The Happiness Blog

How to avoid unhappiness when things go wrong in your life - Part 2

Copyright (c) Dr Jim Byrne, 25th November 2011

Manage your thinking to avoid distressing emotions -

2: The role of ‘critical thinking'

If you want to be happy, you must learn how to avoid distressing yourself emotionally when things go wrong in your life.  Last week I wrote about how to use Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)*** and the Six Windows Model*** of Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT)*** to avoid emotional disturbances.

Today I want to make a more general point about straight thinking as a way to keep yourself from spoiling your happiness with negative emotions. 

‘Critical Thinking' is a discipline derived from the study of formal logic, and especially Aristotelian logic.

Critical thinking has a few key features:

1. It distinguishes between ‘appeals to the emotions' (rhetoric) and ‘appeals to reason' (or logical arguments).

2. It teaches us to look for the hidden arguments in the statements that are made in the media, in advertising, and in personal and professional conversations.

3. It allows us to see when the speaker is trying to hook our emotions, rather than giving us good reasons to believe their claims.

4. It teaches us how to analyze an argument into its premises and its conclusion, and to test it to see if it's valid.  A valid argument is one in which the conclusion follows logically from the premises, and the premises are true. 

5. It teaches us to spot fallacies (or mistaken beliefs) in arguments and to tell good reasoning from bad.

If you have never studied Critical thinking or formal logic, I would strongly recommend that you begin with Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp's ‘Critical Thinking: A concise guide'. (Routledge, 2005. Second edition).

This book will introduce you to the negative impact of allowing yourself to be duped and misled by the kind of ‘rhetoric' that is used by politicians and marketers, PR specialists, etc.

Here is their definition of ‘rhetoric': "Any verbal or written attempt to persuade someone to believe, desire or do something that does not attempt to give good reasons for the belief, desire or action, but attempts to motivate that belief, desire or action solely through the power of the words used".

This is a powerful reason to learn to think logically - to avoid being duped and misled.

Here is a little five minute video clip on Critical Thinking which you might find helpful and informative: Introduction to Critical Thinking.***

However, I also think it is important to watch out for what I call "self-rhetoric".  This involves the use of emotive expressions, in response to situations you don't like, which are designed to escalate your emotions even more as a response.

The classic pieces of self-rhetoric identified by REBT include these:

"This rotten thing should not be happening.."

"It's totally bad (awful) that I have been deprived of my right to..."

"I can't stand being in this miserable situation..."

"I'm a rotten louse"; or "S/He's a rotten louse"; or "The world's a rotten place..."

All of these statements are overly-emotive exaggerations, designed to promote distress.

The classic pieces of self-rhetoric identified by CENT include these:

"I am uniquely disadvantaged, of all people, I am the only one who is suffering this affliction and that makes it unbearable..."

"I have to have outcome X, and outcome Y is not acceptable as a consolation..."

"Because this one big part of my life is messed up, the whole of my life is messed up..."

"Nothing could possibly be worse than my present suffering..."

"I have to be able to control every single aspect of my life, and it is not okay if some parts of life are beyond my control..."

Again, these statements are rhetorical because they appeal to the emotions to escalate to a higher level of disturbed arousal.

Other schools of thought, such as Cognitive Therapy, have different, but significantly overlapping, lists of self-rhetorical statements, which they represent as Automatic Negative Thoughts.

So we have the concepts of irrational beliefs, negative automatic thoughts, prejudiced ways of seeing, distorted ways of framing; and they all mean essentially the same thing.  They are all forms of self-rhetoric.  They all appeal to emotional involvement and emotional escalation. And they all lack sound reasons to support the belief, thought or way of seeing or framing an event.

The way to protect your happiness from being sabotaged by self-rhetoric is to subject your beliefs, thoughts and ways of seeing your significant events to rigorous logical analysis:

Ask yourself: What is my conclusion here?

What are my reasons for believing this conclusion?

Are those reasons justified true beliefs?

And does my conclusion follow logically from those reasons (or premises)?

In this way you will be able to eliminate your habit of engaging in self-rhetoric, and to manage your thinking-feeling from a sound basic in fact.

