One thing that unites just about every human who’s ever lived is that at some point, and in one way or another, life gets difficult. And a second thing that’s universally human is that our brains are pretty good–too good, often–at seeing that difficulty and directing our attention and energy toward it, in an effort to do what we can to fix it. When it comes to our mental health, many of us are very aware of problems and areas of deficit, or could easily list the things we know we need to work on. But why isn’t our brain naturally as good at seeing things that are working well? How aware are you of your good parts? Your character strengths, your healthy abilities, or the aspects of you that enhance your well-being? And do you give these your energy, focus, and intentional effort at a level similar to how you approach your problems? These are the kinds of questions that are relevant to Positive Psychology, Psychological Well-Being, and the science of happiness and flourishing.
Psychotherapy and its Focus on Suffering
For much of its history, the mental health profession focused on identifying, understanding, and treating problems. These problems are the type that cause pain and suffering for people who experience them. We identify specific groupings of symptoms and, in ways similar to medical disciplines, we might label these problems as disorder, disease, dysfunction, or illness.
From there the focus of therapy responds accordingly and is driven by an underlying question: how can we treat, or remove, the illness and disorder so that a person can return to health? Let me be absolutely clear that this approach is useful. It has driven scientific inquiry and clinical innovation, so that when you seek help from a mental health professional, we have good reasons to be optimistic that it will succeed. And why wouldn’t we want to reduce human suffering where we’re able?
But identifying and treating illness is only one side of the scale.
Balancing Illness and Wellness
Imagine a two-sided scale, kind of like the scales of justice that are often seen around courthouses or on TV legal dramas. Only this one is the scale of human suffering and flourishing. On one side of the scale is a pile of the negative, painful, stressful, and difficult things we experience. Everyone has something on this side of the scale, and sometimes people have much larger amounts that pull the scale way down in that direction and out of balance. Therapists and counselors, and even more broadly most medical professionals, spend most of their time and resources identifying what’s weighing down this “negative” side of the scale, diagnosing it, and treating it, so as to reduce suffering and restore some balance. And thank goodness for that!
But what about the other side of the scale? There are two ways in this metaphor to restore balance: remove weight from the ‘negative’ side of the scale, or add weight to the ‘positive’ side. And why not both? Sometimes in treating mental health problems we–patients and therapists alike–can easily get caught up focusing only on all the problems on the negative side. It’s easy to forget to zoom out a bit and remember that removing weight from one side isn’t the only way to balance the scale. A strict symptom/illness focus can get us overly zoomed in on problems, and stuck in a mindset where we have to fix or remove all the bad stuff in order to feel and live better. On the other hand, a simplistic positive approach that attempts to ignore away serious pain or issues with ‘just focus on the good stuff’ or other shallow toxic positivity can cause its own problems. One solution? We don’t have to pick one part of the scale to exclusively focus on. BOTH are important and deserving of our attention, and I believe therapy that takes your problems AND your strengths seriously is the best kind of therapy. It is possible, and often very helpful, to work on reducing pain while simultaneously enhancing health.
Well-Being Skills are Not a Quick Trick
This of course means applying Positive Psychology in a way that has some depth and complexity. Quick sound-bites or Instagram quotes often fall apart fast when they meet up with actual human experience, in all its variability and nuance. Admonitions from your friend with a perpetually sunny disposition to ‘focus on the positive’ or ‘think good thoughts’ are well-intended, but not usually very helpful. The idea sounds good on the surface, but even the best tools don’t work well if they’re not being used the right way or with some skill and dexterity. The problem, as you already know too well, is that life is just not that simple. Be appropriately skeptical about over-simplified applications of positive psychology concepts. There are plenty of them out there. Remember both sides of the scale and don’t ignore your pain…it’s useful information and deserves your attention. So how do we enhance psychological well-being in ways that are actually helpful?
How to Develop Skills of Psychological Well-Being
The skills of utilizing, developing, and enhancing psychological strengths are just like any skill you would wish to develop in any other area of your life. It’s going to take a foundational conceptual understanding, but on top of that it requires action, practice, and repetition.
It takes purposeful reflection on what strengths you already have, and dedicated action in the direction of further developing and utilizing those strengths. It takes developing the parts of the brain that notice, appreciate, and savor positive aspects of day to day life, especially since evolution gave the problem-focused parts of your brain a massive head start. It takes identifying your values, and engaging in things that give you a sense of meaning or purpose. It means focusing effort on the psychological equivalents to physical health, such as internal flexibility, mindfulness, and interpersonal connection.
It also helps to find evidence-based sources to guide your efforts; consider consulting these resources: Sonja Lyubomirsky, University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, including their Authentic Happiness strength assessments, courses, and more, and UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.
Ask your mental health professional if you can work this into your therapy. The professionals at Full Color Psychology have lots of experience developing psychological well-being in both therapy and the university classroom. Feel free to reach out to us with questions or to set up a therapy appointment.
