a woman who'd come over to the UK from India several years earlier, and was mother to two teenage children.

If she cared about the royal family, she may have felt terrible that her actions had led to such an embarrassing incident, even though it wasn't her fault; all she did was put a telephone call through. And worse, more than one person may have reminded her that Prince William's own mother died after she was in a car driven by someone who decided to go on a mad race to escape people intruding into her privacy, trying to take photos of her with her lover, and people might have cruelly or thoughtlessly accused Jacintha of causing another blow to Prince William by now causing an intrusion into the privacy of his wife.

Jacintha might have been especially upset because she had perhaps attended to Kate personally, and cared about her well-being - taking the call wasn't like letting down a stranger. Besides perhaps thinking she'd brought trouble on someone she cared about, she might have been upset by the thought that she would likely have to face that very person when she was next due to work on her ward.

Also, in the part of the world Jacintha came from, it's considered a much more serious offence - at least for women - to do something that could be thought to show their family up; people are disowned - or even assaulted or killed - by their families for much less than she might have been thought guilty of in some parts of her country, being accused of having brought shame on them. Even if there was no threat of recrimination from her family, the nurse may well have felt deep shame when the call was broadcast and rebroadcast, and her voice was heard worldwide putting the call through. She might have thought her family would be better off without her, thinking she would forever be a reminder to them that the privacy of the royals had been breached and it was because she'd put the call through. Her family might not have thought like that at all; apparently they were very upset when she died. But people tend to think bad things are much worse than they really are when they're depressed, so she may have feared the worst, and that things would never get better.

And she may have been depressed even before the prank call; there are some reports that she'd tried to commit suicide before, only a year or two earlier in India, twice within a short time, and then was prescribed anti-depressants.

But if she'd had a thicker skin, a cooler head, more courage of her convictions, and the experience to know that what she'd done was only a three-day wonder - with people disgusted or laughing and ridiculing one minute, and probably having almost completely forgotten about it the next, - she could have planned how to turn her infamy into a fantastic opportunity to do good instead:

She could have reasoned with herself that she didn't actually do any wrong, and in fact no great harm had been done at all. So what if the world had got to hear that Kate had merely been suffering from the same things any woman with morning sickness might suffer from, she might have reasoned. "So what if I made a mistake and put the call through; I can't be blamed for assuming that someone saying they were the queen really was; hoax calls are simply not something I've ever had to deal with, and the Queen was concerned to know how Kate was getting on and I knew it."

Lots of abusive and thoughtless comments appeared on the Internet, laughing at her for not detecting the hoax. People should have really thought about whether what they were saying was true before they said it. They ridiculed the nurses who were taken in, feeling sure they themselves could have spotted the hoax; but it's actually very doubtful they could have. The call came in the early hours of the morning; The nurses might well have been tired; and the impressions the DJ's did of the queen and Prince Charles were actually good, and at the other end of a phone line, they wouldn't have sounded as clear as they would have when the conversation was broadcast on the radio. Besides, neither Jacintha nor the other nurse spoke to them for all that long, especially Jacintha, who heard them speak for mere seconds before putting them through.

And listeners who were informed that it was a hoax before they heard it would have been listening out for any ways the voice of the hoaxers differed from those of the Queen and Prince Charles, whereas a nurse treating one of the royals in hospital simply couldn't be expected to be listening out when she received a phone call to see whether she thought an apparent concerned relative really was one; she would have probably assumed the caller was anxious with concern about her relative, and her thoughts would all have been to do with helping the relative to have their anxiety relieved. Besides, it might have seemed very discourteous indeed to have delayed putting the call through, to quiz someone who might have been an anxious queen about whether she really was who she said she was.

A thinking person can't put any of the blame on Jacintha, and if she'd been a different - perhaps less sensitive - kind of person, she could have reasoned all that through and said a big "Stuff you" to the thoughtless abusive people having a laugh at her expense, seeing them for just what they were. Or she could have been reassured if someone else had said such things to her. And she could have reasoned with anyone who accused her of anything as horrid as subjecting William's wife to the same kind of intrusion of privacy that killed his mother Princess Diana that the intrusion wasn't actually that bad; merely putting a call through to another nurse really isn't in the same league as chasing someone all over the country to get photos of them, and it could have been prevented if the hospital had had a better security system, ... which she could say she had some good ideas about improving. She could then have suggested that in future, they use a password system.

The hospital management might well have been embarrassed by the incident, but they, too, could have come out of it looking not too bad; they could have announced that from then on, anyone phoning up claiming to be a relative of anyone famous in the hospital would have to give a password, and it would be explained to the nurses taking the calls that no matter how anxious and important a relative might be expected to be and how discourteous it seemed, they'd have to ask them for their password before putting them through, and risk not putting through a genuinely anxious relative if they couldn't give one. They could have said that perhaps it could be organised so every relative who might phone could be asked a question only they knew the answer to if they forgot their password, and though setting such a system up with possibly frightened relatives might seem insensitive and inconvenient, it would be considered that it would have to be done.

Jacintha could have gone to the papers herself - lots would likely have been eager to interview her. She could have apologised, justified herself in the face of the criticisms, ... and then, ... could have come her moment of glory!: Her brother is reported to have said she'd been thinking of setting up a nursing centre in India. If true, the opportunity of a lifetime could have just arrived, if only she'd thought to take it! She could have told the papers that it would be a pity if her career was ruined, because she was thinking of setting up a nursing centre in India that would help lots of people ... and that in fact, if people would donate to it, it might be fantastically successful and help a lot of people out of misery.

Donations and offers of help might have flooded in! She might have been able to set up something far far bigger and better than she'd ever have been able to have done if the mistake hadn't been made. Perhaps Kate and Prince William could have given her support, and then it could have turned into something massive, that helped a lot of people!

Other situations that seem hopeless can sometimes not only be not nearly so hopeless as was at first thought, but result in a lot of good, if people focus on how to turn them to advantage.

One problem is that people's opinions are often shaped by their feelings; people can think things are hopeless because they feel hopeless. But the reason they feel hopeless might only be because they've been interpreting things in only one way, worrying and worrying about one or two things on their minds, till they're overwhelmed with bad thoughts. They think their feelings are telling them about the way things really are, and they let themselves be dominated by them.

In reality, feelings are very good servants - they often do bring to our attention very important things, such as when an indignant feeling might make someone pay more attention to the injustice of something, and motivate them to try to do something to change it. But feelings don't make good masters; feelings can only tell a person that part of their brain thinks something is badly wrong; they don't mean that there definitely is a problem. So people should do their best never to allow feelings to be the masters of their thoughts. After all, the same situation can make people feel very different, according to how it's thought of.

Sometimes, people are angrier than they should be because they assume a person has evil intent, when what they did was an accident, or they thought it was just fun. Jacintha said she held the DJ's who made the prank call responsible for her death, and hoped they paid her mortgage. Also, streams of angry comments appeared on the Internet; the DJ's even received death threats, and were accused of having British blood on their hands - that shows how ill-equipped to make condemnations the people who declared that were, because they clearly didn't have enough information to make a good judgment, since for one thing, Jacintha was Indian! This abuse was equally as thoughtless as the ridicule the nurses had got in the first place for falling for the hoax. When the DJ's made the call, they would have had no idea there was even a possibility it would lead to someone's death, or even someone being anywhere near upset enough to be suicidal, and they almost certainly wouldn't have wanted that to happen. So they were being judged by the results of what happened, rather than their intentions at the time. Since they couldn't have foreseen the results, that wasn't fair.

It's similar in everyday situations: For instance, a person might regularly call another person an insulting name, and that person might be angry about it, but not say they are. Yet they might hold the person who insulted them responsible for their feelings, and think they caused them deliberately, when the person who said the insulting thing might not even realise they have those feelings, and didn't intend to cause them. They might have only meant the insult to be light-hearted.

One Way a Person's Mood Can Get Worse and Worse Quickly, and Trying to Stop it

One problem is that the more a person worries or torments themselves about a thing, the stronger their feelings grow, till they can be so strong, it's simply impossible for any thought that sees things another way to make itself heard above them, so a person becomes all the more convinced that things are as bad as their feelings are making them think they are. The thoughts that go on in a person's own mind can make the difference between passive acceptance of a thing with a mildly positive outlook on it, and months of torment and low spirits. The more someone convinces themselves they're hard-done-by and can't cope, the more hopeless they'll feel; and that feeling of hopelessness can sap a person's confidence in themselves, so they become even more anxious about coping, and their mood can spiral down and down.

So when negative thoughts and feelings begin to come on, it's worth trying to remember that depression and anxiety often make things seem worse than they really are, and that things might look very different if thoughts are turned to trying to plan ways to solve the problems, or getting help to, instead of just brooding on how bad things are; and some problems have led to things changing in ways that turned out to be for the best in the end.

Or even if a person just shifts their train of thought to something else when they notice familiar old thoughts are going round and round in their heads again, that only put them in a bad mood if they're left to carry on, it can result in their mood becoming much better.

Sometimes, certain things trigger off a train of bad thoughts that put people in a bad mood, and if they just change something about their routine, it can mean they bypass the thing that triggers the thoughts off, so it no longer happens. For instance, if someone realises they start stewing on things that have irritated them and end up feeling really grumpy every time they spend a long time having a shower and drying themselves and getting dressed afterwards, when their mind isn't occupied with much else, they could try to remember to attempt to speed up the process of showering from then on, so they can move on to the next thing they want to do more quickly.

A person who finds they're already drowning in bad feelings will find it very difficult to do that, or think analytically about anything, till they've calmed down. So if possible, they should give themselves a treat or do something that'll make them feel much calmer before taking any important decision at all.

Feelings that are very strong can seem so convincing, there doesn't seem to be any need to try to think of things differently; things can seem straightforward and worse than they are. So people can start thinking in more extreme ways than would be good for them. But one reason there will only seem to be one course of action or one possible interpretation of a person's behaviour will be because the feelings are so convincing and strong, they're blocking out the brain's ability to start thought processes that could lead to good plans or different perspectives.

So when a person's feelings are telling them to do something drastic like committing suicide, or committing violence against another person, it can save them from ruining their lives for good if they can try to remember that the calmer they are, the more likely they are to be able to think of other solutions to their problems which will work out better for them in the long run, so the first priority could well be to do some serious relaxation, - something safe they can do that'll occupy their mind so much they'll be forced to take their minds off their problems for a while, because thinking about them more and more will be what's driving the feelings that are telling them to commit suicide - or whatever else they have an urge to do - to grow stronger and stronger, putting them in more and more serious danger of actually doing it.

Alternatively, talking to supportive people about the problems can be calming, reassuring, and help people think of things from different points of view, so as to see possibilities for ways to solve their problems they might well never have thought of on their own.

The Story of a Woman who Felt Suicidal About Things But Later Didn't Understand Why She'd Thought They Were So Terrible A woman went to a forward-thinking therapist after a suicide attempt that had left her badly injured and in hospital for a week. She felt overwhelmed with problems. She'd had to give up work a few years earlier because her back had been injured, and she'd been unemployed since. She was about to go to court to try to get compensation from her previous employer. She'd recently read in the paper about someone else who'd taken a previous employer to court for compensation and lost, and had had to sell their house to pay the employer's legal costs! She worried and worried that the same thing would happen to her, and that her and her husband would end up homeless. She also felt trapped in her house, because a neighbour had a dog, and she was scared of dogs, so she felt horrible feelings of fear whenever she went past it on her own, and didn't dare go out a lot of the time. It was really getting her down. Another problem was that she and her husband were having a new house built, and the builders were months behind schedule. She felt as if they were ripping her off, and was despairing because the place looked a shambles, and she was convinced it would never be finished! And something that had upset her deeply not long before was that her sister was in counselling, and had told her one day that she'd realised during counselling that she'd been sexually abused by her father when she was a child. The woman who'd attempted suicide loved her father, and had a close relationship with him. He'd never abused her, and she didn't know whether to believe her sister, and whose side she ought to come down on. Her sister wanted her to support and side with her, but her father was upset about the accusations, and wanted her to side with and support him. She didn't know what to do. All those problems added up in her mind to what seemed like a catastrophe, that was ruining her life so much that suicide was the only way out. The therapist showed her some ways to relax, and talked her through a way of calming herself. As she calmed down, she began to regain the ability to think of things from different points of view. She also began to realise her problems didn't mean it was the end of the world, and that in fact she had a lot going for her that she'd simply forgotten, because she'd focused so much on worrying about her problems, it had begun to seem as if they were all there was to life, and that they were as bad as they could be. That's how people start thinking when they're depressed; and anyone who normally thinks like that is at greater risk of becoming depressed than most others. The therapist used a quick and fairly stress-free technique to remove her phobia of dogs, one she hadn't known existed before, called the rewind technique. Then he discussed her other problems with her, and soon she realised she'd been blowing them right out of proportion: He asked her what actual evidence she had that she was going to lose her court case. She repeated the story she'd read in the newspaper. The therapist reasoned that there might be a lot of things about that case that were different from hers. He told her it was important to concentrate just on the evidence that her own particular case would succeed or fail. He asked what her lawyer had said about it. She said her lawyer had said she was certain to win, since she was injured at work and there were witnesses who'd given sworn statements. He'd said that basically all that remained was for the court to decide how much she was going to receive in damages. The therapist explained to her that she'd been misusing her imagination, by using it to invent a very unlikely catastrophic outcome to the case, and then fantasising and worrying about how terrible it might be. In her calm state, she could easily understand that for her to be so scared she was going to lose the case and it would mean she'd have to lose her own family home was unreasonable, since it was very unlikely to happen. Then they discussed the problem of her sister having come home from counselling and announced that their father had sexually abused her, hoping for support. The therapist reasoned that since there was no actual physical evidence of any abuse, and the woman had never seen any abuse happen to her sister, and she didn't believe her father was the type of person to do that, the best, and really the only thing she could do, was to reserve judgment, till such a time as she ever had more evidence one way or the other. It was best for her simply to resign herself to the fact that she didn't, and perhaps never would, have enough evidence to make a decision one way or the other; there was nothing wrong with not making a decision who to side with at all; and while not knowing who was telling the truth might be painful, she could simply consider that it was currently impossible to make a decision, because there was not enough evidence either way; there was nothing wrong with that. He explained that while her sister might be telling the truth, it was quite possible she could be mistaken, because some types of counselling implant false memories in people; the therapists who use such types , while likely assuming they're doing good, can be doing a lot of harm, using one or more of several techniques that can make clients who trust them feel sure they experienced things in the past that they didn't. (Sometimes hypnosis is used, and sometimes imagination and leading questions: The counsellor asks the client if they could possibly have been sexually abused, and then asks them to think back and try and imagine a scene where they were, filling in more and more of the details their imagination comes up with as the counsellor asks them more and more questions about what it could have been like. The counsellor asks them to think about it more and more over the coming week, trying to remember more and more detail, and seeing any dreams they have about it as significant. Clients can come to believe that what they've begun to imagine is a real memory, especially if the counsellor seems convinced they can spot signs that they've been abused.) The woman who'd been agonising over whether to side with her sister or father breathed a huge sigh of relief when she realised it wasn't her job to side with either of them, but she could simply be supportive to both, unless and until she had more evidence. After all, She had no children who just might be put in danger if it was true and she let her father near them. Then they turned to the problem with the builders. The therapist asked the woman what the chief architect had said about the progress. She said he'd said they were six months behind schedule. The therapist quipped that knowing what builders were like, that was twelve months ahead of schedule in builders' terms. The woman thought that was amusing. The next week, she came back to the therapist feeling much better, not depressed at all, and still free from her dog phobia. She said she couldn't understand how on earth she could have got things so out-of-proportion, so much so that she had thought the only way out was suicide. But the reason it had happened was because she'd taken her problems to mean life in general was hopeless, hadn't thought to try and think of them from other perspectives, and generated stronger and stronger depressed and anxious feelings in her mind by worrying and worrying about them, till suicidal urges came on.