If you do not know how to set about doing this, then try studying the Bowell and Kemp book mentioned above.

~~~

In the run up to the Christmas holidays, many individuals will upset themselves with self-rhetoric about how the holiday must go; how the food must be; who should and must turn up for the festivities; what kinds of presents must be exchanged; and a thousand other madnesses.  To avoid engaging in too much Christmas self-rhetoric, please see my Six Windows process on Christmas upsets from previous years.***

And a special page on Developing Tolerance over Christmas.***

That's all for this week (as I am extremely busy). :-)

Best wishes,

The Happiness Blog

How to avoid unhappiness, when things go wrong

Copyright (c) Dr Jim Byrne, 19th November 2011

Manage your thinking to avoid distressing emotions

So, it's 8.00pm on Saturday evening and I still have not written a sentence of this Happiness Blog.

My commitment is to write this blog every week, come hell or high water.  Normally I manage to make a start on Thursday, and to get it done on Friday - however, this week has been so hectically busy that I have not been able to find any time so far.

So here goes, late on Saturday evening:

Keep yourself sane when the pressure mounts

Since my goal is to get this blog up and running by Friday, I could now make myself unhappy by the way I respond to this delay.

I could, for example, awfulize, or catastrophize about my ‘poor performance' - telling myself that it's awful that I have failed to achieve my goal. 

I could then make that worse by demanding that I absolutely should not have failed in this way.

And what would the result be?  I would feel depressed about my failure - and I might then even conclude that "I am a fail-ure!"

This is how many people spoil their happiness, and make their lives miserable.

However, instead, I can use the Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)*** approach of "sticking to preferential thinking", like this:

"I'd prefer it if I'd got this blog up and running yesterday, but it's not essential to have achieved that.  It's bad (to some small extent) that I failed to get it done, but it's not the worst thing imaginable.  And it certainly does not make me a fail-ure!"

If I stick to this preferential philosophy of life, then I will only feel sad and disappointed that I have not got this blog done on time, but I would not feel overly-upset (e.g. depressed).

~~~

I could also use the Six Windows Model*** from my own Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT)***, like this:

Looking through Window No.1 at my lateness, I would notice that the slogan around the frame of this window says "Life is difficult and frustrating, and involves some suffering for all humans, at least some of the time".  Seeing my lateness in this context, I realize that there is no reason why I must be exempt from frustrations and difficulties, and this is just one such difficulty, being late with this blog.

Window No.2 would tell me that "Life is without difficulty provided I avoid picking and choosing", so all I have to do is to give up choosing to be on time (when I am actually late) and my problem will be largely dissolved.

And Window No.3 would remind that that "Life is both difficult and non-difficult"; so if I am only focussing on the difficulty that this blog is late being written and posted today, then I am obviously squeezing out awareness of some good things which could counterbalance that regrettable fact.  So what could some of those counterbalancing things be?

1. On Monday I posted a new video clip on YouTube, on the subject of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) for the benefit of the general public all over the world: http://youtu.be/VD79gJiQ8Vg

2 On Wednesday I ran a workshop at the University of Manchester on the nature of REBT, for a group of counselling psychology doctoral candidates.

3. On Thursday I posted a second new video clip on REBT on YouTube, explaining how people can get control of their negative, habitual emotions: http://youtu.be/5m-ELPWj3eQ

4. I have seen several clients yesterday (Friday) and today (Saturday), and so I can hardly accuse myself of not honouring my commitment to help people to be happy.

