HUMAN HAPPINESS - ITS NATURE & ITS ATTAINMENT
VOLUME II: THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS
CHAPTER 15
ELIMINATE NEGATIVE FEELINGS
THE TWELFTH FUNDAMENTAL
Fundamental Twelve is known as "the depressing fundamental," because it deals with the troubled, unhappy side of our lives.
By in large, the Fundamentals we've presented so far have been pretty "up-beat." And why not? These Volumes are about happiness -- the most "up-beat" topic there is. Naturally, therefore, most of our discussions have focused on the more pleasant themes and aspects of life. Indeed, the essence of these Volumes has been an attempt to examine the ultimate state of human existence (happiness) by learning what the very happiest people can teach us. The Fourteen Fundamentals, which has been derived from the study of these happy people, provides a guideline for the average individual wishing to climb that mythical "happiness ladder" all the way to the top.
This makes these Volumes quite different from the bulk of technical and "popular" literature in the field. Most books in psychology deal with problem areas in life: depressions, anxieties, dysfunctional families, parenting difficulties, marital conflicts, etc.. And though the majority of those books provide much insight into such personal difficulties, as well as a lot of guidance toward overcoming or working-through them, the best results just teach a person how to be "problem free" -- but not necessarily happy.
Perhaps the main distinction that The Fourteen Fundamentals Program enjoys is that it takes over where the rest of the more problem-solving approaches leave off.
Certainly, eliminating marital conflict eliminates a lot of unhappiness from one's life. No doubt, working-through the remnant scars of an abusive childhood frees one's mind of long-carried, emotional baggage. Clearly, ridding oneself of a deep-seated fear or insecurity can go a long way in making day-to-day living a lot easier. But is that all there is to it? Isn't there something more?
In the early days of psychology, the answer was: "no." In those early days, is was just assumed that the Good Life was simply the absence of pain and unhappiness. If one could just conquer their personal problems and difficulties, they'd be happy. Indeed, in many quarters, "happiness" is still defined as merely being the absence of unhappiness. Yet it is clear from the accumulated research we have presented, that true happiness is more -- in fact, much, much more -- than just the absence of unhappiness from one's life.
Most of us still hold to the the idea that happiness flows when all personal problems are cured. But in fact, when all personal problems are cured we're really just in a neutral happiness-state. In essence, we're only half way up the ladder. Indeed, we've only begun our climb...
The Fourteen Fundamentals have shown you how to begin that climb. Yet here we find a "catch 22." The Fourteen Fundamentals are essentially designed to help fairly average people move from a relatively neutral position in life, up the ladder, to a happier plane. But what about those people who need happiness the most -- the people who are already unhappy to begin with -- do they have any hope?
The answer, according to the research we've done, is: "it depends..."
On one hand, the research indicates a rather favorable answer. In the dozen or so investigations I, and my staff, have conducted over the years, we have been gratified to find that the most unhappy and "normally" depressed individuals we have included in our studies have typically shown some the greatest happiness-improvements of all (citing). Anecdotal evidence with hospitalized depressed patients, prison inmates, crisis intervention clinics, and in my own work with depressed patients also suggests positive results. Even a formal study with terminal cancer patients found a significantly positive effect using the Fundamentals (citing).
Although not designed for individuals in severely depressing and unhappy circumstances, the Fundamentals appear, in many cases, to be helpful. Yet this has not always been the case...
Over the many years I've taught the Fundamentals as part of my college courses (or shared them in other public and media formats), there have been examples of a "back-fire effect" with some who have learned about the Program. Though the occasions have been rare (I estimate about 1 person in 100), some people have a negative experience with the Fundamentals. Try as they might, working with the Fourteen Fundamentals seems to make no difference in their happiness.
Even in our more rigorous experiments, the same untoward phenomenon occurred. But worse than this, a smaller number of individuals exposed to the Fundamentals have reported that the information made them even more unhappy than before -- basically because their newfound knowledge about happiness brought their own, unhappy condition more keenly to mind.
Such "back-fire effects," as rare as they are, have disturbed me deeply. It saddens me that a program to help people find greater happiness might have just the opposite effect on some. Yet, as a researcher, I have found there is a reason why some, rare individuals cannot profit from the lessons we have gleaned from the happiest people, and that is that they tend to be burdened with deeper, unresolved psychological conflicts to begin with.
Put in terms of an analogy: it is hard to climb the "happiness ladder" when psychological "gremlins" are pulling on your legs.
Which brings us to Fundamental 12: "Eliminate the Negative" -- "the depressing Fundamental."
MEMORIES
Life is inevitably filled with problems, stresses, heartbreaks, and disappointments.
It's bad enough that each of us have to endure these unhappy events as they occur; but what's worse, is that they remain with us in memory -- long after the actual event has passed -- to torment us time and time again, after the fact.