Depression is the Brain Trying to Say Something

It can be difficult when depressed or anxious, but it can help calm feelings if instead of accepting the worst possible interpretation of things, which will often be the first one that comes into the mind, people see it as just a possibility, and then try to think of several other possible interpretations. Even if they believe none of them, they can take the view that it's perfectly OK to reserve judgment on all of them for the time being, till more evidence is gathered.

Sometimes when a person's feeling irritated or depressed, or very worried, or some other strong emotion, it can be calming to ask themselves whether feeling that strongly really is warranted, whether they could be forgetting positive things and only remembering negative ones, whether there are any possible explanations for the problem that would make it more understandable and so less bothersome, whether it's worth getting so emotional, given the only thing that's happening as a result is their mood is being ruined, and things like that.

Depression is the brain's way of saying something needs to change; but the part of the brain that causes it can't give any clues as to what that thing is. So people can get exactly the same feeling whether they have a vitamin or thyroid deficiency that's causing a problem with the brain not getting enough of what it needs, whether they feel hopeless because their life is going nowhere after they've applied for several jobs and failed, whether they've been deprived of sunshine for weeks, whether they've just heard some bad news, and so on. So people have to try and work out what the cause is.

Examples of Looking at the Same Thing in Very Different Ways so Different Feelings Result

Sometimes there can be more than one way of looking at things, and one way can lead to even more depression, while another can lift the spirits.

For instance, a man delivered a new fridge freezer to two people moving into a flat. He said they shouldn't use it for 24 hours, perhaps because it needed time to get to the proper temperatures. One flatmate thought, "Hooray, in 24 hours we'll have a functioning fridge freezer!" while the other one said, "Oh no, we've got to wait 24 hours before we can use our fridge!"

Then there was a woman who was fed up because she'd applied for several jobs and not got one, and also she'd been turned down for some in ways that made her feel sure the employers were prejudiced against her because she had bad eyesight. Someone suggested that the way she presented that information might change employers' attitudes, telling her there was a woman who got fed up of being rejected for jobs, who felt sure it was because employers weren't keen on taking on women of childbearing age who were in a relationship in the kind of job she wanted to do, because of the worry they'd have babies and leave for months, making things awkward and more costly for them. One day she went for another job interview, and sure she was likely to be rejected again, walked in, and almost before she said anything else, said, "... and before you ask, I've had a hysterectomy!" She got the job.

The message the person who told the story was hoping the woman who felt down-hearted would take away was that she herself could do something similar, by perhaps saying to interviewers before they could make any judgments something like, "By the way, I've got bad eyesight; but I can do all the work you'd want me to do just as well as anyone else in your office - it isn't bad enough to affect the way I do the job"; but instead, she just said, "That proves employers are prejudiced!", and carried on as dispirited as ever.

People Can Feel More Hard-Done-By Than They Should When They Fail to Consider Others' Points of View

Sometimes, people feel angrier or more anxious than they should about things, because they're only thinking about them from their own point of view and what they want, rather than looking at them from others' points of view, which might help them understand them better; and they can also attribute motives of ill intent to others that they might not have at all.

For instance, there was a man who thought hardly any good music had been produced since about the 1940's, and liked to buy old records, but would get anxious and angry with the companies he bought them from easily, often sending them aggressively-worded complaints. One time was when he ordered something and hadn't heard from them within about three days. Maybe he'd have been less angry and anxious if he'd tried to think of things from another point of view:

To him, he was all-important; but to people at the company, not unreasonably, all he would be was another order to be processed, a chunk of text in an email; and he didn't know how many staff the company had to process orders, and how many orders they had to get through. He didn't know if any of their staff were off sick, whether they were having technical problems, or how many other things they had to do besides processing orders. Therefore, he couldn't tell how reasonable or unreasonable it was of them not to have acknowledged his order in the time they'd had.

If it had occurred to him to think about all those things, his anger would have likely evaporated, at least partly.

Staff in some organisations that deal with the public will often have to deal with abusive customers. While some of the things that go on in those organisations are bound to be frustrating, people really ought to think before being abusive, because they don't know what kinds of pressures the staff are under.

The same man got angry one day, because a company who'd been offering something free when anyone made a particular purchase had started charging for it. He vented his frustration on Facebook, saying it ought to be illegal to do things like that, and that it was a terrible thing to do that ought to be a crime!

If he'd only tried to think of reasons why the company might have done it, he might not have been nearly so angry, and spared himself and others from having to put up with his mood. He might have thought of several possible reasons why the company had done it:

• The supplier that the company bought the thing from that they'd offered for free before might have put the price of it up, so it was no longer so affordable for them to offer it for free;
• The company might be in financial hard times and not be able to afford freebies for a while;
• It might only ever have been a time-limited special offer;
• The price of the free item would probably have been concealed in the prices of other things anyway - it would have to have been paid for somehow - so maybe they'd decided to drop the price of one or two things, and charge for the free item instead that people were previously paying for in the price of what they bought without knowing.

And so on.

Also, if it really was made illegal to later charge for something you used to offer for free, then what company would ever offer anything for free ever again, knowing they'd never be able to charge for it without being penalised, something that wouldn't happen if they charged for it from the start? Only those offering things unrelated to their products that they'd never charge for in any case, such as cereal manufacturers giving away little toys with boxes of cereal. The law would do exactly the opposite of what those who'd clamoured for it had wanted!

Deciding on a course of action in a state of emotion without thinking things through first can lead to all kinds of unforeseen unfortunate consequences. When having a serious think about something, important things can occur to people that just wouldn't if they'd acted hastily without thinking.

The man became anxious if he sent someone a Facebook message and they didn't reply quickly. He took it personally. But he shouldn't have done that, not knowing why they were taking a while to reply; one person was preoccupied with moving house after a decision was made to knock down her old one!

Having Depressive Conversations With People Who Confirm You in a Mistaken Point of View Because They Have the Same Depressive Thinking Style

Another example of something people can do especially if they have a depressive thinking style is to think that everything's terrible whereas it used to be great, or at least that the world's in a worse state than it ever used to be. They can have whole discussions with like-minded people about how things were so much better in the old days - as if no child ever got abducted, no child abuse went on undetected by neighbours - and if it did happen at all they'd always report it, because they'd always find out about it because they were in each other's houses more, so no one ever got away with it, how people cared for each other so much more, how the music was so much better, and so on. Even people still in their twenties can think like that. When people agree with them, they can feel all the more that they're correct because people are agreeing, whereas it really just means they share the same extreme way of thinking.

In reality, it's far more likely to be the case that those people simply can't remember news stories from years before about bad things happening to children, or they didn't listen to the news much at all in those days, or that such things weren't publicised as much as they are nowadays; and they might only remember the music they liked from years ago, and haven't listened to enough new music recently to find new favourites, and so on.

People don't remember everything that happens in their lives. Things are never likely to be as simple as people in that frame of mind seem to think they are. How could they be? What could possibly change human nature or opportunities for criminals so much that a mere 20 years ago, no child would ever have been abducted, whereas now there's a constant danger of it? Or how could it be that nowadays there's not a single good piece of music around? Or how could human nature have changed so much that a mere 50 years ago, everyone cared for each other, while no one does now? How could anyone ever know no one does now anyway? Surely you'd have to collect the experiences of thousands of individuals who all said there wasn't a caring person in their communities to even get an idea that that was true. And how could anyone ever know that no child abuse would have gone undetected by neighbours 50 years ago when neighbours perhaps spoke to each other more, when it can go on in a house without even other family members knowing about it? Things simply have to be more complex than that.

Sometimes, people condemn an entire thing, when not only is that thing not really the cause of the problem, but there's only something wrong with a small part of it, and a greater understanding of how it works could solve the problem. For instance, someone who's angry because they can't work out how to win a video game might proclaim that computers are the curse of the modern age. Not a thought for what even their own life would really be like without them! Not a thought for how computers have benefited mankind. Not a thought for what else computers are capable of doing besides enabling people to play video games. Not a thought for whether their own lack of skill is really the problem. Just a sudden unthinking conviction that when it comes to computers, the entire lot of them shouldn't exist!

People shouldn't blame the tools for the way they're sometimes used! Trying to work out how things can be better and less likely to go wrong in future is often better than just blaming; but it's certainly better than blaming people or things that don't even bear any responsibility at all for the problems.

The Story of a Tragedy Made Much Worse By Lasting Depressive Thinking

A woman was stabbed by her autistic teenage son, who was frustrated because he could hardly speak, so there were serious communication difficulties and misunderstandings. She could have been killed. Luckily help came quickly. At first the police treated it as attempted murder, but things changed when the extent of his disability was understood; besides being able to say very little, much of his mind is that of a child.

Social services took him away and put him in a care home. Naturally the mother was traumatised at what had happened, and she was also grief-stricken that he'd been taken away, especially because it was so sudden, with her having no say in where he was taken. Her devotion to him was admirable, considering what he'd done! She didn't blame him, because she was sure he didn't understand the seriousness of it. He'd just lashed out in frustration. It wasn't the first time he'd been violent, but she still adored him and wanted him with her.

Naturally it was to be expected that she'd be extremely upset by what had happened, and she deserved a lot of sympathy. And she was never going to get over it quickly. Yet over the next years, she tormented herself with anguish far more than she needed to, because she brooded and brooded on how awful it was not having him at home, and worried and worried about how he was getting on, even though all the signs were that he was being treated well and enjoying himself. Someone with a different temperament might have been very much more accepting of the fact that he no longer lived at home and wasn't going to be allowed back for the foreseeable future, and so would have suffered much less.

She really needed psychological help. She was offered a bit of counselling, but she didn't find it helpful at all. Some counselling just encourages people to mull over their past hurts, and they go home and brood on them, and end up feeling worse! What she needed was the kind of therapy that would help her look at her problems from new perspectives, and focus her mind on how to solve them, rather than on how bad she thought they were. Unfortunately, she didn't get that kind of help, and she lived alone for much of the time, so she felt lonely and isolated, not having worked for a long time, and just spending her time at home with nothing much to do, feeling lonely; and when people are isolated, their thoughts can go round and round in an unhealthy depressive rut, because they don't have contact with people who will look at things in new ways that enable them to start thinking about things from different perspectives, so they might realise the problems aren't so serious after all, or that there are ways of solving them that they hadn't thought of.

And others around them will say and do things that will help them start focusing their thoughts on different things altogether for much of the time, so they can become more cheerful, because they're no longer working themselves up into a state of emotion thinking about their troubles. Also, company can eliminate the loneliness that can contribute to depression.

In the first home her son was placed in, she was allowed to visit him once a week - no more than that, because staff had to be available to supervise the visit, in case he got violent again, and the home was miles and miles away, so it was difficult for her to get to, especially because a disability she has herself makes it much more difficult for her to hop on a bus, and impossible for her to drive, so she had to rely on someone else, paid for by social services, to drive her there.

Though her son knew few words, one phrase he repeated every time she visited him was, "Home Mummy!"

Naturally, she was in a better position than anyone who didn't know him to know what he meant by that, because she'd hear his tone of voice. But because she was so convinced he needed her and ought to be at home, and she desperately wanted him to want to be with her, it was possible she put her own interpretations on what he said; and her emotional response and the feelings she had for days afterwards would have been dramatically different according to how she interpreted that phrase. She always interpreted it to mean he was upset and desperately wanted to come home, so she was often upset, and cried after visiting him. She would have done that to some extent anyway, because she hated saying goodbye and not being able to take him home. But she may have suffered far more than necessary, because of the thoughts going through her head.

What if instead of assuming the worst, she'd reserved judgment, tried to get him to say a few more words that would give her more of a clue about what he really meant, and only if she'd been successful, had drawn a conclusion about what he was really trying to say? Just doing that might have meant she didn't do nearly so much of the worrying that was sinking her deeper and deeper into depression because she was convinced his words must mean he was unhappy.

After all, the boy's words could have been interpreted in several different ways, including:

• I have a deep and enduring longing to come home that keeps me awake every night pining; please, please, please take me home Mummy.
• Though I've barely thought about home all week, seeing you reminds me of it, and I'm thinking on a whim, 'Wouldn't it be nice to go back there!' Me being me, with the condition I have, I'll likely forget about it again when you go and I get absorbed in something else, but for now, I'm thinking it would be great to go and visit home!
• Hey Mummy, this is my new home now. Nice, isn't it.
• Talk to me about home Mummy; tell me the news.
• Mummy, why aren't I living at home anymore? I don't understand. It's as if everyone's forgotten I belong there. Remember I live at home! What's going on?
• Since you bring me so many goodies every week Mummy, I reckon if I was at home you might give me goodies every day, so I'd like to go home Mummy.
• I feel at home here Mummy. I want to live here now.
• Bog off home Mummy! I was enjoying myself before you came and you're interrupting it.
• I'm happy enough at this place, but I'm puzzled: When am I coming home? Tell me Mummy.
• You know, Mummy, it's funny; they call this place a home. So where you live is home, and this is home.
• Mummy, I hope you haven't come to take me away, because this is my new home now and I like it.
• They call this my new home Mummy. I'm excited, but you don't seem interested in it, just sitting here. I'd like you to come and have a look around. Come and see it Mummy!

It could have meant any one of those things or something else, or different things at different times. In fact, when he left there after a year to go to another home - one for autistic adults this time, because he'd turned 18, he cried, and when he saw his old friends from the former home again a few days later, he jumped for joy, excitedly skipped around, and kept saying, "Home!", as if he was talking about the home he'd previously been in as 'home'.

A few weeks later, he was allowed to come to the woman's house for a supervised visit, brought by the manager of the home he was in. It was the first time he'd been allowed back in over a year. He loved it. He was very pleased to be there. It was only a three-hour visit, but the woman hoped that in future, there could be longer ones.

One Way Depressive Thinking - Focusing on the Worst Thing and Imagining it's Even Worse Than That - Causes Unhappiness

The next day, people were expressing good wishes to her, saying how pleased they were that it had gone well. But one of them had the misfortune, after she wrote a caring Facebook message, to conclude it by asking if her son had been allright about "going back where he lives" after the visit. The woman got offended, and told her how much it upset her when people called the place he was living his home. The other things the well-wisher had asked and said were completely forgotten, it seemed, in her preoccupation with that one phrase.

But the well-wisher hadn't really said anything offensive. Sometimes, what upsets people is not what others say, but the way the person who hears something interprets it in their own mind.

It seems that for some reason, even though the mother surely knew better, something in her mind had interpreted what the well-wisher had said to mean she was thinking the young man lived at the home permanently, and that that was his real home. She didn't mean that at all. The mother thought that what was upsetting her was what the well-wisher had said, when in reality it was her own thoughts that were upsetting her, the thoughts she'd probably started having after reading the message, about how horrible it would be if he didn't come home again.

