|
Emotional Fitness: Positive Psychology:
How Can Healthy People Have a Happier Life?
By Farzaneh S. Khazrai, Ph.D.
fkhazrai@cox.net
Have you ever wondered how people react and act differently in the face of unfortunate events and hardships? Some feel helpless, breakdown, and sink into depression, and others get up and look for solutions with an optimistic attitude and hope, and take steps toward resolution and betterment. The question is how some people, in spite of unfortunate events and setbacks in life, get on with their lives with the same hopefulness and efforts to achieve their goals and in the process live more satisfying lives, and some do not.
My last several articles in PAYAM were on depression, which is the most pervasive of all mental illnesses. This holiday season I would like to start with a positive subject. The questions, like the one I posed above, are the ones that social and mental health scientists have been asking for several decades. The area of mental health science which has been studying to answer these questions is called Positive Psychology.
What is Positive Psychology?
Positive psychology is the study of optimal human functioning. It is the study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and families to thrive. It started as an attempt to achieve a necessary balance to the systematic bias inherent in psychology's historical emphasis on mental illness rather than on mental wellness. Martin Seligman, considered the father of the modern positive psychology movement, pointed out that for the last half century clinical psychology "has been consumed by a single topic only – ‘mental illness’.” He urged the community of mental health professionals to return to the earlier missions of psychology of nurturing talent and improving normal life. Although much earlier, others- some of you may be familiar with their names– Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Eric Fromm– developed theories about positive human’s attributes, but there was no solid empirical research to support. With his research, Martin Seligman has guided a new generation of psychologists to a renewed interest in this approach, providing a firm scientific foundation for the study of human happiness and optimal function, thus adding a positive side to the predominantly negative discipline of psychology.
Seligman worked with others to create the "positive" list of character strengths and virtues which looks at what can go right, a counterpart to the list of what can go wrong in mental illness. In their research they looked across cultures and across millennia to distill a manageable list of virtues that have been highly valued from ancient time to contemporary cultures. Their list includes six character strengths: wisdom/knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Each of these has several sub-headings. One of their key points is that they do not believe that there is a hierarchy for the six virtues – no one is more fundamental than or a precursor to the others. Through their research they also found that the personal strengths and virtues were more universal than they expected. They have produced a list of two dozen character strengths, grouped within six broad areas of virtue.
It will be lengthy for this article going through the list of all character strengths; I will leave that for future issues. However, I believe it is important to mention three related issues of positive psychology research. These are three learned attitudes that can have profound effects negatively and positively in our lives and the way we live it.
1- Learned helplessness:
One of the Seligman’s foundational experiments and theory which is "learned helplessness” began in 1967, as part of his study of depression. He and his colleagues found that the “learned helplessness” to be a psychological condition in which one has learned to act or behave helplessly in a particular situation, usually when experiencing inability to control, to change and/or to avoid an adverse situation and/or consequences. The person experiences this helplessness even when actually in situations that one has the power to change/avoid the unpleasant or even harmful circumstance. The researchers have seen this helplessness with severely depressed patients, and argued that clinical depression and related mental conditions result partly from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation. The issue and related research has had profound result in recent years on the subject of treatment of depression. Its full discussion is out of the scope of this article.
2-Learned optimism:
Learned optimism is the strength and skill of attributing one's failures/unfortunate events, first to causes that are external and not all personal (not one’s fault); second, to causes that are variable (not permanent); and to causes that are specific (limited to a specific situation). For example, an optimistic person realistically looks at her/his unfortunate event. Then she/he first, recognizes the external causes (the environment or other people). She/he does not attribute the unfortunate situation only to her/his luck, fault, (self-blaming attitude). She/he takes responsible action to correct mistake on her/his part if realistically there is one; second, recognizes that the causes will not likely to happen again; and third, recognizes that causes were specific to the situation, which means they will not affect his/her success in other life endeavors.
3-Learned to Hope
Hope is a learned style of future goal-oriented thinking in which the person utilizes both one’s perceived capacity to find ways to desired goals and motivations to embark on those ways.
Practical applications of positive psychology include helping individuals and organizations identify their strengths and use them to increase and sustain their respective levels of well-being. Everyone has some strengths of character. In my experience working with people, I always look for their strengths. I have found that that they can identify at least a handful of strengths like love of learning, creativity, optimism, interpersonal skill, hope, honesty, perseverance, work ethic, courage, fairness, humanity, love and kindness, as very much of her/his own.
I have an exercise for you to do for this month. For the first few days everyday take a 10 minute break of your usual work and focus on finding your strengths and make a list of your findings. Then start to exercise them as best as you know. As you do, find out how exercising your positive qualities enrich your life. Take moments to focus and make a mental note of your experience (Martin E. P. Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).
Practice more your strengths and abilities in order to live well. Until the next issue, all the best wishes!
Dr. Khazrai is a licensed marriage & family therapist with more than 25 years of experience in individual, couple and family psychotherapy, practicing in Newport Beach.
|
