The psychology of gift giving - Part 1.

With the festive season winding down I thought it was an opportune time to discuss the psychology of gift giving. This seemingly simple piece of human behaviour is indeed quite complex and fraught with all sorts of twists and turns that one finds in all forms of human communication. And indeed can lead to quite significant distressing feelings and conflict in relationships.

This is the first part of a two part series on the psychology of gift giving.

With all those christmas gifts now having been exchanged one is confronted with that most heinous of human behaviour - Regifting

Now lets face facts, who has never regifted?
Very few will say they have never regifted and those who do are partial to fabrication.



Someone gives you a gift that is not liked all that much. You keep it and at a later time you give that same gift to someone else as a present. The unstated transaction when you regift is that you thought of a gift for the receiver, you went out and bought it with your hard earned dollars, wrapped it and then gifted it to the receiver. That is the great regifting lie.

What really happened is someone gave you a present that you did not particularly like, you kept it and simply passed it on to someone else at a later time. You save the money because you don’t have to buy it and all the time and effort going into deciding on the present, purchasing it and then wrapping it.

However regifting can be a dangerous thing to attempt as you can be exposed as a regifter and thus suffer considerable shame and humiliation that goes along with such an unmasking. You must make sure the gift you are about to regift is clear of any identifying signs that will show regifting has occurred. If you are regifting a bottle of wine in a carry bag you must make sure there is no little card down the bottom thanking you for something by someone else. The regift receiver may find it and then you are exposed. Some times it may have been regifted half a dozen times and the people mentioned on the card are completely unknown to you.



Regifting a book can also be hazardous. You must make sure the gift giver has not written a little message to you somewhere in the book. You must check more closely than just the cover page. Sometimes the gift giver may suspect that you will attempt to regift it and write a note to you in a less obvious place. Or if you simply want to stop any attempt to have your gift regifted later simply write your loving little statement obviously on the cover page and that will stop any subsequent regifting.

Then one can simply forget who gave you the gift in the first place, especially if you regift on a large scale. And you regift back to the person who gave you the gift in the first place. If they recognize such a thing then you have been found out as a regifter.

As I mentioned before regifting can lead to embarrassing and painful feelings by all concerned. So what do you do if you discover that you have received a present that has been regifted?

An ominous question forebodes - Do you expose the regifter? My wise counsel to such a person considering such a question is to recall the words once said by a very wise man.

He who is without sin cast the first stone.

1. If you have regifted in the past how can you live with yourself if you now expose someone else as a regifter.

2. If you expose a regifter as the heinous individual she is, that leaves you open to subsequent exposure as a regifter in the future. Should that happen then ones sense of shame and humiliation at such exposure is magnified ten times as you painfully fall from the high moral ground upon which you have placed yourself.


Be careful you don't end up like this.

On that biblical note here endeth Part 1.

Graffiti

Graffiti Letter A | Graffiti Alphabet A

Sketch graffiti letters A cool style

Sketches Graffiti Alphabet B

Examples of some of the sketches graffiti alphabet B in the paper. Maybe you can use it to simply look for the style of graffiti letter B. The following six B style graffiti letters different:

3D sketch graffiti letter B

Graffiti sketch letter B with color

Graffiti sketch letter B with a green border

Sketch graffiti alphabet B with bright colors
Sketches in black and white graffiti alphabet B


3D sketches in black and white graffiti alphabet B

Graffiti Alphabet in Used Tins

Example of making graffiti alphabet in used tins. Graffiti to the bolts in order not to disturb any origin. Other than graffiti on a wall can also be made in tin cans as above. More creative when making the decorations. Able to sell and make money. Maybe I'll do it someday. New Graffiti

Men at work

It is one of those situations where you are asked a question and you give a response. Sort of a spontaneous response that just comes out of your mouth and you have not given it much thought. It is then when your own ears hear the answer that it surprises you! You kind of realise that you didn’t know, what you obviously did know, because you just said it.

I was reading a research report on police and stress as I have a bit of time to read such things over the festive season. It was saying that many who enter the police force self select in that they are looking for a stressful job as indeed being a police officer is. That reminded me of a question I was asked some time ago.

I was asked, “What was it like working in a prison?”
My answer, “I liked it because it was exciting. There is always the threat of physical violence in the air”.