She said on another occasion that she refused to use the word 'living', but would always use the word 'staying' when talking about where he was. She may have felt hurt by the term 'living', but only because she associated it in her mind with living permanently, which of course is wrong; for instance, when a child goes off to university, they might say they're 'living' in student quarters, but it doesn't mean they've left home.

So she was being offended by things others couldn't possibly have foreseen she would be offended by, and yet she was telling them to be careful what words they used, as if they were being insensitive.

She was very easily offended by things others said too, which might have been a reason most stopped talking to her after a while.

One thing people who are depressed in general can do is to interpret things in the worst possible way. It works to their own disadvantage as well as that of others, because it just leads to them becoming more upset and depressed, and also it can turn away those on the receiving end of their offended comments, who don't want to risk saying more than they have to in case they only get offended again; so the depressed people can lose some of the sources of support they could really do with.

Posting via the Internet rather than saying things face-to-face can sometimes make things worse, because people can't pick up the tone of voice people use, and their body language, so they can easily interpret things as being meant hurtfully, when sometimes they were even meant sympathetically; they just triggered off unpleasant feelings in the depressed person because they reminded them of things they're upset about; and because the hurt feelings started immediately after they read what was said to them, they blame the person who said it, and can get unpleasant in response, which could cause arguments, or lead to the person whose intentions were misinterpreted wanting to stay away from the depressed person, or not offer much of any support from then on.

Battles With Social Workers

It can be just as bad when people are overly-supportive, - in fact it can result in even worse things. For instance, the woman whose autistic son stabbed her really needed all the support she could get, especially from authorities who had the power to decide what happened to him. Several of her Facebook friends were very supportive, but they may have unintentionally hindered rather than helped her a lot of the time, though she was convinced they were helping; and something similar might happen in a lot of other people's circumstances, with them feeling supported at the time, but possibly ending up feeling more angry and hopeless than they did before, because they've been confirmed in their opinion of how hard-done-by they are.

After her son stabbed her, he was taken away and put in a children's home, without her having a say in it. Social services should have given her more support to cope before - he had often punched her, once got her in a headlock and tried to strangle her, and head-butted her. When he wasn't doing any of those things, - and he didn't do them most of the time, - she felt there was a strong bond between them, and was heartbroken when he was taken away, because she felt he was the only thing she was living for. She held the social services partly to blame, and would say angry insulting things about them.

Several of her Facebook friends encouraged her to think such things, agreeing that they were nasty and evil and that her son needed to be at home with her, and that they should let him come home immediately. She was thankful for their support. But, without her realising it was contributing to the problems, what they were saying might have made her feel even more hard-done-by and angry with social services than she had before, since she was being confirmed more and more in her opinion that she had every right to feel that way, and that they were doing her wrong.

Unfortunately, that may have not only affected her state of mind, making her more depressed and bitter than she had been already, but in her anger, she was abusive to social services, and condemned them to her son while they were there. She failed completely to see things from their point of view at all, refusing to even consider any kind of compromise with them, at least for a long, long time. But as she dug her heels in and refused to even admit there was anything reasonable about their point of view, they did that with her. Since they were the ones with all the power, antagonising them could only be bad for her.

They wrote a report saying things that amounted to accusations that she was an unfit mother, and an abusive nasty unstable person, which put her at a disadvantage from then on, whenever she wanted anything. Her son's social worker would never come to her house unaccompanied, but always brought someone with her, which can't have looked good on her records at all.

She felt she was losing control of everything valuable in her life - most of all what was happening to her son - and she felt ever more helpless about it. She tormented herself about how he wasn't living as enjoyable a life as he could, making herself ill with worry, and being abusive about the staff in the homes where he was. But in reality, he was probably pretty happy most of the time. Someone with another temperament would have resigned themselves to not being able to control where he was, since after all, he was receiving good-quality care. It would have made the difference between feeling OK and feeling terrible every day.

She would also have felt better, and as if she had more control, if she'd focused her mind on trying to think of better solutions to the problem of him being so far away from her. If they'd been acceptable to social services, they might have been willing to consider them.

She did find one home near her house, and suggested her son be transferred there to them - it was for disabled adults. But they said it wasn't equipped to cater for the safety of residents if one got violent. She took offence at that, and instead of thinking of things from the point of view of all residents, rather than just her son, and looking for a home where they were more likely to be protected if he became violent again, she poured out angry words about how they were being unfair, declaring that her son isn't dangerous. But after all, even if he wasn't dangerous most of the time, he'd only have to attack a vulnerable adult once for something very serious indeed to happen. She was contributing to her own emotional agony by doing the very things she thought were standing up for herself and her son - getting defensive and refusing to admit he could be a threat to anyone, rather than doing her best to look for a solution that took the threat into account, and yet would suit both him, the other residents of any home he went to and her, plus social services.

She did have a good reason to feel angry with social services - they could have shown much more understanding than they did from the beginning. almost immediately after she was assaulted, after she came out of hospital, one told her she was selfish to want her son living with her again, since he had better life chances elsewhere. This was his mother the social worker was talking to, while she was at her most grief-stricken! And they continued to be unpleasant, though part of that might have been in response to her own unpleasantness to them. It does seem, though, that there were a few people in social services and in the homes where her son was placed who were genuinely unpleasant people.

However, just perhaps, if some of the mother's Facebook friends hadn't rushed to tell her she was right in every bad thing she said about social services, backing up her view that they were just plain evil and nasty in not letting her boy come home, but that instead, while expressing sympathy, they had gently tried to help her see things more from the social workers' point of view - that they must have been worried that if the boy was allowed home again he might even kill her, as he would have done if she hadn't got hospital treatment so quickly before, and then he'd end up in prison; and if they'd encouraged her to be willing to compromise with social services - which might soften their attitude towards her so she actually got more of what she wanted, - then perhaps she'd have stopped feeling so stressed, depressed, angry and helpless because of the bad things she thought were being done to her, and stopped being abusive to the social workers and risking them being even less willing to help her. She didn't realise that's what her behaviour must have been doing. She just interpreted what they did as further evidence of their evil and nastiness.

She thought of lots of things to do that could make her home safer if her son was allowed to come back home, such as putting knives in a lockable safe after she'd used them. But social services wouldn't trust her to do those things all the time - and indeed, it would surely be easy to forget sometimes - you wash up a knife, the phone rings ... and so on. If she'd shown some understanding of their point of view, and they'd shown some understanding of hers, it might have been possible for her to discuss ideas with them for ways around the problems that both would have been reasonably satisfied with. But that was never going to happen when both sides were of the opinion that the other was just crazy and nasty and impossible to work with sensibly, and that any kind of compromise was undesirable anyway.

So her anger, depression, grief and feeling of helplessness just went on and on, as did the same old abusive comments about the social workers, and the same confirmation from Facebook friends that she was right to feel the way she did and they were just nasty child snatchers.

If people had instead tried to persuade her to think of how things must look from the social workers' points of view, and come up with new ideas for solving the problems that might have helped her think in new ways, that might even have put thoughts into the heads of the social workers that might have enabled them to do so also, it's possible that some kind of arrangement could have been made that was more satisfactory to her.

Granted it would have been more difficult for her friends to have taken that approach, since she would have taken offence at anything that wasn't very carefully worded; - anything at all that even hinted she was doing something wrong, or reminded her things could get worse, risked her offence. But even just fewer of the declarations that she ought to get everything she wanted, that it was very unfair that she wasn't, and that she was fighting evil people only out for themselves, might have helped her begin to see things differently. And though even the odd gentle suggestion as to how she could think about things differently here and there might have risked her offence, the more she started thinking in new and more hopeful ways, the more she might have been able to tolerate, since it was the depression partly making her so over-sensitive, and she knew it.

There was no guarantee that social services would have been more willing to listen to her if she'd become more willing to listen to them and suggested new ideas, but it was possible; the alternative was that nothing was likely to get better any time soon, and they'd continue to be unsympathetic.

Marriages and Other Situations Made Worse by People With Good Intentions

Similarly, thousands of marriages might be damaged every year by people trying to be supportive: People complain about their husband or wife to their friends, and their sympathetic friends express anger at what the spouse has done, and declare that their friend has got every right to feel the way they do and worse, telling them how sorry they feel for them. While the person complaining might feel supported and cared for, they might go away feeling much more sorry for themselves, and much more aggrieved and angry at what their partner has done than they did before.

If so, they might be more unpleasant to their spouse, because they'll feel justified and even more in the right, convinced all the more that their partner's being unreasonable and nasty. So the husband or wife will get more unpleasant in response because of the provocation, and then the person will have even worse reports about them to tell their friends, who might convince them all the more that they're justified in whatever they think, and that their partner's a horrible person. The friends need to bear in mind that they're only hearing one side of the story; things might seem very different if the partner was there and could tell theirs, explaining what motivated them to do what they did, and so on.

If the person complaining continues to feel the way they do, and the support they get only ever convinces them all the more that they're right to feel that way and their husband or wife is bad, unfair and whatever else, bad feeling between the two might increase to the point of divorce. That'll likely make both partners feel a whole lot worse, plus any children they have.

If, instead, - except where the complaints are truly serious and the person complaining's being put at risk by their partner, - friends consider that they're only hearing one side of the story, and, while being sympathetic, gently ask how things might look from the partner's point of view, and try and steer the person gently towards discussion of what might help to solve the problems, while the conversations might be more awkward at the time, the friends might well be doing the person far more of a favour, because they might well start feeling like far less of a victim than they would have done if the friends had said they were justified in every little bitter emotion they felt. And if they leave contemplating trying to resolve the difficulties with their spouse, rather than disliking them even more than they did before, the marriage might improve instead of deteriorating, and everyone could end up happier.

When a person's depressed, while sympathy can be good sometimes, giving a lot doesn't always help them, because agreeing that they're hard-done-by - if in fact their situation isn't hopeless - can just reinforce their belief that they are, and make them feel more sorry for themselves, so it takes longer for them to recover. Also, people are more likely to think in extremes when they're very depressed, and backing up what they say can just confirm them in their opinions; and though they might be comforted at the time, they could end up feeling worse.

For instance, if the depressed person's angry with someone else and complaining about them or blaming them for something, then agreeing that the other person's behaving badly, when thinking about the matter fairly would lead to the conclusion that they're not nearly as much to blame as the depressed person thinks they are, could end up making the depressed person feel more angry and bitter, as well as justified in holding the attitude they have towards them, which might mean they treat them badly, and relations deteriorate between the two, causing worse consequences for the depressed friend in future.

So while it might seem less sympathetic, it can be best if people realise they're only hearing one side of the story, and wonder what things might seem like from the other person's point of view. Also, even if the other person is genuinely at fault in some way but it's not actually clear that they're entirely to blame, it can be better really if, rather than the one complaining being backed up by people who just accept what they say as truth, they're gently encouraged to think about how things might look from the other person's point of view, and asked if there aren't things that could be done to improve the situation; trying to think about ways things could be made better could give the depressed person a more hopeful outlook.

For instance, when some of the Facebook friends of the woman whose son stabbed her condemned social services for taking her boy away, it might have encouraged her to be more abusive, being confirmed in her opinion that they were entirely in the wrong and they were treating her unfairly. That might have made her even less willing to try to see things from their point of view. But the more resentfully she behaved towards them, the more they might well have been convinced she was an unfit mother, which didn't do her any favours.

The Lasting Emotional Torment of the Woman Living Without Her Son, and Why it was Unnecessary, Just as a Lot of Emotional Torment Others Suffer Is

Another problem was that in focusing her mind so much on what was going wrong, she failed to see the positives, which would have improved her own mood quite a bit. For instance, for a long time, she wouldn't accept that the first home her autistic son had been put in was any good for him, but when he left he cried; he must have had good times there. And after he left she looked back on it with some fondness, because she thought it was much better than where he went next.

Her son was taken to court after he stabbed her, but received what she should have taken to be an extremely lenient sentence: He didn't receive any prison term, or any kind of punishment at all; but social services were to have control of his care for the next two years. Instead of seeing it as lenient, - considering what it could have been, - she was angry and upset for that whole time that social services had charge of him at all. Again, she was suffering more than she needed to, because of her attitude.

All that's not to say it was her fault that she had the attitudes she did, or that it's the fault of others with depression and similar problems that they do; a depressive thinking style could probably have developed over time, partly as a result of childhood experiences; and some people might have some kind of biological predisposition to it. Isolation won't help, and nor will a variety of other things. And of course, in common with others with depression, the more the woman thought about how upsetting and unfair she believed things were, the more upset she became; and the more upset she became, the more gloomy her thoughts would have been; and the more gloomy her thoughts were, the worse she would have felt; it would have been a spiral downwards a lot of the time, made worse by the fact that her thoughts and feelings made her behave in ways that made things happen that upset her even more, such as when she was abusive to the social workers, and they put her on record as being a risky person to be around as a result. She needed help to break the cycle.

But anyone who recognises that they themselves are in such a cycle might be able to find ways out of it themselves, once they realise what's going on.

The woman who was assaulted by her autistic son was often suicidal, feeling that what social services and the courts were doing to her was just too much to cope with - she felt that if she couldn't have her son with her, life just wasn't worth living. If she'd only found some cause or other to live for, something that made her life seem less empty and more fulfilling, she likely wouldn't have felt so bad. Also, a lot of her feelings had to do with a feeling of helplessness to do anything about her problems, which could well have been an attitude she'd learned in childhood and still had by habit, even though there were in reality several things she could have done to try to improve her circumstances.

One of her Facebook friends did try to come up with several new ideas. At first she was grateful, but then the friend said something she misinterpreted and thought was insensitive, and she told her to stop talking about the situation because it was upsetting, and the Facebook friend never tried again. But that proves there were possible new ways of trying to get more of what she wanted.

Even without her circumstances improving much, her suicidal feelings could have faded away if she'd just done a few things differently:

• One is if she'd changed her perspective so she had more empathy for the point of view of the authorities, who were after all just trying to protect her and prevent her son from doing something that would have landed him in prison or some other criminal environment. And though it would be bound to be difficult, It would have helped her if she'd listened more considerately to what they had to say - which might have meant she realised some of it made sense after all, so she would feel calmer. And if she responded to the issues they brought up in as calm and intelligent a way as she could, so they developed more respect for her and were more willing to listen to what she had to say, she might no longer feel persecuted.
• Another thing would be trying to see things from a long-term perspective - in time, she would likely get her son back, or at least have more access to him, especially if she focused her mind on thinking of as many possible solutions to her problems as she could, and of ways of responding to possible objections to them that might be brought up, rather than feeling helplessly immersed in misery about what the authorities were doing. The social workers weren't just going to let her have him back after the supervision period was over, but it was possible that doing some serious searching during the two years they had charge of him by court order for would lead her to find a home closer to her that would be willing to take him on, or she might have thought of some other solution they'd agree to. If her mind was more focused on hope for the long term, rather than the day-to-day misery she was feeling, it might have made her more optimistic, especially if she felt there was a sense of progress, because she was looking into finding a solution.
• Another thing would be trying to find something else to fill her days, such as looking into finding out if she could do some kind of voluntary work, or something like that that she believed in, that made her feel useful and as if she was valued because she was helping others (though it would have to be something not too taxing or depressing); - but if she had something to live for besides her son, and her confidence was increased because she felt valued, and there were periods during the day when her mind was completely taken off her own problems, she would have begun to feel better.
• Another thing that would help her is trying to see the positives in the situation - for example, the fact that at least her autistic son was being treated well in the home he'd been put in, going out and doing activities he enjoyed, and he'd got an extremely lenient sentence for what he'd done.

