Strand Four: Your journey
Unit Two: Two ways of seeing the road ahead
Take a moment to think about how you got where you are now. Are you where you'd like to be, in terms of happiness? If not, why not?
Do you find yourself saying things like 'My partner left me, that's why I'm unhappy' or 'My company made me redundant, that's why I'm depressed.'? Do you see life as a series of good and bad, lucky and unlucky, events that happen to you?
I believe most of us go through life feeling we are simply walking along minding our own business when suddenly someone or something ambushes us. And, thud, there we are licking our wounds, hardly able to get up off the ground. But this presupposes that other people plan our downfall. I think this is rarely the case. After all, they also feel they are just walking along minding their own business.
The reality is that we all walk our own road, nobody walks it for us. What one person sees as heart-breaking another shrugs off as experience. Some people are devastated by events, others are not. We make from events our own story. The story is not written for us in advance. We write the story of our lives. We decide to let events depress us or make us angry. And we decide to let events teach us a lesson or roll off us like water off a duck's back.
Are you thinking, 'I certainly didn't decide to let my life be sad. This bad feeling I have was never a choice I made.'
But I believe it must be. It is our brain's interaction with the outside world that gives us ideas about life. My brain is different from your brain, just a little. So my world is different from yours too. The same event will be felt differently by each of us. Even if the same things happen to us our stories, the stories we tell ourselves and others to explain what reality or life is, those stories will be different stories. We make our world, our world does not make us. We make our happiness and our sadness. These things are not lurking around ready to pounce on us.
Your life is your own journey. You will tell yourself it is unbearable or heavenly. It is what you say it is. It has no reality beyond your own brain.
Which is all very well in theory. But why are we not all totally happy all the time? Who would choose unhappiness?
Unhappiness is a form of pain. All pain is a warning. It says in no uncertain terms: 'Stop doing that.' If we ignore the pain we feel when a knife nicks our thumb we might cut right through our thumb making our life, and survival, all the more difficult from then on. So most of us are pretty good at doing exactly what physical pain tells us to do, and fast.
Mental pain: depression, sadness, anguish, exists for the same reason. It says 'Stop doing that.' But it would seem that we are not so good at following orders when it comes to our mental life. Quite often we keep right on doing the same thing until, metaphorically, we cut our thumb off. Not only does that hurt a great deal but it leaves us impaired. We seem to think that if we just put a brave face on things they'll get better. So instead of changing our behaviour, doing things differently, we sometimes hope we'll get away with it. Something will stop that knife cutting through our thumb even if we do not stop it. Or somehow the pain will just go away if we ignore it.
We choose to interpret certain events as happy to encourage ourselves to do more of them. And we choose to interpret other events as unhappy to encourage ourselves to change course. So sometimes choosing unhappy is the right thing to do. It is going to stop us incapacitating ourselves. The problems only start when we don't listen to the warning and carry on doing the thing that we are being told to stop (telling ourselves to stop), the thing causing the pain.
A healthy reaction to sadness or anxiety is to locate where it is coming from and change our behaviour fast. This might mean thinking about things from a different point of view, finding out more about why something has happened, or quite simply putting it out of our mind. But it always means change. If we don't change, the pain just goes on and on and may permanently affect our happiness.
Taking the decision to try a new road, take a new direction, do something differently, is a good start.
Try this exercise: Is there someone who is making you unhappy? A partner or former partner? Your boss? Your teenage son? Think about what it is that is causing you pain. As an example, let's imagine that your wife has left you. You go over and over her words as she stormed out of the door that last morning. And every time you think about those moments you feel deeply depressed. 'You are utterly selfish. I make a lovely home, make sure the kids are healthy and happy, invite friends to supper so we have a social life. And what do I get in return? Nothing. You come home late without ringing me, spend the weekend playing golf and forget I even exist. Well, from now on I don't. You can do your own bloody cooking and cleaning. You're worthless. I'm wasting my life on you. Goodbye and good riddance!'