This just kind of came out of my mouth and I didn’t even realise I thought it until I said it. Probably not the most politically correct answer in the world but it does indicate that I was self selecting for a stressful job.

And it is true there was always the threat of physical violence and whenever I was in the presence of inmates there was always a kind of hypervigilance on my behalf and I kind of liked that. Especially for me because the inmates that I usually dealt with were experiencing some kind of distress or psychological pain.

The most common form of physical violence that happened was usually inmate on inmate. Two prisoners had a physical fight for some reason. However inmate on staff member violence also happened at least every week or so but it was less common.

Even just entering the prison set the stage. You walk up to this large complex of buildings to enter through the gatehouse. On either side are wire fences, electrified fences and these long circular tubes of endless razor wire all over stretching for hundreds of meters. It actually presented quite an engaging scene. The fenced area is immaculately kept. All the lawns are mowed, there is no rubbish or objects lying about and all the wire and razor wire have that clear shiny stainless steel look to it. There was never any rusted wire.



I always thought you could get some great photographs with perspectives looking along the fence and long tubes of razor wire. But of course permission would never be granted to take such photographs.

Only once did I feel there was some kind of physical threat made directly to me but I backed off, talked my way out of it and it defused into nothing. There were verbal threats made on staff but these were also not so common as they would likely result in the prisoner being charged. I recall one prisoner threatened to have his friends on the outside kill the family of a staff member who I knew quite well.

Those inmates who wanted to threaten would most often do so more subtly. If he was a big man he may stand close to you and kind of lean over a bit. Others who had done particularly unpleasant crimes may recount them in loud detail to you seemingly relishing in what they had done. Most often this was just to test you to see how ‘hard’ you were. If you took it with disdain then they would respect you and that was the end of that.



I always never compromised my physical safety. Because of my role I had access to all the inmate files and whenever meeting an inmate unknown to me I would have a detail read of their crimes and how they handled prison life. Had they been on any charges in the past and so forth.

If I felt there was some risk then I would have an officer with me in the interview room when we met. There was few times when there were two officers in the room with me and the inmate. I always found this some what farcical. How can you counsel someone with one or two large prison officers standing behind him. With a couple of very violent men they were standing right at the side of us, almost inbetween!

One thing that did surprise me was that never did any prisoner ever question this. Not once did anyone ever say, “What are they here for?”, or “They don’t need to be here”. How can you counsel an inmate when there is no confidentiality and by me requesting the officer be there shows I have little trust of the inmate not attacking me. How does that impact on the therapeutic alliance. Well you can hardly call it an alliance, can you?



But my answer was true. I did find it exciting and that did appeal to me and made the work more fascinating and interesting to me.

Graffiti

Works Of Art Such As Graffiti Alphabet Letters

A design alphabets driftwood on the wall of the Copper Creek Inn, near Ashford, This is not a photo az graffiti alphabet, but works of art from driftwood cool alphabet taped on the wall.

Bubble Graffiti: Purple Bubble Graffiti Alphabet

Alphabet in bubble graffiti letters
Bubble graffiti

Purple bubble alphabet graffiti on the wall store. Graffiti dominant with cool purple color. Graffiti street art.

Graffiti Sketches of Black and White with Yellow Shadow

4 samples designs wildstyle graffiti alphabet style. Graffiti sketches of black and white with a yellow shadow.




With examples of graffiti sketches above, you can create graffiti art beautifully.

Dependent personality type

This person is typified by a difficulty in making their own decisions. Difficulty initiating things. They will readily give up responsibility to others for major areas of their lives, they can lack self confidence and avoid having to rely on self.

If no one is there they will experience a strong urge to look around for and to attach to what they see as a strong authority figure and then seek for that person to make decisions for them. Hence we end up with the symbiosis diagram.



In this theory the dependent personality seeks to give up their Adult and Parent ego states and allow the other person to assume ’control’ of them. At the same time the other person is usually looking for some one of this dependency type so they can either control them. Or they are looking for some one they can rescue or ‘save’. The woman who seeks to save the man from prison, drugs, gambling and so forth.

