Posts in category: Dating Tips, Guide and Advice

We hear it all the time on dating apps or when we’re talking about our love lives with our friends, “it didn’t work out, he was emotionally unavailable” or “I’m looking for someone that’s emotionally available”.

Whether we’ve just ended a serious relationship or coping with mental health issues, being emotionally available is a state of mind that ebbs and flows. It plays a major role in determining whether or not a relationship will blossom, because if one person in a pair isn’t able to connect with the other person emotionally, intimacy can’t grow.

“To say a person is emotionally available means being present in a way that goes beyond physical proximity. It’s about being open to truly understand, empathize, and reciprocate the emotions of others,” explains Joel Frank, PsyD, clinical psychologist and owner, Duality Psychological Services. “It refers to our ability to share an emotional connection with others and to be open to receiving their emotions in return,” he adds.

Emotional availability is a critical component in any type of relationship. But knowing what emotional availability is, and putting it into practice in your life, are two different things. We’ll give some perspective on signs of being emotionally available, insight on barriers to emotional availability, and how you can enhance the emotional health of your relationships.

Signs Someone is Emotionally Available

When you’re in a relationship with someone who is emotionally available, both of your actions help to nurture a strong, healthy connection. But whether it’s a friend, coworker, spouse, or parent, there are a lot of specific indicators that someone is emotionally available. Here are some examples.

You are vulnerable

You have meaningful, in-depth conversations, and don’t shy away from things that are difficult or sensitive for you to talk about. Of course, the level of intimate conversation depends on the relationship, but you are generally comfortable being open with how you feel.

“When we are emotionally available, we give ourselves and others the space to be congruent and authentic,” explains Domenique Harrison, MPH, LMFT, LPCC, Founder & Psychotherapist, The Racial Equity Therapist. “Authenticity is about being genuinely ourselves. It’s about not judging ourselves with harshness,” she adds.

You’re there for someone in good times, and in bad times

A person who is willing to give of their energy and insight to support you when you’re having a rough time, is making themselves available to you emotionally.

You’re not afraid to apologize

No one gets it right all the time. Taking ownership and saying you’re wrong shows a person is mature and will expend emotional energy on making a situation right. 

You show genuine interest in the other person in the relationship

Have you ever spent time talking with someone, and can hardly get a word in? They are happy to discuss their thoughts and feelings, but seem to give little regard for yours? Someone who is willing to be available to you emotionally wants to know how you’re doing and is as invested in talking about you as they are about discussing themselves. 

You honor their boundaries

When you are emotionally invested in a relationship, the other person’s boundaries matter to you. Whether it’s a mental, physical, or emotional guard that they’ve put in place, you do your best to honor it.

You show affection

Comfort levels with affection vary from person to person. But showing warmth and affection, whether through a smile or a hug, conveys that you are a person who is emotionally available and invested in the relationship.

“Regarding relationships, the importance of emotional availability cannot be overstated. It is the cornerstone of meaningful and fulfilling relationships. When someone is emotionally available, they foster a sense of security and trust with their loved ones, allowing them to express themselves freely. Such openness encourages deeper connections, fostering a bond that is strengthened over time through shared experiences and mutual understanding,” notes Dr. Frank.

Emotional availability has mental health benefits. It can help relieve stress and anxiety. It also fosters a sense of belonging.

With all those benefits, it’s worth the effort to nurture your emotional availability.

Nurturing Emotional Availability

You may recognize that you are not as well-developed in the areas of emotional availability as you would like to be. Working on your self-awareness can help with that process.

“Understanding your emotions, reactions, and triggers can greatly enhance your emotional availability. If you know why certain scenarios make you uncomfortable, you can work on addressing these issues,” Dr. Frank states.

Learning how to manage your own emotions and exercising empathy for others’ feelings can also help nurture your own emotional availability. Working through your own process may give you a greater capacity to engage others.

