Positive Psychology
Well I’ve decided to start another section to my website. Considering this is a pretty depressing website (well I guess it depends on how you look at it- it does try to help people, but the subject matter is depressing!) I decided I need a bit of an uplifting part. Thus, I figured positive psychology would be the way to go (thanks to a great professor for mentioning it!). So here I will talk about what positive psychology is etc. and maybe how it can play a part in your life.
Well I figure I’ll start out with a sort of definition of positive psychology, what exactly it is:
“’It won’t be drugs like Prozac, nor will it be widespread psychotherapy sessions that alter the epidemic of depression now affecting young people,” warned APA President Martin E.P. Seligman, PhD, at the 1998 Annual Convention in San Francisco.
Rather, he said, at a Psi Chi sponsored lecture on 'Prevention of depression and positive psychology,' it will require psychologists to teach people how to take advantage of a simple skill they all have but tend to use incorrectly. 'It’s called disputing,' said Seligman—the act of 'monitoring and then arguing against the catastrophic things that you say to yourself.'”
'Those of you who habitually find changeable or transient causes to the setbacks in your life will recover rapidly from depression,' he said. As an example, he described someone who had been rejected in love and who admitted 'I didn’t work hard enough at it.' Working hard, said Seligman, 'is a transient and changeable cause. Whereas you might have said to yourself, ‘I’m unlovable.’ And unlovability tends to abide.'”(APA, vol. 29,10- McGuire)
I thought this best summed up positive psychology. Given how this all makes sense, it makes you wonder why we haven’t been practicing or looking at positive psychology more closely. We’ve been so busy looking at the negative aspects- what causes the various psychological problems, how do we fix them etc., that we’ve lost the aspect of what makes people happy. We’re so busy worrying about how to “fix” the mental illnesses that we’ve forgotten that we should also concentrate on taking preventative measures.
Seligman also talks about if you let the damage from one bad incident seep into other aspects of your lives. He states, “Some people, when they are fired from their job, may not look for a new job,' he said, 'but their marriage remains intact, jokes are still funny to them, they don’t get a cold that lasts all winter.' Others, though, 'find characteristics to explain their failures that hurt them in all situations,' he said.
He also goes on to define pessimism: 'It’s never going to change, it’s going to undermine everything you do. It’s your own fault. ‘I’m stupid, I’m unlovable.” He also wonders about risk factors, “Isn’t this a risk factor for depression? When bad events strike, you’ll be at much greater risk for helplessness and depressive deficits and for a longer time [when you take the pessimistic view]”
If you really think about it, this can apply to us, the cutters. I think we could all use a little positive psychology in our lives. Instead of always wondering how we can sustain ourselves without cutting, perhaps we can take a look at how to prevent ourselves from getting so far down that we do turn to cutting. Challenge your thoughts- like are you going to let one bad episode seep into everything else you do so you feel worthless and want to cut or worse? Sure, we’re so far gone, we can’t completely prevent our mental illnesses, but surely we can take a look at our lives and see what makes us happy. Maybe even challenge some of our thoughts- like make sure a bad incident is contained so it doesn’t just explode in our faces.
“Hope, wisdom, creativity, future mindedness, courage, spirituality, responsibility, and perseverance are either ignored or explained as transformations of more authentic negative impulses.” This said, again by Seligman, is also very true. Which is why I’ve somewhat created this website- to give hope, courage, perseverance. I believe you all have that in you and it just needs to be brought to the surface. I mean, to make it as far as you guys have, you’ve got to have a good amount of strength. It would have been so easy to give up, to let go, but we don’t. We fight on every single day, and that has to count for something. Sure, we’ve got our problems, but what about the good. Take for example- I know I’m a good softball player, good sister etc. If I’m feeling bad, I can just take a look at my strengths and know, sure I may suck at math, but hey look at this over here- I’m good at this. I can take a look at what makes me happy rather than sad, worthless or depressed.
2-26
All right, I've found some more time to update this! I will put the date when I update this, but eventually I'll get it all organized and pretty- but I'm a little short on time right now. So anyway, I thought I'd right a little about coping mechanisms and which ones have been deemed, "positive"... Now I have thought for a while now that humor was a bad coping mechanism- I guess because it always got me in trouble-
suppressing my emotions, laughing off everything and hiding what I felt inside. Even in the Psych ward I used humor, but
eventually I guess you could say I cracked under pressure. But anyway- I read an article- Adaptive Mental Mechanisms by George Vaillant, and he kind of gave a quick run down of the "good" coping
mechanisms- so I'll do a run down and quick summary:
Altruism- getting pleasure from giving others what they want etc.
Sublimination- allows an indirect resolution of conflict with neither adverse consequences nor loss of pleasure.
Suppression- Sacrifices beauty for truth; semi- conscious decision to postpone paying attention to a conflict. But this one you have to be careful with and have a balance- too much suppression could end up being harmful.
Anticipation- Capacity to keep affective response to an unbearable future in mind; the capacity to
perceive future danger affectively as well as cognitively- master conflict in small steps- both thinking and feeling about the future.
Humor (my personal favorite!)- permits emotion without discomfort and unpleasant effects; timing is everything (ya'll should hear my one timers!), you look at pain, but dissociate self- distract etc.
These mature defenses promote positive psychology- synthesize/alternate rather than deny/distract conflicting sources of human behavior- conscience, reality and emotions.
So there's my little paragraph on coping mechanisms since we talk a lot about that in my website and in emails. They are very important because cutting is obviously not a "good" coping mechanism etc.
Continuing updates...