At this point we need to define two different types of dependent personalities. The one diagrammed above essentially results form a lack of skills. The person lacks assertion skills, they lack practice and experience at using their Adult ego state independently or exercising their Parent ego state in the ways they can. Thus they lack confidence and a belief in self. This may happen because mother never gave the child the chance to practice such things or maybe father undermined the child’s confidence but putting him down or deriding him.



If this is the case then treatment is not too difficult. The individual is afforded the opportunity to learn assertion skills, use their own Adult ego state to change the tyre on a car, manage their money, practice setting their boundaries around others and expressing their opinions from their Parent ego state. When this happens their self confidence will usually slowly rise as well for which they get lots of positive strokes along the way.

The other dependent personality type does not result just from a lack of skills as described above. Instead it results from a disturbance in the structure of the personality. Thus one can say it is a ‘deeper’ kind of problem that is more difficult to remediate.

To explain this type we don’t use the symbiosis diagram but use the attachment diagram.



As the diagram shows this person has a poor sense of self as an individual. For some reason in childhood they did not successfully separate and in particular individuate from mother. As we know a child is born and it then develops an attachment to mother in the first two years of life. After that it uses the three separation/individuation stages of 2 yo, 4 yo and adolescence to separate and individuate from her.

The more the child separates the more it can individuate. That is discover who it is as an individual. The more it individuates the more it can then separate. The person who has successfully individuated can answer the question - Who am I? Not in the practicalities of gender, marital status and so forth, but in the feeling sense of who I am. The dependent personality will find it very difficult to answer this question.

The parents may have kept the child cocooned for some reason or children of rich parents can have this problem as well. Parents can use financial ties to make it harder for the child to leave. If a child has always been given lots of money that can at times significantly hamper the individuation process.

The person does not develop a strong sense of who they are.
Exercise: When I first moved away from my parents as a young adult what did I learn? What did I learn about me and about life?



As there is an under developed individual self this person seeks to form attachments to others. Once done they assume the the identity of the other as their own and thus feel better psychologically. An example of this is the woman who says: “I don’t feel complete without a man”. She recognises that she ‘lacks’ some sense of identity and discovers that if she forms an intimate relationship with a man then that lack of identity gets filled up with his and thus she feels more complete.

This woman is then in very difficult circumstances as she will find it very difficult to leave the relationship. All people find it difficult to leave a intimate relationship with a strong attachment. But she will find it 10 times harder because her basic sense of identity is also connected with staying attached to the man. For her to leave its like psychologically having her arm ripped off.

This woman is domestic violence waiting to happen. If the man is violent he discovers that he can hit her and she wont leave. She may threaten to leave or even leave for short periods but she always comes back for the reasons I mentioned above. When asked why she moved back she may say, “He said he loved me and wont do it again”. Of course the real reason is that she finds it intolerable to loose part of her very identity or sense of self.



The dependent personality of this type is harder to treat as it is not merely the acquisition of new skills that is required. She has to acquire a sense of herself as an individual human being which is not easy to do and will take time and money usually. However these people can end up in counselling because they will be attracted to the strong counsellor for the same reasons. In this case one can get the rapid development of strong transference feelings from the client to the therapist. The client does the same and takes on the therapists identity as her own and thus will get that sense of ‘completion’ again.

This can be a good thing in that then she can separate and individuate using the therapist as the parent figure but it takes time. On the down side this client is primed for financial exploitation by the unscrupulous therapist. Sensing her high level of dependence the therapist can propose multiple sessions per week and expensive workshops and training which she takes up because of her dependency needs as described above.

Graffiti

Graffiti Alphabet Letters Cartoon Characters

Graffiti alphabet a to z with the design style of cartoon characters. As an example to write their name on the graffiti wall murals.

Graffiti Romania Christmas Tram

Graffiti Christmas Tram in Timisoara, Romania. graffiti painted by Karm, Jones and Moon Patrol.

Graffiti art mural

Graffiti Alphabet in Tram


Graffiti Cartoon Characters


New graffiti saying merry christmas and new year

Create Graffiti Alphabet Photoshop Text Effects

How to make graffiti alphabet with Photoshop Text Effects? The following is a tutorial on how to create graffiti with Adobe Photoshop:

1. You ready for this. Keep up, there's a lot to cover. First, create a new document. I chose a banner size.

2. Choose a brick color such as the one in the picture. Fill the background layer with this color.

3. (Filters/Filter Gallery/Texturizer)
Choose brick, top left lighting. Make the bricks look big enough. Click ok.

