1 . The nature of compassion fatigue (同情疲劳) means that many working in traditional care-giving roles are likely to experience its symptoms. This includes first responders, medical professionals, social workers, journalists, and lawyers specializing in family law or criminal law.

Kelli Collins, a licensed family therapist, remarks “Think about muscle fatigue—if you work out too hard, your muscles might simply give out. In the same way, compassion fatigue means your ability to offer compassion to others is dramatically affected.”

Collins herself experienced compassion fatigue as a young therapist working in a community mental health setting, where she “had the strong desire to help” but quickly realized some things were out of her “rang of influence”. She felt herself becoming easily annoyed with loved ones, sleeping very little, and fantasizing about changing careers. It was an overwhelming time, during which she felt she was failing her clients.

“I thought that by giving endless compassion to my clients, I was ‘leaving it all on the field’. In fact, bearing the responsibility for my clients’ pain without consideration for my own needs and limits meant that I wasn’t a particularly effective therapist,” she says.

Lynne Hughes, who founded Comfort Zone in 1999 and now serves as CEO, lost both her parents as a child, experiencing first-hand the lack of resources and support for grieving children. Hughes expresses similar feelings about the challenge of compassion fatigue, stressing the importance of looking inward.

“Suffering from compassion fatigue does not mean you’re bad at helping or caring, it only means the scale between caring for others and caring for yourself is no longer balanced,” she says. “When you’re in a role where you’re nurturing and caring for others — it’s crucial to extend that nurture and care to yourself so that ‘your well’ does not run dry.”

But both Hughes and Collins emphasize that it’s not only traditional caregivers who experience compassion fatigue. “It is applicable to anyone in a caring role,” says Hughes, while Collins believes it is a uniquely human condition, occupational or not.

1. Why does Collins mention the muscle fatigue?

A．To describe she is in a bad mood.

B．To show she is eager to give a hand.

C．To suggest she has limited pity for others.

D．To explain she is much tired of her customers.

2. Which of the following do Hughes and Collins agree with?

A．Care for yourself while caring for others.

B．Compassion fatigue has nothing to do with career.

C．Those with compassion fatigue are poor at helping.

D．Shy persons always tend to suffer compassion fatigue.

3. What does “your well” in Paragraph 6 refer to?

A．Pity.

B．Nurture.

C．Symptoms.

D．Occupation.

4. How does the author develop the text?

A．By giving examples.	B．By quoting arguments.
C．By making comparisons.	D．By analyzing reasons and causes.

2 . Self-criticism (自我批评) is a mental habit of negatively analyzing and judging ourselves and our actions. If we don’t find a way to overcome self-criticism, we won’t be able to live a happy and satisfying life.     1    .

Stop Negative Thoughts

Thought stopping is one of the best secrets of how to overcome self-criticism. Interrupting your thoughts helps you change how you think about yourself, thus helping you feel better.     2    . However, with enough practice, you will make it.

    3    

Another strategy is to replace negative self-critical thoughts with positive realistic statements. For instance, if you set a goal, be realistic about it by giving yourself enough time to achieve it. In fact, having a constant desire to achieve immediate success can ruin your confidence.

Avoid Perfectionism

Another secret is to let go of the need to be perfect. It’s all right to set high standards for yourself.     4    . In addition, desiring to be perfect in everything you pursue can prevent your progress.

Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

    5    . However, it’s important to note that comparing yourself to your peers, friends, or family can increase dissatisfaction and unhappiness. That said, the best tip on how to overcome self-criticism is to practice self-acceptance.

A．Be realistic

B．Focus on strengths

C．It’s normal to feel like that everyone has a better life than you

D．Remember it’s from your mistakes that you get to improve yourself

E．If you’ve been stuck in negative thoughts, here’s what you need to do

F．It’s important to note that changing your negative thought patterns can take time

G．However, falling short of your goals and expectations can make you feel worthless

3 . Nothing is better than having a sense of humor, but is yours positive or a bit different? Are you just dry?    1     , you’ve come to the right place!

A dry sense of humor is when you find things funny while others may not, and you say it in a serious tone of voice. Check the following signs of dry humor to see if you have that.

·Your wit always saves the day. Your quick wit enables you to outwit nearly anyone you come across. No one is a match for your sharp tongue.     2     .

·    3    . With no display of emotions, you may seem robotic when your joke pours out of you.

· Some people don’t get you.     4     , but it’s just because they’re not on the same page as you. However, your humor is much to the entertainment of like-minded people.

· Your jokes aren’t always funny straightaway.     5     . They have layers which tend to unfold a little slower, requiring more time to take hold of the listener.

The world isn’t always a cheerful place, so having a dry sense of humor is a great tool. It means you can take the negativity of the world and turn it into something funny. Next time life brings you down, just get out there and keep on laughing!

