1 . The pain we feel may be nature’s way of telling us it’s time to take notice of our inner selves. Should you be facing painful times, we urge you to reach out to get the help and support you need.
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●Keep a journal. This is a good way to measure your progress in “getting to the other side” of things.
●Be extra good to yourself. Especially when life hurts, it’s time to take extra good care of yourself. Get enough rest, eat properly, get the exercise your body needs to burn off the tension, listen to soft music, and don’t forget those extra hugs for your pet.
●See a professional counselor (咨询师). Seeing a trained professional is an excellent way to work through painful times. Ask your parents or school counselor to help you find one.
A.Try to bear your pain. |
B.Don’t keep it all inside. |
C.Be sure to date each entry. |
D.Maybe you believe that no one will understand you. |
E.You know what a source of comfort you are to others. |
F.It is also a good way to improve your writing skills gradually. |
G.It means you may need more outside support than you’re getting. |
2 . As social creatures, research has histoncally pointed us away from time alone. But recently, more people are spending time away from the crowd, and even seem to desire it. In Solitude (独处) — The science and power of being alone, a book co-written by Heather Hansen, an award-winning journalist and author, with the researcher Thuy-vy Nguyen, they set out to understand how everyday solitude affects people’s lives.
In the largest study of its kind, thousands aged between 13 and 85 participated in online surveys. For some, think of the word “solitude”, and they will think of a determined hiker alone in the wilderness. Most people described experiences of solitude achieved while, for example, walking in a park or writing in a journal. Surprisingly, some described solitude as having a psychological distance from others, but not necessarily a physical one.
In several separate experiments, Nguyen found that when people spend 15 minutes alone, there is a “deactivation effect”, meaning “high excitement” emotions like anxiety are decreased, while positive “low excitement” feelings like calmness are increased, which wasn’t seen when people spent 15 minutes with another person. One caveat is that sometimes solitude also increases the negative low excitement feeling of loneliness. However, a further experiment showed that this increase could be weakened when individuals chose to think about positive thoughts or when they were given a choice whether to spend time alone.
The list doesn’t end there, though. Several studies link time alone and creativity, but only when people avoid social interactions because of what is known as a “non-fearful” preference for solitude. On the other hand, there is no such link in those whose fear or anxiety prevents them from interacting with others, or because of avoidance, where people disliked social interactions.
Now think about the next time you will be on your own. Will you enjoy or suffer it? As evidence increases for how time alone can be a positive force in shaping our lives, Hansen and her colleagues recommend planning for it-and protecting it.
1. What is the survey in paragraph 2 mainly about?A.When solitude is needed. | B.What solitude looks like. |
C.How solitude affects people’s lives. | D.How people make the best of solitude. |
A.Trap. | B.Bonus. | C.Warning. | D.Prediction. |
A.prefer to take risks | B.choose to be alone without fear |
C.dislike social interactions | D.enjoy negative emotions |
A.The Power of One | B.Profit of Socializing |
C.The Urge to Live Alone | D.Battle Against Solitude |
3 . How to Be Less Emotional
Being overly emotional may mean reacting to feelings like anger, sadness and fear quickly instead of letting all of your intelligence weigh in. Chances are, if you feel overly emotional you are relating to your emotions in a way that isn't always constructive.
Identify emotions. It's important to know what you feel so you can adequately address each emotion appropriately.
Monitor your expectations. Sometimes, the way you feel may be influenced by how you expect to feel.
Adjust your routines to reduce stress. Think about what events trigger your strong emotions, and try to either avoid them or control your response. For instance, if you tend to get anxious because you often run late for work, adjust your morning routine so you are not rushing.
A.Cope with your emotions. |
B.Practice breathing techniques. |
C.However, it's important to learn to regulate your emotions. |
D.If you feel anxious, you may notice you burn a lot of emotional energy worrying. |
E.Start to reflect on how your body feels when you notice an emotion coming through. |
F.If there is a group of people that bring out lots of unpleasant emotions, decrease your time with them. |
G.For instance, if you expect that watching a movie may make you sad, you may end up feeling sad. |
4 . Women interpret emojis differently to men, research suggests. Scientists say this is because these small digital emojis, used to express an idea or emotion, can be ambiguous and be understood differently by different people.
The researchers recruited 523 adults (49% men and 51% women) to review 24 different emojis. Each emoji — taken from Apple, Windows, Android, and WeChat platforms — represented one of the six emotional states labelled by the team: happy, disgusted, fearful, sad, surprised, and angry.
They found women were able to more accurately interpret happy, fearful, sad and angry emoji labels compared to men. No gender differences were observed for surprised or disgusted emoji, the team said. Dr Ruth Filik, associate professor in the School of Psychology at The University of Nottingham, said: “What I found most interesting and surprising is that there are so many individual differences in how people interpret these emojis.