As you work to develop this skill, give yourself grace. Don’t try to change everything all at once; in fact, experts say working in your safety zone initially can be a good start. “Take relational risks and practice vulnerability with folks you trust: Start by taking small relational risks with the people you trust,” says Harrison.

Overcoming Barriers to Emotional Unavailability

Once you begin the process of nurturing your emotional health, having a plan to overcome problems or issues is key for yourself, and for dealing with someone who is emotionally unavailable.

Effective communication is a great start.

[Take] some time to calm down before communicating (even five deep breaths have been shown to make a difference). Figure out how you feel, and then communicate with ‘I statements’,” explain Eileen Anderson, EdD, Anne Templeton Zimmerman, MD Professor of Bioethics and Director of Educational Programs, Bioethics and Medical Humanities.

Showing empathy and patience is also important, both with yourself and others. Building your emotional vulnerability takes time and effort. And seeing the changes you desire in your relationship takes time as well.

Be clear on your boundaries. What makes you uncomfortable? What takes you more time and space to process? Insist on having those boundaries respected. Likewise, honoring those boundaries in relationships may make the other person more willing to be emotionally available to you.

And be willing to seek help if you need it. A mental health professional can help you with the tools you need to get to a healthier place emotionally.

Above all, focus on taking care of yourself physically and mentally. Being in a healthy space and practicing your own self-awareness is a critical step in the process.

“Identifying and acknowledging your emotions without judgment is an essential first step. Learning to communicate your feelings effectively, setting healthy boundaries, and practicing vulnerability are other valuable tools for fostering emotional availability,” Dr. Frank concludes.

A specific phobia is an intense and irrational fear of a specified object or situation. A phobia is an excessive and overwhelming fear that results in avoidance or extreme distress. Some phobias are centered on a specific fear object, while others are complex and tied to different situations or circumstances. 

Phobias affect about 19 million adults, and women are two times more likely than men to have a specific phobia. Some people experience multiple specific phobias simultaneously. Approximately 75% of people with a specific phobia fear more than one object or situation.

DSM-5 Criteria for a Specific Phobia Diagnosis

A fear and a phobia are not the same, so it’s important to know the difference. Many people experience fears or aversions to objects or situations, but this does not necessarily mean that they would be diagnosed with a specific phobia.

Therapists cannot use a lab test to make this diagnosis, so they and other mental health professionals consult the DSM-5-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, text-revision). This guide provides diagnostic criteria for specific phobia from the American Psychiatric Association:

• Unreasonable, excessive fear: The person exhibits excessive or unreasonable, persistent and intense fear triggered by a specific object or situation.
• Immediate anxiety response: The fear reaction must be out of proportion to the actual danger and appears almost instantaneously when presented with the object or situation.
• Avoidance or extreme distress: The individual goes out of their way to avoid the object or situation, or endures it with extreme distress.
• Life-limiting: The phobia significantly impacts the individual’s school, work, or personal life.
• Six months duration: In children and adults, the duration of symptoms must last for at least six months.
• Not caused by another disorder: Many anxiety disorders have similar symptoms. A doctor or therapist would first have to rule out similar conditions such as agoraphobia, obsessional-compulsive disorder (OCD), and separation anxiety disorder before diagnosing a specific phobia.

Types of Specific Phobias

There are five types of specific phobias:

1. Natural/environment type: These are phobias of nature, weather, and environmental events or situations. These can include the fear of thunder and lightning (astraphobia) or water (aquaphobia).
2. Injury type: This type of fear is related to a fear of physical harm or injury. These include a fear of the dentist (dentophobia) or injections (trypanophobia).
3. Animal type: These fears are centered on animals or insects. This can include the fear of dogs (cynophobia), snakes (ophidiophobia), and insects (entomophobia).
4. Situational type: This type of phobia centers on fears triggered by specific situations. These include the fear of washing (ablutophobia) and enclosed spaces (claustrophobia).
5. Other types: Fears that don’t fit into the other four types are included in this category. This can include things such as a fear of dolls, vomiting, or loud sounds.