With lots and lots of other people who feel like committing suicide, too, all it might take to make the suicidal feelings fade away for the long term is a change of perspective, a new focus on trying to solve problems rather than feeling hard-done-by, a realisation that they might have more power to change things than they have assumed, and sometimes a willingness to look into new ways of making themselves feel like worthwhile members of the community that will take their minds off their problems and give them more self-esteem, as well as being good for others.

Again, the more people are drowning in miserable feelings, the more difficult it becomes to see things from other perspectives. It's important for people to recognise that, so they can try to remember to consider that the impression that things are hopeless they have when they're feeling at their worst might very well not be the way things are in reality, and that finding ways to calm down for a while will help them start trying to look at things in new ways, and plan possible solutions if they can.

If the woman had perhaps had psychological help, and come to accept things the way they were, so she became willing to wait patiently to have her son home, and became satisfied with seeing him just once a week, and she'd become content to stop worrying about his well-being unless she found serious evidence that things were going wrong for him, most of her problems would have disappeared in the blink of an eye; - all the tears, all the suicidal feelings, all the fear and stress, all the resentment, all the emotional torment would vanish! A mere change in attitude could achieve all that.

Things might not be so extreme for most people, but still, most people may have gone - and go - through life circumstances where a change in perspective could make a big difference to their emotional health, and their decisions about what to try to do about the problems.

Thinking Positive Means Different Things in Different Circumstances

Sometimes, people feel hopeless because they assume the only possible solution is to carry on doing more of what they've tried and tried to do, but which hasn't worked in the past. So they might think they're right to feel hopeless. Sometimes that might be true, but often it won't be.

for instance, an unemployed person who's written 500 job applications and not got one job offer might assume that in his case, 'thinking positive' means carrying on writing them, hoping he'll get somewhere, even though he doesn't really believe he will. So he might not see the point in trying to think positive and carrying on. But carrying on doing things in the same way when they haven't worked before can be a bad idea; the solutions might lie elsewhere.

For instance, he might try applying for different kinds of work. Or he might try putting thoughts of getting a job on hold, and doing voluntary work for a while (as long as he isn't desperate for money), - and after all, voluntary work might lead to a proper job, and would also likely make him feel as if his life was more fulfilling and worthwhile, and he might meet new and interesting people there, even if it didn't lead to paid work. Or he could work on the presentation of his job applications, so they look more impressive. He could also try looking for different organisations to get advice from. And so on.

Genuine positive thinking isn't mustering up an unrealistic sense of optimism; nor is it convincing yourself that everything will go well in the end, and not being willing to hear anything to the contrary because it's negative. True positive thinking is being willing to face whatever problems may come - and anticipating those you can - with the attitude that you're going to apply your mind to try to solve them if you can, rather than just getting immersed in the misery they cause.

A Change in Circumstances for the Mother and her Autistic Son

The fortunes of the woman who was stabbed by her son improved, when at the second home he was placed in, - the one for autistic adults, - it was decided that staff would bring him to visit her in her own home once a fortnight, instead of her having to visit him there on those days. It was really a fantastic step forward for her.

Unfortunately, though she was glad, she wasn't as pleased by that as someone with a different temperament would have been. In fact, she said it was overshadowed by something she found worse. Again, she was immersed in suffering because of her own thoughts about it. She likely wouldn't have been nearly as upset about it if she'd been able to think more creatively, and see others' points of view:

She'd been told it was felt to be risky to have her visiting her son in the living area of the residents' home where he was, so she was asked to visit him at a day centre they had instead. This made her feel unwelcome, and she was very upset about it, since she didn't like feeling unwelcome in her son's own place of residence. Though that was understandable, Just being willing to see things from their point of view might have changed her perspective entirely:

One of her visits may have been very distressing and scary for them. It happened after her son was allowed to come and visit her at home for the first time in over a year. He loved it. The plan was that he'd visit every fortnight, and she told him it wouldn't be long before the next time. The visit was supervised, so it should have been safe. But then social services forbade any more visits home till there had been some kind of risk assessment. The woman was upset, and the boy was angry.

While there probably wouldn't have been any problems if he'd been allowed to keep coming home for a few hours each fortnight under supervision, as had been the plan, after the visits were stopped, pending a risk assessment, the boy felt angry and unfairly treated, and lashed out fiercely at a member of the home staff, who'd had nothing to do with the decision, punching him several times around the head and neck while he was driving; he could have lost control of the car, and both of them could have been killed. Then the boy's mother visited, and he hit her, as if he blamed her. He'd hit her on a few visits since he'd been in the homes. After he hit her, he was made to go out of the room, and went upstairs and smashed his bed frame to bits.

The other residents might well have been scared from then on that something nasty would happen again when she visited, especially because they couldn't understand why it had happened; they were more severely autistic than her son, so their reasoning abilities would have been even more impaired than his were; it likely wouldn't have done any good to try to reassure them that he'd only got violent because he was angry that his visits home had been stopped for a while, especially because he was only new at that home, so they didn't know what was in character for him, and what wasn't.

Taking their point of view into account and accepting things could have spared the mother all the anger and emotional torment she went through when she became upset because the home staff wanted the visits to take place away from the other residents from then on. It seemed no one encouraged her to try to think of things from their point of view, instead backing up her opinion that she was being treated unfairly, with angry words about how unjust they thought it was. So upset was she by it, that it was more important to her than the fact they decided to allow him to have visits home again, which she should have seen as major progress!

It is possible, though, that the home's management and the social workers could have explained the situation to her in a way that would have made it easier for her to empathise with them. Perhaps what they said sounded more like commands than explanations. Part of the reason she felt as if she was being made unwelcome was probably the way some of them spoke to her and their attitude; she had a particularly difficult relationship with the deputy manager, who apparently could be unpleasant, and some other staff in the home held that opinion of her too.

When the woman visited the home, they did allow her to see her son in a day centre not far away where the residents did activities; it wasn't a particularly nice place, with no windows, and with a bit of a bleak feel. But if she'd had a more optimistic and can-do outlook, she would have been willing to make the best of things.

When she went there for the first time with her son, he was unsettled. He made it clear by his behaviour that he didn't feel comfortable meeting her there. She was so convinced it wasn't suitable, she just took that as confirmation that she shouldn't have been sent there. But she didn't consider the possibility that he was unsettled not because he didn't like the place, but because he saw that she was distressed about being there, or simply because he wasn't used to it and hadn't expected it. And someone with a more positive outlook, instead of concluding that things were hopeless, would have tried to make him feel at home as best they could, trying to distract him with something nice till he calmed down.

Christmas Time

The mother was desperate to have her son home on Christmas Day. Social services wouldn't finance and arrange that, but the first Christmas he was away from home, they had paid the taxi fare for her to go to see him and to also be brought back home on the day after Christmas Day, which, considering that the home he was in was over a hundred miles away, and the fare was much more expensive than it would be on ordinary days because the drivers would be working on a public holiday, must have cost the equivalent of a fair chunk of a month's salary. But rather than being grateful they'd been willing to fund it, she appeared to accept it as her due, and thought as negatively of them as ever. Perhaps once you've become hostile towards people, it's difficult to view anything they do as good. She was still upset on Christmas Day itself that he wasn't with her.

A year later, social services said they wouldn't do the same thing again, because the boy was now considered an adult, so it wasn't thought necessary that they should be together. The mother was in great emotional torment about it for weeks and weeks, even asking her lawyer to apply for emergency legal aid to fight for the right to have him home on Christmas Day, despairing and full of anxiety when it was refused. Someone with another personality type would simply have thought, "OK, we're having Christmas day on another day this year", and planned how to make the celebration as good as they could when the boy was next allowed home, or when they went to see him next. But she felt as if she just couldn't cope. She even had suicidal feelings.

But the staff at the home said a couple of them would drive him to her house for three hours on Christmas day, which was a long way. They'd be giving up their own opportunities for celebrations on Christmas Day to do that. Instead of being glad though, she complained that her son would arrive awkwardly early, while the dinner was still being cooked, and she was upset that he'd be there for no more than three hours, and spoke angrily about how she was determined not to allow the staff who were there to supervise the visit to be at the family table during dinner.

It was understandable that she didn't want them listening in; it must have been horrible to have spent the last eighteen months since her son was taken away not being able to say anything to him that wasn't listened to by strangers. Still, they were there for her own protection, and someone with a more cheerful outlook could have accepted it without all the distress she went through because of it.

When people in general are stressed, things that would normally seem like minor problems that are easily solved can seem much more taxing. So the more stressed she became, the less likely it was that she was going to be able to think of a way around the difficulties, or to get them in perspective.

In the end though, she had a lovely Christmas. Despite only having a few hours with her son, she really enjoyed herself; her other sons came to see her, and there was a lovely family atmosphere. The staff were happy not to sit at the table with them, and they had a cosy family meal. So all those weeks of emotional torment were for nothing; she needn't have worried herself sick all the time after all. So much suffering is unnecessary.

There's a famous quote that goes something like, "I'm reminded of the old man who, on his deathbed, said he'd seen many troubles in his life, most of which had never happened."

It means that the old man had worried about things for years and years, imagining horrible possibilities, making himself miserable, when a lot of that was unnecessary, because most of the things he worried about never happened after all. Maybe a lot of people do the same thing.

The attitude of the woman who craved the company of the son who'd assaulted her contrasts with that of another woman, who despite facing tragedy, had a much more cheerful outlook much of the time. She'd had two children who'd died when they were little, and a third, a daughter, who'd lived to adulthood, but was almost certainly dying of cancer, with little children who'd be left motherless if and when she did. She'd emigrated to the other side of the world, so there was a chance her mother would never see her again, because she'd die before she could visit. The mother hadn't seen her daughter at Christmas since she was about nine years old, because her husband had divorced her, and her daughter had always gone to his home. Yet she said that hadn't ruined her Christmases; she said she was quite happy to be alone.

That woman wasn't in despair, complaining about being hard-done-by because she'd never again have a Christmas with her daughter, and in fact might never see her alive again. She didn't often complain about anything, and on Christmas day, she cooked a Christmas dinner for others who might otherwise be alone at Christmas, and created a cheerful atmosphere. Though she'd suffered other hardships in her life, such as cancer, and an accident that had left her with a disability, she didn't see herself as hard-done-by, and even said that overall, life had been good to her.

It illustrates how attitude can make a tremendous difference to how much suffering a person endures as they go through life.

A Man Who Learned a Lesson in a Pub he was Later Grateful For

I heard a story about a forty-year-old man who went out to a pub one afternoon, and sat next to an attractive young woman. He struck up a conversation with her, and started telling her all about how upset he was about things that had happened to him as a child. She listened for a while, but then she asked how old he was. When he told her, she said, "You're forty years old, and you're still upset about what happened to you as a little child? If you're still being bothered by that at forty, it's not the things themselves, but your thoughts about them that are hurting you now."

Then she got up and walked away. He was shocked, but realised she had a point. From then on, he began to change his life for the better.

These things illustrate that a person's attitude to things can make a massive difference to their mental health, and that the things they keep telling themselves about how terrible things are for them not only increase their own emotional torment a lot, but make a big difference to their behaviour, which in turn can determine others' reactions to them, which can make them happy or else upset them, causing further thoughts about how hard-done-by they are, and the cycle often continues.

That's not to say people should pretend things are any better for them than they really are. It just means that sometimes, much of the reason for people's unhappiness has to do with their failure to see the positives in a situation, the way they work themselves up with worry about it till they're sure it's much worse than it really is, and other such behaviours. And those things can be changed, making the exact same situation seem a far less upsetting one, which can only benefit the person in it.

Part of the way people can change some things is by doing their best to focus their minds on what to actually do about their problems.

Looking in Unwise Places for Solutions to Problems

But then, some people who try to find solutions to their problems rather than just complaining about them aren't necessarily any better off, because they can look in the wrong places for quick fixes, that end up harming them. People in all kinds of situations can commit themselves to things that aren't a good idea, and also waste money, because they're not aware of - or haven't given any thought to thinking about - possible different and better alternative solutions to their problems.

Two university professors once went to a meeting, run by a couple of men trying to recruit people to an expensive transcendental meditation program they were running. They went to study the tactics they were using. The men apparently talked a lot of nonsense all evening, even claiming that at the more advanced - and more expensive - levels of their program, people could be taught to fly, and pass through walls. That should have made everyone walk out in disgust or disbelief, sure these people must be charlatans. But it didn't. Eventually, one of the university professors couldn't stand it any longer. At the end of the meeting, when the men who'd done the talk asked for questions, he gently but thoroughly demolished all the claims they'd made. In less than two minutes, he pointed out in detail where the claims were contradictory, illogical and unsupportable. The two men advertising their transcendental meditation program were stopped in their tracks, embarrassed and not knowing what to say. After discussing it with each other, they replied that the points were good ones, 'requiring further study'. It might be assumed that would put everyone off wasting their money signing up for the program. But surprisingly, just the opposite happened! There was a great rush to sign up! And the program wasn't cheap! All those who joined had to pay $75 just as an initial down payment! But they were queuing up to pay. The recruiters showed signs of giddy bewilderment, chuckling to each other, nudging each other and shrugging. The professors couldn't understand it, thinking the audience couldn't have understood what the professor who'd debunked the recruiters' claims had said. But then they spoke to three of them in the hall outside, who explained why they'd rushed to put their money down. They all had problems they'd been hoping transcendental meditation would solve, since they couldn't find other solutions to them: One said she was a severe insomniac, who'd been hoping it would help her relax and sleep at night, and the recruiters had made her feel reassured that it would. Another was hoping to become an actor, and wondered if it would help him gain enough self-control and poise to master the art successfully; he too had been assured by the recruiters that it would. The other one was failing his college courses, saying there just didn't seem to be enough hours in the day to study properly; he was hoping the meditation programme would help him stay awake so he could study for longer, needing fewer hours sleep each night. He too had been assured by the recruiters that it would help him do that. The professors wondered if the people they were speaking to hadn't understood the logic of what the one who'd demolished the recruiters' theories had said; but in fact they understood it very well, but wanted desperately to block it from their minds. They would have waited before handing over any money till a later date, and may have possibly decided in the meantime not to, if he hadn't said anything. But they were scared that thinking about it too much and allowing themselves to be persuaded by what the professor had said would mean they'd be discouraged from signing up, and that then they'd be left with a soul-destroying hopeless feeling, because they'd think their problems couldn't be solved after all. So they rushed to hand over their money, so they'd be motivated to stick with the programme, in the hope it would still work. It's a pity it didn't occur to them to try looking in new places for ways to solve their problems instead; but perhaps they couldn't think of anywhere else to look, after having tried other things.

Not Forgetting to Think About Whether There Might be Alternative Solutions

Sometimes, people make the error of underestimating the number of alternatives they have available to them, or even not even hitting on the idea that they could try and think of an alternative way of getting what they want.