4. Select the type tool. Type something. Choose a graffiti looking font like TagsXtreme. I think I got this font from the 1001 free fonts website.

5. The worst part of any tutorials… layer effects!!! I could type them out, but that's too much work, so here just download the style and look for you self. Remember that these effects were created for the size of the image I used. You may notice a difference if your image is much larger, or smaller in size compared to mine. graffiti.asl

6. Duplicate the text layer. Link the text layers and combine them. This will flatten the layer effects. Tell me, why isn't their a command to rasterize layer effects?

7. Ad more layer effects. I chose a simple outer glow. Then ad a sharp drop shadow for that cartoonist effect. This style was also in the styles file in step 5.

8. If you want that paint dripping effect that we see so often, Filter>Liquify. Use the forward warp tool to push the graffiti down, then use the bloat tool to make the “paint” bulge like its dripping as you can see in the final image on the bottom of the R and I.

9. Create a new layer above the rest. This is your highlights layer. Create little highlights on the top left of the paint drips, and make little cartoonist starbursts at the corners of the graffiti. If your lazy like me, you will create a single star burst and then just duplicate the layer as many times as needed.

10. Finally reduce the fill so that some of the brick wall shows through. Somewhere between 70 and 90 should look good. I'll let you be the judge.

Important note: A certain Mr. Tyler suggested to change the blend mode of the text to overlay. Thank you Tyler, all suggestions are welcome and help us all. I appreciate the input.

Extra Step: I duplicated the graffiti layer and merged them to rasterize the layer effects, the performed Filter>Texturizer>Brick with the same settings as before on the graffiti layer. Then I hit Edit>Fade Effect and reduced the opacity a bit. It looked like this. [Via]

Graffiti Art

Red Graffiti Sketches

5 design sketches graffiti alphabet with a red pen. Graffiti with a different style cool



Graffiti sketch of a red pen on paper


Art is beautiful, like a sketch graffiti in red above. See also blue graffiti sketches

Vector Graffiti Alphabet Letters Green Leaf

Vector graffiti alphabet letters A to Z style green leaves. Aleksandr Doodko [Via]

The hysteric and obsessive-compulsive personalities

Histrionic

This personality type is more common in women and with males it is more common amongst the homosexual community

A very Child ego state personality type. The Child is dramatic, reactive and intense and thus the relationships are usually not easy going. (Sometimes referred to as a ‘small dose person’). Initially it seems that they are having Free Child reactions to situations but the reactions are exaggerated and overly-dramatic so that it is more correctly diagnosed as being Adapted Child ego state.

Their feelings can have a lack of authenticity and can change rapidly. Quickly develop love and then it switches to someone else. Be very sad about loss of goldfish and then ten minutes later be jovial about something. Pyrotechnics and you need to cut off the top of the feelings chart. They need to have considered and controlled feeling expression. Thinking and feeling often do not go together, which is another treatment goal. To learn to think while they are feeling.

Adult and Parent are often minimal and thus they tend to be quite symbiotic and require someone else’s Parent and Adult ego states to function in life.


Symbiosis

Obviously treatment will involve the development of the Adult and Parent ego states and breaking down current symbioses which means you are effecting others who may not like the change. The hysteric can often marry the O/C or paranoid. They are quite impressionable and may be quite suggestible in relationships

They often sexualise transactions and play the game of Rapo (flirtation) and thus can have poor boundaries which shows up the lack of Adult and Parent ego states. They can quickly develop romantic fantasy and have sexual attraction to the other which of course male therapists need to be careful about and manage well.

Historically the girl may have had a romanticised, sexualised quality of relationship with father. This does not mean sexual abuse at all. They will report a special quality of connection between daughter and father. This can lead to later problems in their relationships with partners as no man in her mind can ever match up to father and her reluctance to break the attachment to father. Focus of treatment is this historical relationship.