Causes of Specific Phobias

There are a number of different factors that can contribute to the development of specific phobias. These include:

• Temperament: Research suggests that people who exhibit more behavioral inhibition have a higher risk for a variety of anxiety disorders, including specific phobias. 
• Genetics: People who have a family member with an anxiety disorder or phobia are more likely to also develop some type of phobia.
• Experiences: Stressful or traumatic experiences can also play a role in the formation of a phobia. A single incidence of being bitten by a dog, for example, can play a role in the development of a fear of dogs.

Treatment for Specific Phobia

While specific phobias can be serious and debilitating, effective treatments are available. These can help reduce or even eliminate symptoms. They include:

Medication

While medication is not usually used on its own to treat phobias, it may sometimes be prescribed to help people manage physical and emotional reactions associated with phobias. Such medications are usually most effective when paired with psychotherapy.

Psychotherapy

There are a number of psychotherapy techniques that may be used to treat phobias, but exposure therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) are the two that are more commonly used. 

• Exposure therapy involves gradual and progressive exposure to the feared object or situation. Such exposure is paired with relaxation strategies until the fear reaction is reduced or extinguished.
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy involves helping people learn to identify and then change the automatic negative thoughts that contribute to phobic reactions. 

The DSM-5 states that people with specific disorders also have an elevated risk for suicide. These phobias also tend to commonly occur alongside other mental health conditions including panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance use disorder. Because of this, getting appropriate treatment is essential.

Preparing for Treatment

If you have decided it’s time to seek professional help for your fear, take some time to prepare yourself for your first appointment. To make the most of your appointment, and help your therapist determine if you have a fear or a phobia, create three lists:

1. Symptoms: Make a list of physical and psychological symptoms, including your trigger, how you cope with your fear, and things that make your anxiety better or worse.
2. Personal life: Make a list of anything stressful going on in your life, including relationship issues or trouble at work. Listing new situations that seem like a positive thing, including promotion or a budding romance, is also important, as good news can cause anxiety, too.
3. Medication and supplements: Make a list of all medication and supplements you take regularly, such as vitamins and herbal teas. These substances can affect your mental state and interfere with treatment.

Questions to Ask Your Therapist

While you’re in the therapist’s office, you have an opportunity to ask questions. Worried you won’t be able to think of any on the spot? Here are some you can use:

• What options for treatment do you recommend?
• How can I best manage my other health conditions while in treatment?
• If I follow the recommended treatment plan, how much improvement can I expect to see, and when?

Ativan (lorazepam) is a benzodiazepine sedative used to treat anxiety disorders. It depresses the central nervous system and, as a result, has risks when combined with other depressants or alcohol—including the possibility of fatal respiratory depression. This makes it important to understand how long lorazepam stays in your system if you’ve been prescribed this drug.

How Long Does It Take to Feel Ativan’s Effects?

Ativan is a benzodiazepine, which means that it has sedative and hypnotic effects. The drug works by enhancing the effects of a natural chemical called GABA, which depresses the central nervous system (CNS) and leads to a calming or relaxing effect. 

Ativan can be given as a tablet, liquid concentrate, or by injection. The different routes have different timetables for when they take effect. With tablets or liquids, the peak effects are seen in two hours. An injection of Ativan begins to have effects within 15 minutes and these effects generally continue for six to eight hours.

How Long Does Ativan Last?

While it is a fast-acting drug, Ativan has a relatively long half-life. A medication’s half-life refers to the amount of time its concentration in the body reduces by half which, in the case of Ativan, is every 12 hours.

This drug is metabolized primarily by the liver. It is then eliminated by the kidneys, through the urine. In all, Ativan may be present in the body up to nine days past the last use.