For instance, a young woman went shopping with her family to buy an outfit to wear for her brother's wedding the following week. They searched for some time, but for some reason, they couldn't find anything. With the shops about to shut, they found quite an expensive outfit that seemed to fit, even though it was a bit of a strange shape. It was more expensive than the woman intended, especially since she thought she might only wear it occasionally, or even just that one time at her brother's wedding. But she thought she'd better get it, because she hadn't found anything else, and time was running out, so there was a bit of pressure on her.

But there might have been other options: She could have asked her mother if she had some clothes she could wear; they wouldn't have been new, and some people might have seen her mother wearing them before, but she could have tried to convince her mother that that didn't really matter. Or likewise, with her younger sister. Still, they might not have been very impressed with the idea, since it was their idea that she get something new, for some reason. It might have been worth a try though.

Not so much in that situation, but sometimes, people feel under pressure to make decisions straightaway, and are more likely to make a bad one, because they're not stopping to consider things carefully, when in reality, the person asking them to make the decision wouldn't mind if they said they'd prefer to think about it and tell them their decision the next day, or in a few days.

Part Four
How Mockery, Backbiting and Hasty Condemnation Poison Relationships and are Often Unfair so They Should Usually be Avoided

Just as people can be harmed by making bad judgments about their own circumstances, making bad judgments about other people can be harmful; not always in serious ways, but often ways that damage relationships.

People often say unfair things about others who aren't there, not realising they're misinterpreting the behaviour of those they're talking about, putting an unfairly negative spin on their likely motives, or repeating things that aren't even true.

There are probably several reasons why a lot of people enjoy gossiping about others behind their backs. And most people who do probably see no harm in it, perhaps enjoying a maty sense of camaraderie in a little group who are all mocking and making fun of someone, or grumbling about them together. But people shouldn't be so quick to accept the conclusions of others and themselves about another's behaviour, - unless they're talking about someone who could put them at risk in some way, or cause some other problem it's worth being warned about, so it's a good idea to pass on information even if some of it turns out not to be quite accurate.

But if there isn't a good reason for it, it can be unfair, since after all, even if everything you say is true, it maybe that you don't understand what's really going on in the person's mind, or what's happened before that might have made them behave the way they do that might make it more excusable. Or you might not even have the full story. Or some things you've been told might be plain wrong. Judging by outward appearances can be a mistake. So it's worth standing back from the criticism when the person isn't there to defend themselves, and not being quick to make a judgment.

... Of course, that doesn't mean mockery and hasty judgments are any more acceptable when the person's there.

Children in Particular Can be Upset by Harsh-Sounding Words, and Encouragement Sometimes Works Better

One thing children especially can be upset by is when parents and others take something annoying they've done as evidence of a bad personality, rather than just something they might do from time to time, for some reason. Or sometimes, parents aren't really doing that, but just talk as if they are, so the children get the impression that that's what they're doing. If people were to stop doing that, it could improve marriages, and improve relations with children:

People who are just growing up, before they're confident enough in themselves to reject such criticism as untrue, can be especially upset when parents say to them things like, "You're stupid!" "You're useless!" The parent might not even mean those things literally, but sometimes just mean they're unhappy with one thing their child has just done, and they're wording their disapproval carelessly. But the child will likely assume the parent means they think they are generally out-and-out "stupid", "useless" or whatever the parent accused them of being. It can make them unhappy, and they can feel bad about the criticism for months. It's definitely worth giving a lot of thought to phrasing things more accurately, and also helpfully, for instance explaining exactly what the child has done that has displeased the parent, rather than calling them things for it, and explaining the ways in which their behaviour could be improved.

It can also be more effective in changing behaviour to encourage someone, rather than to say something that might demoralise them. For instance, if a child won't try something new at the dinner table, they might be more likely to do so and take to it if they're encouraged, with words like, "Come on, there might be some really nice things just waiting to be discovered. You might really like it if you try it", than they will if a parent says something more like, "Only silly boys don't try new things. Are you a silly boy?" That's likely to make a child angry or demoralised, not in the mood to enjoy new things. If they do taste it while they're angry, they might rebel, for instance thinking to themselves, "OK, I'll try it, but I'll show you what happens when people try food they don't like!" and then they might even do something like spitting it out, with a dramatic defiant display of disgust.

So insulting people can have the opposite effect from the one that the person speaking intended. And often people won't even realise that it was their insult that led to the bad behaviour.

Marriages Could be Improved by Better Less Judgmental-Sounding Communication

Likewise, marriages could be happier if husbands and wives talked to each other more respectfully sometimes. And sometimes a husband or wife being accused of having a particular personality trait might not even have done the thing that's making the other person think they have it and accuse them of it!

For instance, a wife could come home, having bought a different brand of something she normally buys, but at three times the price, and no better quality, when money's tight. Her husband might be angry, and say something like, "You stupid woman!" The kids might overhear, and think for months to come that their dad thinks their mum is a generally stupid person. The dad might not have meant that. And the wife might not even have bought the thing because she was being stupid! Perhaps she couldn't see the brand she normally buys, she'd taken the baby out with her and he was screaming for a feed, the shop was about to close, someone was tutting and clearing their throat impatiently behind her, because they wanted to look at the things she was looking at, and the stress she felt because of those things, the time limitations, and the worry that she was inconveniencing other shoppers, combined to lead her to make the decision to snatch up the expensive brand of thing hastily, not even looking at the price, but hoping to leave as quickly as possible.

So instead of just jumping to conclusions about the characteristics of the wife's personality or behaviour, and making accusations, it would be better if the husband just explained the problem, asked for an explanation of the behaviour, and then they discussed how best to make sure it didn't happen again, if possible, such as going shopping earlier, and leaving the baby at home next time.

Likewise for other situations. Many marriages could become happier if the couples communicated with each other in more thoughtful, considerate ways.

Another thing that makes for improved communication between people is being specific, saying exactly what you mean, rather than being vague, or leaving things out, so things are left to the imagination of the listener, - people can imagine much worse possibilities than what's really meant.

For instance, if someone tells a boyfriend or girlfriend merely that they don't want to see them for a few days because they feel the need to spend time on their own, it's natural for the person to feel rejected, wondering just what their girlfriend or boyfriend wants the time for. All kinds of questions might come up in their minds: Are they having a fling with someone else? Don't they love them anymore? Could this be the beginning of the end? Are they involved in something shady they don't want anyone to know about? And so on. Explaining a bit more could put their mind at ease, provided, of course, that there is an innocent explanation.

Likewise when asking a person to change their behaviour: You might know exactly what you mean when you say something, but it might be too non-specific for anyone else to be sure. For example, a person might say:

• "I wish you were better with the children."
  Better in what way? Shouting at them less, perhaps? Playing with them more? Being stricter? Being more easy-going? If you haven't told them where you think they could improve, you can't expect them to know what 'better' means, just because you know yourself.
• "You've got some strange views, but I still like you."
  Strange in what way? Exactly which views do you consider strange? All kinds of possibilities might enter the person's head unless you explain, and as they think about it more, resentments could grow at the perceived insult.

Gossip is another thing that can cause unhappiness. For instance, if the husband, instead of coming to an understanding with his wife about why she bought something three times as expensive as usual but no better, when there wasn't much money in the family to go around, and talking through with her ways of trying to make sure it didn't happen again, just accused her of being stupid, and it led to them having an argument about whether she really was stupid, and then in the coming days, he told his friends, "Hey, my wife's stupid! You know what she did the other day? She went and bought ..." (whatever it was):

Any of his friends who didn't know her, meeting her for the first time afterwards, might think, "Oh this is the stupid woman who's no good with money", and they would have less chance of developing a good friendship with her, because they might not feel like it, and they might look down on her. Or if the two of them did develop a friendship, and the friend later told the wife what the husband had told them and his other friends about her, it would likely cause further arguments or resentment in the marriage.

Giving Too Much Credence to Rumours and Gossip, and Jumping to Hasty Conclusions

Related to that is the way people can form impressions of others through rumours or complaints they hear about them. The rumours aren't necessarily accurate, and might, for example, be based on second or third-hand impressions of those people, which lost some accuracy with each re-telling, - impressions gained in the first place that weren't discussed with the people believed to be at fault to try to get to the truth, but simply discussed with friends.

It's worth keeping in mind that if a person enjoys gossiping about others to you, they'll likely be saying things that are just as unpleasant about you behind your back.

On the other hand, bear in mind that if someone tells you someone's said something bad about you, and tells you what they supposedly said, they might not really have said it; perhaps what they really did say has become distorted and exaggerated in the person's mind, and it sounds completely different to you than the way it was said to them. Or perhaps it wasn't even said at all, but the person who tells you they said it is somehow mistaken, or just out to cause trouble or something. So it's just as well to ask the person who's supposed to have said it in the first place questions about what they really did say, and why, before getting angry with them.

Some people believe it's good to talk about others behind their backs because it's a way of letting off steam, working off frustrations about them. In reality though, it can have the opposite effect - if others agree and say bad things of their own, it can make the person all the more convinced they're right, so their ill feeling towards the one they believe is at fault will likely increase. In reality, everyone expressing bad opinions might be wrong, because of something they've misunderstood, misheard, or not thought about deeply enough to work out what might really be going on, and possible reasons why.

Misunderstandings That Can Go On and On When People Complain Behind Others' Backs Rather Than Clarifying Things With Them

Sometimes, a person can express an unpopular belief, or say something unpleasant about another person, and they can assume people agree with them, or think they must be right, because no one objects to what they're saying. But the real reason no one's objecting might be that they don't fancy a confrontation with the person, or they don't want to disagree in case the person doesn't like them for it.

Similarly, when someone does something that seems wrong, it's often best to ask questions to find out more facts before condemning them, since there might be reasons for it that you just hadn't thought of.

Naturally, some people's behaviour is so terrible it deserves to be condemned right away; but there can be times when things are more complicated than they seem at first, so it takes a while to know all the facts, such as where someone looks suspicious, but really there's an innocent explanation of their behaviour that no one who makes a snap judgment will find out about, because they won't ask.

To give an example, a young man had a sister who was blind. One thing that "really annoyed" him about her was the way she would spy on him and the other family members, not joining in some of their conversations. ... At least that's what he thought was going on. Behind her back, he would sometimes complain about her behaviour to other family members, and they apparently also said they disapproved of the way she would do that. ... What none of them thought to do was to ask her why she was behaving the way she was. If they had, they might have spared themselves years of annoyance, when she told them she wasn't spying, and that there were good reasons she didn't include herself in their conversations as much as they'd have liked:

One reason she behaved in a way that made the others think she was spying was simply that if she wanted to find out what was happening sometimes, for instance if another family member came to the front door with a friend of theirs, and someone else answered it, she would have to use hearing rather than sight to find out who was there, which would obviously take longer, sometimes quite a bit longer. Anyone who could see would instantly identify them; but she wouldn't be able to do that, so she'd have to listen to find out who was there; and since it might be several seconds before anyone gave any clue that the friend was even there, she'd have to listen for quite a bit longer than anyone who could see would have to look before she found out what was going on.

And when she walked along and there were people who seemed to be in her way who were deep in conversation, or so near her she wasn't sure she could pass them without bumping into them, she'd sometimes patiently wait for them to move or stop talking, instead of interrupting them to ask to be let past. Perhaps they thought she was creeping up behind them and listening.

Another reason was that when she went to her parents' house, for special occasions when other family members were there, because she couldn't see where things were, she was more cautious about moving around; there could have been toys anywhere on the floor; in the kitchen the dishwasher could have been open - a bruise on the leg waiting to happen for anyone who walked into it, - and there were a couple of little kids running around who didn't understand that she couldn't see, so they could easily have walked in front of her as she was walking, and she might have knocked them over. For those reasons, she was cautious about getting up and going over to where people were to join in their conversations, and tended to walk in the room where they often were and lean on a cupboard just inside the door, facing them, just feet away, rather than going up to them. She could hear their conversations perfectly well from there, and saw nothing wrong with just letting the chatter flow around her, not realising they'd have liked her to say more, because they never said, and also they were so talkative themselves, there didn't seem to be a need, and it would have been an effort to get a word in edgeways.

It would also have been difficult sometimes for her to include herself in their conversations, because they were often huddled around photos or YouTube videos, commenting on things she couldn't see. And they often talked about people she didn't know, since she didn't live near them, so they knew a lot more about some people than she did.

Perhaps they thought her behaviour looked suspicious because she was partially obscured by the door. It hadn't occurred to her that they might not be able to see her as well as they'd have liked, because she couldn't see them or the door, or tell how she looked to them. She could hear them perfectly allright, and they could hear her as loudly as they would have done if she'd been sitting beside them, so it didn't occur to her that they might think there was a problem with her not coming to sit by them.

She had actually been trying to be considerate to them by not coming any further into the room, because people would be going about in the room wanting to do things, and she didn't want to get in their way, especially since her mother had often complained in irritation that she was in the way when she'd come further into the room. Also, she didn't know whether there might be things on the floor between herself and the others she might step on, or whether there was room at the table where they were sitting, or whether they'd have to move up, possibly moving several things they had on the table in front of them, if she was to come and sit down with them. She wanted to spare them from having to pause for a while in a conversation they were obviously enjoying to direct her around possible things on the floor, and then possibly having to move and shift all their things, if she were to come and sit with them.

But while she was trying to be considerate and spare them hassle, they were apparently silently getting annoyed with her, and thinking things they later discussed among themselves, accusing her of things she wasn't guilty of and stirring up bad feeling towards her among each other, confirming each other in their mistaken suspicions, while thinking they were letting off steam.

Asking why someone is doing something, rather than jumping to impatient conclusions, can spare bad feelings on both sides, as well as reducing the possibility of arguments or other situations developing from unpleasant things that might be said or done as a result of the wrong conclusions being jumped to.

Examples of Other Situations Where It's Easy to Jump to the Wrong Conclusions

Sometimes, bewilderment, rather than irritation, results from misunderstandings, and sometimes scorn and sneering. Sometimes other things, naturally. Someone once told me she was walking past the post office, when a blind man standing there asked her where the post office was. She told him he was in front of it, and showed him where the door was. He said he'd asked several people where it was before she came up to him, but they'd all just walked past without a word. Perhaps some were confused about why someone standing right in front of the post office would ask where the post office was, and worried he might be insane. Maybe some realised several seconds later that he could be someone unfamiliar with the area so he wouldn't know he was right there, being blind. Maybe quite a few others walked off laughing to themselves, and maybe some thought he must be a stupid idiot to have asked where the post office was, when he was just steps away from it.

Sometimes, there are logical reasons for things that seem silly at first glance, so it's as well not to be too quick to sneer.

Another example is that some blind people have been known to spin round and round sometimes. It might look very silly or retarded, and certainly isn't the ideal thing to do. But actually, it's usually merely the blind person's equivalent of pacing; - an able-bodied person might pace around the room or up and down, up and down, up and down and up and down it, while on the phone or something, and people around them think nothing of it. Pacing the room wouldn't be so safe for a blind person, because chairs and other things sticking out and other such things would be hazards. So they'd have to walk far too carefully and slowly to get the benefits able-bodied people get from pacing - perhaps a release of tension, and an opportunity to stretch the legs. Doing that standing in the same place is a safer option.