A．Some of them can be slow burners

B．You deliver dry jokes with a straight face

C．If you have a dark and dry sense of humor

D．They think your jokes are slightly tasteless

E．You sometimes make people uncomfortable

F．So you can talk your way out of tricky situations

G．If you’re wondering what a dry sense of humor is

4 . As bad as it feels, anxiety is essential. It’s awful, but imagine not having it? Imagine the state of our lives and relationships if we don’t have that little feeling inside us going, “Ah, don’t go there. Don’t do that.”     1     But when anxiety hits, it’s hard to remember its importance. Here are some interventions to help dial down your stress for those moments.

Name things that make you feel safe

If you’re feeling anxious, ask yourself, “What are some things that help me feel safer?”    2     A lot of people will find that being surrounded by familiar people or things is comforting. Once you have your list of people or activities that make you feel sale, pick one off the list and do it.

    3    

Try naming five things you can hear, taste, touch, smell or feel. You can also try washing your face with cold water. Smelling something strong can help too. These strategies help activate the parasympathetic nervous system (副交感神经系统),which can allow the body to relax.    4    

Acknowledge your physical sensations

Naming how you feel physically when anxious can help dial down the intensity. For example, let’s say you feel anxiety in your stomach.    5    Then, pick a part of your body that is not in active pain. Next, alternate attention between the place in your body where you feel pain and the place where you do not feel pain. This mindfulness technique can help you tolerate or even reduce your pain.

A．Use your senses to relieve yourself.

B．Describe your pain to your physician.

C．Notice you feel like it’s on fire and it’s tight.

D．Thus, your physical sufferings will be greatly relieved.

E．Anxiety is how our body can signal to us when we’re in danger.

F．That way, the part of your brain responsible for logic can come back online.

G．It could be a person you feel comfortable around or a TV show you love rewatching.

5 . Tricks To Becoming A Patient Person

Here’s a riddle: What do traffic jams, long lines and waiting for a vacation to start all have in common? There is one answer.     1    .

In the Digital Age, we’re used to having what we need immediately and right at our fingertips. However, research suggests that if we practiced patience, we’d be a whole lot better off. Here are several tricks.

●Practice gratitude (感激)

Thankfulness has a lot of benefits: Research shows it makes us happier, less stressed and even more optimistic.     2    . “Showing thankfulness can foster self-control,” said Ye Li, researcher at the University of California.

● Make yourself wait

Instant gratification (满足) may seem like the most “feel good” option at the time, but psychology research suggests waiting for things actually makes us happier in the long run. And the only way for us to get into the habit of waiting is to practice.     3    . Put off watching your favorite show until the weekend or wait 10 extra minutes before going for that cake. You’ll soon find that the more patience you practice, the more you start to apply it to other, more annoying situations.

●     4    .

So many of us have the belief that being comfortable is the only state we will tolerate, and when we experience something outside of our comfort zone, we get impatient about the circumstances. You should learn to say to yourself, “    5    .” You’ll then gradually become more patient.

A．Find your causes

B．Start with small tasks

C．Accept the uncomfortable

D．All this adds up to a state of hurry

E．It can also help us practice more patience

F．This is merely uncomfortable, not intolerable

G．They’re all situations where we could use a little extra patience

6 . COVID-19 changed a lot—how we socialized, where we went, and even what work looked like. A new study shows the pandemic (流行病) may have changed our personalities as well.

Psychologists have long believed that a person’s characters stayed pretty much the same, even in the wake of stressful events. But by looking at pre-pandemic levels of neuroticism (神经质), extraversion (外向), openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness (勤奋而细心) and comparing that to data collected in 2021 and 2022, researchers found clear personality changes among the United States population.

“The pandemic was an opportunity to see how a collective stressful event may impact personality,” said lead study author Angelina Sutin, a professor of medicine at Florida State University.

Extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness all declined in the US population in the years following the start of the pandemic, particularly in young adults, according to the study, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

Why were younger adults more impacted? We don’t know for sure, Sutin said, but there are theories. “Personality is less stable in young adults. Then at the same time, the pandemic disturbed what young adults are supposed to be doing. They’re supposed to be in school or starting their careers. Then, everything was changed. However, the results didn’t hold true for each person.”

Researchers examined the data through the five-factor model, which hypothesizes (提出假说) that the various personality characters can come down to five important qualities: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Over the entire population they examined, researchers found a declining trend in neuroticism in 2020, but the changes were small. Once they took 2021 and 2022 data into account, researchers saw a more significant decrease in extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Neuroticism also increased over this time. That is especially significant considering how important those characters are, Sutin said. For example, conscientiousness is important for academic and work outcomes, as well as relationship and physical health, she added.

1. How do researchers get their study results?

A．By comparing data collected in different periods.

