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 Office Hours With Dr. Jim
by James
Houran, Ph.D
In this column, "Dr.
Jim"
honestly and candidly answers your questions about
dating, love and sexuality. He doesn’t tell
you what you want to hear – he tells you what
you need to hear. Dr. Jim is committed to offering
you guidance based on responsible clinical practice
and hard data from the latest scientific studies.
Send
Dr. Jim your questions today for consideration
in an upcoming issue.
This
Week:
Are the Best People Still on the Market
Checking Online Dating Services
If the people
on online dating sites are so attractive and eligible,
then why are they still on the market?
I’ve heard self-absorbed men in informal focus
groups ask this very same question. They seemed suspicious
that the women on online dating sites were not “quality” individuals – because
they reasoned that quality women wouldn’t be
on the market. I guess it never dawned on them that
their reasoning also applied to them.
The fact is that some singles, be they online or off,
are unsavory characters that wouldn’t make for
stable or satisfying relationships. But the truth is
that there are many reasons why attractive, dynamic,
and eligible
are on the market. Some put their education
or careers before romance, others are recently new
to the market because of some sort of separation, whereas
others are on the market simply because they’ve
not yet found the right person.
Whatever the reason, online dating sites are full
of amazing singles just like you. It’s up to
you to find dating services that fit with style and
seem to have your type of people. But a little due
diligence should quickly reveal that online dating
gives you an outlet unlike any other if your goal is
to meet the greatest number of quality and eligible
singles near you and beyond.
I look forward to checking
out my online dating site all day, but by the time
I get home after work my mood changes. What can I
do?
I have to wonder if your mood changes are due to work
stress. You might have a rewarding, successful career,
and, therefore, deny any work stress. This would be
a wrong assumption. Hans Selye was one of the founding
fathers of stress research. His view in 1956 was that “stress
is not necessarily something bad – it all depends
on how you take it. The stress of exhilarating, creative
successful work is beneficial, while that of failure,
humiliation or infection is detrimental.” Selye
believed that the biochemical effects of stress would
be experienced irrespective of whether the situation
was positive or negative.
Some of the earliest research on stress established
the existence of what we know today as the “fight-or-flight” response.
That is, when a person experiences a shock or merely
perceives a threat, the body quickly releases hormones
that help it to survive. The physiological effects
of these hormones essentially prepare us to either “fight” the
stressor or “flee” or runaway from it.
It’s not just life-threatening events that trigger
this reaction – we experience it most any time
something unexpected happens or when something frustrates
our goals. When the threat is small, our response is
small and we often do not notice it among the many
other distractions of a stressful situation. So, small
work pressures might be having a snowball effect and
causing these mood changes.
Even small pressures can have big, cumulative effects.
For example, your previously good mood might slowly
or abruptly transform into more negative feelings like
anxiety, jumpiness, or irritability. There are very
few situations in modern working life where this response
is useful. Most situations benefit from a calm, rational,
controlled and socially sensitive approach. The same
is true for online dating and interacting with others
in social settings. If your mood changes are significant,
then you might be experiencing work burnout. See if
any of the following symptoms sound familiar:
1. Chronic
fatigue - exhaustion, tiredness, a sense of being
physically run down.
2. Anger at those making demands.
3. Self-criticism
for putting up with the demands.
4. Cynicism,
negativity, and irritability.
5. A sense of being
besieged.
6. Exploding easily at seemingly inconsequential
things.
7. Frequent headaches and gastrointestinal
disturbances.
8. Weight loss or gain.
9. Sleeplessness and depression.
10. Shortness
of breath.
11. Suspiciousness.
12. Feelings of helplessness.
13. Increased
degree of risk taking.
If those do sound
familiar, I recommend speaking to your doctor. In
the short term, we need to keep fight-or-flight
responses under control to be effective in our jobs
and successful in our online and offline dating exploits.
In the long term we need to keep it under control
to avoid problems of poor health and burnout.
> Perfectmatch.com - The best approach to find the one.
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