Memory is a double-edged sword. On one hand, memory is a marvelous blessing for us. Our memories store all the learning, all the information, all the experience we have gained in life. Without this immense storehouse of knowledge we would be unable to function at all. Without memory, all our skills, all our abilities, and all our education would be lost (indeed, never gained in the first place). Without the ability to learn from our experiences, we wouldn't survive at all.
Yet more than learning and information, our memory also houses a relatively on-going record of the events which have occurred in our lives -- our personal history, so to speak. It provides for us an individual sense of our self, and our unique place in the world. It provides a sense of continuity, and gives meaning and security to our existence. When this function of memory is lost, as it is for patients suffering from the various forms of amnesia, one is left completely lost, anxious, and without identity.
Memory can provide some of life's better moments, as well. How pleasant it is to take a "trip down memory lane" to recall some of the happier events in our lives. Looking through an old photo album, hearing a passed "hit" on the radio, or just reminiscing with friends allows us the chance to re-live a "great time" over again. Not only did we enjoy those good times when they occurred, but thanks to memory, they're there to enjoy over and over.
No, for the most part, memory is a wonderful blessing. But memory can also has it's dark side. It is filled with the unhappy experiences we've been through -- the pains, the failures, the hurts we've suffered in life. And here is when memory can become a curse...
As life progresses from early childhood on, our memories fill with experience and information. Most of this, as we've said, is quite beneficial and useful -- much of it is quite pleasant to recall. Yet, some of it is rather unpleasant, to say the least -- and these are the kinds of memories which tend to damage our psychological growth and stunt our happiness as the years go by.
It is the unhappy memories we're addressing here in this chapter -- and how they build over the years to damage our mental and physical health...
THE PRESSURE COOKER
To demonstrate the principles in this chapter, imagine your mind as a old-fashioned pressure cooker (a pot with a clamped lid which could create ultra-high stove temperatures). Imagine, further, that we're just one of a number of such "pressure cookers" at an infamous school for sadistic chefs, and today's lesson is to duplicate a typical lifetime using a variety of highly negative ingredients.
Our chefs have a myriad of unpleasant ingredients to cook with: there's a little remorse, a touch of anger, a tablespoon of guilt, and a dash of jealousy. There's sadness, regret, blaming, hatred, insecurity, fear, loneliness, resentment, spite, self-pity, humiliation, and indigence for flavoring. For extra spice, they can add a bit of sexual betrayal, bereavement and guilt, physical abuse, or the pain from an accident, ill health, or a psychological trauma or two. It's truly a sadistic chef's dream! There are so many thousands of unhappy ingredients to cook with.
Now each second in this macabre cooking school equals years in our average lifetime, and as each chef sprinkles negative ingredients into our individual pot, each sprinkle represents the negative experiences we've lived through. As these "years" go by, each pot slowly fills with the hurts and sadnesses life deposits in them.
Not every pot gets the same proportions. Some may receive more anger than guilt, while others receive more grief than fear. Additionally, some pots may get generous spoonfuls of ingredients, while others get only a pinch or two. As in real life, no two individuals have the same amount of pain to bear -- nor are any two individuals exactly alike in the kinds of pains they are given.
Every so often, the chefs clamp down the lid of the cookers and place them on the stovetop. There, they check the initial pressure in the cooker (with the pressure gauge that those old-fashioned pressure cookers had), and then they slowly turn up the heat. The winning chef, of course, is the one who can run his cooker up to the red ("danger area") mark first, and, if lucky, totally explode his pot!
In the first heating, none of the cookers are destroyed, so the chefs go back to work adding more negative ingredients. As time goes by (several minutes for the chefs; many years for our pots) the recipes are reheated many more times. A few are destroyed quite early. Others take repeated heating and massive negative ingredients to blow. But by the end of the school, success has been attained by most of the chefs; only a few of the pots are left in tact.
After class, the chefs get together to compare notes. Certain conclusions become clear to them as they analyze their data. Their conclusions, in this analogy, can help us understand the nature of human emotionality, as well.
In this analogy, the cooker (or pot) represents our individual mind. The negative ingredients, of course, represent the numerous unhappy experiences each of us go through in life. The heat from the stove is meant to represent the stresses and pressures we experience periodically. And the explosion of the cookers is, of course, representative of an emotional collapse ("mental breakdown") or the onset of a more permanent, emotional disorder.
At first, some of the chefs, whose pots weren't the first to explode, complain that their classmates had some unfair advantages. A squabble ensues. Some chefs fuss that their pots were initially weaker than the others.
Psychologically, they have a valid point. The research has found that some individuals can handle far more stress than others. Indeed, some "pots" are much more resilient to stress than others. Perhaps this is due to genetic factors, more likely it is due to the development of certain coping skills. Whichever, some people are far stronger than others in dealing with stress and misfortune.
Other chefs complain that their colleagues had hotter stoves that gave them an unfair advantage. They argue that it was the heat (stresses of life) which accounted for the pots blowing, not the ingredients (negative experiences each chef included). In fact, the chefs which argue this point are correct also. There is little doubt that some of us live extremely stressful lives, while others manage to avoid stress altogether. Some of us seem to live on one of the front burners where the heat is on high, while others of us luck-out on a back burner where the heat is turned down.