By following these kinds of reflective, re-thinking approaches, I can control my happiness level, even when I am performing sub-optimally in the world, and thus I can have a happier life than people who overly-upset themselves when they run into frustrations and difficulties and fail to achieve their goals.

~~~

Writing about forgiveness in your Happiness Journal

Being kind and generous can make you happier, and so can learning to forgive those who transgress against us.  Also important is learning to forgive yourself when you fall short of your own self-expectations.  (I forgive myself for failing to get this blog out on Friday!  I let it go!)

Back in 2005, Ben Dean Ph.D. sent me a newsletter in which he talked about the importance of developing forgiveness of self and others. It is difficult to be happy if you are full of hatred or feelings of hurt towards those people who have transgressed against you, knowingly or unknowingly.

Ben's newsletter made this point: "Developmental psychologist Robert Enright[1] provides a process model of forgiveness that could be applied to forgiveness interventions with individuals or groups.

"In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Heller, 1998)[2], he outlines the following nine steps toward forgiveness:

1. Acknowledge your emotions. Whether you are angry, hurt, ashamed, or embarrassed (or some combination of the above), acknowledge your emotional reaction to the wrongdoing.

2. Go beyond identifying the person who hurt you and articulate the specific behaviours that upset or hurt you.

3. Make the choice to forgive.

4. Explain to yourself why you made the decision to forgive. Your reasons can be as practical as wanting to be free of the anger so that you can concentrate better at work.

5. Attempt to "walk in the shoes" of the other person. Consider that person's vulnerabilities.

6. Make a commitment to not pass along the pain you have endured-even to the person who hurt you in the first place.

7. Decide instead to offer the world mercy and goodwill. At this stage, you may wish to reconcile with the other person (but that's not necessary).

8. Reflect on how it feels to let go of a grudge. Find meaning in the suffering you experienced and overcame.

9. Discover the paradox of forgiveness: As you give the gift of forgiveness to others, you receive the gift of peace."

Who is the person (or persons) against whom you are holding a grudge?

What did they say or do to you?

What is it costing you to hold on to this grudge?

Do you want to achieve the relief of forgiving them?

Choose to forgive them (remembering that that does not mean ‘Don't you dare ever do that again!').  "I choose to forgive them" means: "I let it go!"  "I release the feelings of hurt or anger".  "I am willing to let bygones be bygones". 

Remember that they are fallible, error-prone humans: That they may be less skilful than you would hope; That they might be less charitable and compassionate that you would like.  Try to empathize with their point of view; or just with their imperfection.  Remember that to err is all too common, but to forgive is a measure of your maturity and your capacity to love and accept others in the face of difficulty and frustration.

~~~

That's all for this week.

Best wishes,

[1] Baskin and Enright (2004)." Intervention studies on forgiveness: A meta-analysis." Journal of Counseling and Development 82, 79-90.

[2] Heller, S. (1998, July 17). "Emerging field of forgiveness studies explores how we let go of grudges." The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The Happiness Blog

Happiness related to physical and mental health, and to stress

Copyright (c) Dr Jim Byrne, 4^th November 2011

"Simple Great Things: The best things are nearest - breath in your nostrils; light in your eyes; flowers at your feet; duties at your hand; the path of Right just before you.  Do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life". 

Robert Louis Stevenson

Here's a strange set of circular facts:

(1) It is hard to be happy if you are depressed or anxious or angry, so developing your capacity to manage your emotions is an important part of living a happy life.

(2) However, some emotional disturbances are caused by things going wrong in your body.  Hence it is also important to know how to manage your physical health.  See the Mind-Body Link.***

(3) But your physical health can be harmed by not managing your mind well. And if your body is in pain, it is very hard to be happy.  (This will be explored further below). 

Thus the task of managing your happiness by managing your body-mind is a complex one. There is at least one chicken-and-egg conundrum here.

In this connection, somewhere in the past week I wrote and published a new paper on dealing with chronic pain, which was an extended review of Tim Parks' book on his own journey away from insomnia and chronic abdominal pain, towards health and happiness, which involved coming to consciousness about the nature of his problem, and then taking responsibility for solving his own physical (and mental) problems. See: CENT Paper No.17 - Counselling for Chronic Pain.***

In the past I have emphasized the insight from Stoicism that the main thing you need to do in order to be happy is to live a moral life.  And we live a moral life from the good side of our character - the Good Wolf aspect of our personality.  The core of the Good Wolf is love/charity/compassion, and some theorists emphasize that if we want to be happy, we have to become loving towards the world.  (The core of the Bad Wolf aspect of our personality is hatred/anger/rage, and if we want to be endlessly unhappy, the place to operate from is the Bad Wolf).

