positive psychology
Submitted by tonyplant on August 9, 2006 - 12:47.
It’s a cliche in positive psychology that FEAR is an acronym: depending on your preference it is either False Experience Appearing Real or False Experience Accepted as Real.
Happiness teacher and writer Robert Holden says that a lot of his work consists of showing people that they are already happy. When working with people it is not unusual to discover that if people look through their present circumstances, there is much for which they are grateful, and much that contributes to a sense of happiness.
Participants in my Happystance workshops can be initially reluctant to join in some of the group exercises: they frequently say that they can not visualise and have no power of imagination. Yet, in my experience, most of those people are experts at being frightened by something that hasn’t happened yet. They are afraid of something that may happen in the future: they can imagine this event of set of circumstances in full technicolour gore, and may even be capable of experiencing some of the accompanying emotions in advance.
“They need to do better than what is going on to make a dent in the fear that is affecting a million people.”- ANDY APAID, a businessman in Port-au-Prince, on the United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti.
I read the above quotation some time ago in the New York Times. And I had it in mind when I met a few people this morning who all reported themselves as unhappy. After we had worked together for a while it became apparent that none of them was unhappy because of their current circumstances. The unhappiness lay in their expectation of future unhappiness, and they brought that emotion into their present, although it doesn’t belong there, and there is no guarantee that a future event will occur that will justify their present emotional state. It is well established that negative emotions have an adverse impact on people’s immune systems and can undermine their health and wellbeing. Fear of an adverse event in the future can undermine an individual’s ability to cope with it.
1 attachment | read more | add new comment | terrorism | robert holden | positive psychology | happystance | happiness | furedi | FEAR
Submitted by tonyplant on July 19, 2006 - 08:13.
I was caught up in yet another discussion about choice recently. We were exchanging views on whether choice adds to our sense of freedom and happiness or whether being immersed in choice actually distracts our energy from more significant matters. The discussion ranged from the "we've never had it so good" school to Schwartz's recent account of the freedom to choose and Harbaugh's "falling behind the Joneses".
I was trying to express my experience that I meet many carers in Happystance workshops who relish some choices but are bewildered by others (e.g., to do with complex benefit/allowance applications; or indecision about what care package meets the needs of everybody involved). In the press of conversation I managed to mangle a cross between a spoonerism and a malaproprism. The spoonerism was between choice and consumer; the malapropism was substituting agoraphobia for a word that I no longer recall.
After my initial surprise, I thought about it and have decided that the phrases are apposite. Agoraphobia is literally fear of the marketplace. I think that 'consumer agoraphobia' can describe a condition where consumers are overwhelmed by choice. Some people are so overwhelmed by choice that they no longer want to take even small decisions because they trigger so much anxiety.
1 attachment | read more | add new comment | schwartz | positive psychology | positive emotion | happystance | choice
Submitted by tonyplant on June 1, 2006 - 19:08.
Not many 12 year-olds are so desperate that they consider killing their own father. Several years ago I heard an author talking about his childhood. The memory that stays with me is when he described his father entering a room and acting as a black hole for all positive emotion or blitheness of spirit. The family responded by self-censoring their emotions even when the father wasn't present. The author recounted an incident when he was 12 years old when desperation made him offer a cup of tea to his father that he had laced with rat poison. He never made tea for his father. The boy's father took the tea, looked at it, looked at him and laughed. The father enjoyed a bleak victory in driving his family to such extremes.
I've always considered that childhood account to be a crushing and bleak example of emotional contagion. I think that many of us know people who are so sensitive to the moods of others that they sense anger, or can themselves become depressed. Fear and sadness can be transmitted from one person to another without the parties being aware of it.
Interviewed by Stacey Colino in a recent article for the Washington Post, Professor John Cacioppo attributes this transmission to the human instinct to mimic others during communication.
[T]he more expressive and sincere someone is, the more likely you are to see that expression and mimic it...The muscle fibers [in your face and body] can be activated unbeknownst to you, at much lower levels than if you were to express those movements yourself initially.
For those familiar with the
ideomotor response it seems as if our muscles can react and respond without our conscious knowledge. Several theories of communication suggest that this process initiates a feedback loop where we see someone smile, our smiling muscles mimic the action, this behavioural action is linked to our state and raises our positive state which may make us smile. Unfortunately, there is a similar mimicry for negative emotions that may result in the transmission of fear, alarm, depression or sadness.
read more | 3 comments | resilience | positive psychology | happystance | happiness | emotion | depression
Submitted by tonyplant on May 18, 2006 - 17:28.