A few of the chefs blame their winning colleagues on the recipe itself. Some of them criticize the chef who put in a whole cupful of "guilt," others point to the chef who added an extra measure of "bitterness." Essentially, these chefs are saying that some emotions are more damaging to the psyche than others. Although never rigorously studied in research, I believe our chefs are on to something here, as well. Some emotions appear to have more devastating effects on our personality than others. In my own clinical experience, I find that guilt creates deeper problems than fear, self-disgust more than hatred, rejection more than loss, and so on. And though the research has yet to objectively rank such feelings in terms of their psychological damage, most clinical practitioners and researchers believe that such differential emotional effects are, in fact, discernable.
In the final analysis, however, the chefs were forced to agree: the main factor was simply the amount of negative ingredients each pot had received over the "years." Though the pots differed in strength; though the heat varied, though the kinds of ingredients differed -- the main variable which determined the blowing of any pot was the sheer amount of negative ingredients which had been poured into it. The poor pots who'd had more negativity in their "lives," blew their tops a lot sooner than the others.
Life is much like this cooking class. Our mind is essentially a vessel (the pot), and over a lifetime, each of the negative experiences we face deposits a layer of unhappy, painful ingredients in it. Some of these layers can be quite substantial (a cupful, or two) when Life presents a major crisis (the loss of a loved-one, a nasty divorce, being the victim of abuse, etc.), but most of the layers only amount to a sprinkle or two, caused by the small rejections, the occasional fights and arguments, the little hurts, and the minor disappointments in living.
As the years go by, the negative residual from life's difficulties builds layer by layer. Practically every day that goes by, some minor incident occurs that adds a tiny pinch to the accumulating debris. Slowly the deposits grow. And, more importantly, they never go away -- they just build and build. And as they build, our subconscious mind is placed in greater and greater stress.
Consciously, we're hardly aware that's it's happening to us, but every negative experience is being recorded somewhere in an obscure corner of our memory. The vast majority we will never recall again in our lifetime, but each one is there doing their dirty-work. And the more of these little deposits there are -- as tiny and insignificant as any one might be -- collectively the add-up to a mounting stress on our mind and body.
Even our chefs noticed this. As they periodically checked the pressure gages, they found something remarkable happening as they added more and more negative ingredients. The needle on the gauge was slowly rising without any heat at all. Of course, once the pots were on the stove, the needle shot way up. Yet, the chefs had to admit that, even without heat, the negative ingredients appeared to create some pressure all by themselves!
As the residual, trapped emotion from life's little hurts and major traumas grows, it creates strain and pressure. This internal strain and pressure, in turn, creates a host of problems for each of us. The kinds of problems vary, but in the broadest terms they fall into two basic categories: psychological problems and health problems.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
Negative emotional strain, built from a continuing onslaught of negative experiences over time, is considered to be the main cause of most emotional difficulties.
(Although science continues to debate the role of genetic factors in mental disorders, virtually all experts agree that negative experiences in life play a major part in most of them. How much these experiential factors contribute varies from expert to expert. There are some who feel that virtually all emotional disorders are the exclusive product of negative emotional build-up during a person's life. There are others who believe that genetic factors predispose an individual to eventual illness -- yet, even they admit that negative, life-experiences tend to "trigger" and exacerbate such genetic predispositions. Whichever the case, all experts agree that negative emotional experience either directly causes -- or greatly compounds an inborn tendency toward -- most common emotional disorders.)
The story of most individual's mental deterioration follows a typical scenario. Negative life-experiences, bit by bit, tend to fill the human memory with trace feelings of unhappy emotion, mostly on a subconscious level. Driven by the frequency and intensity of these negative experiences, each person's mind fills, to its own degree, with this negative residual from the past. And slowly but surely, it begins to affect us.
For some it begins at birth. Even as an infant, the bickering and fights we constantly hear from our crib entrench an fearful and discomforting view of the world which may be with us for life. Chronic neglect of our basic needs imprints deep insecurities within our psyche. And outright physical abuse gives a picture of the world that is angry, hate ridden, and aggressive.
By childhood, the die has been cast for many of us. Already we feel the moods of anxiety, insecurity, or depression which were set before. Sometimes we react with tears or angry outbursts which seem to come from nowhere. Specific memories elude us, but the feelings from them still well-up inside.
Already, some of us experience the effects of "negative build-up," but there is even more to come. Although most of our adult memories are faint on the subject, our childhood was filled to the brim with unpleasantries. Punishment from our parents, teasing from our siblings, ridicule from the kids at school, scolding from our teachers -- such would be the minor emotional aches we all suffered then. But some of us found our lot even more unkind with episodes of sexual abuse, parental neglect, social rejection based on our race or ethnicity, and other such traumas.