You feel the criticism is so unjustified. You spend hours at work so she and the children can have a nice home, holidays. Playing golf on Sunday is the only time off you get. Is it too much to ask to have a few hours of pleasure? Does she really think you are worthless after all you've done?
Put a chair directly across from where you are sitting. Imagine your wife on that chair saying those words as she gets up to leave.
Now go and sit on that chair yourself. Imagine you are your wife. Sit like your wife sits. Get right into the part.
Now look across at the chair you've vacated and see your husband (you) sitting opposite. But instead of getting up and leaving, bring out more of why you want the relationship to stop. What sort of a man do you see sitting there opposite you? What do you like and what do you not like about him? Get right into your wife's mind. See yourself as she sees you. Now carry on speaking where she left off. Take her part. See things from her perspective. What is really annoying her? Where does she feel the unfairness lies? Why does she see you as worthless? What did she hope you would be when she married you? What would need to happen for her to find you worth something after all? Keep speaking. Say everything you think she might say. Don't wonder if what she's saying is true or fair. Just say what she sees as true.
Now come and sit back in your own chair and take on your own character again. You have taken heed of the pain you felt and you've stopped thinking things through from your own perspective, you've thought about things from hers too. You've stopped doing what you were doing and you've started doing something different. This exercise should help you to feel less depressed, less out of control. It might even have opened your eyes to how you might change other behaviours. If you believe you are worthy of her what is she not seeing? How can you show her what she hasn't noticed? Could your marriage be saved? What would you need to do or say?
Now you are thinking of this unhappy event as an opportunity not a disaster. An opportunity suggests that you have some control over a situation, a chance of some sort of successful outcome. It is difficult to be depressed when you see hope for a better future. Some of your pain is going away. Don't waste what you've learnt. Get in touch with her. Check whether you are clearer about what she feels. If you think there are things she isn't seeing that make you worthy let her know about them. If things go badly it might mean doing the exercise again as new things happen. But it is one way of disrupting the hold of unhappiness over you and taking control of your life. See life through different eyes.
You can do the same exercise in any situation. You've been made redundant after all the work you've put in over the years. You just can't get over the injustice. You feel as if someone has just judged you and you came out as worth nothing. See the interview through the eyes of your boss. How does he feel about making you redundant? Why is he doing it? What does the company have to weigh up? What other choices does it have? Why doesn't it take them? Does your boss agree with decisions that have been made higher up? How will he feel when he goes home tonight? What value can he see in you that he feels unable to talk about because it might undermine what he has to do? How would he advise you go about finding another job? What does he think you do best?
Is he right? Are you better than he realises? Why are your talents hidden? How can you show people what you can do in the future so this doesn't happen again, unjustly? If you think your boss feels bad about what he has to tell you (and it's almost certain that he does) what can he do to help you and make himself feel less bad? Does he have any connections he can use on your behalf? How can you ask him to give you this help? And so on.
Again, you are changing viewpoints in order to see the same events through different eyes. Now you can start to see you may not have been judged of little value. You can see that asking for help is not a gesture of desperation or weakness but a way of helping both of you to get over the bad feelings this event has left you with. You can see how you might start taking control rather than getting angry or getting more deeply depressed.
To change your way of thinking it is important to literally change your position and sit on the other seat and to feel yourself in the body of the other person by taking on their body language, their gestures, their characteristic way of sitting and speaking. I don't believe simply thinking things through has anything like the same power to change your perspective.
If you do this exercise as suggested you will have taken the first steps down a very new road. It is a road that is very likely to lead you towards where you want to go: happiness. Remember this exercise when people seem unfair or cruel for no reason. It's you who give them these names. Sit in their chair and see how they see their actions. It will allow you to take control of your life and your emotions. You will have heeded the warning your mental pain is making and stopped looking at things in a way that is not only useless but is probably dangerous to your long term mental health.
Get up, cross the room and give it a go!
