Training the Mind for Happiness

I've often discussed this approach to life, the changing of your thoughts to manifest positive things in your life. I first read the idea in a children's book in the third grade by Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, which was written over a hundred years ago now. Burnett made the case that choosing positive thoughts over negative ones could have a tremendous impact on your actual day-to-day life, stating that a good thought could be as beneficial as medicine for an illness, but that bad thoughts are like poison. More poetically, she writes "Where you tend a rose, a thistle cannot grow." So this is hardly a new idea. Since a fairly recent visit to a crisis intervention center, I've taken to regarding this transformation as much less a mental exercise and more of a survival skill.

They say "fake it till you make it," though I've always disliked people who strike me as ingenuous -- primarily because then I don't trust them, and I certainly would like to be able to trust everyone. If nothing else, it would be nice if I could be myself without second-guessing everything.

"In identifying one's mental state as the prime factor in achieving happiness, of course that doesn't deny that our basic physical needs for food, clothing, and shelter must be met. But once those basic needs are met, the message is clear: we don't need more money, we don't need greater success or fame, we don't need the perfect body or even the perfect mate --- right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness (Dalai Lama, p 37)."

I find this thought empowering. I don't believe we should be positive to the point that we are fake, but I do think that being more positive from within does result in more happiness within.

Part of my trouble has always been financial. I'm seldom far from the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy, but I've always made that an opportunity to empathize with people less fortunate and try to brighten their days to the best of my ability. As you know, laughter gets me through a lot.

Now that I am living with my sister, I don't have to worry quite as much about basic needs. I wish that alone were enough to make me stop having PTSD symptoms, but I'm working on embracing my difference and using it for good. Someday I'm going to help someone pull themselves out of this pit, but I'm still scaling it myself right now.

"...first learn about the positive value of the practices, then build up determination, and then try to implement them. at the beginning, the implementation of the positive practices is very small, so the negative influences are still very powerful. However, eventually, as you gradually build up the positive practices, the negative behaviors are automatically diminished (p 43).

This is good stuff.

It is much easier to choose to do positive things than it is to prevent negative things. Do you see? Where you

tend a rose, a thistle cannot grow.

This excerpt is fascinating to me in that it echos the advice of Dialectical Behavioral Theory. Like a parent soothing a baby, I have to practice these coping skills one at a time until I figure out what works. Similarly like a baby, I have to start all over again after each outburst. It gets discouraging, but it's the only thing I can do. Whenever I talk myself into thinking that I'm fine, something reminds me that the condition is more or less permanent, but can lose its strength over time and practice. I naturally don't want to spend my entire life in the victim role, but I do have to concede that there's nothing normal about experiencing a full-blown flashback in the counselor's office this past week, and now loud noises are bothering me again. Today it was my sister vacuuming. I started to shake and had to leave the room. Yep. You might as well know just exactly how scrambled my brains are. No stigma. Just unique.

"...the purpose of life is happiness. That simple tool can be used as a powerful tool in helping us navigate through life's daily problems. From this perspective, our task becomes one of discarding the things that lead to suffering and accumulating the things that lead to happiness. The method, the daily practice, involves gradually increasing our awareness and understanding of what truly leads to happiness and what doesn't...

Here's the tricky one for me: How to discard something that I can't touch? What should I throw away? Obviously all self-doubt must go, and of course I should make healthier lifestyle choices.

Much harder is the attempt to jettison every negative thought or action and replace them immediately with positive thoughts and actions. It requires much patience and determination, mostly because those negative thoughts and actions didn't evolve overnight. 

I wonder, if I personally feel so exhausted and empty from grasping for things I can't have, then how much more tiring am I to the people I'm reaching out for?

I'm afraid that they'll leave even as I fully expect them to do so.

I exhaust their capacity for compassion, reinforcing my long-held belief that I really am worthless.

I'm well aware that it's all in my head, but the exits are not clearly marked. I often find myself wandering around up there, seeking a door that I can't locate. And were I to actually find that door, I still wouldn't know where the key was. I know it's in there somewhere. I just have to feel around along the floor until I brush against it in the dark.

And it is very dark indeed these days.

The loss of any relationship immediately filters through and translates into confirmation of my deepest fears and self-loathing.

Not good, smart, pretty, or confident enough.

Too damaged.

Repellent.

Pathetic.

Insignificant.

Secretly so ugly inside, so selfish and small-minded that I deserve to remain in the dark. Anyone who gets too close can easily spot the flaws and find the justification they need to abandon me.

I'm never surprised by it when it happens.

That's not the same as not being hurt by it.

And I accidentally let people get so close.

Even as I'm feeling responsible for all my own problems, feeling like the dog that's accidentally wet on the carpet when not let out on time, I'm aware that every negative emotion I feel represents some lie that I'm buying into. I know it's a lie.

