On the Positive Side
Historically, the focus of all psychotherapies has been on curing various forms of mental disturbances, including maladaptive behavior, cognitive distortions, personality disorders, chemical imbalances, genetic predisposition, and so on. For the most part, the various psychotherapeutic approaches focus on ameliorating discomfort, re-structuring the personality or re-educating an individual, and changing maladaptive thought processes or behav-ior, in order that an individual might live a happier and more fulfilling life. Generally speaking, this approach follows what might be called a disease or pathology model. Similar to most of Western medicine, it focuses on what’s wrong with an individual, seeking to remedy a disease or problem.
However, medicine is undergoing a transformation in which the focus is more on disease prevention and health maintenance than only curing disease when it occurs. Researchers are investigating the value of vitamin sup-plements, acupuncture, nutrients, herbal medicine, fiber, exercise, meditation, and spirituality, to name but a few approaches to disease prevention. Homeopathic remedies are being viewed in a new light for the first time since the discovery of penicillin. As our life expectancy increases, we want to live healthier lives not just longer lives.
A similar transformation is taking place in the field of mental health. Sigmund Freud was reputed to have said, “The role of psychoanalysis is to ameliorate people’s neurosis and leave them with the normal unhappiness of life.” Now, I don’t know how true this attribution is, but I do know that for generations of men-tal health professionals the focus has been on psychopathology. With the exception of a group of psychologists during the late 1960’s and early 70’s, led by Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and other proponents of what was referred to as the human potentials movement, most practitioners focused what was wrong with peo-ple’s lives. Everything from substance abuse, to compulsive masturbation, to over-eating, has been viewed as a disease or illness.
An American Psychological Association president, Dr. Martin Seligman, called upon psychologists to focus on a positive psychology that can enhance people’s lives. He challenged us to use psychology to improve the quality of lives through health –strengthening the immune system to ward off disease. It is time to look for ways to prevent disease, as well as psychological disturbances. We should be examining strengths and finding ways to enhance these strengths, rather than focusing exclusively on weakness.
One of the problems inherent in this model, however, is that in-surance companies, more often than not, pay when you are sick, not for prevention. This model forces practitioners to look for “what’s wrong” with the individual in order to come up with a reimbursable diagnosis. Most insurance companies, for example, do not reimburse for marriage counseling. Yet we know that unhappiness in marriage can manifest itself in physical illness, depression, loss of work, inability to focus, and so. We know that with psychological intervention people will lose less time from work, spend fewer days in the hospital, have fewer indus-trial accidents, make fewer visits to their physician; and, In short, there will be an increase in productivity, and in the long-run costs to individuals and businesses will be reduced.
Psychology and Your Quality of Life
Let us take a look at a few of the ways psychology can improve the quality of our lives.
Physical health
We can do whatever is necessary to build up and reinforce our immune system so that it will resist disease. We can carefully watch our diet, get sufficient exercise, learn about vitamin sup-plements, nutraceuticals, health supplements, etc.; regularly check our blood-chemistry, vital signs, and other physiological processes through at least annual physicals; and even learn how to monitor ourselves before illness strikes.
If illness should befall us, we can still focus on enhancing the natural healing properties inherent to our bodies. Psychology has taught us that visualizations, meditation, spirituality, and auto-hypnosis can enhance our immune system and help us become more resistant to disease. People with a positive outlook on life, a positive self-image, and high self-esteem have fewer illnesses and recover more quickly from them than do those who are de-pressed, negative, and have low self-esteem. It has been demon-strated that a brief hypnotic session with a psychologist can even decrease the length of post-surgery hospital stays.
Personal Growth
Psychologists have found that many psychological problems of everyday life are largely a function of inappropriate belief sys-tems and maladaptive behavioral patterns. The world as it is per-ceived and interpreted by a child is very different than the world perceived and experienced by an adult. Yet, many adult beliefs are formed by the perceptions and interpretations developed in childhood. Many maladaptive behaviors were designed to help the individual deal with a world that was painful, confusing, and frightening. The behaviors mitigated some of the pain, leaving the individual feeling more in control, less frightened, and less pained. But as the years passed, these behaviors became less and less constructive. They stopped serving their original purpose, leaving the individual stuck with the effects. Over-eating, for example, may have been the child’s way of coping with the anxi-ety of living in a dysfunctional family or feeling insecure living in a world that s/he could not control. Food soothes that feeling. The world that was overwhelming to a child may not be so overwhelming to an adult. However, once the child learns that food can assuage feeling of discomfort, it becomes the method of choice for dealing all sorts of anxiety.
