proofonline.org » Happiness

‘You Have to Remember… Lee Was Really Happy’

Douglas Faneuil — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:46:20 +0000

I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much with a human being.”

[A wonderful follow-up to this post. Props to Cathy Horyn, who really hits all the bases in writing responsibly about a suicide.]

‘The Battlefield That’s Inside Your Mind’

Douglas Faneuil — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 17:29:57 +0000

I know that I have to be extra vigil around the holidays and protect myself in a technique [that] I call SEE, which is to sleep (sleep hygiene), eat good, and exercise. Sleep hygiene means going to bed at the same time each night and waking up at the same time in the morning…

And sometimes when I’m feeling kind of overwhelmed by ‘the battlefield,’ I will just sort of stay away from the artificial situations and get back to my closer friends who really get what’s going on in my psyche.”

[Amen. I'm going to make better sleep hygiene my new year's resolution. -Ed.]

Trying To Prove What We Already Know

Douglas Faneuil — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:28:43 +0000

Here’s a recent headline from London’s Telegraph:

Artistic men are happier, study finds

“The findings of the study, in which almost 50,000 people participated, suggest that greater participation in arts and culture may improve overall levels of mental health. Professor Jostein Holmen, one of the researchers at the university said there was a ‘positive relationship’ between cultural participation and happiness for both sexes.”

In mental health news, you hear this stuff all the time: obvious conclusions couched in scientific language, announced in the manner of discoveries. Should it come as any surprise that participation in cultural activities adds to well-being? Why would scientists spend so much time verifying this connection? The study and its press say more about our relationship to art than anything else.

The real news here is our insecurity. Art doesn’t just make us happy – it makes us human. Those who question its benefits, or need to prove them, already seem lost.

PostSecret Is Showing Our Cards

Douglas Faneuil — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:47:26 +0000

I’ve been visiting PostSecret for years, and it’s still one of my favorite sites around. Few projects, online or off, suggest such a range of inner life so succinctly. Reading it each Sunday is a ritual of sorts, reminding me that in our weirdly unique differences we are all the same. It’s a little dose of humanity. It always makes me feel less alone.

In some ways, the site is a contradiction. Its mission seems particularly suited to the ethos of a blooming web culture – bringing together strangers to share secrets in an arbitrarily structured way that feels freeing and gives rise to a wealth of expression. From another angle, the whole thing seems oddly old-fashioned – decorating tiny canvasses using scissors and glue, submitting them for publication via snail-mail, and hoping your entry gets lovingly scanned by Frank Warren himself. It’s folk art for the internet age. And I love it.

I’m Messed Up… And It Informs Everything I Do

Douglas Faneuil — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:42:48 +0000

I’m okay with it, because there’s a lot of us.”

[This is great. Comedian Howie Mandel opens up about his Obsessive-compulsive Disorder on Ellen. -Ed.]

Help Is Not Bling

Douglas Faneuil — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:34:03 +0000

As I’ve said before, I spent nearly a decade in therapy. I shudder to think just how much it cost me. For most of us, I’d guess, money complicates our commitment to getting help. It forces us to compromise, to make sacrifices for our own benefit. Lots of people may be open to seeing a shrink – until they consider the monthly charges.

Therapy is expensive. Even on a sliding scale, one can expect to pay anywhere from $40-$75 per session (though better deals can be had). And the question of cost isn’t merely tricky because of tight funds. Who wants to pay for emotional support? I’m sure people grapple with this question all the time – I know I did. It took me years to address my misgivings about money with my therapist in an open and honest way.

In the end, I found that my reluctance to “shell out” cash for therapy had a lot to do with fears: of being self-involved, of being silly, of being wasteful. In other words, I questioned the relevancy of my own peace of mind.

For getting me to consider questions like that, therapy was worth every penny.

[PS: Here are some tips for care on a budget. See also my comments here (at bottom); the emergency room is always an option.]

‘Orchid’ Theory Posits Illness as Side-effect of Darwinian Success

Douglas Faneuil — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:37:32 +0000

At first glance, this idea, which I’ll call the orchid hypothesis, may seem a simple amendment to the vulnerability hypothesis. It merely adds that environment and experience can steer a person up instead of down. Yet it’s actually a completely new way to think about genetics and human behavior. Risk [of illness] becomes possibility; vulnerability becomes plasticity and responsiveness. It’s one of those simple ideas with big, spreading implications. Gene variants generally considered misfortunes (poor Jim, he got the “bad” gene) can instead now be understood as highly leveraged evolutionary bets, with both high risks and high potential rewards…

[A] genetic trait tremendously maladaptive in one situation can prove highly adaptive in another. We needn’t look far to see this in human behavior. To survive and evolve, every society needs some individuals who are more aggressive, restless, stubborn, submissive, social, hyperactive, flexible, solitary, anxious, introspective, vigilant—and even more morose, irritable, or outright violent—than the norm. All of this helps answer that fundamental evolutionary question about how risk alleles have endured. We have survived not despite these alleles but because of them. And those alleles haven’t merely managed to slip through the selection process; they have been actively selected for.

Read Full Article (via Jonah Lehrer)

[Fascinating stuff – reminiscent of this post. Also included, this wonderful zinger: "The orchid variant of the DRD4 gene, for instance, increases risk of ADHD (a syndrome best characterized, Cochran and Harpending write, 'by actions that annoy elementary-school teachers')." -Ed.]

Kierkegaard’s Happy Wanderer: He’s Totally Bummed

Douglas Faneuil — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:57:16 +0000

There is abundant chatter today about “being spiritual” but scarcely anyone believes that a person can be of troubled mind and healthy spirit. Nor can we fathom the idea that the happy wanderer, who is all smiles and has accomplished everything on his or her self-fulfillment list, is, in fact, a case of despair. But while Kierkegaard would have agreed that happiness and melancholy are mutually exclusive, he warns, “Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.” …Despair is not correlated with any particular set of emotions but is instead marked by a desire to get rid of the self, or put another way, by an unwillingness to become who you fundamentally are.

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Happiness Is Love, Full Stop

Douglas Faneuil — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:34:04 +0000

Writing in September 1938, Bock declared that medical research paid too much attention to sick people; that dividing the body up into symptoms and diseases—and viewing it through the lenses of a hundred micro-specialties—could never shed light on the urgent question of how, on the whole, to live well. His study would draw on undergraduates who could “paddle their own canoe,” Bock said, and it would “attempt to analyze the forces that have produced normal young men.” He defined normal as “that combination of sentiments and physiological factors which in toto is commonly interpreted as successful living.”

For 42 years, the psychiatrist George Vaillant has been the chief curator of these lives, the chief investigator of their experiences, and the chief analyst of their lessons. His own life has been so woven into the study—and the study has become such a creature of his mind—that neither can be understood without the other. As Vaillant nears retirement (he’s now 74), and the study survivors approach death—the roughly half still living are in their late 80s—it’s a good time to examine both, and to do so, I was granted unprecedented access to case files ordinarily restricted to researchers.

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