I know the truth. I know that I'm beautifully unique, heartrendingly talented, compassionate, loving and kind. Or if those things are too vain to acknowledge, certainly I can allow myself the presumption that I'm at least worthy of tolerance -- kindness, anyway.

But these qualities slip from view as quickly as I catch a glimpse of them. 

And the tragedy in it is that it takes much less effort to believe a lie than to hang on to the truth.

The little girl keeps crying inside...

I cover her mouth.

If he hears her, he'll hurt her, whoever he is. I have these bad dreams. It's hard to explain.

If anyone sees this child, they'll reject her.

She belongs in a closet. She should never have been born.

Somebody told her that.

I would love to let go of suffering, to stop punishing myself for not being enough something elusive that I never can quite lay my finger on.

I am a student of life. I learn hands-on as well as from the wisdom (or weaknesses) of others. I strive to learn my lessons well.

Clearly I haven't been studying the right textbooks since my childhood.

"When life becomes too complicated and we feel overwhelmed, it's often useful just to stand back and remind ourselves of our overall purpose, our overall goal. When faced with a feeling of stagnation and confusion, it may be helpful to take an hour, an afternoon, simply to reflect on what it is that will truly bring us happiness, and then reset our priorities based on that. This can put our life back in proper context, allow a fresh perspective, and enable us to see which direction to take...

I sat down on New Year's Day and made a list of goals and the steps required to meet them. I do this every year, with adjustments to make the goals attainable. If mental health issues didn't keep getting in my way, I feel I would have gone a lot farther by now. How to explain it to you, how the sound of a vacuum cleaner can terrify me when I'm in hyper-vigilance mode? How do you look at me the same, knowing this about me? I tell myself the differences are positive ones, but I don't know. I think well enough of you to believe so, or I wouldn't keep sending these rambling posts. Somewhere in the book, there's a sentence or two about the fact that allowing ourselves to be more vulnerable shows greater strength than holding yourself back.

To me, it sometimes seems as if the years of my life connect like so many links in a chain. Car problems leading to job problems leading to rent problems leading to total and complete emotional fallout, on and on into infinity. Can't shake the feeling that the fault is my own and the solution is so transparent that I disregard it every time -- Out of perfectionism or laziness I couldn't say. My father would have called it lazy. I tell the little girl she's too lazy to even to try to succeed in life, and too stupid and useless to make it anyway.

If someone holds me, I feel lovable.

Immediately I stiffen up inside, worrying that they'll see that frightened, insecure child and be repulsed by her. And that fear and worry harkens back to some fragmented memory of something, of someone, some frightening, exposed moment with someone else. It was never supposed to happen and I was supposed to forget, and any time I get too close to the memory I become overwhelmed and either check out and put up a mask of affable incompetence, or crumble into a fetal position and cover my head with my arms to ward it off.

That someone lets go of me, as I've expected them to all along.

I free fall.

"From time to time we are faced with pivotal decisions that can affect the entire course of our lives. We may decide, for example, to get married, to have children, or to embark on a course of study to become a lawyer, an artist, or an electrician. The firm resolve to become happy --- to learn about the factors that lead to happiness and take positive steps to build a happier life --- can be such a decision. The turning-toward happiness in a systematic manner can profoundly change the rest of our lives (p 62-63)."

So this is the choice that I'm consciously making, a firm resolve to become happy, to study the factors that

lead to happiness and take positive steps to build a better life for myself. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is a fairly good start.

Therapy involves a list of 22 Skills addressing tolerance: tolerance of distress, dissociation, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation and what they call "Middle Path Skills," which basically means that we are most effective when we achieve balance in our lives and minds. On a weekly basis I have to keep a diary card detailing what challenges I faced and what skills I used to overcome them. 

The card is also for rating my emotions and describing what I want and need to reduce in my life. Worry, for example. If I'm worried about something, I'm generally being too emotional. So there's a chart I draw up in which I address my worries, counterbalance them with logic, and then develop a plan for compromising between the two, since I may very well be worried about some concrete concern, but that doesn't mean I can fix it worrying.

At first this diary card stuff irritated me because the techniques are all things I'm familiar with already, but over the course of a few months I can see that, though I know not to worry about things that may never happen, I do it anyway. 

Until I can learn, or train my brain, to go automatically to positive thoughts and coping mechanisms, I will continue to free fall, which is a very uncomfortable position to be in, like when your stomach gives a slight drop when the elevator goes up --  dramatically magnified beyond all manageability.

Turning toward happiness.

How ironic that we all struggle to find happiness in our lives when we are actually carrying the potential right inside of us all along, a choice to identify and act upon. 

I hope this is a moment that changes my life.