The notion that happiness can be taught sometimes leave people feeling baffled by the language (like the translations in the accompanying photograph) or even outraged. I participated in a fascinating Like Minds event last night. I had the opportunity to present some of the work that I do with positive psychology to an audience of battle-hardened GPs, Community Mental Health workers, psychiatrists and even a Mental Heath Commissioner (I think; he was up until last Friday, but from bits and pieces last night it seems as if he was so successful and innovative there that he has been appointed to a different post).
The GPs were concerned with the medicalisation of unhappiness and patients' requests for anti-depressant medication. There was some discussion of claims that GPs don't know how to make appropriate referrals for depression. The GPs felt that they had limited resources rather than limited knowledge: in terms that were reminiscent of Dr. Crippen they felt that they were being treated like the dinosaurs of medicine and asked to become more and more remote from their patients rather than giving them the one-on-one time that so many of them need.
1 attachment | read more | add new comment | unhappiness | positive psychology | happiness | depression
Submitted by tonyplant on March 25, 2006 - 20:28.
In Godspeed, Keith Carlson has offered another inspirational and poignant account of caring that enriches our understanding of compassion, essential dignity and the vocation of caring.
Godspeed is a poignant reminder that there are sicknesses that extend beyond the body and affect all of those around the person who is afflicted by these complex ills. Even when somebody has a complex medical history, the true sadness and disruption of that life may lie in the spiritual realm, or in the psychosocial miasma that surrounds those health problems.
The patient is a "human time-bomb" of clinical and other ills that Carlson has tried to defuse or render less harmful many times in the past. Carlson's efforts could not succeed without the patient's co-operation and so those attempts could not achieve their aim. Despite his remarkable resilience, the patient's serious illnesses seem to be about to overwhelm him.
Yet, despite "the body bristling with tubes and the technology of desperate measures", Carlson offers us a glimpse of what the man is to his family, and what he might have been. He is a "lost soul" whose family care about him and grieve for what he might have been:
read more | 1 comment | positive psychology | dalai lama | compassion | carer | caregiver | addiction
Submitted by tonyplant on March 7, 2006 - 18:39.
I was caught up in yet another discussion about choice today. We were exchanging views on whether choice adds to our sense of freedom and happiness or whether being immersed in choice actually distracts our energy from more significant matters. The discussion ranged from the "we've never had it so good" school to Schwartz's recent account of the freedom to choose and Harbaugh's "falling behind the Joneses".
I was trying to express my experience that I meet many carers in Happystance workshops who relish some choices but are bewildered by others (e.g., to do with complex benefit/allowance applications; or indecision about what care package meets the needs of everybody involved). In the press of conversation I managed to mangle a cross between a spoonerism and a malaproprism. The spoonerism was between choice and consumer; the malapropism was substituting agoraphobia for a word that I no longer recall.
After my initial surprise, I thought about it and have decided that the phrases are apposite. Agoraphobia is literally fear of the marketplace. I think that 'consumer agoraphobia' can describe a condition where consumers are overwhelmed by choice. Some people are so overwhelmed by choice that they no longer want to take even small decisions because they trigger so much anxiety.
One example is that consumer experts constantly tell us that most of us have not got the best deal that we could on credit cards, bank accounts, utility providers etc. They emphasise how easy it is to change our providers and research the best deal and yet apparently more than 80% of us never do such research despite the fact that not doing so may cost us considerable sums of money.
read more | 2 comments | schwartz | positive psychology | positive emotion | happystance | choice
Submitted by tonyplant on March 1, 2006 - 11:57.
I deeply admire people who work in the arena of addiction. I have no understanding of how they constantly renew their compassion and energy for working with people who can present with extremes of dysfunction.
So, I was interested to come across a blog account that describes why Things Don't Go Better With Coke. Keith Carlson writes:
Working with this poor, chronically ill and generally disenfranchised community, addiction and its unhappy effects are normal aspects of my work, and part and parcel of many patients' lives. Compassion and love are still called for, and judgementalness and criticism only fuel the flames of separation. While my compassion-meter is sometimes pushed beyond its perceived limits, I find there is always more compassion and love somewhere in the chambers of my heart. The ultimate goal is healing, and especially in the face of addiction, compassion and understanding must, in the end, be the energy which fuels the healers' fire.