B．By collecting data from different people.

C．By making experiments in a university.

D．By building a five-factor model.

2. Which of the following would Sutin probably agree with?

A．Personality is more stable in old adults.

B．The study results hold true for every person.

C．Younger adults are less impacted during the pandemic.

D．American people are more likely to be influenced.

3. Which one of the qualities is important for relationship and physical health?

A．Neuroticism.	B．Extraversion.
C．Openness.	D．Conscientiousness.

4. What’s the best title for the text?

A．Pandemic Has a Great Impact on People’s Life

B．Young Adults Adapted Quickly During the Pandemic

C．Different Personality Characters Influence Social Relationships

D．People Experienced Personality Changes During the Pandemic

7 . Developing an optimistic outlook can be good for both your physical and mental health. Here are some ways to make thinking positive thoughts easy.

●Spend time with positive people

If you surround yourself with constant complainers, their negativity is likely to rub off on you. Spend time with positive friends and family members to increase the likelihood that their positive thinking habits will become yours too.    1    

●Recognize and replace negative thoughts

You won’t be successful at positive thinking, if you’re still stuck in frequent negative thoughts.    2    If you find yourself thinking something such as, “I always mess everything up”, replace it with something more realistic such as, “Sometimes I make mistakes but I learn from them.”

●Consider the consequences of negativity

Spend some time thinking about the consequences of negative thinking.    3     For example, a person who thinks, “I probably won’t get this job interview,” may put less effort into the interview. As a result, he may decrease his chances of getting the job.

●Create a daily gratitude list

If you start keeping a daily gratitude list, you’ll start noticing exactly how much you have to be thankful for.    4     And you focus on the positive in your life instead of thinking about all the bad things that have happened in the day.

●Look for silver lining

When something bad happens, look for the silver lining.     5     While it may be difficult to find good in a tough situation, it is always there if you look hard enough. Focusing on the positive helps you to stay hopeful and optimistic even when things are tough.

A．Often, it can become a self-fulfilling prediction

B．This will help you look for the good in other people.

C．Learn how to surround yourself with positive people.

D．Your past mistakes are not there for you to hold on to.

E．This means looking for the positive side of a negative event.

F．Learn to recognize and replace thoughts that are overly negative.

G．Generate ideas on limiting the time you spend with negative people

8 . When reading, my mother likes to slice a paragraph or a sentence out and attach it to the wall of her kitchen. She picks boring sentences that puzzle me. But I prefer copying favorite bright lines into a journal in soft, gray No. 2 pencil, word by word.

She doesn’t know any of this. There's nothing shocking: for our chatting. we seldom begin certain conversations though we talk on the phone weekly, sometimes making each other laugh so hard that I choke and she cries. But what we don't say could fill up rooms. Fights with my father. Small failures in school. Anything that really upsets us.

My mother has never told me “I love you, Lisa.”—as if the four-word absence explains who I am—so I carry it with me, like a label on me. The last time she almost spoke the words was two years ago, when she called to tell me a friend had been in hospital. I said, “I love you, Mom.” She stopped for a while and then said, “Thank you.” I haven't said it since, but I've wondered why my mother doesn't until I've found a poem that supplies words for the blank spaces I try to understand in our conversations:

Don’t fill up on bread. I say absent-mindedly. The servings here are huge.

My son, middle-aged, says: Did you really just say that to me?

What he doesn’t know is that when we’re walking together, I desire to reach for his hand.

It's humble, yet heartbreaking. After copying it down in my journal, I emailed it to mom, adding “This poem makes me think of you.” My mother doesn’t read poetry—or at least, she doesn’t tell me, and I felt nervous clicking “Send”.

She never mentioned the poem. But the next time I went home for vacation, I noticed something new in the kitchen fixed to an antique board: the poem. The board hung above the heater, the warmest spot in the kitchen. The poem still hangs there. Neither my mother nor I have ever spoken about it.

1. What's the function of paragraph 1?

A．To stress the theme.	B．To establish the setting.
C．To represent the characters.	D．To create the atmosphere.

2. Which of the following best describes the mother daughter relationship?

A．Shaky.

B．Distant.

C．Reserved.

D．Intense.

3. Why did the author send the poem to her mom?

A．It reminded her of mom's love.

B．She wanted to apologize to mom.

C．It suited mom's taste of literature.

D．She needed an interpretation from mom.

4. What does the poem mean to mom?

A．A memory of golden days.

B．Daughter’s gratefulness to her.

C．A decoration in the plain kitchen.

D．Daughter's understanding of her.

9 . Mindfulness meditation(冥想) is a practice used to achieve mental quiet and a sense of calm. It is a series of steps used to encourage reflection and deep breathing and to increase self-awareness.