Misunderstandings like that don't just happen where one person is disabled, of course; they can happen between anyone. For instance, someone who looks in someone else's window might see someone jigging around, and think they look like a lunatic, not being able to hear the music they're dancing to. Or someone walking down the street who comes across a man holding another man down might assume he's attacking him; but it might turn out that the man on the ground was the attacker, and the man holding him down has spent several minutes trying to overpower him to protect himself.

So sometimes, it's best not to make hasty judgments about someone's behaviour, but to reserve judgment till more facts are known, or to forever reserve it if nothing more is found out. All kinds of people can do things that don't seem sensible to others, where there might be reasons for them that aren't immediately obvious. So when someone does something that seems strange or daft, thinking, "Why might they be doing that?" rather than, "Gosh what a stupid thing to do", can be far wiser.

Asking Questions to Try to Find Out the Truth, Rather Than Judging by First Impressions

People might sometimes assume it isn't worth asking questions about others' motives if they're making assumptions about them, so they feel sure they know why things are happening. But since things aren't always what they seem, when bothered by a behaviour, it's worth trying to understand it better.

If the brother of the blind sister had mentioned his suspicions about her spying, and asked her why she wasn't including herself in their conversations years earlier than the issue was finally raised, she would have explained things from her point of view, and he would have spared himself years of annoyance.

Perhaps part of the reason he didn't was because he was worried about what she'd say if he accused her of eaves-dropping and being unsociable, since he accused her of other things also, such as being defensive and shouting people down in arguments. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that accusation, things would have been much less likely to have got heated if instead of making an accusation, he had reserved judgment on whether what he thought was happening really was, and asked her questions about why she was doing it, perhaps saying something like, "I might be wrong, but it looks as if you're spying on us. Are you really, and if so, what are you doing it for?"

That goes for all such situations: Questioning people about things, trying to understand why they're doing them, rather than judgmentally accusing them of something, is often much less likely to make them feel provoked into arguing; a mere matter of changing the way things are phrased can make a huge difference to the outcome of the conversation, possibly leading to understanding and regained friendship, rather than a heated argument and lasting bad feeling.

It is more difficult to do that under the influence of strong emotion like anger; and yet if a person can perhaps remember to wait till they feel calmer before raising the issue, planning beforehand how to phrase what they say in a less provocative way, things can work out better for them in the end.

Making Bad Assumptions About People's Motives Because They're Misinterpreted

Sometimes you might accuse someone of something, because you've misinterpreted their behaviour, and one reason you have is that they're doing something that, if you did it, you'd be doing it for a particular reason, so you assume they're doing it for that reason too. But they might not be.

For instance, the father of the young man with the blind sister thought it would be good if they were to go on family walks to get some healthy exercise. It was a good idea on the face of it, but the blind sister often didn't want to go. Her brother and other members of the family called her lazy behind her back. But this was unfair, and if they'd asked her why she didn't want to go for walks instead of privately insulting her, they might have found that out, and their bad feeling would have subsided.

In reality, she was put off walking with them for three reasons:

• One was because she couldn't see her surroundings at all, and so she could find it boring; and not only that, if they were walking uphill and it was an effort, she couldn't see how far it was to the top; if you can see the top, you can gauge how much time it'll take you to get there, and become more optimistic and encouraged as you get closer; but if you can't see it, or anything else around you, or if you're walking anywhere else without being able to see where you're heading, and without knowing how long you're likely to take to get there, it can feel as if you're trudging on endlessly into infinity, and it can be disorientating and discouraging. That was the way she sometimes felt.
• Also she had anaemia, so strenuous walking was more of an effort.
• And perhaps the main reason was that there were family arguments erupting often around that time, and she knew that if one started, she wouldn't be able to just walk away if she wanted, like someone who could see could, or as she could if she was in an environment where she knew her way around, like her home; if one started, she'd be stuck there to endure it.

It isn't just people with such significant differences as disabilities who might have unexpected reasons for their behaviour, naturally; with anyone, their reasons for doing what they're doing might not be the obvious ones that come to mind first. Also, if someone with a disability does something that seems strange, daft, anti-social or whatever, it might have nothing to do with their disability whatsoever. So reserving judgment, asking questions and not making accusations, especially ones the person can't defend themselves against because they're not there when they're being made, can be the best way to go.

Before Labelling Someone as a Particular Kind of Person, Consider Whether Certain Circumstances Might Have More to Do With Their Behaviour Than you Think

As for the brother's accusation that his sister shouted people down, when she asked him for examples, he couldn't think of one. He said it must just be that something had happened in the past to give him that impression.

But if you're going to accuse or think of someone as having a particular personality trait, such as generally being difficult, it simply has to mean they're like that on such a regular basis that you should be able to think of a dozen examples very easily, or at least be sure they're like it often. If you can't, then rather than thinking of someone as having a particular characteristic, the possibility should be considered that a particular situation resulted in the person behaving in a particular way, because of something about the situation they found hostile or difficult to handle or something, and that you yourself may have contributed to the provocation. More care really ought to be taken sometimes to analyse just why things are happening, - although it shouldn't stop there, since the most important thing is to discuss how they can be prevented from happening in future, if both people can agree that they should be.

Circumstances That Can Change a Person's Behaviour and Even Personality for a While

One reason circumstances can change a person's behaviour is that people's decisions and behaviour can change over time according to what environment they've just been exposed to; for instance, if a boss has been around unpleasant argumentative people a lot recently, and maybe had their view of human nature further jaundiced by hearing a lot of unpleasant things on the news, they might start assuming their workers are unpleasant people of not much worth if they don't know them well, and that they're far less deserving of a pay rise than they might think they are if they've been spending their free time reading stories about people doing moving things for others that make them feel optimistic about the goodness of mankind, and inspire them to want to do nice things themselves. They might be influenced by such things, even though they have nothing to do with the people in the workplace, and though decisions about pay rises ought to be made on the basis of considerations such as how well the business is performing and how well the workers are doing.

Similarly, policemen can apparently come to believe most people are corrupt and probably up to no good, because they spend so much time around people who are. The feelings - more than the thoughts - generated by certain environments, can shape people's attitude to humanity in general.

People's whole personalities can even change as a result of being in certain circumstances; for instance, being in the army, especially in combat situations, can key people up to be aggressive at a moment's notice, and also stop them caring so much about other people. For instance, it can start happening if friends get killed, and they're filled with hatred, and begin to feel contemptuous of humanity in general, after they witness first-hand that humans can do such terrible things. And once a person's reflexes have been trained to be quick to trigger off violence because it's necessary for survival in an emergency, it can become a habit, so any situation in the civilian world that sparks off adrenaline can be responded to more aggressively than it might have been before. The effects can linger, so the affected soldiers can be more violent when they get home, and less caring about the consequences.

The effect can be made worse if as part of their training, they were taught to view the enemy as subhuman, which is a strategy that can be used to make soldiers less concerned about killing opponents. Once you begin to see one group as subhuman, it's easier to start viewing other groups in the same way, partly because the feelings of contempt that have been worked up will be around in the system when thinking of other groups it's possible to look down on, and feelings will make any thoughts seem more intense.

That's one reason why it's best not to automatically assume authority figures expressing opinions know best, but to question them, at least to oneself in thought.

It's possible for people's personalities to be changed a bit temporarily, - or at least for certain sides of people's personalities to become much more of an influence on their behaviour than normal for a while, - in more minor ways, after less serious experiences.

I myself became a lot more argumentative temporarily once after a long argument I had on an Internet forum - it lasted weeks! After that, for a while, I noticed I was more aggressive with people in general, and not so willing to patiently think about what they said before responding. Thankfully it didn't last.

It may be that a child who grows up around parents who are always arguing will sometimes develop a permanent argumentative nature.

But it's best to reserve judgment about whether someone is an argumentative person, or whether they might just be in an unusually bad mood one day, till a pattern of behaviour can be observed over time, unless the behaviour is irresponsible or dangerous, so it's best not to take chances, but to avoid the person.

Things can work the other way too: A group of schoolboys apparently once thought it would be a laugh to dare each other to ask the girl they thought was the most boring girl in the class to go out with them on a date. They took turns asking out one particular girl, for about fourteen weeks. By the end of it, probably to everyone's surprise, she was no longer quiet and uninteresting, but bubbly and outgoing. Perhaps the boost in her morale and self-esteem, and the fact that she was doing more fun things, made the difference.

Trying Not to Make Hasty Judgments About People's Motives

Jumping to quick conclusions about what people are like, why they're behaving the way they are, and so on, is partly a way the brain makes life easier, since it would take a long time to think everything through all the time. In all kinds of circumstances, the skill of coming to instant conclusions is extremely useful, such as where the brain can help people instantly recognise new furniture for what it is because of its basic structure, even if it's a different size and height and shape to the kinds they normally see, or the way the brain can help people jump out of bed without thinking about it in the morning, rather than having to think through what would be the best way of doing that each day.

Nevertheless, it's often as well to ask questions instead of just assuming things, in all kinds of situations.

Don't Immediately Jump to the Conclusion That Something You're Told Must be True

The blind sister who was falsely accused of spying got angry herself with her brother's wife, because she was told by her mother that the wife had complained that she asked her to do too much for her, after she asked a favour. She hadn't actually asked her to do anything before that in some time, and what she had asked her to do before, she'd asked because she couldn't see to do it herself, and if it hadn't been done by someone else, it would have made it more difficult or sometimes impossible for her to have achieved what she had in life. So it sounded to her as if her brother's wife was complaining about being asked to do things that were only things she wanted done to give her some of the same advantages in life as most people take for granted. So she got angry, and asked her brother's wife if she would far rather that she had to put up with such disadvantages than ask for help from her, and whether she just didn't care that she had to put up with them.

It turned out that that wasn't fair, because her brother's wife hadn't actually complained about having been asked for help. It turned out that what had happened was that her mother had asked her brother if her blind daughter was asking too much of his wife, and her brother had said he thought it was possible that that was the case, without the knowledge of his wife; but it was simply reported back by the mother as the brother's wife having complained about being asked to do things.

So when told that someone else has said something bad about you, it's best to find out more information, and sometimes to ask the person themselves what they said, before coming to any kind of conclusion about it. Things can get distorted in being retold; and sometimes, things can even be entirely made up out of malice.

Asking Questions Can Help a Person Increase Their Consideration for Others Through Greater Understanding of What's Motivating Them

In all kinds of other situations, it's best to ask questions before giving credence to assumptions about people's motives:

For instance, when the blind woman who was accused of spying was little, she said she didn't want to go on a slide one day in a park, when she was halfway up the steps to it. It was only quite a small slide, so her parents thought she was just being silly, and said so, urging her to go on it. In reality, what was bothering her was that she'd got high enough up the steps to feel the top of it, and discovered that it didn't have a flat top, and she couldn't understand how on earth people were supposed to keep their balance while they were sitting down to slide down it if there was no flat surface to stand on. She stepped backwards down a step. Unfortunately, her younger sister was climbing up behind her, and she didn't realise she was so close, and accidentally trod on her fingers, though not hard. Her parents protested, understandably. But if they'd asked her at first why she was worried about going down the slide, she would have told them she didn't understand how anyone could keep their balance so as not to fall, for long enough to sit down on a top that wasn't flat, but just went straight down, and they might have given her some advice.

So it's as well to find out what a person's point of view really is, rather than jumping to what might seem an obvious conclusion, or thinking something bad, without knowing all the facts. Someone can do one thing for particular reasons, that might look downright daft to someone who doesn't know the reasons, but it's just as well not to be too quick to sneer or criticise.

For instance, someone started having fun binge drinking in her late teens, but a few years later, she decided she didn't want to get drunk any more, and gave up drinking altogether. A few members of her family thought it was ridiculously extreme to give up drinking altogether, and mocked her. But if they'd actually asked her to explain herself instead, she might have explained that, in the paraphrased words of the comedian Jasper Carrott: "What's the point of drinking alcohol if you're not going to get drunk?"

She was laughed at for not wanting to get drunk anymore. But she didn't really understand why, and if those laughing had really thought about it, they might have realised it wasn't sensible to mock and laugh, since after all, they themselves could give examples of why it wasn't always wise.

For example, two of the family had been drunkenly dancing opposite each other one day at another's wedding, one in narrow high heels. She was doing a kind of can-can dance to the music, kicking up her feet high, oblivious to any risks. The family member dancing opposite her was very safety-conscious when sober; it was even part of his job to make safety assessments. If he'd been sober, he'd probably have advised her on the spot to take her shoes off. But he was just as oblivious to the risks as her, just enjoying himself. Unfortunately, she lost her balance and fell over, breaking her ankle. A mere few minutes of drunken foolishness cost her a lot of pain for months while she recovered.

Years earlier, their mother had got drunk one day after she'd been sacked from a job, and damaged the kettle while attempting to make a drink after she'd got home, so everyone who came in afterwards couldn't use it. The young woman who'd given up drinking herself knew how easy that kind of thing was to do; she'd had a radio that she'd plonked down by the side of her bed one night when she'd been drunk, and that was damaged a bit; she hadn't realised people tend to lose their sense of how heavy-handed they're being when they're drunk.

And she'd done worse things than that while drunk, including somehow snapping the lid of a priest's toilet seat in half. Giving up getting drunk seemed like a sensible decision.

It's easy to mock and criticise, especially behind a person's back when they're not there to defend themselves; but sometimes there's more to something than meets the eye.

People can have distorted perspectives without even realising it. One of the people who laughed at the young woman who'd given up drinking was her brother. If she had started using bad language around him, punctuating her sentences with loud angry swear words, he probably would have objected. How strange that he thought it was great good fun and would encourage people to do the kind of thing that might result in a broken ankle, a snapped toilet seat or worse, and yet object to something that couldn't do any harm at all - if it was just the odd brief outburst, in private. ...

(A habit of swearing, on the other hand, might do a bit of harm, by making others feel intimidated, or lowering others' opinions of the one doing the swearing, thus disadvantaging them; but such a thing probably wouldn't have even been in her brother's mind as he objected; he might not really have known why he was doing it.) It would probably have been gut instinct that made him object. But it probably wouldn't have occurred to him to think it strange that he encouraged the more harmful thing, while objecting to the lesser. And how many other people have distortions of perspective like that in some part of their lives without even realising? Maybe everyone.

Their father, strangely to her mind, couldn't stand swearing in the movies he enjoyed; but those very same films featured people acting out beating each other up, shooting each other, and other violent activities, and he loved them. Why would someone love watching violent plots, but hate what would seem to be the lesser evil, since no one was acting out getting hurt when they were merely swearing? It doesn't seem logical; but perhaps it's to do with feelings, the way the adrenaline can kick in and cause a pleasant sensation for some people while they're watching aggressive action, especially if they're willing one side to win, and in suspense, wondering whether the good guys or the bad guys will, while swearing is often just jarring for the one listening, not pleasant on the ears.

Perhaps it's similar with drinking: The pleasure people can feel when getting tipsy is perhaps so valuable to them that they'd hate to have to give it up, even though they're aware of the mishaps getting drunk can lead to, so because they personally value it, they don't disapprove of it nearly as much as they would something that is in reality much less harmful, but doesn't give the listener any pleasure.

Or perhaps sometimes, people just adopt their parents' attitudes, and react the same as them with feeling, just because their parents did, without even ever pondering on why.