Blood

Ativan can be detected by blood tests six hours after ingestion. This type of test can also detect the drug for three days after the last use. The detection window may be longer for people who’ve been taking Ativan at higher doses for three days or more. 

Urine

Ativan is eliminated in the urine for one to six weeks, depending on how much is administered and for how long. Urine screening tests can detect intermediate-acting benzodiazepines such as Ativan up to five days after the last use.

In those who have been taking the drug regularly or at higher doses, this detection window may be longer. If testing looks for the metabolite lorazepam-glucuronide, which is produced as the drug is broken down by the body, older studies suggest that detection may take place up to eight days after the last use.

Hair

As with other substances, Ativan can be detected in hair samples for much longer than with other methods. If given a hair test, this drug can be detected for up to 30 days after use. 

Factors that can influence the level to which drugs are incorporated into or eliminated from one’s hair include:

• hair color
• a person’s ethnicity
• whether the hair has been treated with bleach, dye, or relaxants
• weather damage

Saliva

While no recent studies could be located in this area, older research suggests that Ativan could be detected in saliva samples up to eight hours after use. However, saliva tests are rarely used to screen for benzodiazepines such as Ativan. 

False Positive Testing

Some medications may result in a false positive urine screen for Ativan. The antidepressant medication Zoloft (sertraline) is one such drug known to cause a false positive for benzodiazepines. Efavirenz, an antiviral drug used to treat HIV, is another.

Factors That Affect Detection Time

There are a number of things that can influence how long Ativan remains in a person’s system. While rates usually follow a fairly consistent timeline, some people metabolize and clear the drug more quickly than others.

Biological Factors

Some of the factors that can influence how long Ativan remains in your body include the following.

• Age: Older people tend to clear medications more slowly than younger people. This is because older individuals tend to have slower metabolisms, decreased organ function, lower blood flow, and other health issues that can affect how quickly the drug is processed and excreted.
• Kidney function: Liver impairment does not appear to have much of an impact on Ativan clearance rates; however, kidney problems are associated with prolonged drug half-life.
• Height and weight: Taller people and those at a higher weight typically clear the drug more quickly than individuals who are shorter and/or weigh less.

Dosage and Frequency of Use

Higher doses of Ativan take longer to metabolize. The drug is also detectable for longer periods in individuals who have been taking the drug for a longer period of time.

Use of Other Substances

The concurrent use of other substances can have an impact on how quickly each is processed and excreted from the body. For example, valproate (a mood stabilizer) can reduce lorazepam clearance by 40% when taken at the same time, while certain oral contraceptives can increase lorazepam clearance.

How to Get Ativan Out of Your System

After stopping Ativan use, some people want to speed up how quickly it clears their system. Since the drug is excreted through urine, staying well-hydrated by drinking plenty of fluids may slightly increase its elimination rate.

Important Information to Know About Ativan

Ativan is classified as a Schedule IV drug, which means that it has a lower potential for misuse and a lower risk of dependence than Schedule II and III drugs. But Ativan can still be habit-forming. As a result, it’s usually prescribed only for short periods.

With long-term use, you can build a tolerance such that larger doses are needed to achieve the same effect. Stopping Ativan after using it for an extended period can result in withdrawal symptoms such as increased anxiety, sleeplessness, and irritability.

Overdose Risk

An overdose with Ativan is most commonly seen when taken with alcohol or opiate medications like Vicodin (hydrocodone) and OxyContin (oxycodone). This combination can be life-threatening, and it is important that your family or household members know what symptoms to look for so they can get emergency help quickly.