Psychologists can help individuals alter their belief systems and develop new, more effective ways of coping with discomfort. Furthermore, these same approaches can help individuals modify their belief systems and develop new behaviors for enhancing their life, much as a sports coach might help your tennis or golf game. By pointing out what behaviors are interfering with your stroke, a coach can help you develop new behaviors to improve your game. In fact, many psychologists are consulting with indi-viduals in the capacity of "life coach" rather than "psychothera-pist."
Emotional Health
People often experience life as a series of emergencies demand-ing immediate and intense reactions. This constant state of reac-tivity plays havoc with one's emotional world, not to mention the effects on one's body each time we call for mobilization. It is emotionally and physically exhausting. For these people, life is a series of calamities. Every event is met with 100% emotional response. They seldom become "somewhat annoyed," but rather they become "enraged." Every ding on their car becomes a major event. What these people do is to exaggerate the magnitude of the event to fit the intensity of their emotional reaction when they should be reducing their emotional reaction to fit the event. In terms of intensity of reaction, for these individuals, receiving a traffic ticket is the same as being mugged.
Another common tendency is for people to constantly prepare for real or imagined danger. They are always in a state of "ready alert," perceiving and expecting danger in every interaction. They are always scanning their environment in a state of hyper-vigilance. At some point in their pasts, these individuals learned to perceive the world broadly as an unsafe place, so to stop and "smell the roses" is anathema. They cannot imagine letting down their guard lest they be harmed.
Psychologists can help individuals with such issues by examining the belief system upon which their behaviors are predicated. For instance, the individuals might learn to evaluate the magnitude event in terms of its importance. By using a one-to-ten scale, where ten is reserved for life threatening diseases or accidents, each event is rated. If a person is late for an appointment, for example, relative to learning a loved one has terminal brain can-cer, the tardiness may receive a value of "1." Therefore, the magnitude of the reaction should be on the level of "1" as well. By learning to adjust their reactions to fit the event, rather than the other way around, they learn to get more control over their emotional lives.
The psychologist might help the individual to understand the relative probability of an event occurring as well as the ability to deal with it. For the most part, this individual carries with him the belief that he would not be able to cope with most situations unless totally prepared. He might be operating in the world similar to a helpless child for whom life itself looms as an ever-present danger. By examining the basis for such a belief system, this individual can be helped to create a more realistic appraisal of danger.
Achieving Balance
A key element in having a more fulfilling life, with fewer psycho-logical concerns, is to achieve balance. Learning how to balance the various aspects of your life – career, marriage, children, spouse, community involvement, spiritual life, social life, recrea-tion, physical health – is not an easy task. Most people sacrifice at least one aspect. Some people drop several of these areas al-together. Others are franticly trying to juggle all of them, often not enjoying any.
So, how do we achieve balance? The first step is to evaluate your expectations. Then evaluate your circumstances and abili-ties. It is important to realistically appraise your situation. Evaluate what we can and cannot do. Evaluate the level of in-volvement with which you are capable of participating in the various areas of our lives. While you may wish to be president of the parents association while raising two pre-schoolers and hold-ing down a full time job, it may be more appropriate to consider being on a committee that meets once a month. You can still be involved, but the degree of involvement must be modified to fit out life situation. Rather than having no hobbies because of time constraints, we might consider having a less demanding hobby - one that is relaxing as well as fulfilling.
Achieving balance requires planning. Just as building a house or developing a business requires a blueprint or a business plan, so does a balanced life. It requires that you do your homework, realistically designing how you are going to develop a balanced plan for living. Just as architects are able to develop appropriate housing plans for your home, many psychologists are quite adept at developing life plans with individuals. Most people have little difficulty obtaining architectural or business consultation, but they believe they should be experts when it comes to life plans.
Marriage Enhancement
Psychologist, Dr. Judith S. Wallerstein, co-author of The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts, carried out in-depth inter-views with 50 couples who have been married at least nine years, had children together, and independently and who independently regarded their marriage as happy. Dr. Wallerstein identified nine “psychological tasks” as the pillars on which any marital rela-tionship rests. The following are Dr. Wallerstein’s nine tasks:
• Separate emotionally from one’s childhood so as to invest fully in the marriage and, at the same time, to redefine the lines of connection with both families of origin.
• Build togetherness based on mutual identification, shared intimacy and an expanded conscience that includes both partners, while at the same time setting boundaries to pro-tect each partner’s autonomy.
