Life Gives Us Pause

In a peer level support group called Rising Tide. where we learned and practiced a positive approach to solving life's problems, a new man joined us and announced dejectedly that he was considering suicide. Why? Because he had just learned he was HIV positive. The words "be positive" were, to him, a death sentence. The rest of us in the group modified our speech pattern to say instead, "Be optimistic," but apart from that the good news is he turned his attitude around and ended up moving to Arizona with his devoted partner, to live on a ranch where he looked forward to planting a vegetable garden.

Scientific evidence has recently indicated that our outlook on life is half hereditary and half learned. If we are born with a tendency to be unhappy and are raised by adults who are basically pessimistic, we have a strong tendency to view life's glass as half empty. If we are born with a propensity for happiness and raised by adults who are basically optimistic, that same glass seems to us half full. In either case, our parents are to blame. Pretty cool, yeah? Only as a humorous aside. The fact is, we need to accept personal responsibility and use our past as a stepping stone, not as a place to squat for the rest of our lives.

The reason I say "blame" even in the second scenario, is because being too much of an optimist is just as much a problem as being too pessimistic. Anything carried to an extreme is nature out of balance, and when our nature is out of balance, we are out of sync with the world around us. Life (with a capital el) has a life (small el) of its own, and if Life is zigging when we are zagging, we and Life step on each others' toes. Not a graceful move on any dance floor.

I often teach my clients to use the auxiliary word just to minimize a problem they have blown out of proper proportion. A person with a phobia, arachnophobia, for example (an unrealistic fear of even harmless spiders) can learn to say when encountering a Daddy Long Legs, "Oh, it's just a spider," and remain calm as opposed to shrieking OH MY GOD IT'S A SPIDER and running from the room in a fit of terror. This technique allows them to function more realistically in normal society.

Imagine, however, a person who lives in the mountains saying, "Oh, it's just a bear trap." This nonchalance might increase their odds of stepping in it (both literally and metaphorically speaking).

There is a choice that rests somewhere between optimism and pessimism, and that is called realism. We have the potential to view stimuli without attaching an evaluation skewed by either heredity or conditioning. It isn't good, it isn't bad, it just is. The solution rests in the pause between whatever "it" is, and our reaction. An automatic reaction overpowers the pause by happening instantaneously, without consideration. We revert to our default mode and, by doing so repeatedly, we reinforce that tendency. We become more positive, or more negative.

I treated a client recently who was very right brain predominant... extremely "dreamy" with no grounding in intellectual processing. She asked me how she could correct the imbalance and I told her some ways by which she could develop her intellect. "That sounds AWFUL" was her reply. "I don't want to DO that." Of course not. It would have meant leaving her comfort zone to explore unknown territory. The other option, I explained, would be to accept her nature, and nurture her gift of imagination. This might doom one to the category of eccentric but, in my book, there are worse labels.

Years ago I treated an engineer who presented with Globus Hystericus -- an imaginary lump in his throat. He met with success but later reverted, so I offered to record a hypnosis session that he could play repeatedly to reinforce the solution to his problem. "Great idea," he said," but don't use any of that drifty, dreamy stuff. I prefer pragmatism." Of course he did, I explained, adding, "If this issue could be resolved with logic, you would have done it yourself. To fix it, you're going to have to step out of left brain now and then."

Left brain, right brain, optimism, pessimism -- it's all good. What's bad is getting stuck in one or the other. We need to be able to travel through our mind, explore, and adapt to new terrain when we come across it. An honest assessment of an undesirable event (such as the recent tsunami in Japan) is more appropriate than thinking or saying something seemingly positive. "Think of all those who survived," for example. Not an appropriate comment if talking with those who lost loved ones. One of the worst things to say to a person with clinical depression is, "Snap out of it! Be positive!" It's the equivalent of asking a man without legs, to walk. So in social interaction we must take the circumstances and needs of others into account, and perhaps override our default mode to temporarily adopt a more helpful stance. Don't offer a potato chip (because you happen to have one handy) to someone dying of thirst.

The tsunami and clinical depression are extremes that I use to make a point, which is that we are social beings and when we interact, it isn't just about us. It's about others as well. It's true that others who are negative can drag us down. It's also true that others who are positive can lift us up; and sometimes either of those is precisely what we need in order to bring balance into our own lives. We can lead others by example, but we can't drag them from their internal storm into our sunny meadow filled with wildflowers. Sometimes we have to step out of our comfort zone to meet them in theirs, then guide them if they are willing to follow, understanding they may only move partway.

This means --for the eternal optimist as well as the proverbial pessimist -- abandoning the fear of viewing Life realistically. Life gives us Pause (with a capital P) precisely so that we can choose an action or reaction appropriate to time and circumstance rather than simply using the one we like best and practice most.

The same way we can remember that our opinion is just our opinion, not fact; which is why differing opinions can both be right -- or wrong. But that's a blog for another day.