A mindfulness meditation course may be as effective at reducing anxiety as a common medication(药物), according to a new study. The research, published on November 9 in JAMA Psychiatry, involved a group of 276 adults with untreated anxiety disorders. Half of the patients were randomly selected to take 10 to 20mg of escitalopram, the generic form of Lexapro, a common medication used to treat anxiety and depression. The other half were assigned to an eight-week course in mindfulness-based stress reduction. The results were stunning: Both groups experienced about a 20% reduction in their anxiety symptoms over the eight-week period.

The patients assigned to the meditation group were asked to attend a mindfulness meditation group class in-person once a week. Each class was around two-and-a-half hours long and held at a local clinic. They were also asked to meditate on their own for around 40 minutes per day. Hoge, the lead author on the study, compared the time commitment to “taking an exercise class or an art class”.

But according to Joseph Arpaia, an Oregon-based psychiatrist specializing in mindfulness and meditation, the daily time commitment is likely too much for many patients dealing with anxiety.

Arpaia says that he has worked to find less time-intensive mindfulness methods to help patients manage their anxiety. One technique he teaches is called a “one-breath reset” that helps patients calm themselves over the course of a single breath.

But despite his reservations, “It’s always interesting to see meditation work, and it works as well as medication,” he said. “My hope would be that people realize that there are things other than medication that can work.”

“My other hope would be that they realize that if sitting and following your breath makes you feel relaxed, great, but it doesn’t make everyone feel relaxed. Find something that does. Read a book, go for a walk, spend time gardening,” he said.

1. What’s the main feature of mindfulness meditation?

A．It works in removing anxiety.	B．It makes people’s mind empty.
C．It drives people to keep calm.	D．It focuses on thoughts and awareness.

2. What can we know about the new study?

A．Its result is hard to understand.

B．Its participants should attend courses face to face.

C．Its function is like an exercise class or an art class.

D．Its participants are divided into two equal groups freely.

3. Which word can best describe the author’s attitude to the new study’s result?

A．Objective.

B．Skeptical.

C．Conservative.

D．Approving.

4. How does Joseph Arpaia expect people to reduce anxiety?

A．They learn more about meditation.

B．They can bring a “one-breath reset” into focus.

C．They choose a proper way to relax besides meditation.

D．They can read books to develop mind instead of medication.

10 . Bookstores, like wines, have different notes, different flavors, each one distinct. There are the musty, quirky ones with random piles and dusty rows, usually with both used and new books. There are the small indie stores charming and cozy. Then there’s the big-box with long, straight rows, bright and dustless, usually boasting a cafe and a kids section you can get lost in.

My adoration for bookstores is, without a doubt, partly nostalgic(怀旧的). I came of age in the late 1990s, when Amazon was mostly known as a river in South America, phones were not smart and bookstores were dotted around cities.

When my husband and I were dating, our go-to date was to get coffee and walk around bookstores together. It was the best. Wed move slowly, meandering through the religion section, the memoirs, fiction, poetry, history. I’d pick up a title I’d heard about and sit in the aisle reading a chapter. I’d find one I’d never heard of and scan the back cover. We’d sip our coffee and read each other interesting paragraphs from books we found.

I fell for bookstores and for my husband at the same time. So when stores began closing down all over America, we were both sorrowful. What were we supposed to do with a night out now?

In a recent very informal and unscientific poll (调查) of my friends, I found that many of us love and miss physical bookstores. Friends described the feeling of discovery and exploration, the calming serenity of being surrounded by words and ideas. My wise friend Greg said,“Bookstores are like the best parties; You may discover a new friend or join an unexpected conversation with a simple turn of your head.”

I dream of an America with streets full of independent bookstores whose inventories (库存清单) contradict one another. But right now I’m rooting for any brick-and-mortar (实体的) book store, really. Any place that reminds us that the material world is beautiful and worth spending time in. Any place where we can learn how to exist together in communities chock-full of words and ideas. Any place where we may discover something unpredictable and new. And if there’s coffee nearby, even better.

1. What do the underlined words in Paragraph 2 suggest about the late 1990s?

A．Physical bookstores were popular.

B．The information age finally dawned.

C．Smart phones were common in cities.

D．The Amazon River remained unpolluted.

2. What do we know about the author?

A．She was picky about her books.

B．She favored books she hadn’t heard of.

C．She spent most of her time in bookstores.

D．She enjoyed drinking coffee while reading.

3. What do the author’s friends think of physical bookstores?

A．They are easily out-of-date.

B．They are a source of inspiration.

C．They are attractive to partygoers.

D．They are intended for conversations.

4. Why did the author write this article?

A．To share her affection for bookstores.

B．To introduce different types of bookstores.

C．To criticize the lack of public enthusiasm for reading.

D．To explore the reasons for the disappearance of bookstores.