If you suspect that someone has overdosed on Ativan, call 911 immediately. Signs of an Ativan overdose include:

• Confusion
• Poor coordination
• Slow reflexes
• Coma
• Death

Precautions

If you take Ativan with alcohol or other medications that can depress breathing, you risk serious breathing problems, sedation, and coma. To prevent accidental overdose or other complications:

• Do not use alcohol while taking Ativan.
• Do not take any street drugs, as they may contain substances that can depress breathing.
• If you are breastfeeding, be aware that this drug passes through into your milk and may affect your baby.
• If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant, discuss this with your doctor.
• If you are depressed or have suicidal thoughts, avoid Ativan.
• If you are older, you may experience more effects of Ativan, such as drowsiness.
• Do not smoke cigarettes or use tobacco products, as these can reduce the effects of Ativan.
• If you take or plan to take any opiate or opioid medications, discuss them with your doctor as they can result in a life-threatening reaction with Ativan. These include medications with codeine or hydrocodone (such as for a cough or pain), fentanyl, hydromorphone, Demerol, methadone, morphine, oxycodone, and tramadol.

Getting Help for Stopping Ativan

If you need help stopping Ativan use, start by talking to your physician. Physical dependence can occur, even if you take the drug exactly as prescribed. Quitting Ativan suddenly can be dangerous or even life-threatening due to the increased risk of seizures during the withdrawal process. That’s why it’s important to be monitored by a medical professional as you go through the withdrawal process.

In most cases, you can detoxify from the drug on an outpatient basis. There are no medications approved to treat Ativan dependence, but the standard approach is to slowly reduce the amount of the drug used over a period of time to prevent severe withdrawal symptoms. Your physician will monitor your progress as you slowly taper off of the drug.

They may also recommend other treatments, such as psychotherapy. Types of psychotherapy that may be used during drug recovery include cognitive-behavioral therapy and dialectical behavioral therapy. If you need help with your treatment, ask your provider to refer you to a psychiatrist or another mental health professional who specializes in addiction recovery.

Everyone has needs, and many people turn to their partners to fulfill all of them. But that’s a lot to ask of a partner—and a relationship. While helping to meet each other’s needs is important, the ultimate responsibility for emotional fulfillment rests on the individual.

Learn how to recognize your emotional needs in a relationship and what you can do to fulfill them yourself. We also share ways to help your partner meet their needs, further strengthening your relationship. But first, it’s helpful to be clear about what emotional needs are and why they’re important.

What Are Emotional Needs?

Clinical psychologist and author Willard F. Harley, Jr., PhD, shares that an emotional need is “a craving that, when satisfied, leaves you with a feeling of happiness and contentment, and, when unsatisfied, leaves you with a feeling of unhappiness and frustration.” These cravings include a need for affection, conversation, honesty and openness, and family commitment.

All humans have emotional needs, and when those needs are met, we experience emotional fulfillment. Importantly, as emotions come from within us, fulfillment must come from within, too,

“When we have an expectation that a husband or wife fulfill us, we set ourselves up for disappointment, because no human being can satisfy another human being,” says Mark Altrogge, creator of The Blazing Center. “To hope that another human can meet our needs is asking too much of anyone.”

In the end, a partner can help support us emotionally, but they can’t be the only way for us to feel fulfilled and content. That said, their emotional support is still critical, even if they can’t meet our every need.

Importance of Meeting Emotional Needs In a Relationship

If your emotional needs in a relationship are being met, you feel more comfortable expressing your feelings to your partner. While you may certainly have disagreements, it becomes easier to fight fairly, knowing that the ultimate goal is to reach a mutually agreeable solution.

When partners are meeting each other’s needs, they are also likely to spend more time together and share details of their lives with one another. They both feel valued and validated, and they often experience higher levels of relationship satisfaction.

Steps to Identifying Your Needs

Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and professor who specializes in helping clients face relationship issues, suggests a four-step process for thinking about your own emotional needs. , This process comes from the field of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).