Challenged to explain how he can constantly renew his compassion, Carlson refers to a sense of gratitude for his own material and social good fortune. He also admires the work of Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama. It may be yet another instance of Aristotle's argument:
men become builders by building houses, and harpists by playing the harp. Similarly, we become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage. (Bk II, Nicomachean Ethics)
However, to an outside commentator, even Aristotle is insufficient to explain why Carlson and people like him have not burned out. It seems that Carlson has remarkable resilience and social intelligence/citizenship. I mention this last because positive psychology argues that when our character strengths and virtues are in line with the demands of our life and work, then people achieve remarkable results and they do not burn out as rapidly as other people would who have different strengths and virtues.
read more | 1 comment | positive psychology | dalai lama | compassion | character | aristotle
Submitted by tonyplant on February 27, 2006 - 16:02.
There is an interesting piece in the New York Times that asks Is Freedom Just Another Word for Many Things to Buy?. The authors claim:
Americans are increasingly bewildered — not liberated — by the sheer volume of choices they must make in a day.
As behavioral scientists, we have found that the people who frame freedom in terms of choice are usually the ones who get to make a lot of choices — that is, middle- and upper-class white Americans (most of our study participants are white; we can't make any claims about other racial and ethnic groups). The education, income and upbringing of these Americans grant them choices about how to live their lives and also encourage them to express their preferences and personalities through the choices they make. Most Americans, however, are not from the college-educated middle and upper classes. Working-class Americans often have fewer resources and experience greater uncertainty and insecurity. For them, being free is less about making choices that reflect their uniqueness and mastery and more about being left alone, with their personality, integrity and well-being intact.
There are some provocative examples that show why having a plethora of choice can bring about paralysis of action. It is possible to extend this work to account for why uncertainty and axiety about making choices can bring about
learned helplessness.
read more | add new comment | positive psychology | freedom | choice
Submitted by tonyplant on February 23, 2006 - 14:52.
GeekNurse has posted a tracing of a baby’s heart activity. It’s one of those occasions where a straight reading might have prompted concern that there was a major cardiac problem. However, with the nurse’s special understanding of the context, the trace is correctly interpreted as innocent of any sinister problem (I’m not giving the solution here, it’s a nice surprise). [April 2006 edit. Sadly, this excellent blog has been taken down so this example is no longer available. The solution was that the nurse had been present when the baby hiccoughed, causing the irregularity in the trace.]
I’m attracted to this example because it is a striking instance of the need to understand the full context of data before interpreting it appropriately. And this is yet another re-working of my continued thinking on the topic of whether unhappiness is a symptom or a passing phase.
Unhappiness is inevitable as a response to life events: it is appropriate in the current context of that life. There may come a point when the degree of unhappiness paralyses a person’s ability to function on many levels, both socially and economically. Somewhere on that continuum unhappiness became a symptom in need of a remedy or intervention, whether pharmacological or psychosocial. Identifying that point of cross-over seems to be an art-form.
Positive psychology emphasises the many benefits of positive emotions, from greater personal success to better immune systems and improved longevity. One of the most repeatable findings seems to be that unhappiness is inevitable, but it is our resilience to life events and circumstances that governs our outcomes. It seems that we can cultivate resilience by cultivating positive emotions.
read more | add new comment | unhappiness | positive psychology | positive emotions | nutrition | happiness | food
Submitted by tonyplant on February 19, 2006 - 23:09.
Both in everyday encounters and during workshops, I frequently come across the power of FEAR (False Expectations Appearing Real) and how it can blight our current experience of our life. I described a visit to a pre-school group that had prompted me to consider the topic of chaos theory and happiness. It does seem as if some people’s current unhappiness is grounded in apprehensions about the future and a sense of helplessness about influencing those wider concerns and future events.
So, I recognised the phenomenon when I read Dr. Sanity’s tongue-in-cheek account of command hallucinations and the creation of FEAR. We need a Happystance to resist these strong command hallucinations and to provide us with personal and social resilience in the face of all the dire news that confronts us on a regular basis.
In The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, Friedman argues that the financial and social anxieties created by living in a stagnant economy lead people to look for explanations and answers in intolerance and fear. Furedi provides his own explanation for this behaviour. He claims that the phenomenon is responsible for the widespread internalisation of conspiracy theories: "[t]oday, acts of misfortune are frequently associated with intentional malevolent behavior".
Michael Crichton recently gave a lecture on Fear, Complexity, Environmental Management in the 21st Century. He gives a remarkable account of the mis-information surrounding the impact of Chernobyl. He summarises some of the statistics of estimated deaths and health-related problems and goes on to discuss how wrong they have proved to be. Crichton quotes a UN report from 2005 that says the largest public health problem created by the incident at Chernobyl is the:
read more | add new comment | positive psychology | happystance | friedman | economic growth | command hallucinations
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