I am so angry at him this morning, after our senseless spurt of fighting at 8 a.m. We both leave for work stewing over our prideful sense of self-righteousness, without releasing any words of apology. I, being right of course, solemnly promise myself to carry my bellyache forever, if needed, but not apologize first. During my drive to work, I can’t help but conduct in my head an amateur ping-pong match of the two opposing teams: his good vs. bad points.

Wham! Good quality No. 1: very funny.

He makes me laugh at things, at myself, and at him. He has that amazing ability to take himself seriously but not impose this attitude on others.

Boom! Bad quality No. 1: overly laid-back.

He can switch off his brain and tune out all of the short- and long-term worries that permanently reside in my mind. He can just lose himself in the cushiony softness of his favorite chair, stretch out his long legs, and listen to music or watch sports.

Father’s Day rolls around again, and I am brought back 50 years to the smell of spent cigars and sweaty T-shirts in the mid-June heat. We argued about those T-shirts often and rancorously, my father and I. He favored the sleeveless, white-cotton variety, which I thought looked ridiculous.

“Why don’t you wear the right T-shirts?” my father would ask, with genuine bafflement. “You’ll be a lot cooler in the summer!”

“I like colored T-shirts, with sleeves!” I’d shout back. “Leave me the hell alone!”

I was 14, and anything but the son my father would have chosen. He was a natural athlete who loved nothing better than starting up a softball game with the kids at Kibbe Park, who knew him simply as “Jake.” He liked crooning along with “Dean Martin Sings Parisian,” channeling Groucho Marx (“I hate to be Russian, but I Mos-cow…”) and downing a cold glass of Genesee Beer with a few slices of pepperoni.

I was a studious nerd, given to spouting verses from Dylan Thomas and listening to Simon and Garfunkle, alone in my room. I hated almost anything connected with sports and, as my classmates frequently pointed out on the baseball diamond, I threw “like a girl.” On some level, I probably sensed that the arguments my father and I had over T-shirts were really about the kind of kid I was, and the kind he wanted me to be.

What do others think about me? Will that person be mad at me because of something I said? They will be so disappointed in me if I don’t excel in my work… and so on.

A highly sensitive disposition can keep you up at night and busy with thoughts like these every waking moment.

In general, care for your feelings and others’ opinions is not only normal, but good. It enables you to connect with people at a heart-to-heart level and express empathy. The problem arises when you are “too much” in touch with your emotions.

Having a highly emotional disposition can make life harder. It attracts labels and remarks such as “You’re so sensitive!,” “Now what did I say to upset you?,” “Talking to you is like walking on eggshells!,” “Why can’t you just snap out of it?,” “Can you not care so much about what that person said to you?” and so on.

Such remarks usually come from people who look like they don’t have a care in the world. They handle their feelings well; they look confident and happy. They just don’t understand why it is so hard for some to let go of their emotional baggage.

It doesn’t have to go to this extreme. If others’ opinions matter to you more than you would like, read on.

“The quality of your thinking about whom you see in the mirror largely determines the quality of your life,” according to speaker and bestselling author Brian Tracy and therapist Christina Tracy Stein in their book Kiss That Frog! 12 Ways to Turn Negatives into Positives in Your Life and Work.

“If you change your thinking about yourself, you change your life — almost immediately.”

As such, the authors help readers morph their negative thoughts and emotions into positive ones and fulfill their potential. They note that developing high self-esteem and a positive attitude takes practice. In the last chapter of their book, Tracy and Stein spell out the seven keys they say will help you be the best that you can be.

Whenever a teacher would say, “Today, we’re working in groups,” I could feel the dread bubbling in my stomach. For the most part I’ve always preferred working alone, digesting the assignment and slowly making sense of my thoughts.

I also rarely raised my hand in class until I mulled over my response in my mind (over and over). And even then, there were many times I stayed quiet, hands at my sides.

Today, while I love being out and about, I prefer quieter places and I’m happy to stay home with a good book (or two). I love interacting with people, but I have my limits, especially in noisy environments. None of the people who know me would ever describe me as a risk-taker, fierce competitor, quick decision-maker or multitasker. And I’m a much better writer than I am a speaker.

In other words, I’m an introvert.

I’ve posted this quiz before, but because I think it’s such a very helpful thing to know about yourself, I’m posting it again. Recognizing this distinction has been one of the most important insights that I’ve had into my own nature — more helpful, say, than understanding that I’m an under-buyer, not an over-buyer.

A piece of advice I often see is, “Be moderate. Don’t have ice cream every night, but if you try to deny yourself altogether, you’ll fall off the wagon. Allow yourself to have the occasional treat, it will help you stick to your plan.”

I’ve come to believe that this is good advice for some people: the “moderators.” They do better when they try to make moderate changes, when they avoid absolutes and bright lines.

For a long time, I kept trying this strategy of moderation — and failing. Then I read a line from Samuel Johnson, who said, when someone offered him wine: “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.”

Ah ha! Like Dr. Johnson, I’m an “abstainer.”

When I completed Elaine Aron’s Highly Sensitive Person Self-Test, I checked 24 statements. Out of 27.

I checked everything from being bothered by bright lights and loud noises to getting startled easily to trying to avoid mistakes to not watching violent movies or TV shows.

Maybe you can relate.

While there are many differences among highly sensitive people (HSPs), we have one thing in common: HSPs have a sensitive nervous system that makes it harder to filter out stimuli and easier to get overwhelmed by our environment.

For instance, the sound of sirens and other loud noises might reverberate like nails on a chalkboard through your head. (They do in mine.)  Crowds might make you especially uncomfortable, while strong smells make you feel sick.

Attachment styles form the basis for a psychology theory about how people interact with others in their life, and the world around them. While it can be traced back all the way to some of Freud’s writings, it was John Bowlby who devoted significant effort and research into expanding upon and demonstrating attachment theory.

“Attachment” refers to the emotional relationships we share with others in exchange for the things we most need out of life — comfort, care, and pleasure. Our attachment style is primarily formed in early childhood, according to this theory.

Bowlby identified four characteristics of attachment…

I’m pleased to introduce Character Strengths — a blog about positive psychology and figuring out how to …

We have dozens of quizzes here at Psych …

Last week, more than a few news agencies and blogs picked up the story that “one out of every 10 Wall Street employees is a psychopath.” This immediately caught my attention, because as a researcher, I found the statistic intriguing because it was so out of whack with the incidence of psychopathy in the general population.

But in trying to research where this statistic came from, I stumbled upon a symptom of what’s wrong with a lot of journalism today.

I can summarize the problem in one word — laziness. Many (most?) journalists nowadays take “experts” words for whatever claims they make, without ever bothering to check them out independently.

In his insightful book, The Addictive Personality: Understanding the Addictive Process and Compulsive Behavior, author Craig Nakken explains why, even after an addict has given up the bottle or the weed, she will never be done with recovery:

Addiction is a process of buying into false and empty promises: the false promise of relief, the false promise of emotional security, the false sense of fulfillment, and the false sense of intimacy with the world….Like any other major illness, addiction is an experience that changes people in permanent ways. That is why it’s so important that people in recovery attend Twelve Step and other self-help meetings on a regular basis; the addictive logic remains deep inside of them and looks for an opportunity to reassert itself in the same or in a different form.

Nakken brilliantly explains the addictive cycle that I merely call “the exploding head phenomenon”: the process by which I continually seek relief from uncomfortable feelings, a “nurturing through avoidance — an unnatural way of taking care of one’s emotional needs,” as he says. The addict, he clarifies, seeks serenity through a person, place, or thing.