Things aren’t what they seem

When two feelings are in tension with one another, admitting to the uncertainty leads to greater credibility and grounded confidence.

Cognitive Dissonance

  • When you hold two cognitions (such as ideas, attitude, beliefs, or opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent with each other (e.g. cult followers when proven wrong or smokers)
  • Choose courage and being curious over comfort
  • Helps you to rethink and relearn

Amusement

  • Pleasurable, relaxed excitation, usually involves humor

Bittersweet

  • Tension of happy and sad
  • Different than ambivalence, unsure if you are happy or sad

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a yearning for the way things used to be in our often idealized and self-protective version of the past.

  • Bittersweet: yearning/loss
  • Rumination: negative past
  • Reflection: adaptive & psychologically healthy
  • Worry: future focused

Paradox

  • Appearance of contradiction between two related components
  • Paradoxes are hard and good for you

Irony

Are you doing something up in humor that actually requires clarity and honesty?

Sarcasm

  • Related to irony, can ridicule, tease, and or criticize