By the time we reach adolescence, our personality has just begun to gel. But then we hit the hardest, and one of the unhappiest, times of all (according to the researchers). The teen years are filled with stigma. One's physical appearance, popularity, intelligence, and athletic ability all become the focus of intense social scrutiny. It is a tender and fragile time for most of us -- filled with more insecurity and hurt than success. Those of us who have sturdy emotional backgrounds make it o.k.; but those who don't are already on a downhill track.
If we make it into young adulthood without a break-down we are quite lucky. Many of the more severe emotional disorders, like schizophrenia, hit in the late teen years. Yet most of us get there intact. And once we've arrived, our basic personality is fairly well formed...
Perhaps by this time, we're home free!
Indeed, in a certain sense we are. Many of the most severe emotional disorders become evident in childhood or adolescence, so those of us who make it into adulthood without symptom are far less likely to suffer from such illness. But that doesn't exclude us completely. For many of us, it only means that the onset has been postponed...
As adults, the hurts and dissapointments -- indeed, even the more traumatic events of life -- don't hit us half as hard as they might have when we were younger. But still, they sting us some. And even though they seem to just "roll off our back," subconsciously they're being added to the slowly building, negative layers of hurts in our memory. Year after year -- unhappy experience after unhappy experience -- the mental deposits form. And as these deposits build, more and more pressure builds.
In the beginning, we hardly sense what this "build-up" is doing to us -- but the warning signs are always there. For a long time we've considered it natural that we have our "blue" moods. We've never questioned our angry outbursts. Our occasional feelings of anxiety and insecurity seem second nature to us. Unhappiness is something we've grown used to. We tend to think that our condition is normal and we are unaware of the many years of subconscious hurts and angers that are bubbling-up beneath the surface which are infecting our day to day mood.
Year after year we maintain; controlling our moods and pushing ahead in life. But then, the heat is turned on...
THE TEMPERATURE RISES
It doesn't take much to burst an individual with a long history of hurt. Rise the pressure far enough, and most anyone will collapse. A little heat, as our maniacal chefs discovered, can take even the most well-adjusted person to the brink of emotional disturbance.
When the heat is raised (i.e., when everyday pressures and stresses build to the "red line") is when most "pots" begin to show obvious weakness. Especially during those periods when the heat stays on for a prolonged period of weeks or months.
The human mind can only take so much stress. As pressure builds, clear thinking becomes increasingly difficult. Emotional residuals buried deep in the past begin to flood into the present. Panic and insecurity take hold. Mistrust of those around us starts to grow. Worry and anxiety fills our thoughts.
At first, we respond with our more typical coping strategies -- hoping to alleviate the mounting stress. But, will all this stress we find these old coping tactics fail to handle the situation. Again and again we return to our old strategies, each time in a more grasping and desperate manner. But because the pressures are mounting so fast, these old strategies offer little relief. As the pressure is continues, the effects of this stress begin showing themselves in symptoms of mental disintegration. Normal patterns of thought and behavior are replaced with more neurotic adaptations. The brain's natural mechanisms for coping with stress are being overloaded, and the classic patterns of mental illness begin to show themselves.
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TYPICAL PATTERNS OF DISORDER
Normally, most people experience one or more "early-warning" signs that stress is taking hold. Some of the more typical reactions are: frequent depressed moods; insomnia; fatigue; irritability; a sense of anxiety; minor panic attacks; social withdrawal; increased use of alcohol, medications, or illicit drugs; a loss of interest in work or family life; crying spells or other exaggerated emotional reactions; frequent temper outbursts; suicidal thoughts toward one's self or hostile feelings toward others; an increase of health-related problems; feelings of isolation and alienation; frequent aches, pains, or other physical discomforts; or just a general sense of malaise and apathy toward life.
If such stresses progress over long periods of time, however, the human mind appears to adapt to them in a variety of neurotic or psychotic ways. Psychologists are only beginning to understand why some minds drift into one of these patterns as opposed to another, but the patterns among those who suffer from the same syndrome are so identical there is little doubt that they are extensions of normal mental functioning, built-in to the basic structure of all of our brains. Each is seen as one of several ways a normal brain can react when enough psychological stress is placed on it; and each of these reactions may also be viewed as gross exaggerations or how some individual minds respond to the normal fears, hurts, and insecurities we all live with.
According to current models of mental disorder, and documented in the current "DSM-IV" (expand ref. here), there are seventeen main classifications of emotional disorders.
NOTE: expand below with general statistics
The Anxiety Disorders (which include reactions like Panic Disorder, Phobic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). Here, deep-seated, unacknowledged stresses from an individual's past or current life often play a part.
A person suffering from a Panic Disorder experiences severe attacks of abrupt anxiety and strong physical reaction, from time to time. These attacks of extreme anxiety seem to come "right out of the blue." Phobic Disorders display the same anxiety reaction, but the reaction appears to be focused on one rather specific object, situation, or location (like closed-in places; heights; darkness, etc.). On the other hand, Generalized Anxiety Disorder is just that: a pervasive feeling of dread or threat which permeates every aspect of day-to-day living.