An easy way to remember the four steps is with the mnemonic STOP:

1. S stands for stop: When you feel that your emotional needs are not being met, stop. “Don’t react, just freeze,” says Romanoff. “Freezing for a moment helps prevent you from doing something impulsive, dismissing your needs, or acting without thinking.”
2. T stands for taking a step back: If you feel overwhelmed, it’s difficult to identify your needs. “Give yourself some time to calm down and process how you’re feeling,” says Romanoff. “Take a step back, either mentally or physically, from the situation.” Use deep breathing to help regulate your emotions.
3. O stands for observe: Look at what is happening around and within you. Who is involved? What are they doing or saying? “It is important not to jump to conclusions,” Romanoff advises. “Instead, gather the relevant facts to understand what is going on and what you need.”
4. P stands for proceeding mindfully: Romanoff suggests asking yourself, “What do I need from this situation? What is my goal? What decision or behavior would make this situation better or worse?”

Ways to Fulfill Your Own Needs

Once you’ve identified your emotional needs, the next step is to find ways to fulfill them. Romanoff suggests that this begins with being alert to when you tend to reach out to others for emotional fulfillment. For many, this might be when you are bored, lonely, anxious, or need to regulate your emotions.

“Once you identify your triggers, you can begin to reduce your dependence on others in these situations,” says Romanoff. “If you delay reaching out, you could strengthen your internal resources to process difficult emotions, for example, by journaling, exercising, taking a warm shower, or another relaxing activity.”

Depending on a partner to meet your needs is not only difficult for them; it’s also holding you back. “By reflexively reaching out to others to meet your needs, you are reinforcing the idea that you are not capable of caring for yourself in these difficult moments,” says Romanoff. “It is important to prove to yourself that you are stronger than you think you are.”

Helping Your Partner Meet Their Emotional Needs

While self-soothing is important, you can still help your partner meet their needs in a healthy, non-codependent way, says Romanoff. Strive to be of help when your partner asks for it. “This will help strengthen the relationship,” she says, “as it will be based on intentional and purposeful connection instead of neediness or expectations that your partner can read your mind.”

Consider what your partner wants and values. Is it a home-cooked meal? A special dinner at a fancy restaurant or a quick burger at a fast-food eatery? Fixing that leaky faucet or loose door handle? An affirming word or affectionate gesture?

How to Talk About Your Emotional Needs

It’s important that partners can communicate their emotional needs in a relationship. Once you are in the mindset of being a loving and giving partner, you can then start to advocate for your own needs, but you have to be careful about how you go about it.

When you want your spouse to perform some kind of action to magically meet your needs, you are really asking for them to change, says Barton Goldsmith, PhD, a psychotherapist and author, and that’s a nearly impossible request. Instead, be direct.

To be direct, you must be clear in your own mind about what you need. Romanoff explains why this is important: “Once you are able to self-reflect, sit with your emotions on your own, and understand what you need, you will be more able to communicate what you would like from your partner,” she says.

“Oftentimes what we need the most is to have a partner who is willing to be more accessible, emotionally receptive, and engaged,” Romanoff adds. This means being emotionally present during difficult situations.

We live in a world saturated with media of all kinds, from newspapers to radio to television to the internet. How do we understand and evaluate all of these media messages we encounter daily? Well, it’s this neat little skill called media literacy.

Media literacy is seen as an essential 21st-century skill by educators and scholars, including media psychologists. In fact, the mission statement of Division 46 of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Media Psychology and Technology, includes support for the development of media literacy.

Despite this, many people still dismiss media as harmless entertainment and claim they aren’t influenced by its messages. However, research findings consistently demonstrate that people are impacted by the media messages they consume.

Media literacy interventions and education help children and adults recognize the influence media has and give them the knowledge and tools to mitigate its impact.

History of Media Literacy

The earliest attempts at media literacy education are often traced back to the British Film Institute’s push in the late 1920s and early 1930s to teach analytical skills to media users. Around the same time in America, the Wisconsin Association for Better Broadcasters sought to teach citizens to be more critical consumers of media.