“It is important to note that the results reflect how often participants labelled the emoji in the same way as the researchers. So, we should think of the results in terms of there being differences across people in how they interpret emojis, rather than some people being better at it than others. We should keep these differences in mind when using emojis in our messages.”
The researchers said that those emojis can add both slight differences as well as potential ambiguity to messages sent via texts, emails or even social media. To understand more about how emojis are interpreted, the team recruited 270 people from the UK and 253 from China, who were aged between 18 to 84 years old.
Each emoji was assigned an emotion label by the researchers, which they say may not correspond exactly with the emoji as used in real life. In addition to gender, the team also found age to play a role in how emoji are interpreted, with younger adults faring better than the older ones in matching the emoji with their assigned labels. Those in the UK were also better at labelling the emoji in the same way as the researchers compared to their Chinese counterparts.
The researchers say ambiguity of emojis is worth further research, “especially when communicating across gender, age, or cultures.”
1. Which aspect of the team’s research is NOT mentioned in paragraph 2 and 3?A.Its participants. | B.Its samples. | C.Its conclusion. | D.Its significance. |
A.Researchers are not better at labelling emojis than participants. |
B.Females are better at perceiving the meanings of emojis than males. |
C.Proper caution is necessary when sending emojis to different people. |
D.Males and females have different understandings of disgusted emojis. |
A.To make ambiguous emojis have concrete and clear meanings. |
B.To explore how emojis are interpreted by extending research angles. |
C.To figure out how young adults do well in matching emojis with labels. |
D.To prove that Britons are better at labelling emojis than Chinese people. |
A.Ambiguity of emojis deserves further research. |
B.Age and culture play a role in how emojis are perceived. |
C.Secrets behind different understandings towards emojis. |
D.Pay attention to differences of emojis when sending messages. |
5 . Recent studies have found that good things really do come to those who wait. Some, of these science-backed benefits are detailed below, along with three ways to develop more patience in your life.
Patient people are better friends and neighbors.
Patience helps us achieve our goals. The road to achievement is a long one, and those without patience may not be willing to walk it. Patient people make more effort and progress toward their goals.
Patience is linked to good health. Patient people are less likely to report health problems like headaches and pneumonia.
And how to develop patience? Reframe the situation. Patience is linked to self-control, and consciously trying to regulate our emotions can help us train our self-control muscles.
Practice mindfulness. Taking a deep breath and noticing your feelings of anger or overload can help your respond with more patience.
A.Practice gratefulness |
B.Patience is a form of kindness |
C.Patience can be achieved through training |
D.As virtues go, patience is a quiet one |
E.Patient people enjoy better mental health |
F.They are also more satisfied when they realize them |
G.But impatient people have more health complaints and worse sleep |
6 . “Anxiety.” The very word invites discomfort. Its effects—shortness of breath, pounding heart, muscle tension—are outright upsetting. But, as a clinician, I find that we tend to miss out on many valuable opportunities presented by this human emotion. In and of itself, anxiety is not deadly, nor is it a disease. Quite the contrary: it is an indicator of brain and sensory health. Once we accept that it is a normal, though uncomfortable, part of life, we can use it to help us.
We all know working out at the gym is hard. By nature, a “good workout” is uncomfortable, since it involves pushing our physical strength past what we can easily do. The sweet spot of exercise is always a somewhat challenging experience. Similarly, if you want to be emotionally stronger, you need to face some tension. For example, one effective treatment for fear is exposure therapy (疗法), which involves gradually encountering things that make one anxious, reducing fear over time.
Humans are social creatures. When my patients learn to open up to their partners about their anxieties, they almost always report a greater sense of emotional closeness. Also, as international relationship expert Sue Johnson teaches, when we express our need for connection during challenging moments (e.g., “I’m having a hard time right now and could really use your support”), it creates greater connection and turns our anxiety into love.
From time to time, we find ourselves at the end of our rope. Our responsibilities pile up, our resources break down, and we feel uncomfortably anxious—what we’re experiencing is called stress. Simply put, the demands placed upon us outweigh our available resources, just like a set of scales (天平) going out of balance. Focusing on work and pretending everything is OK only leads to disastrous results. Medical treatment for stress may function for a while, but it tends to make things worse in the long run. The only solution to deal with stress is to do the mathematics to balance the scales.