Sometimes underlying anxieties manifest themselves in repetitive and irresistible urges to engage in almost ritualized compulsions or obsessive thoughts. Persons suffering from an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder deeply involve themselves in these thoughts or actions in a psychological attempt to avoid the deeper conflicts.
To some extent these bizarre attempts to ward off anxiety work. A behavioral ritual, the avoidance of circumstances or locations which create extreme anxiety, the focus on a particular thoughts -- all tend to relieve the really feared, underlying cause of anxiety. But they don't actually help to diminish it -- they just mask it.
The Phobic personality way to cope with great emotional pressure by somehow transferring stress from a variety of sources onto just one strongly feared object. Again, the pattern provides some temporary relief, since all the stress is focused on one type of situation like high places, for example, and that one situation is generally easier to manage and avoid than a life full of problems.
Other emotional disorders appear to affect the body rather than the mind. The Somatoform Disorders (meaning "bodylike") show a variety of physical symptoms which have no physiological basis. Here the underlying anxieties manifest themselves in a host of vague and often misdiagnosed physical complaints for which there is no precisely determined medical origin (Somatization Disorder), yet sometimes even major complaints (like seizures, paralysis, or the loss of sight, hearing, or speaking) can occur (called a Conversion Disorder). Here again, the mind is automatically (though ineffectually) trying to cope with uncontrollable stress. In cases of Conversion Disorders, for example, the mind is trying to cope the best way it can with traumatizing or uncomfortable circumstances. A woman finds his arm paralyzed on the morning she must sign unwanted divorce papers. A child appears "deaf" when surrounded by constantly arguing parents. A young girl finds herself blind after witnessing a repeated violence in her neighborhood. An older man can hardly hear when his wife has been nagging at him for years.
In another category of disorder, named the Dissociative Disorders, the mind copes with stress by completely blocking it. Psychological Amnesia, is one example. Here, without any evidence of brain damage, a person's ongoing memory appears to vanish, is often precipitated by traumatic or highly stressful life events -- and fugue, where a person completely forgets their past, and starts a whole new life in a different part of the country -- are excellent examples of how the mind may find it far easier to blank-out the memory than deal with an imminent personal catastrophe.
Another form of Dissociative Disorder, multiple personality disorder, often captures the interest of the general public in movies and television docu-dramas. As bizarre as such disorders seem to the average to the untrained observer, such segmenting of a person's identity is yet another way our mind has of coping with the traumas of life. In most cases of MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder), there is an early childhood experience of ongoing physical or sexual abuse. Unable to cope with the reality of such abuse, the child's mind soon begins to sever itself into a number of segmented and independent personalities -- most of which are unable to remember the traumatic circumstances which required such a self-protective formation of separate personalities.
In recent years, a new diagnostic sub-classification, posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), has been added to the standard list of Anxiety Disorders. Here, negative traumas lay dormant after their initial occurrence, only to re-emerge months or years later to debilitate the person. PTSD is seen as a "delayed reaction" to emotional stress. It is most common in war veterans, rape victims, or those who've experienced violent natural calamities (like earthquakes or tornadoes). Here the mind copes as long as it can; but eventually the top "blows."
Mood Disorders form another major classification in modern psychiatric diagnosis. Here we begin to see the emotions out of control. These are called the Major Depressive Episodes, when deep unpredictable depressions occur. Often severe depressive episodes are accompanied by delusions and hallucinations, though they may not be. Also, there are the Bi-Polar Disorders, when moods tend to swing from short periods of happiness to long depths of depression. Such major emotional patterns are mirrored in less-severe diagnoses as Dysthemia (prolonged, but minor, depressed moods) and Cylothemia (prolonged, but minor, periods of emotional mood swings). In these disorders we see normal bouts with unhappiness carried to their logical conclusion: sustained periods of leaden depression. In the depressive condition, unhappiness remains a constant companion. In the cyclical conditions, this pervading depression is sometimes broken with brief manic periods -- wherein, in short-lived escape, the mind is able to muster a semblance of temporary happiness. Inevitably, however, such manic periods are followed by a deep depressive "crash."
Then there are the more severe mental disturbances such as the Schizophrenic, the Paranoid, and the Personality Disorders. These range from the "catatonic" schizophrenic (whose inner fears virtually grip their body in an almost frozen state for hours or weeks at a time) to the antisocial "psychopath" (where childhood abuse or cold neglect are often aimed, as an adult, in violence and criminal retribution toward innocent victims in society at large).
The clinical listing of emotional difficulties goes on to include anything from a mild "adjustment disorder" (i.e., difficulty coping with the setbacks and crises of life) to the most bizarre and frightening psychoses (serial murderers, and the like).