• Establish a rich and pleasurable sexual relationship and to protect it from the incursions of the workplace and family obligations; it is the second part of this task which must not be overlooked or taken for granted.
• (for couples with children) Embrace the daunting roles of parenthood and to absorb the impact of Her Majesty the Baby’s dramatic entrance into the marriage. At the same time the couple must continue the work of protecting their own privacy.
• Confront and master the inevitable crises of life and main-tain the strength of the marital bond in the face of adversity and create a safe haven within the marriage for the expres-sion of difference, anger and conflict.
• Use humor and laughter to keep things in perspective and to avoid boredom and isolation.
• Provide nurturance and comfort to each other, satisfying each partner’s need for dependency and offer continuing encouragement and support.
• Keep alive the romantic, idealized images of falling in love, while facing the sober realities of the changes wrought by time.
Dr. Wallerstein’s tasks are not easy. To accomplish them re-quires that each spouse be committed to enhancing their mar-riage and making it work. In addition, they require that each spouse be equally committed to their own personal growth as well as the growth of their partner. The preservation and en-hancement of the marriage partnership must be a top priority.
Stress management
Stress is the body’s adaptive response to unusual circumstances and can come from internal and external sources. Prolonged, intense stress can and often does have deleterious effects on mind and body. It can affect the immune system making us vul-nerable to high blood pressure, ulcers, and heart disease. It can affect our judgment, our perceptions, our interpersonal relation-ships, and our job performance. Some people are more prone to experience stress than others. For example, people who have difficulty accepting change or being out of control have higher stress levels than those who are adaptive and accepting of the contingencies of life. Psychotherapy is often helpful in dealing with chronic stress reactions and post-traumatic stress disorders. Meditation, yoga, relaxation techniques, exercise, and hobbies can ameliorate temporary stress reactions and can be helpful in preventing stress reactions if practiced regularly.
There are several common activities that are useful in reducing or coping with transitory, situational stress. These techniques, when applied regularly, can significantly reduce or soften the brunt of the stress reaction to temporary events.
Relaxation techniques. There are many different forms of relaxa-tion techniques including auto-hypnosis, progressive muscle re-laxation, and some forms of yoga. One that I have found helpful combines several aspects of these approaches:
Start by seating yourself in a comfortable position in a quiet area. Loosen your clothing so that you do not feel constricted in any way. Close your eyes and squeeze them shut as tight as you can. Progressively move from one muscle group to another, teeth and jaw, neck, shoulders, arms, fists, chest, back, thighs, buttocks, calves, and feet. Tighten each in turn until your entire body is tight. Then relax one group at time, feeling the contrast between the tight experience and the relaxed experience. Notice the tin-gling or what ever sensation you have. Just notice it, don’t do anything about it. And as you relax each area, focus on your breathing. Breathe slowly and rhythmically until your entire body relaxes. Finally, imagine yourself in a location that you find es-pecially relaxing, safe, and comfortable. For some people, it might be a secluded beach, for others a mountain lake. Each of us has our own place. Once you have the image in mind, make it as clear as you can, almost as though you are there. Let your thoughts go, don’t try to capture them or block them; just let them go by like so many butterflies fluttering. Stay in your “place” for five or ten minutes and then slowly remind yourself to come back to present time or home. Gently open your eyes and gradually re-orient yourself. This approach takes about 15 to 20 minutes. You should feel refreshed when you are through.
Deep Breathing. Deep breathing has long been known to have relaxing properties. All forms of yoga, athletic exercises, and meditation have a breathing component. Oxygen itself tends to revitalize; it both energizes and relaxes as we cleanse our system. Breathing exercises are simple. Sitting quietly, breathe in as deeply as you can through your nose and exhale through your mouth expelling all of the air. Repeat this three times. Then, focusing your attention on your breathing, breathe in slowly through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Breathe rhythmically. Repeat this ten times. You will notice the differ-ence.
Physical exercise. Of all form of exercise, aerobic exercise in particular, has relaxation qualities. Getting oxygen into your blood stream, releasing stored toxins in your body through sweat, and increasing the production and release of endorphins into your blood stream will have a calming effect on your entire sys-tem. That is one of the reasons so many people are participating in these forms of exercise across the nation.
About the Author: Edward Dreyfus, Ph.D., is a counselor in private practice in Santa Monica who specializes in individual therapy, relationship counseling, sex therapy, and life coaching from a humanistic perspective. Edward is available here: http://www.goodtherapy.org/m15_view_item.html?m15:item=ead%40docdreyfus.com or here: http://www.goodtherapy.org/Northridge-therapy.htm
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