1. What does the author say about anxiety?A.It is an invitation to diseases. |
B.It indicates stable mental health. |
C.It costs us many valuable chances. |
D.It is a natural emotional expression. |
A.To prove how exercise influences emotions. |
B.To suggest an effective way to challenge limits. |
C.To explain how anxiety builds emotional strength. |
D.To show a positive connection between mind and body. |
A.The key to closeness is partners’ support. |
B.Sharing anxieties improves relationships. |
C.Humans are defined by their social nature. |
D.Expressing feelings keeps us off anxieties. |
A.Devote more energy to our work. |
B.Increase resources available to us. |
C.Seek professional medical treatment. |
D.Master advanced mathematical skills. |
7 . The Power of Insensitivity
Highly sensitive(敏感的)person, or HSP, is a term invented by psychologist Elaine Aron. HSPs can come with many challenges. They may find it hard to adapt to new surroundings, and easily become uncomfortable in response to certain feelings or others’ opinions.
The power of insensitivity can be explained as “slow power”. Usually, people connect “insensitivity” with something bad, but indeed, it stresses the ability to keep doing something difficult without complaining.
There are some ways to practice “insensitivity”: Don’t pay too much attention to the ups and downs of life at the moment.
Everyone can gain the ability to be insensitive.
A.Insensitivity plays a significant role. |
B.Rather, you should be looking forward. |
C.That’s where the need to be insensitive comes from. |
D.Once you slow down the pace, you will feel more comfortable. |
E.Those not easily affected are the people who care less about others. |
F.That is, calmly facing the downtime in life and moving towards one’s own direction. |
G.One reason why insensitivity allows people to better survive is the strong self-awareness. |
I’m sorry to hear that life is getting you down right now ... I’m not sure there’s any specific advice I can give to cheer you up. It’s sometimes quite annoying to be reminded how much people love you when you don’t love yourself that much.
I’ve found that it’s of some help to compare one’s moods(情绪)about the world to the weather. Here are some obvious things about the weather:
It’s real.
If it’s dark and rainy, it really is.
It isn’t under one’s control as to when the rain stops, but it will stop one day.
You can’t change it by wishing it away.
It really is the same with one’s moods.The wrong approach is to believe that they are illusions(幻想). Panic, anxiety and anger are as real as weather.
But they will pass; they really will.
In the same way that one has to accept the weather, one has to accept how one feels about life. “Today’s a bad day” is a perfect approach.“Hey-ho, it’s raining inside; it isn’t my mistake, and there’s nothing I can do about it. But when the sun comes out, I shall take full advantage.”
I don’t know if any of that is of any use... I just hope this brings you a little more pleasure and purpose in life.
Best wishes!
Yours,
Stephen Fry
1. How does Crystal feel according to the letter?A.Ignored. | B.Ashamed. | C.Panicked. | D.Unhappy. |
A.offer tips on making friends |
B.teach skills of writing poems |
C.share comfort and encouragement |
D.explain ways of observing weather |
A.Literature. | B.Watch This. |
C.Just Ask. | D.Science Forum. |
9 . Anger has a bad reputation.
But what if anger is a valuable-friend, not an adversary (对手) to be defeated?
Anger has one main purpose — to secure our safety and survival. We respond with anger when we are threatened or when our boundaries are violated (侵犯).
What we need is a willingness to experience anger without suppressing it or discharging it immediately. When we have the courage to remain present with our anger, we can look directly at it. We can investigate and come to understand it, and we can extract its wisdom.
Anger, like a fire, is a force. Left unchecked, it can be destructive.
A.Uncovering the wisdom of anger begins with feeling it fully. |
B.It gives us energy and power to overcome threatening situations. |
C.Yet when it is used wisely, it can be powerful beneficial instrument. |
D.When you come to see anger as a friend, you change your relationship with it. |
E.While anger sometimes involves aggressive tendencies, it also carries great wisdom. |
F.When we have the courage to remain present with our anger, we can look directly at it. |
G.When it bursts out, it can take control of our body, our thoughts, our senses, and our actions. |
10 . Higher levels of optimism (乐观主义) are related lo a longer lifetime. People with the highest levels of optimism have 11 % to 15% longer lifetime than those who practice little positive thinking. The optimists may live to age 85 or beyond.
Optimism doesn’t mean ignoring life’s stress. But when negative things happen, optimistic people are less likely to blame themselves.
Optimism can be improved by training. Studies have found only about 25% of our optimism is programmed by genes (基因).
It’s not easy to carry out optimism exercises. Like exercise, they will need to be practiced regularly to keep the brain positive.
A.It may also lengthen your life. |
B.The rest is up to your attitude to life. |
C.Being optimistic also improves your health. |
D.The optimism exercises may be a hard process. |
E.The focus on the positive can reshape your brain. |
F.Practicing this daily can significantly improve your positive feelings. |
G.They are more likely to see the barrier as a good chance to turn positive. |