But what does it mean to become loving towards the world?  It means, as M. Scott Peck defined it, to ‘extend ourselves in the service of others': to become ‘productive', useful, pro-social contributors to the wellbeing of others.  (But remember Renata's point, from last week.  You must take care of yourself first, otherwise you will not have the wherewithal to take care of others).  And there is nowhere more important to begin this work of becoming loving/productive than in our relationships with our life-partners.***

(Probably) The final journal writing activity: Writing about love

For some weeks now I have been presenting you with exercises you can do in your Happiness Journal, to promote higher levels of happiness.  Today I am presenting the last of these exercises: Expressing your love and affection for somebody you love.

The idea is to sit down with your happiness journal, and think about somebody you love.  This could be a romantic partner, spouse, parent, child, grandparent, close friend, etc.  Now "spend 20 minutes describing why this person (means) so much to (you)". (Professor Richard Wiseman)[1].

Here is the full activity instruction:

"Think about someone in your life who is very important to you.  It might be your partner, a close friend or family member.  Imagine you only have one opportunity to tell this person how important they are to you.  Now write a short letter to this person, describing how much you care for them and the impact they have had on your life". (Wiseman, 2010, page 21).

This activity was developed by Kory Floyd, at Arizona State University[2], as part of a formal research activity, involving an active writing group and a control group.  The results of this research found that the participants in the group which wrote affectionately about a loved one showed "...a marked increase in happiness, a reduction in stress and even a significant decrease in their cholesterol levels".  (Wiseman, 2010, page 19).

PS: Learn how to manage your stress level

In order to be happy, you must be able to manage your physical and mental health.  In order to improve your physical and mental health, you must know how to manage your stress level.  A recent article by Dr Robert Epstein, in Scientific American Mind, found that most participants in a large-scale study of stress management competence - with 3,304 participants - score the equivalent of a grade F, or fail, demonstrating that "our stress management IQ is painfully low".[3]

This is not surprising, as "few people receive formal training on how to manage stress..." (Page 32).

One of the most important points that Robert Epstein makes is this:

"In our culture, people often try to cope with stress in self-destructive ways, mainly by drinking (alcohol), taking drugs or overeating.  Commit to avoiding the self-destructive solutions - for a day, a week or whatever you can handle - and replacing them with positive, healthful ways of managing stress". (Page 35).

(For a whole range of healthy ways of managing your current or anticipated stress level, see the link to my CENT Stress Book below.)

In Epstein's model of stress management, it is as if our life is a car with four wheels - or sets of competencies - each of which must be fitted well, and serviced diligently.  These wheels - or competencies - are:

1. Managing sources of stress;

2. Practicing relaxation techniques;

3. Managing thoughts; and

4. Preventing stress from occurring.

One of Epstein's main discoveries is that, while many counsellors emphasize the importance of relaxation (which is item 2 above) and meditation (which is included in item 3) for stress management - (both of which are important) - it seems that being proactive, in order to prevent stress occurring (which is item 4) - and managing time/activities to stay on top of events as they unfold (which is item 1) - yielded the best results for the group studied.

Unfortunately, Dr Epstein missed one whole area of competence: managing your diet to minimize stress.

I have included all five areas of competence in my CENT book on stress management: How to Reduce and Control Your Stress Level, and to Have a Happier Life: The CENT approach.***

I have also now produced a new Kindle version of this book, which can be found here. CENT Stress book at Amazon/Kindle.***

This is a comprehensive training manual, with space to engage in reflection on your learning journey.  It can be followed from beginning to end, or you can dip into it to find the area of competence that you need to improve - the wheel that's missing from your ‘car' of life.

That's all for this week.

Best wishes,

[1] Wiseman, R. (2010) 59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lot.  London: Pan Books.

[2] Floyd, K., Mikkelson, A.C., Hesse, C. and Pauley, P.M. (2007) Affectionate writing reduces total cholesterol: two randomized control trials.  Human Communication Research, 33: pages 119-142.

[3] Epstein, R. (2011) Fight the frazzled mind. Scientific American Mind, 22(4): September-October; pages 31-35.