Yet in each classification, negative emotional circumstances appear to play a role in the clinical development of the disorder. As varied (and sometimes even bizarre) as these differing conditions appear, each represents a special way in which the mind attempts to deal with the accumulation of emotional strains built up from early childhood throughout a lifetime.
HEALTH PROBLEMS
Emotional difficulties are only half the toll we pay for the long-term build up of negative stress and strain in our lives. The other half is a deterioration of our physical health!
The chefs at our sardonic cooking school have also come to notice this. In addition to the mental effects of their culinary experiments, their cooking has also had an effect on the physical parts of the pots themselves. As time goes on, and more negative ingredients are added, the pots receiving the most heavy doses seem to develop more diseases, ailments, and even common colds!
The chefs have discovered what modern medicine has amply confirmed. Stress is at the heart of most physical illness!
There is no doubt that stress can kill. Stress is a major factor in almost every physical ailment from deadly heart disease and stroke to the common tension headache.
The relationship of stress to physical illness is a complex one...
In some disease, stress can play a direct causal role. Peptic ulcers, chronic tension headaches, and a number of digestive, circulation, and other disorders are often cited as being directly caused by emotional stress.
In other disorders, stress combines with other factors as a precondition for the onset of disease. Here is where stress does its greatest damage. By overtaxing the body's resources and energies, thus lowering the body's basic immune system, it leaves the body more susceptible to whatever disease it then becomes exposed to. Under such conditions, an individual is more vulnerable to "catching" anything from a "flu" to life-threatening viral infections. Likewise, if there are any inherent genetic weaknesses or inborn susceptibility to certain ailments in the body, stress can precipitate their actual attack. Indeed, most people would be appalled to know that within any drop of saliva from the average person's mouth some 10,000 potential disease-causing organisms can be found. Furthermore, they're just waiting to get out of control and make you ill! The only thing that keeps them in check is your body's immune system -- an immune system that works best when it is not overtaxed by emotional stressors.
Finally, of course, there are many physical diseases which are caused by factors having nothing to do with stress at all. Such would include disease of accident, exposure to toxins, sexually or airborne transmitted disease, etc.. Yet, even here, stress has a role to play in the severity and prognosis of the disorder. Medical evidence suggests that even in these illnesses, the actual course of the disease has much to do with the stress the patient experiences. Even when stress has no part in the actual causation of the illness, stress still plays a role in the exacerbation of the ailment. The severity of the infirmity, its duration, and its eventual prognosis -- all have much to do with the stresses (past or present) the patient brought to it.
Simply put, emotional strain can directly cause some health problems, leave you wide open to others, or make much worse those you already have.
Not surprisingly, then, is the most intriguing finding of modern health medicine: the number one correlate of good physical health is mental health!
Over the years, a strong accumulation of research data on topics of physical health have come to a surprising conclusion regarding health practices. As we documented in Volume I, studies on peak health and longevity have focused on diet, exercise, health history, environment, and dozens of other health-related factors to determine which among them contribute the most to good physical health. In virtually every major study, the most significant factor seemed to be the "mental health factor." The most mentally healthy people generally enjoy the best physical health. They're sick less often, have fewer major illnesses, suffer less from ordinary aches, pains, flus, and colds, and are generally less susceptible to a whole range of common health problems.
The reports in no way dismiss the value of exercise, diet, a healthy environment, and other positive health habits (like non-smoking, moderate drinking, etc.), for all of these factors were found to be significant contributors to life-long good health. Still, none of these factors appear to be quite as important as a mentally healthy personality in their contribution to ultimate physical health!
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READER'S NOTE: The remainder of this chapter is outlined in very rough draft. Most sections have only been inserted in order of their eventual treatment. Please forgive the disjointed nature of the pages which follow...
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THE STATISTICS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES
The long buildup of negative emotional strains takes its toll on each of us eventually. As our devilish chefs found, the results will vary, depending on a variety of combining genetic, historic, and contemporaneous stress factors. But no matter how we add it up, emotional stresses and strains take their toll.
Psychologically, these strains affect millions around the world. Just in the United States, for example:
One of every ten Americans will be hospitalized for an emotional "difficulty" or "breakdown" during their lifetime.
One in every five will suffer an episode of severe clinical depression during their lifetime. At any one point in time one in twelve Americans are clinically depressed.
The most recent Presidential Commission estimates that at least 15% of the population, right now, is suffering from serious emotional problems. (The current estimate from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health is even larger, at 20%.)
One in five Americans are currently suffering from an Anxiety Disorder.
your mental back would be a series of increasingly stressful events to fall from your faucet. If the stresses and disappointments started building uncontrollably, you, too, would eventually reach your breaking point. -- expand
What to do.... Well, the most typical strategy most people think of is to attack the faucet itself -- to work with problems, solve or eliminate them, and hopefully, therefore, turn off the faucet of stress. And, to some degree, this can be a successful approach. Happy people are good at this strategy -- we've said they tend to approach rather than avoid -- they're competent, efficient, organized, energetic, etc. -- they have many skills to aid their problem-solving ability -- skills, by the way, that have been echoed through all the Fundamentals.
