Ch-8: Rise Above Anxiety, Anger, and Depression

Mental Control Strategy 1: Choice--Accept or Change?

Mental Control Strategy 1:
 

TO CREATE HARMONIOUS FUNCTIONING REPLACE OR CONVERT ACTIVITIES

How much of your time during a typical week is spent in a state of arousal that is too high--feeling anxiety, stress, resentment, frustration, guilt, or other emotions of overarousal? Is it 10%, 25%, 50%, 80%--or even more? I have many clients tell me that they are in this state over 80% of the time. How much of your time during a typical week is spent in a state of arousal that is too low--feeling bored, lonely, depressed, apathetic, "tuned out," or unmotivated? Some people tell me they feel this way over 80% of the time.

In comparison, what percentage of your time is spent where your arousal level is more "in the zone"--happy, joyful, interested, excited, looking forward to something, and confident?

Many people spend most of their time doing what they don't like and very little time doing what they do like. How very sad! What if we could transform our lives into more time spent doing what we really enjoy? What if we could spend 80 or 90% of our time in the harmonious functioning zone?

It may not sound possible, but it is! Sherry and I have greatly increased our own percentage of time "in the zone" by replacing or converting activities. We each are interested (or happy) in what we are doing at least 80% of our time. During the past few years, the biggest changes have occurred not so much from replacing activities as from converting them from stressful or boring ones into interesting ones. What has changed most are our thoughts--our mental control, involvement, and interest.
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REPLACE ACTIVITIES TO GET MORE IN THE ZONE

You may assume that you "have no choice" but to do certain unpleasant activities, because they are necessary to accomplish important goals. One alternative to spending your time in unpleasant activities is to try to replace as many of these with more enjoyable ways of accomplishing similar goals.

When you question your assumptions, you may find that an unpleasant activity serves no current high priority goals. If so, consider eliminating it or consider spending less time doing it. When you begin to question your assumptions behind the "I have no choice" statement, you will find that you almost always have many choices.

Many people have eliminated or reduced time spent on unpleasant tasks. They minimize chores by moving from high-maintenance to low-maintenance homes, by planting low-maintenance plants, and by shopping infrequently. They minimize housework and teach children to do more for themselves.

Good time-managers do the highest priority tasks (those with the most happiness and productivity payoffs) first, forcing themselves to do the low payoff activities in what little time is left. Sherry and I find that these methods give us much more time for activities like writing, tennis, going out, travel, and other things we love to do. (See O-PATSM self-management chapter.)

Involving and enjoyable activities can help cope with negative emotions. One way to get control of your emotions is to get more control over how you spend your time. You can choose your environments and activities.

Evaluate every situation or activity you are in for its emotional effects on you. How do you feel afterward? Anxious? Resentful? Frustrated? Or another overarousal emotion? Do you feel depressed? Bored? Apathetic? Or another underarousal emotion?

You have a lot of control over your schedule (no matter what you think). You have choices. Sprinkle in more activities that get you into the zone and add variety to your schedule. Try to achieve some balance in meeting different values, interests, and parts of yourself. You are unique and must find the combination of activities that works best for you.

CONVERT ACTIVITIES TO GET MORE IN THE ZONE

If you do not choose to get out of the situation (or replace the activity) to feel better, you can accept the situation and change how you view it or cope with it. In other words, you can convert the activity into an interesting one. Does that seem impossible with many tasks you "hate"?

Let's return to Victor Frankl's life in the Nazi Concentration camps to see how he coped with the boredom and pain of minimal human existence.

It was how Frankl thought about the situation that was the critical difference. He switched from thoughts that focused on the details of his misery--trapped in its midst--to thoughts that came from higher parts of himself--such as his inner psychologist. When he switched into the role of thinking about the situation as a psychologist, it became interesting.

Frankl also found that to have positive emotions--such as hope--people must not only find their lives interesting, but also meaningful or purposeful in some higher sense. Thoughts that reflect higher meaning are therefore more helpful for overcoming negative life events.