Particularly Pitiless Judgments

Some people may find this part of the article particularly depressing:

Some people make some very unfair judgments sometimes, perhaps not stopping to think about just how unfair they sound, or that sometimes, the one they're focusing their condemnation on is in reality the one least at fault, if at fault at all.

For instance, a woman walks home alone at night, or agrees to go to the house of a man she's only recently met who's asked her in for coffee at the end of an evening, or walks around in a short skirt, or goes on a date with a man and leans her knee against his and allows him to hug her as they leave the place they're at, and she ends up getting raped. Some people's immediate reaction is to say something like, "Stupid girl! She had it coming!" She can end up getting the blame. Some people have no pity, taking the attitude that she deserved it for doing something as silly as she did. But is that fair?

If she was walking home alone at night, yes - she probably made an unwise judgment. But why leap to the conclusion that she was stupid to have done what she did, and the even worse conclusion that a stupid decision, perhaps taken on the spur of the moment, deserves a penalty that might leave her emotionally and maybe even physically scarred for the next perhaps 50 years? She might have caught a horrible disease; she might have nightmares for years; she might be reminded of the attack and get stressed every time a future husband tries to get lovingly intimate; she might get sacked from work because she can't stop thinking about what happened and can't concentrate on her work, or can't bear to go there very often anymore, because when she's alone with men there, she's filled with fear she can't help, so she's often off sick with stress. ... Does a rash decision to walk home alone in the middle of the night really make her deserving of all that? Surely if a person went out shoplifting, no one would consider them deserving of a punishment that bad. So why does a mere innocent decision to walk home alone make a person deserving of it?

Another thing those who make hasty judgments fail to take into account is that they likely don't know the reason she was walking home alone.

And perhaps the most important thing: Why is it that the first thought in the minds of people who make such hasty judgments is the woman's behaviour, and how that was supposedly stupid? Why aren't they thinking about how much the attacker deserves condemnation, and how important it is that the police catch him, lest he strikes again, especially considering the possibility that they themselves may even be the victims next time?

And why assume the woman simply must have been able to make a better choice? Why jump to the conclusion that the entire responsibility for her behaviour is hers? What if the reason she was out so late alone was because her and her boyfriend had had a big row, and he began to hit her, so she rushed out of the house without having time to call a taxi or anything, and had no option but to walk home alone? Or what if she had walked that way so many times before and been allright that she just assumed it would be safe? What if she'd been called out in the middle of the night to an ill relative, so she was unprepared to make arrangements for going home? It's simply impossible to make a good judgment without knowing all the circumstances. And again, even if her behaviour was irresponsible, was it really deserving of a violent attack, something most people wouldn't even think burglars deserved?

And if the woman actually went to the man's home when she didn't know him all that well, or wore a short skirt, or flirted on a date, again, why is the first thought in the minds of so many people who hear about the tragic outcome condemnation for her because she should have known better? Why should she have known better? Why shouldn't she have assumed she was entitled to respect and would get treated decently? Why assume that caution that tends to come with experience and wisdom should automatically be part of the behaviour of everyone, no matter how young and inexperienced they are? If all her friends up till then were decent, why wouldn't she assume the next man who shows her friendliness will be, rather than subjecting her to sudden violence that might leave her traumatised for years? People just don't expect to get traumatised when they go out for the evening; it's probably the last thing on most people's minds. It's easy to condemn in hindsight; not so easy to have foresight when carried away by the excitement or enjoyment of a moment, or the wish to impress.

People have made even more pitiless judgments:

For example, one day on a very windy afternoon, a group of teenagers were playing on the beach, caught up with the excitement of watching the high seas, throwing stones in, and then playing a game where they ran towards the water and then ran away with the waves coming after them. Some might have even paddled, though it was late October. Doing that was a bad enough judgment in itself, given how powerful the waves were. But who goes out to play expecting to be killed? Unfortunately, it seems one boy went too far out and got swept away, and probably did get killed.

In hind-sight, it's easy to say they were stupid to have got that close to the sea in high winds. And some people did say that. Others who heard them say it might have been easily swayed to share their opinion because of the way they made his behaviour sound, and the conviction with which they declared that he was a stupid boy, as if it was the obvious thing to think and that there could be no doubt about it. Some listeners hearing them speak might have agreed, or quickly thought the same. But people should really be thoughtful about such things, and make up their own minds. After all, there will likely always be more than one side to the story.

In this case, who hasn't done foolish things when they were young and inexperienced, caught up in the excitement of a moment? What if the winds weren't all that bad when they started, and got worse undetected while they were playing? What if between gusts, the wind wasn't all that bad and there could be a few minutes between each major gust, so it was easy to underestimate how big the waves could be when there was a powerful gust?

Also, the boy had played near rough seas before several times and nothing bad had happened; so he might well have assumed it was most likely that nothing bad would happen that time too. He might have felt confident he could just get up again if a big wave did knock him over, and if need be, swim a short way to the shore; and he might well have been able to, if it wasn't for a strong current that he might not have taken into account, because it might have been stronger than usual so he wasn't expecting it.

Some people condemned him for being irresponsible, because he might have been putting the lives of rescuers at risk by risking getting swept out to sea. But no one makes a calculated decision, "Yes I might be putting others' lives at risk, but it's worth it for my fun!" Since he wasn't intending to get swept out to sea, it probably wouldn't even have crossed his mind to seriously worry that either his own life or that anyone else's life might be put in danger if he did. Condemning him for not having the hind-sight he can't have had isn't fair. The ability to foresee the possible consequences comes with age and experience; plus it's far more easy to see them when dispassionately sitting at home than it is when being part of a high-spirited group who are all feeling exhilarated because of the exciting weather and waves, who are all caught up in the moment, encouraging each other to go nearer the sea.

There are so many things that might have made their mistake understandable; yet some people had no sympathy for the boy who'd been killed, saying it was his fault and he deserved what he got for being so stupid. He may have been stupid, but it's easy to say that in hind-sight, detached from the exhilaration and high spirits that might have led to the group making the decision to get closer to the sea than they should have done. It may only have been the sudden decision of a moment that led the boy to get closer to the waves than was safe. Yet did he really deserve the same punishment as some people say someone who murders in cold blood ought to be given - the death penalty, in effect? Is there no difference between the two offences? If someone goes on a mugging spree, few people would think he deserves the death penalty. Yet some of the same people who'd merely think a mugger deserved to go to prison would be in effect saying they thought a young boy who was caught up with excitement who got too close to powerful waves for a minute deserves death!

That boy will never be able to learn by his silly mistake and become wiser. He'll never be around to warn other children not to make the mistake he did. He'll never have the opportunity to increase in wisdom, and go on to live a good worthwhile life. He paid with his life for a moment's foolishness. Some of the very same people who judged him as deserving of it might well look on people who've made much more serious mistakes - and a lot more of them - when they were older and should have been wiser, - more leniently; because they haven't actually done something where their lives were at risk, they're not considered deserving of death, like they supposedly would have been if their thoughtless foolishness of a moment had caused them to die! Anyone who thinks about that must know it doesn't make sense, and yet without thinking about the contradiction, people can have those attitudes.

What if minutes before the people who made the cruel judgment heard the news story about the boy's probable death, someone had told them about a cute teenage boy who'd saved up his pocket money to take his mother out on her birthday? They might think, "What a lovely boy!" Then a few minutes later, they'd have heard the news story about the probable drowning, and think, "Stupid boy! It's his fault for getting too close to the sea!" What if they then found out it was the same boy, one minute considered lovely, the next minute considered so stupid he was deserving of death? Would they decide he wasn't deserving of death after all, even though he'd have been no less irresponsible than he was before they heard of his kindness? Or would they have decided he wasn't as nice as they'd thought he was, even though he'd still spent weeks or months saving up his pocket money instead of spending it on himself to do something lovely and touching for his mother? That act was no less nice than it would have been when they first heard about it.

Who knows. But hasty judgments, especially made after only hearing about one part of a story, - about one or two hours in a person's life, - aren't wise.

Yet they're often made; and sometimes, they have much much worse consequences than merely irritating someone who has to put up with hearing them being made during a chat over coffee, or such a thing as that.

For example, in the old days especially, and today more in some cultures than in others, women who get pregnant before they're married or in a steady relationship that they intend to last long-term are condemned; families have ordered daughters to leave the house, sometimes apparently unconcerned about the troubles they might face seeking new accommodation, because they've supposedly disgraced the family. It can appear that they can hold a daughter entirely responsible, not even thinking to ask whether she behaved in a slutty way, or whether instead, she might have felt pressured into having sex by a manipulative boyfriend, who perhaps told her he wouldn't stay with her if she didn't do what he wanted, or who emotionally blackmailed her by telling her he'd think she couldn't possibly love him if she didn't, or whether she might have been under peer pressure from friends who made her feel small and silly for not doing what they did and having sex, or something else where she couldn't be held entirely to blame.

The opinions of friends can matter a lot to teenagers, who haven't got the life experience to know that what some teenagers think is cool is sometimes actually foolish and best avoided, and that if some people reject them, there are others who won't.

Things are often more complex than they can seem on the surface.

People who call for mercy and leniency in situations that don't actually warrant it can seem equally as foolish in the contradictory judgments they make as some of the people who make overly harsh judgments:

For instance, someone who calls for understanding to be given to child molesters, theorising that a lot of them are perhaps lonely, and only turned to the child to get their sexual needs fulfilled because they couldn't relate well to adults because of the emotional damage they'd suffered in the past, might be far, far less understanding when they're being personally affected by something, albeit something much less serious, for instance if someone merely taunts them verbally regularly. When they're being affected personally, all thoughts of mercy can go right out the window. Never mind the upbringing or emotional state of the one tormenting them. And never mind that they, as a victim of mere verbal taunts, can't be anywhere near as badly off as the victims of child molesters; - it can be as if they view their own tormentor as having committed a worse offence!

It's all evidence that people shouldn't make hasty judgments when they don't know all the facts.

Sometimes Things are More Complicated Than They Seem at First

Sometimes, issues are more complex than people realise, and someone makes a point that makes it sound as if there are only two sides of an issue, and that people have to choose between them, when actually there are more, or the ones there are aren't as clear-cut as they think.

For instance, apparently there was an unmarried schoolteacher who got pregnant, and a group of parents of children at the school where she worked signed a petition calling for her to be fired, saying what she'd done was immoral and set a bad example for children. The authorities refused to sack her.

An argument might spring up between two people about it, one of whom might congratulate the authorities, saying something like, "I applaud them; it takes courage to stand up to pious hypocrites like those parents."

He's making several assumptions there: One seems to be that all the parents are motivated by religious conviction. In reality, that might not be the case. Also, he's assuming that concerns over the possible immorality of the teacher are so ridiculous, they're not even worth taking seriously. Again, he can't possibly know that. What if it turns out that the teacher's getting pregnant really does show irresponsibility and poor judgment, and that attitude carries over into her teaching style? That possibility isn't even entering the person's head when he's jumping to his conclusion. He's assuming the parents are hypocrites, though he likely hasn't got any evidence for that.

And what if firing the teacher would benefit the children, so it would be a smart move by the authorities, - not because the children would see the teacher being punished, but because she'd be likely to leave anyway after she had the baby, and then a new teacher might well take over, who wouldn't know what the children had already learned that year, and might have a teaching style that took a bit of getting used to - which might impact their grades if they were taking exams? He hasn't thought of that possible issue.

Probably without even being aware he's doing it, he's simplifying the argument right down to one of whether justice should prevail, or whether bigots should get their way.

But a person might argue the opposite point of view, but be making just as many assumptions. They might argue that it would be right to have sacked the teacher, saying that after all, children are impressionable, and shouldn't be allowed to think bad behaviour is OK, in case they mimic it themselves one day. They might say sacking single people for getting pregnant wouldn't always be fair, but that teachers are entrusted with shaping children's attitudes, so they should live up to a higher standard than most, to set a good example.

One assumption they're making is that the children will think the teacher's pregnancy is a good thing. The possibility that the teacher might in fact tell them she made a mistake, and warn them against doing something similar, isn't even crossing their mind. Nor is it occurring to them to wonder what lesson, if the children are impressionable, they're going to learn from the lack of compassion shown by authorities who just put the teacher out of work for something she herself is going to be inconvenienced by most, when she's bound to need all the money she can get to cope. Also, they're making the assumption that children are impressionable enough to learn a lasting lesson from what's happened, and that they're at risk of copying the behaviour one day. They might not have any evidence that either of those things is the case.

And how could they ever know that it wasn't better to have a teacher who'd perhaps made a mistake, and could one day tell the children all about the consequences in lost nights' sleep, expenses and so on, than it would be to have a teacher who didn't get pregnant, who might actually be casually passing on the attitude to the children that it's good to be in casual sexual relationships, never having suffered any harmful consequences for it themselves, for all they know? They're making a judgment without knowing a lot of the facts.

The argument may have seemed a simple one to both sides. But both sides probably went with their gut reaction, not thinking of the broader picture, or thinking about whether there was really good evidence for what they were saying, and whether there was actually less or more evidence against it.

Echoing Others' Opinions Without Thinking Through the Issues

One unfortunate behaviour is often found on message boards, where someone posts a little story about something bad that happened to them, or something they unfortunately did, and dozens of people pile in with condemnation of the person or people who did the bad or silly thing, which might be fair enough, if not for the fact that a lot of the time, the people seem to be all assuming the worst, not giving a thought to what could have motivated the behaviour, or whether they've heard the whole story, or just part of it or one side of it, when another perspective might make it seem different. It might especially happen where the story stirs up emotions.

For instance, a message was written by a woman who'd walked with her dog past a stretch of gravelly road where there were big puddles after some heavy rain. Drivers were zooming past, and when she walked by, her and the dog were splashed, and also hit by gravel that had been sprayed up with the water when the cars went through the puddles. It was painful for both of them to be hit by the gravel, especially for the dog, which got hit in the face by it. The dog became scared to go anywhere near the place for a while. The woman was also a bit nervous about going past there again with the dog, in case it was distressed; and she was worried that the dog might take ages to get over it.

Clearly she deserved sympathy, and she could have done with some suggestions on whether anything could be done to stop such a thing happening again, and how to calm the dog down. But when she mentioned what had happened, though she got some of that, dozens and dozens of people commented, offering their support, but condemning the drivers with insults, and saying they ought to be punished, as if they assumed they were deliberately out to cause everything that happened - that it was all premeditated, and that they went along the road calculating that if they went at a certain speed, they'd splash passers-by, hit them with gravel that was sprayed up, and that dogs would become too anxious to walk that stretch of road again.

Maybe after the first person commented like that, others followed their lead, as if they thought the first person who said that must be right, and that that's what they ought to think too, as if they weren't trying to imagine what must have happened from the drivers' point of view at all, but just thinking the worst, wanting to rush to support the person they believed to have been wronged - a friend of some of them.

But in reality, the drivers may simply have been thoughtless or careless; many may never have travelled that stretch of road before after heavy rain while someone was passing, so they wouldn't have had time to wonder if any gravel they drove over would spray up into the face of a passing dog and onto its owner, and what might happen if it did, before they'd driven over it and were long past it. They might not have been going fast out of recklessness, but some might have been scared the water would seep into their car's engine if they went slower - even though going fast and causing spray would likely be riskier, because it might make it more likely that water would get into it, and reduce their visibility if some of the spray sprayed over their windows, plus it can be more dangerous to drive fast where there's water on the road, because tyres can't grip the road so well if there's water on it, especially if the car's being driven at higher speeds, so that makes skidding and accidents more likely.