Nevertheless, working with the faucet is only a minor part of the solution. Working on the bottle should be the focus of our attack. Tinkering with the faucet cannot ever completely eliminate Life's problems -- bad things will always happen to us that we have no control over. And, really, it's not the problems, per se, that make people sick.
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What makes them sick is the emotional buildup that comes along with such problems, the continuing stress, pressure, anxiety, buildup of negative stresses and emotions. The answer to this is very simple. It is to be able to drain these emotional stresses and to eliminate the pressure and tension. Like in the drawing here (see Figure 2), we need to turn our bottles into sieves and drain the buildup of emotional stress -- and we do this through emotional ventilation -- or, more simply put, the expressing of our emotions -- "getting them off your chest." It is the accumulation of these deposits that make people sick -- the buildup of pressure in the bottle. If you can drain the bottle of that stress, Life's problems can be handled.
The catch, of course, and the thing that makes most people ill, is the fact that many people cannot, for a variety of reasons, ventilate, express, talk about, and therefore, drain these bad feelings. They tend to bottle up their strong, negative emotions and hold them inside. It may be pride, it may be they feel guilty about their negative experiences, they may feel ashamed and embarrassed, it may be they want to appear strong -- keeping that old stiff upper lip, it may be because there's no one they can trust with their emotions, it may be that they don't want to be a burden on others with their problems. There are endless reasons for failing to express negative hurts and feelings, but whatever the reason, it is probably the most detrimental thing the average person does to their mental health.
DRAIN THE COOKER; TURN DOWN THE HEAT
Which brings us back to the Fundamental. One of the most important ways we can help prevent emotional difficulties is to drain our bottles of the emotional stresses that would otherwise tend to build by ventilating. You need to pull your plug, so to speak, and start expressing your emotions. Get things off you chest, get them out of your system. Eliminate stress build-up when problems occur by simply expressing your negative feelings and getting them out of your system when you feel them. It's one of the finest forms of extroversion, or spontaneity, to be able to extrovert what you're feeling when you feel it. (Preferably directly to people who make you feel that way. You'd be amazed how effective that can be. When people know how they make you feel - they often attempt to change - and if they don't - well, they probably don't care much about you).
By developing the ability to express emotion immediately, or at least soon after, you are beginning to make your bottle more like a sieve, and emotional stresses and pressures can pass right on through and be expelled pretty much once and for all. So, if you feel like crying, cry. Get it our of your system. If you feel like yelling and screaming, go ahead. Beat on your pillow. Do what you have to. Do what is necessary. But, the most therapeutic thing of all is not to bottle things up.
We live in a society that places great pressures on people, especially men, to bottle up emotion. We also live in a society where people are not that acceptant of our negative problems. We don't have many chances to ventilate or outlets for emotional expression. So, we must create the opportunity.
The very best thing you can do about emotional problems is to talk them over with someone you really trust. Expel them, dissipate them, get them out of your system once and for all by talking them over with a close friend. Even if you can't develop that marvelous capacity to express yourself when you feel it, you should find a place to talk them out later. Happy people get their feeling out and therefore are much healthier!
This lesson is basically to realize it's good to express emotions and, if you can't do it immediately, to talk these things over with someone you can trust, somebody to whom you can ventilate. Now, my wish for each of you is that sometime during your life, if you don't have such a situation now, that you would develop friends, a lover, or spouse who could be the person you can really candidly and completely ventilate you emotions to, to really get it off your chest. People who have such a close person have one of the finest blessings a person can have in life.
However, such therapeutic friends are rare, and may not be available to you. The answer then is professional help. In every area of the country there's a variety of counseling and psychological services available. And, one of the main functions these services perform is to provide trained professional "friends" who can help you ventilate your feelings, even the most sensitive ones, in an atmosphere of comfort and acceptance. Most people have such gross misconceptions about counseling and therapy -- they feel it is only for the severely disturbed. But, the truth of the matter is that they are for you, too! We've already seen how emotional problems are part of all of us, and how little really separates any of us from severe breakdown. And, we've also seen how the whole cycle of mental illness starts with the bottling-up negative emotions and feelings. And, it is these feelings that most good therapy and counseling deal with. Therapy is no magic cure. But it's most traditionally agreed upon goal is to provide a safe, confidential opportunity for a person to simply get things off their chest and ventilate their emotions. ** -- and, I think after today's lecture you can see how valuable a goal that can be, and how good it would be for you -- especially when the pressures start to build -- to seek the kind of help so many of us need to help us to pull the plug in our bottle and let the stresses drain.
