How Happiness Supports Healing

Happiness is not just the outcome of healing but can facilitate healing. When my trauma therapist first suggested I “bathe in grace” every day, it fell on deaf ears. Many years later, I now understand.

Traumatic states are very magnetic, as are other emotional states that we habitually inhabit. Any state can become home for us, the place we naturally reside. Sometimes these are referred to as “attractor states,” meaning that is where the nervous system is naturally pulled to. It can be a state of hopelessness, anxiety, or anything else.

Moments of contentment, pleasure, and meaning (the components of happiness) help counter-balance negative attractor states. They provide a different experience for the nervous system, creating more choice. They are also a lubricant to the system, giving us the energy and motivation to what might otherwise seem like slogging through our troubles.

Research shows that positive emotions lead to feeling more resourceful, more energetic, and more sociable, all of which further support healing.

There has been a lot of research on the subject of happiness in recent years, and my favorite book explaining this research in practical ways is The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD. who spent 18 years researching happiness. The suggestions below come primarily from that work.

The important thing to remember about happiness is that it doesn’t come from circumstances. Lyubomirsky measures circumstances as accounting for only 10% of happiness. A big chunk is genetic, but the rest is really from our state of mind and what we choose to cultivate.

Lyubomirsky suggests that you identify happiness-enhancing strategies that may work for you and vary them over time. Here are 10 such strategies.

1.  Stop to savor.

You have probably had the experience of doing something you looked forward to and then recognizing it was over and you forgot to enjoy it. This is the usual way we live. Spiritual sages have been pointing out forever that the ingredients to a happy life are right here, if we pause to take them in.

It might be appreciating some part of nature or a loved one or the food you are eating. This is such potent medicine that Lyubomirsky found that those who spent 8 minutes a day savoring for 3 consecutive days felt better a month later.

I like savoring in the moment, although savoring moments from the past and future also help increase satisfaction.

2. Flow!

Flow has been defined as intense absorption in the present moment, usually involving a task that takes some skill. Playing an instrument or sport or doing an art form all may lead to the pleasurable experience of flow. It is important to have some activities like this that give you a vacation from your attractor states and usual mindset.

I have expanded this to what I call “flow time,” which is feeling moment by moment for what is “in the flow,” the natural thing to do next. I can’t always do this, but when I do, I find this time very pleasurable (and surprisingly productive!).

3. Practice gratitude.

There has been a lot of press about gratitude, and it is well deserved. With gratitude, we focus on what is going right rather than what we don’t like. At any given moment, there is actually much that is non-problematic, although we take these things for granted and seldom notice them.

Gratitude helps us let go of grudges and not feel so bitter about life, which is easy to get stuck in if you’ve had a lot of hardship. A yet more advanced practice is to extend this gratitude to include even your hardships, which helps highlight the learning present in those hardships.

You can practice gratitude by pausing to give thanks, keeping a gratitude journal, by including what you are thankful for in prayers, and by sharing gratitudes verbally.

4. Think positive (or at least more objectively).

Of course there is a long history of positive thinking, and also plenty of evidence of people getting caught in magical thinking. I don’t believe that our thoughts alone create reality, but they certainly do shape our experience.

People who suffer from depression are often caught in a negative way of looking at the world. What researchers call Learned Optimism is a correction for this. People who think more optimistically fare better in times of high stress, because they’re not caught in tunnel vision. Maybe the sky is falling, but maybe something else is happening.This is also the province of cognitive therapy.

Research shows that learned optimism promotes more positive feelings, higher self-esteem, and a sense of mastery.

5. Avoid ruminating on your problems.

This is also part of CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy). Ruminating on problems can really sink you. This is not to say that we want to always push difficult things out of mind, but rather to discern when our contemplation of them serves a useful purpose and when we’re just digging a bigger hole.

Lyubomirsky also found positive results when people stop nursing hurt and angry feelings. She suggests cultivating empathy for the people who’ve hurt and disappointed you. This doesn’t mean excusing or tolerating abusive behavior. It means understanding where it is coming from.

We want to work through our hurt and angry feelings without holding onto them longer than is useful.

6. Practice random (or planned) acts of kindness.

When we are extending generosity toward others, it helps open the heart. It helps us see others in a more positive light, lubricates relationships, distracts us from our problems, and helps us feel good about ourselves.

Lyubomirsky found in her research that acting kindly on a regular basis increased happiness for an extended period, although such acts cannot be rote. You have to feel it to have it affect you. Other research has confirmed a “helper’s high” that comes with helping another.

7.  Act the way you want to feel.

This is the well-known principle of “Fake it until you make it.” So, for example, when you act happier, you feel happier. There is even evidence that the body picks up on something like a smile and reinforces it.

8. Cultivate close relationships.

Having more close relationships helps people feel better emotionally as well as supporting physical health through mechanisms like improved immune functioning. If your relationships are not fully satisfying, look at how you can improve them and cultivate new friends.