However, the goal of these initial media literacy efforts, which continued into the 1960s, was to protect students from media by warning them against its consumption. Despite this perspective, the dominance of media—and television in particular—continued to grow, even as interest in media literacy education waned.

Media Literacy and the Internet

More recently, the advent of the internet and portable technologies that enable us to consume media anywhere and anytime has led to a resurgence in the call for media literacy. Yet the goal is no longer to prevent people from using media, but to help them become more informed, thoughtful media consumers.

Although media literacy education has now become accepted and successful in English-speaking countries including Australia, Canada, and Britain, it has yet to become a standard part of the curriculum in the United States, where a lack of centralization has led to a scattershot approach to teaching practical media literacy skills.

Impact of Media Literacy

Despite America’s lack of a standardized media literacy curriculum, study after study has shown the value of teaching people of all ages media literacy skills.

Though the authors note that this topic is still understudied, they observe that the evidence suggests media literacy education can help adolescents become sensitive to prejudice and learn to appreciate diversity.

Media Literacy Affects Your Sense of Self

Meanwhile, multiple studies have shown that media literacy interventions reduce body dissatisfaction that can be the result of the consumption of media messages.

In one investigation, adolescent girls were shown an intervention video by the Dove Self-Esteem Fund before being shown images of ultra-thin models. While a control group reported lower body satisfaction and body esteem after viewing the images of the models, the group that viewed the intervention first didn’t experience these negative effects.

How Media Literacy Prevents Misinformation

Moreover, studies have shown that media literacy education can help people better discern the truth of media claims, enabling them to detect “fake news” and make more informed decisions.

For instance, research into young adults’ assessment of the accuracy of claims on controversial public issues was improved if the subjects had been exposed to media literacy education. In addition, another study showed that only people who underwent media literacy training engaged in critical social media posting practices that prevented them from posting false information about the COVID-19 pandemic.

How to Practice Media Literacy

The evidence for the benefits of media literacy suggests it is valuable for people of all ages to learn to be critical media consumers. Media scholar W. James Potter observes that all media messages include four dimensions:

1. Cognitive: the information that is being conveyed
2. Emotional: the underlying feelings that are being expressed
3. Aesthetic: the overall precision and artistry of the message
4. Moral: the values being conveyed through the message

Media psychologist Karen Dill-Shackleford suggests that we can use these four dimensions as a jumping off point to improve our media literacy skills.

Applying Media Literacy in Real-World Situations

Let’s say while streaming videos online we’re exposed to an advertisement for a miracle weight loss drug. In order to better evaluate what the ad is really trying to tell us, we can break it down as follows:

1. On the cognitive dimension we can assess what information the ad is conveying to us by asking some of the following questions: What does the ad promise the drug will do? Does it seem likely the drug can deliver on those promises? Who would need this kind of drug?
2. On the emotional dimension, we can evaluate the feelings the creator of the ad wants us to feel: Do they want us to feel insecure about our weight? Do they want us to imagine the positive ways this drug could change our lives? Do they want us to envision the satisfaction we would feel after the drug delivers its quick fix?
3. On the aesthetic dimension, we can determine how the ad employs messages and images to make us believe the product will deliver on its promises: Does the ad show “before” and “after” images of someone who supposedly took the drug? Does the “before” image look sad and the “after” image happy? Does the ad offer testimonials from people that are identified as experts?
4. On the moral dimension, we can examine what the ad makers wanted to say: Are they equating thinness with happiness? Are they sending the message that it’s a moral failing when someone is overweight? Are they saying that one has to be thin to be loved and respected?

This is one avenue for learning to practice media literacy in everyday life. Remember, the purpose of media literacy isn’t to enjoy media less, it’s to give people the tools to be active media consumers.

Why You Should Practice Media Literacy

Not only will media literacy enable you to detect, analyze, and evaluate negative or false media messages, it will actually enable you to enjoy media more because it puts control over the media back into your hands. And research shows this is likely to increase your health and happiness.