And the drivers might not even have been thinking about who was passing, but just wanting to get away and off home as quickly as they could, thinking of their dinner.

So before condemning people as stupid, or declaring that they need to be punished, people ought to wonder how things might have looked from their point of view. There might be several possible different reasons for their behaviour.

Also, sometimes the exact same thing can sound very different, according to the context in which it's being said:

Imagine that a woman with a guide dog travelled in a taxi with the dog, and a few days later, she told her friends that the taxi driver asked her whether her dog would attack him if he repeatedly punched it in the face. That would sound psychopathic. It would stir up emotions, and there might be a whole group of people calling for him to be fired, and even for the police to get involved.

But if someone were to ask her what led up to him saying that, she might explain that they were having a conversation where she said guide dogs are trained not to defend themselves when they're attacked, but to get their owners to safety. Amazed that a dog might ever resist the urge to defend itself when attacked, The taxi driver might have been wondering out of curiosity just what it would take for the guide dog to break with their training and do so. First of all, he might have asked whether the dog would react if someone hit him.

When he asked the question about whether the dog would attack if he punched him repeatedly in the face, the blind person might have felt worried and a bit shaken - there she was with this man she'd never met; she didn't know what he was like, and she couldn't just jump out and run away if she wanted to, even if the taxi stopped, because she didn't know what was around her, and what direction it would be safe to go in. But from the taxi driver's point of view, he might have just been curious; he might never actually hurt a dog, and he might simply not realise that saying such a thing might scare the person he's talking to.

But again, a dozen people might condemn him as if he'd actually been threatening the dog and is clearly a menace to society who didn't deserve a job, or even to be free to walk the streets.

Or if a country brings in a law allowing euthanasia for children in some circumstances, anyone who reads the headline might be outraged at the thought that it could be legal to kill children anywhere. They might want to condemn the law as barbaric at once. But it might turn out that the law was introduced to try to spare the suffering of children who had terrible illnesses that were causing them a lot of pain, which were almost certainly going to kill them within weeks or months in any case. Discovering that might put a whole new perspective on things.

Clearly there are many actions that should be condemned no matter what, and people who commit them don't deserve to have people take the trouble to try and understand them. But in a lot of cases, it's best if people ask quite a few more questions before making a judgment, along with thinking about how things might have looked from the point of view of the person who did the thing they're tempted to just condemn out of hand.

Criticising Without Thinking

Also, thinking the worst about a person's motives before knowing anything about what they really are can make people far more angry than they would be if they reserved judgment; and then both they and the other person can be made miserable unnecessarily, if the problem is talked about.

For instance, a woman had a neighbour who was becoming quite deaf in her old age. She would play her radio loud, and it would disturb the younger woman, who lived in the next-door flat. She complained in irritation about the old woman's thoughtlessness and lack of consideration. If she'd stopped to think, she might have realised that there might be more to it than that:

If you're losing your hearing, you can simply be unaware of how loud something you're listening to is. Also, even a person who can hear normally can turn their television or radio up far louder than even they realise they've got it; if it's turned up gradually over time, they can just get used to it and it can seem normal; only if they've been somewhere quiet can they turn it back on and be surprised at how loud it sounds. How much more is someone with bad hearing likely to do that!

Also, the woman with bad hearing couldn't have just somehow automatically known how bad the sound-proofing was in the flats. If she wasn't being disturbed by anyone herself, she would have no reason to suspect it might be less than adequate.

A bit of patient friendly explanation of the problem to the old woman herself might have led to her being more careful, whereas continual irritated grumblings to others wasn't achieving a thing, either towards solving the problem, or towards improving the mood of the woman being disturbed.

Part Five
Sometimes Relying on What the Majority Seems to Think Isn't a Good Idea, and Problems That Can Unexpectedly Occur When Others Seem to Need Help

It might be thought that the judgment or thinking of a crowd is better than that of an individual, since if a lot of people think the same thing it must mean it's likely to be right. But that isn't the case. Sometimes, the reason so many people think the same thing is simply because a few people with strong opinions have expressed them, and everyone else in the crowd thinks they sound convincing, so they assume they must be right, and go along with them, without thinking deeply about the matter, or giving any thought to whether there might be another side of the story. Sometimes, part of the reason for that might be because they're busy doing something else, so they haven't got the time to think deeply about it. But not always.

It isn't just that people sometimes don't give much thought to something though; sometimes they can be deferring to others' judgment, or thinking they are. But in some serious situations, trying to work out what the majority thinks can be a mistake, partly because their behaviour can be misinterpreted as certainty about what to do when in reality, it's uncertainty, and an attempt to look to the majority for guidance:

Lots of studies have found that if someone suddenly finds themselves in difficulties somewhere where there are a lot of strangers about, it's much less likely that anyone will come to their aid than it is if there's only one person around. It seems it's mainly because people are often unsure about how serious the situation really is, and whether help is really needed, so if no one else is doing anything, they'll defer to the seeming judgment of the crowd that nothing needs to be done; and people can also assume there's probably no need to react personally, since someone else will be bound to get help if it is genuinely needed.

People can make judgments about whether to do anything by looking at those around them to see if they're doing anything, and doing what they do. Unfortunately, people often misinterpret the behaviour of those around them: While everyone is looking around to see how those around them are reacting, to determine how to react themselves, they will likely see what looks like everyone around them staying calm and not doing anything. So they can conclude from that that the appropriate thing to do is not to do anything at all. But the real reason no one's doing anything will often be because no one knows whether to do anything, so they're all just appearing to be calm, but only because they're busy looking around to see if anyone else is doing anything, unsure of how to react.

Possibly One of the Best Ways of Alerting Attention if you Fall Ill in a Crowd

The author of a book about how people influence others to do things has recommended that, bearing in mind that people in some kinds of trouble in crowded places are a lot less likely to get help than if something happens to them when there's just one person around who'll know it's up to them to take the initiative rather than looking to others to decide what needs to be done, it's best, if they can, to single out one person from the crowd and ask them to do something, and then if necessary, to single out another person and ask them to do something else that's necessary, for instance phoning the ambulance while the first person comes to help.

It won't be easy to be clear-thinking enough to do that when taken by surprise by whatever trouble it is, and while simultaneously dealing with it, and there are other things that could make it pretty much impossible too; - for instance, a mugging victim might risk violence if they call out, (although the mugger might run away instead of attacking them); but whenever it's possible to do, the technique could increase a person's chances of getting help.

The example the author of the book about influencing people gives is of someone who realises they're having a stroke: Someone who's been to a musical event in a park, say, might perhaps notice a slight numbness in one of their arms as they're getting up to go, but brush it off as nothing, only to realise it's a serious problem as it gets worse, and they find themselves increasingly unable to move. Perhaps most people around them won't seem to notice, and will just walk by; others might notice but look around them to see what others are doing about it, and seeing they're doing nothing, assume that means nothing's really wrong, or that it isn't something they should be getting involved with, and just walk on too. They might worry about feeling silly if they go to someone's aid only to find help isn't wanted. Before it gets so bad the person having the stroke can't call out so they're even less likely to get help, they'll need to decide what to do quickly.

Just groaning in pain might get attention, but wouldn't make anyone realise there was an emergency and that another person's intervention was wanted. Shouting out the word Help is better; even if it turns out it isn't as serious as first thought, and help isn't needed after all, it's better to be safe than sorry; embarrassment at worrying about whether it's serious enough to require help could cost vital seconds or minutes that can't be afforded; better to be embarrassed and apologetic for a minute than dead or paralysed for life.

But even shouting for help isn't the best tactic, since even if it makes people realise it's an emergency, they'll likely still hesitate, wondering what kind of help could be needed, whether they're capable of providing it, or whether someone else there could do it far better, and whether someone else has already gone to get help or phoned for an ambulance. Their uncertainty may well stop them all intervening; and all the while, the situation will be growing more serious. But there is more the person in trouble could do while they can still speak:

The most effective way of getting help might well be to single out one person from the crowd, stare and point directly at them, and tell them what they need to do. Something like, "You, man in the grey coat! I need help. Call an ambulance or get someone else to!"

That'll remove uncertainties about who should help and what they should do. One person will know they're responsible for it. That doesn't mean they'll help immediately - after all, they'll want to know what's wrong and whether the call for help is genuine, and it might not register with them that someone's calling them unexpectedly for a little while, so there'll be a bit of a delay. But it could well increase the chances of getting help. And if they don't respond, someone else could be singled out and asked. Once one or two people come to help, the chances are that more will follow, since then, people will be looking around them for clues about the appropriate thing to do, and see people helping, rather than everyone seeming to be just calmly walking past.

Mistakenly Offering Help When it Isn't Needed

A person who goes to the aid of someone else only to find they've made a mistake because the person didn't need help might be embarrassed, but they won't deserve to feel like that; they shouldn't be looked down on. Far better that they go to help in error than that no one ever helps anyone.

Unfortunately, sometimes people have gone to help others who look as if they could be in a bit of difficulty, such as disabled people, and those people themselves have been annoyed, and made insulting or angry comments, putting those people off offering to help such people again, so there might be people who need help in the future who are less likely to get it.

Maybe sometimes, people feel insulted by offers of help because they're managing satisfactorily on their own and they think an offer of help must mean the person thinks they're incapable of doing things for themselves. But what's really making them feel insulted will often be what's going on in their own mind - suspicions and feelings their own mind's creating, perhaps because their pride's being hurt by thinking someone thinks they can't manage - especially if they think someone they want to impress might be looking, - or perhaps because of experiences they've had in the past, where they've been treated as less capable than they are that they're reminded of, or something else; but it makes them interpret offers of help as demeaning when they weren't meant like that at all, so they react with irritation or sarcasm, or in some other unpleasant way that isn't deserved.

Worse things have happened though: There was one man who heard a woman's screams from a flat above him, and at first he tried to ignore them, but then, as he felt sure she was crying out for help, he rushed upstairs with the only weapon he had to hand - a sword that had been passed down in the family - and kicked the door down, only to find a man watching a porn video. He demanded to know where the woman who was being tortured was, and the man showed him around to prove there wasn't any woman there. The man who'd gone to help was charged with criminal trespass and breaking in. Afterwards he said he felt stupid for having done it.

But before anyone else leaps to the conclusion that he was stupid, they should consider that they don't know what the porn film sounded like from the flat beneath the one it was being watched in - after all, it could have been about sado-masochism, or just sadism. It was probably an easy mistake to make.

Sometimes, however, help offered to people is unwelcome because it's not the kind of help that's needed; help in itself would be nice, but the person aiming to help someone such as a disabled person hasn't asked them what they want, but has just assumed they know what's best for them. In all but dangerous situations, or circumstances where it genuinely is the mind of the person that isn't functioning as it should, it's best to ask whether the person wants help, and what kind of help they want.

For instance, one disabled person I know of had brittle bones, and often wanted help to get up because their legs weren't functioning as they should have; but if someone had grabbed their wrists and pulled, which might possibly help some people, they would have broken.

In another situation, a little group of people would meet to play games like dominos, and the oldest member would buy cakes for them every week, and also prizes. An outsider to the group didn't think it was fair that the old woman should be the one to pay for them every week, and, without consulting her to see what she wanted, tried to get things changed so everyone paid a fair share. The woman was irate when she found out. One reason may have been that though the outsider may have thought they were just trying to help, the way it could have been interpreted is as if they were thinking, "She's losing her wits; she can't be trusted with her own money anymore; she's allowing herself to be taken advantage of, and that isn't right; she might be paying money she can't afford, and it must be stopped."

That isn't going to go down well with someone who prides themselves on still being of sound mind, especially if their generosity makes them feel good, so insisting that everyone pays a fair share without first finding out whether that's what they want might deprive them of that feeling.

So it's best to ask the person concerned whether there is actually a problem, and whether they have ideas on what should be done about it, rather than just intervening on their behalf.

In far more serious matters, too, the people concerned in a decision should often be consulted, rather than having decisions made by well-wishers for them; for instance, when hearing about child labour, most people's instincts must be to feel sure it must all be stopped, and it doubtless should be. So they might arrange boycotts of companies who use suppliers who employ children in developing countries, and give them bad publicity. But if all child labour was to be stopped without the children or their families themselves being consulted, though it might be surprising to many, a lot of children might actually be upset, and there could be drastic unforeseen consequences. For instance, in parts of some countries, in some forms of employment, the children are often the only ones in a family who can find work, and many actually pride themselves on helping out. Without a welfare state, the consequences of throwing them all out of work could be hunger and severe deprivation for many families, before companies adjust to more ethical working practices.

So the solution isn't just to stop child labour, but to find out first what would need to be done to prevent that kind of thing happening when the children stopped working.

Mistaking the Attitude of a Group For the Right Attitude or Attitude of the Public in General

Some people hang around with certain groups of people, and because certain attitudes and behaviours are very common in the group, and they mostly meet people who share their attitudes and do what they do in the places they go together, they can assume such behaviours and attitudes are much more common among the general public than they really are.

For instance, a young man who goes to nightclubs and meets lots of girls willing to have one night stands with them might find themselves in a different environment one day, meeting a different girl, assume she's likely up for a one-night stand, and when she gets offended at his advances, say something like, "What's the matter? All other girls your age are happy to have one night stands!"

To give another example, if half a dozen people in a room all agree that the death penalty ought to be brought back, some of them might think, "Everyone here agrees, so I bet most of the public think this!" But while they might, it isn't necessarily the case, since for one reason or another, the people in the room might not be a representative sample of the public - perhaps approval of capital punishment's more common among people over a certain age, or of a particular class or something.

But even if most of the public do approve of it, that doesn't necessarily mean anyone can be more confident that it's the right way to think; to get an informed opinion, it's better to investigate the opinions of people who've looked more closely into matters such as what might go wrong if the death penalty was brought back - such as people who are condemned for having murdered in a premeditated way when they caught the person unawares, who in reality only killed their victim under extreme provocation over time, being executed, because the provocation isn't taken into account, - versus how much suffering the death penalty might eliminate, by eliminating those from society who might only go on to commit more murders and other crimes after being released from prison if they remain alive.

Notes and Links

The Backstory

Nicholas is worried. He's been a junior manager in a business that made some terrible decisions, stressing their workforce out and causing the company to suffer because of the mistakes that were made. He wasn't happy with the decisions being made, but when he tried to speak up, any idea that challenged what the others were doing was shouted down, regardless of whether it was better than the ones being put forward. There didn't seem to be any tolerance for different ways of thinking.

He's also seen mistakes made in his own family, where people have accepted claims made by religious figures and people selling remedies for diseases who turned out to be conmen, or who led them into harmful actions or ways of thinking that damaged them. He's scared his own teenagers will one day fall for cons, or end up unquestioningly following along behind people who make bad decisions, or hold faulty or unethical beliefs, and that they'll suffer because of those beliefs and decisions, or cause others to suffer. He's also worried they won't develop anywhere near their full potential in life because they're not as good at thinking critically as they could be. He wants to protect his teenagers against these risks by helping them develop sharper thinking skills. He wonders how.

He has the idea of looking to see if there are books on developing better thinking skills. He finds a few and buys them. He looks through them, planning ways of telling his children, and other family members, some of what he's finding out.