9. Get out and exercise.

A Duke University study shows that exercise may be just as effective as drugs in treating depression, without all the side effects and expense. Exercise releases feel-good endorphins and boosts self-esteem. It helps regulate the body and get us out of those stuck states.

10. Adopt meaningful goals.

Goals give us a sense of purpose. They add structure and meaning to life. You want to make sure they are your goals and not just your conditioning, so it’s good to reassess periodically. Ask yourself, What’s really important to me? How am I moving toward this?

These are strategies that have been validated by research, but they aren’t the only ways for you to increase happiness. I encourage you to become curious about how you experience contentment, meaning, and enjoyment, and what leads to these moments. Become a Happiness Detective!

Source:  Jasmin Cori
http://www.jasmincori.com/articles/healing/how-happiness-supports-healing/

Give More, Get Better: Should Kindness Be One Of Your Five-A-Day?

Another brilliant article from my friend Hazel Gale, Cognitive hypnotherapist, mental coach and world champion athlete

Mark was depressed. He had been that way for most of his adult life. By December of 2014, he’d grown so desperate that he thought frequently of ending things. By the time Christmas had been and gone, he was committed to the idea; the first thing he had truly committed to in years.

Increasingly, he distanced himself from his friends and family. It was a vicious, self-feeding cycle of disconnection. The more lonely he felt, the further he retreated into himself.

Then one morning, on a busy suburban street, Mark’s attention was drawn to an old pedestrian who needed help at the traffic lights. Almost robotically, he linked arms with the stranger, and as they slowly crossed the street, he noticed how heavily the old man had to lean on him.

In that brief moment of interaction, Mark felt something he hadn’t felt in years; he felt valuable. As the old man clutched his arm, the weight of his frail body spoke to a part of Mark which had long been dormant. It was the part that takes joy in other people’s happiness; a simple thing that we’re all capable of doing, yet can be so easily lost amidst the ego-focussed demands of Western society.

And so on that bleak, winter’s day, the dark and heavy feeling in his chest began to lighten. By the time the traffic lights turned green again, Mark had taken on a new perspective. He was able to begin seeing the world as a place in which he wanted to be; a place where he was welcome and needed and important. On reflection, he considered how unusual it was for a stranger to ask for help in such a direct way. It was almost, he thought, as if that old man had known exactly what he was doing.

[This is a true story. To protect his privacy, this individual’s name and some details have been changed]

Random acts of kindness (RAK’s) can help heal emotional (and arguably physical [1]) dis-ease. I sometimes challenge clients who feel depressed, invisible, disempowered or disconnected to perform one act of kindness every day. It doesn’t have to be anything dramatic. Just buying someone a coffee, or holding the door open could be deemed an RAK.
It’s such a simple task, but it can have surprisingly powerful effects on a person’s emotional state.

In his book, Why Good Things Happen To Good People, Case Professor Stephen Post explores the benefits of being giving. He cites a 50-year study which indicates that people who are generous with their time, money, work (or whatever) during their high school years enjoy better health thereafter. Other studies have shown a connection between acts of kindness and improvements in conditions of chronic illness including HIV, heart disease and multiple sclerosis.

In a 1999 study led by Doug Oman of the University of California, Berkeley, elderly people who volunteered for two or more organisations were found to be 44 percent less likely to die over a five-year period than were non-volunteers. This was true, even after controlling for their age, exercise habits, general health, and negative health habits like smoking [2].

The Mechanics Of Kindness

There are a number of factors contributing to the healing power of generosity. Firstly, the act of giving forces someone to look beyond the borders of the Self. As we saw in Mark’s story above, depression tends to cause people to cut themselves off from the world. This is actually a defence mechanism; the mind thinks it can help relieve the discomfort of a negative emotional state by hiding away and thinking about it.

Everyone will do this differently. Some ruminate over the past; endlessly replaying painful or distressing memories in their mind as if that will help them to change what happened.

Others do this in the future tense and repeat potentially catastrophic outcomes in their mind as if by doing so they will make the disaster less likely to happen.

Of course, regardless of the positive intentions behind these thought processes, the actual effect is to galvanise the negative feelings they were intended to remedy.

Oxytocin: Hormonal Happiness

At the biochemical level, practicing acts of kindness can stimulate the release of a chemical called oxytocin into the brain.

Oxytocin is a hormone which acts primarily as a neuromodulator and is responsible for the strong emotional connection between family members and friends. It’s released when we hug one another, when couples have sex and during childbirth.

Oxytocin is known as a “cardioprotective” hormone because it stimulates the release of nitric oxide, which dilates the blood vessels and concurrently reduces blood pressure.

Mirror Neurons: Borrowed Happiness

In his book, The Happiness Advantage, positive psychology expert Shawn Achor explores the relationship between happiness, success and mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are a rather special component of primate neurology which have been credited for the rapid acceleration of the evolution of the human brain. They are neurons which fire both when we act and when we observe an action performed by another.