And don't wait until it's too late! Perhaps the most common public misconception about counseling and therapy is that it is a last-ditch solution -- that it is only reserved for those who have let stress so deteriorate them that they can no longer function. That misconception is so tragic! The fact is that, just like a physical disease, the longer one goes without emotional treatment the worse the prognosis for recovery is. It is the wise individual who recognizes the signs of stress build-up early in the game and seeks counsel before the problem gets out of hand. In many cases those who seek therapy or counseling when they still have some control over it -- rather than when it has control over them -- end up being more healthy than they have ever been before because of the benefits professional help can afford. I want you to bear that in mind!
Well, it looks like we've come to the end of another Fundamental lecture. And, at this time, I have a need to express some of the negative feelings I've developed during the past lecture hour. I feel guilty that I have not done any justice to the full scope of mental illness and its full etiology, diagnosis, and treatment. I feel ashamed that I have attemped to treat such sophisticated topics in such a simplistic manner. I feel bad that I have, on the other hand, rambled far beyond to the points necessary for you to benefit from this lecture. I feel inadequate about the job I have attepted to perform here. And, I feel a bit of hostility toward those of you in the back row who've slept through my entire speech, and admiration to you who stayed awake through all of it. But, at least I'm willing to express my feelings -- and that is the whole point to Fundamental 12. In fact, now that I've gotten these negative feelings off my chest, I'm actually feeling better.... Indeed, I'm feeling better about the whole lecture. And, that's the whole point to this Fundamental.
It's the healthiest thing you can do to express your emotions. Especially when you feel them. And, better yet, directly to the people who make you feel that way. Ventilate your feelings. Drain your bottle of negative stress and pressure -- and realize that draining your bottle is easier than turning down the faucet. Take private times alone to ventilate your feelings. Talk things out with close ones you trust. And, don't think twice about seeking professionals to help you ventilate those super-sensitive emotions before they get the best of you. I know you now know how important these ideas are -- and., if you can make them work in your life, you're on your way toward "eliminating negative feelings."
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Actually, mental illness is the mind's way of dealing with tremendous deposits of negative emotion when more normal coping strategies fail. The tragedy is that these ways don't really help relieve the pressure. And, because these illness patterns fall into such regular categories, they appear to be a natural component or potential of every person's mind.
What I am saying, bluntly, is, there is no difference between your brain and the brain of many who suffer intense mental disturbances. The only real difference between you and them is 1) your normal coping patterns are probably somewhat more effective, but more likely 2) your life, luckily, has not turned the faucet of stress on you too powerfully... yet. But, it could happen to anybody, and don't kid yourself about this. I don't mean to get too depressing, but there is very little you can count on to keep mental illness from building in you.
WHAT IT'S LIKE TO FEEL MENTALLY ILL
No, mental illness is not that strange. And, it's probably no stranger to you! I suggest that each of you have experienced a degree of mental illness already in your life. Everyone has had personal tragedies and bad times, and for a moment I'd like you to recall the unhappiest period you have ever had in your life. Perhaps after the loss of a loved one or lover, or a period of severe economic or personal failure. If it was a really unhappy time you were probably displaying many of the symptoms typical of mental illness. You were probably overcome with strong unpleasant emotion, your thoughts were preoccupied with negative themes, your nerves were "frazzled," you felt desperate, at your "wits end," you might have wept uncontrollably and burst into frequent, inappropriate emotional response to simple situations, your thinking became distorted, muddled -- you had a rough time thinking things through clearly -- though feeling tension, your tendency was to withdraw from people and activity, to become easily depressed and apathetic, moving to long periods of privacy, communicating less and less, feeling guilt perhaps, giving yourself heavy doses of self-recrimination and self-depreciation, yet at the same time feeling, in a paranoid way, that the world or your family was against you, that people were trying to keep you miserable -- others, noticing your behavior, felt it was not quite "normal" -- and, either became more concerned than you wanted or seemed to avoid you. Your grip with the present began to slip away, and your mind became more introspective and wandered continuously to the past and worried fears of the future. You were miserable, weren't you? And, you just didn't know what to do about it!
If you know what I'm talking about, if your've had some really bad times -then you know what it's like to be mentally ill. You were, for all practical purposes, ill then! The only difference between you and the institutionalized is that you were lucky and pulled out of it -- the institutionalized are the ones who never did.
These people continue to bottle up emotions to the point where the stress actually breaks them. And, unfortunately, there isn't a person alive who will not eventually break, have a nervous breakdown, a mental relapse, or develop mentally ill symtoms if enough stress and pressure are applied. No matter how well we can handle stress, for each of us there is a point when stress begins to grotesquely affect our thinking and behavior patterns. And, really, that's all
there is to mental illness. Despite popular misconceptions, mental illness is not some bizarre anomaly that just strikes a person randomly. It's not some disease you can catch like the flu. Mental illnesses are simply ways in which people cope with immense amounts of stress that have been bottled up too often and too long. Often these ways of coping are rather ingenious though on the surface they appear quite bizarre and "crazy." There is truly a "method" behind every "madness" -- the strange behaviors and symptoms of the mentally ill are actually the last-ditch efforts of the mind to cope with unbearable emotional buildup.