Postmodern Perspectives

Postmodern Perspectives . . . Love Languages - Making a distinction between the modern view and the postmodern view. Modern - There are five love languages that are waiting for you to identify with. Postmodern - There are infinite love languages and yours is waiting to be constructed.

The Five W’s (who, why, what, when, and where) are generally used to gather objective information about a particular topic or situation. Though often utilized in the field of journalism, I find that these types of questions have significant therapeutic value in helping someone unpack or explore the implicit norms and expectations that have come to inform their relative existence. More often than not, I find that someone’s fixed ideas about how they are “supposed” to think, feel, or act is causing more distress than the thoughts, feelings, or actions that they are assigning as problematic. Using the Five W’s to explore socially constructed norms and expectations can highlight the idea that they were constructed in the first place and make space to deconstruct and change them to be more preferable for the individual. Some examples Who says you that you shouldn’t be angry about________________________? What is preventing you from having a conversation about _____

Postm odern Perspectives. . . The Villainizing   of Mood States Why must we try and stop anxiety or make it go away? Part of what makes the anxious experience unpleasant is the socially constructed idea that we are not supposed to be anxious. Instead of stopping anxiety, another option might be to become its friend and comfortably exist in an anxious state. The same could be said for anger. Why are we always trying to stop being angry?  Part of the reason might be because certain mood states have been assigned a negative value by society and cast aside as villainous. Sure, we will probably always have to concede to social norms regarding the management and control of behaviors that are driven by emotions. We can’t go around punching people in the face because we are angry (we’ll, we can but there will certainly be consequences for that). We can’t stay in our rooms for our entire lives because we are anxious (Well, we could if we won the lottery,