Their actual sexual relationship can cover the whole range from promiscuity and highly sexually responsive, to naive and sexually unresponsive, to apparently normal sexual behaviour. This can also change over time in the one relationship. Initially it can be highly sexually charged but then she can become sexually unresponsive as in her mind the historical relationship with father interferes.

The also somatisize feelings which also shows the strong Child ego state responses to the environment. This gets caught up with the hypnotic suggestibility.
. Their bodies will be very reflective of their emotional and psychological status so it is useful diagnostically in this way.

They can be diagnosed as hypochrondrical as they can seek medical intervention for their somatic complaints which can be common. This is probably an inaccurate diagnosis because it is not a preoccupation and fear of having some serious disease. Their psychology simply gets reflected in their body and they are not lying or trying to rort the system (at least initially). They do feel the pain its just that it does not have a physical basis which can lead those medically examining her to suspect she has ulterior motives. Hence we end up with more dramatic conditions like hysterical conversion such as hysterical paralysis.



Often there is an abrupt onset of the physical condition that may be relate time wise to a particular traumatic event by the person. Argument and so forth. It is seen to have two psychological causes

Primary gain - by somatisizing the pain of say an argument it allows the person to keep the internal conflict out of their awareness. They get distracted to the physical condition and the psychological problem can be forgotten.
Secondary gain - It can allow the person to avoid the noxious activity. The soldier who gets hysterical paralysis or the woman whose husband has said he is going to leave her feels her can’t whilst she is physically infirmed.

Hysterics can often end up in counselling for the reasons just described (frustrated medical professionals refer them) and some therapies are also a great place for venting emotions loudly which may appeal. Often the hysteric can use the defence mechanism of denial steadfastly. It is always someone else causing her the problem. So in this way they lack considerable introspection whilst initially may seeming to be quite introspective.

Attachment style weak and difficult to form due to self centeredness



Obsessive compulsive


Magical thinking is prominent in the personality structure. Scare and anxiety based difficulty so they feel unsafe. I can make myself feels safe if I just - wash my hands, switch the lights three times, check the windows and so on. This activity will make me safe.

This can take one of two forms
The person is aware of the irrationality and thus aware of the magical thinking



Or the person seeks to convince self that there is a factual basis for their behaviour and thus one gets Child contamination of the Adult.
“I read in a magazine that there is this new bacteria that means you have to wash your hands 10 times.”
“there are lots of robberies in this area so it pays to check the window's many times a night”.



Thus one looks for the original source of the anxiety. Possible hurried child, C > NP but no NP back. Either C or A back or nothing back emotionally. This often is a major focus of treatment helping the C2 to feel safe.



Obsessive thinking may simply be a cover for or distraction from feelings. “I you were not allowed to think what would happen” and it is usually that uncomfortable feelings would come up.

Layering process

thinking
------------
feelings


Get the feelings to come up and have them dealt with. That is cry (or scare) and get acceptance and the NP back. Get anger expressed with no terrible thing happening usually the expectation of violence or pain to child. Also possible shame feelings due to anal phase problems, sexually based, encropesis or enuresis or used as a parenting style.

Modelling of obsessional behaviour.

They tend to be dependable, neat, dutiful, inhibited which is all Parent and Conforming Child ego state. They lack Free Child which needs to be increased. Even contracts to have fun obsessionally and compulsively. Have a special meal or movie every second Wednesday night at 7pm.

Redecison work to be a child and enjoy and get needs met.

Relational patterns
The obsessions and compulsions can significantly impair ones everyday life, such as with cleanliness. This means that those others also living in the house have their lives effected as well. The O/C can thus ‘make’ others do the right thing (e.g. be clean) with Controlling Parent if the Parent ego state is strong. Or they can control from the Child ego state by being terrified of things (e.g. lack of cleanliness) and others will respond from their Rescuing Parent ego state. This can destroy relationships if too severe.



Often Adult ego state is well functioning and they use it to be perfectionistic and in the service of refining the obsessions and compulsions. Although decision making can be poor because the Adult can think of all the possible permutations and consequences of every option and thus can’t make a decision in the end. The get bogged down in too much information.

The Conforming Child ego state can also be high as they can be reliable, responsible, hardworking, dutiful, always punctual and so on. In this way they can make good employees as long as they do not waste too much time and energy with their obsessions and perfectionism.

Graffiti