As these neurons “mirror” the actions of others, they cause us to mentally mimic those behaviours as if we were doing them ourselves. This, of course, is true of not only physical movements but also of emotional states like cheerfulness, excitement and nervousness.

And so, when we perform an act of kindness for someone else, their resultant happiness and gratitude are not just things we can feel proud of, but also things we can feel for ourselves.

From personal experience, I can assure you that the positive hangover from a genuinely good deed can have lasting effects. I once caught an elderly lady as she tripped down the escalators at Liverpool Street Underground Station.

The station was quiet that day, and had she tumbled past me, she would almost certainly have been badly injured (or worse). Interestingly, although my reaction had to be nigh on instantaneous, there was a moment when I was acutely aware of my mind weighing up my two options: to catch her and risk losing my balance as well, or to lean back and save myself. I’m very happy (and proud) to say that my unconscious opted for the former.

At the bottom of the escalator, I helped her onto her train and saw her on her way. For the rest of that day, I was untouchable. There was a spring in my step. I smiled stupidly at strangers for no particular reason. I still get a warm glow just thinking about it years later.

During the 2010 Zheng-Kai marathon, Jacqueline Nyetipei Kiplimo from Kenya sacrificed first place as well as the $10,000 prize to help a disabled athlete who was struggling to drink water.

If Achor and Positive Psychology are correct, then happiness leads to success (not the other way around as is more commonly believed).

So, if you want to see a boost in your emotional well-being, your physical health, as well perhaps, as an increase in your productivity and levels of achievement, then commit to a diet of (at least) one RAK a day and see what improvements you can make. At the very least, you can feel good about what you’ve done that day, and you never know, it could even save your life.

Thought Engineering
Hazel runs online courses that teach theories like these along with the Cognitive Hypnotherapy processes to help you achieve a positive mindset and let go of anxiety, procrastination and other self-sabotaging behaviours. Personal support is available to course members as they work through the written material and tasks, and the course is held together with weekly audio recordings of Cognitive Hypnotherapy suggestion patterns to help members reprogram their own thinking.

Notes:

[1] For more on the mind’s ability to heal the body, and a free cognitive hypnotherapy download to encourage natural healing processes, read Hazel's newsletter on the topic from November, 2014: Think Yourself Healthy: The Mind-Body Connection

[2] See: berkeley.edu

Source:  Hazel Gale
https://medium.com/the-coffeelicious/give-more-get-better-should-kindness-be-one-of-your-five-a-day-5f52db26fb61#.u8kindh2q

Website: www.hazelgale.co.uk

Random Acts of Kindness

Random Acts Of Kindness

The goal of the ‘Random Acts of Kindness’ exercise is to increase well-being by consciously performing acts of kindness. Becoming more aware of one‘s own kind behaviour toward other people has been found to increase subjective wellbeing (Otake et al., 2006).

Background

A study by Lyubomirsky, Tkach, and Yelverton (2004) tested the impact of kindness of wellbeing. In their intervention, Lyubomirsky and colleagues asked students to perform five random acts of kindness per week, over the course of six weeks. These kindness acts were described as behaviours that benefit others or make others happy, typically at some cost to themselves (e.g., cook a meal for someone, donating blood, help someone with yard work or offering your seat to an elderly, disabled or pregnant person).

Students in the control group did not receive any kindness instructions. The results of this study showed that the students who performed the random acts of kindness experienced an increase in happiness, whereas the control group experienced a slight decrease. These findings support the idea that deliberately practicing kindness positively impacts well-being.

Advice

This exercise is typically used as "homework" for the client. After the first week or so, the exercise can be evaluated in terms of effects for the client as well as his environment. How did people react? What did it feel like to act in this way? Etc. Inform clients that kindness can involve both small and big gestures; let a car get in front of you or helping someone move.

Theory into practice

There are all sorts of random acts of kindness you can try out. Here are a couple of examples:

• book the middle seat if you’re going to no-show for a flight, so the people sitting on either side get a free seat between them
• buy a coffee for the next person at Starbucks 
• give people you interact with a genuine compliment about something you like about them
• write a kind message for someone on a piece of paper and put it in his/her bag

More great tips and ideas for random acts of kindness can be found at: https://www.randomactsofkindness.org

Source:
Seph Fontane Pennock
https://www.randomactsofkindness.org

Suggested readings

Client Suggested Readings Lyubomirsky, S., Tkach, C., & Yelverton, J. (2004). Pursuing sustained happiness through random acts of kindness and counting one’s blessings: Tests of two six-week interventions. Unpublished data, University of California,

Riverside, Department of Psychology. Otake, K., Shimai, S., Tanaka-Matsumi, J., Otsui, K., & Frederickson, B. L. (2006). Happy people become happier through kindness: A counting kindnesses intervention. Journal of Happiness Studies, 7, 361–375.