Frankl's keen observations of hundreds of concentration camp prisoners can be a lesson for us all. Their external situations were very similar. The factor that made the difference in their emotions was their thinking--finding positive meaning in a hostile environment. Return to beginning

Much of our time may be spent in unpleasant activities pursuing important goals. What activities do you dread? Going to work on Mondays? Doing household chores? Being with certain people? Doing some important project that can make a difference in your career? Looking for a better job? Facing a major decision? How much of your time is wasted dreading the future?

You may spend most of your unpleasant time pursuing important goals such as working, doing chores, commuting, caring for children, or obtaining a college degree. You may assume that these tasks must remain unpleasant. You may believe that you have an "innate" dislike of paperwork, doing the dishes, confronting people, studying math, going to meetings, or commuting. All of these activities may be important in order to meet important goals, but you do not need to feel unhappy while you are doing them.

The first step to convert these unpleasant activities into more pleasant ones is to realize that these feelings are not innate or unchangeable. Being closer to harmonious functioning immediately increases our enjoyment of the activity.

We can get "into the zone" for any activity.  At one time I didn't look forward to seeing certain clients, because I was not feeling as interested or challenged by what they were saying. I used to think that it was because I had seen too many clients with that type of problem. Now I realize that it is my responsibility to maintain my own interest, and that my own interest is a good predictor of progress in therapy.

My boredom is a red flag that something is wrong with what is happening in the counseling session. For example, I had a client who talked about her problems with her family one week, her problems with school the next, and something else the next. Yet it didn't seem that any of these particular problems were much of a problem for her. She was handling them all fairly well, and the sessions were "ho hum." I was not looking forward to seeing her, because it seemed our time was not productive.

In the past I probably would have continued focusing on these "minor" problems. However, I no longer do that. Now I look for a fresh approach. I told her I was feeling that something was wrong. I asked if she was really very upset about these problems. She said that these problems weren't really bothering her very much, but that something was bothering her and she didn't know what it was.

She had only been talking about these more "minor" problems, because she had assumed they were the source of her unhappiness. So it was her unhappiness with her life that had brought her into therapy, not any of these "minor" problems.

That insight may seem small, but it was important and led to an entirely new direction in therapy which we both suddenly became fascinated with. Her life lacked direction and meaning. She was having a great deal of inner conflict between wanting a life focused upon inner peace and happiness versus a life focused upon success, money, getting married, and having a family. Progress in resolving that underlying conflict helped her feel more inner peace and confidence in all of the situations she had formerly been discussing.

This "breakthrough" began because I took responsibility to convert my own feelings of boredom into feelings of interest (and not blame the client for my feelings).Return to beginning

Adjusting involvement, challenge, and complexity of the activity adjusts emotions. I first learned several mental control methods while working with students who were trying to improve their academic performance. Their main goal was to improve their motivation, memory, and grades. We learned that the best way to improve all three was getting out of the zones of confusion or boredom and into the zone of harmonious functioning.

As a by-product of using techniques to get more mentally involved in the content and understand it at a deeper level, I witnessed many students who had "hated" a certain class become genuinely interested in it. The class did not change, the students changed. They became much more mentally involved in the class.

These students learned to use their "inner observer" to monitor their emotions. If they felt highly interested, they were in the zone of harmonious functioning and maximizing their learning. If they felt too confused or anxious, they would use methods to get more understanding.

If they felt too bored, they would use methods to increase the involvement, challenge, or complexity of the studying. Thus it is almost as if they were adjusting a thermostat to keep their interest (and therefore their learning) in the zone.

We can either replace or convert the situation we are involved in to change our emotions. Sometimes the best solution is to replace it with one we like better. More often, the best solution is to accept the situation we are in and convert our emotional reaction into a more positive one. Harmonious Functioning mental control strategies 2-6 stress converting our reactions to a situation. Methods 2-6 give us the tools increase internal control and self-esteem. You will be able to say,

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