Learned Optimism

[Certain Hope]

Hi,

  This may be familiar info to some here, but it's an exciting view, I'd say.

   Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Apparently, it's possible to be a pessimist and not even realize it. This was news to me! We're not as locked into our habits of thinking/ personality styles as we might have thought.

   You may appreciate the story about Elizabeth. Instead of standing up for herself when she was set up by a deceptive person, she fell apart and took all of the blame upon herself... simply out of habit.

   The article ends with this:  Copyright © 2006 by Martin E. Seligman. Excerpted by permission of Vintage, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

So... anyone interested can read the whole thing here:    http://www.enotalone.com/article/5412.html

Hope

[Gaining Strength]

Thanks Certain Hope

What an excellant article.  I whole heartedly believe this and I get inspired everytime I read more supportive of Seligman's view.  My T says over and over that I have "learned helplessness" and I believe that "Learned Optimism" can over come it.  I'll definitely put this on my booklist. - GS

[Certain Hope]

Dear GS,

  You're welcome. I'm continuing to look for inspiration and it's always more satisfying when someone else benefits from it as well.

This concept of "Learned Helplessness" resonates with me, too. When very young, I had dreams where there was imminent threat, but my way of dealing with it was ... to not deal with it, by "playing possum". Can't remember the exact scenarios of these nightmares except for a vague recollection that someone was trying to kill me and all I had to do was pretend to be already dead.
All of this goes hand in hand with avoidance and the paralysis of which you've often spoken... feeling absolutely frozen and unable to cope.  The research and learning continue.

Hope

[WRITE]

Glass half full!

I hated my parents' negativity and all the impending doom during childhood, in some ways I rushed headlong to meet it and did crazy self-destructive things.

But remarkably- here I am, mum and dad!

Mum is dead now, G_d rest, but dad has lived to see me fulfill some dreams and has gone on to flourish a few of his own.

Thank you CH, loved reading that.

My T says over and over that I have "learned helplessness" and I believe that "Learned Optimism" can over come it.

yup GS, if we can learn one way, we can learn another.
Nothing is written in tablets of stone....

[Hopalong]

I really liked Learned Optimism.
I interviewed (by phone) the author, Martin Seligman, for a book chapter once.
He's an expert on optimism (and conversely, pessimism)...it's become his life's work.
I haven't read any of his others and I think there are several more.

I almost feel as though, in some respect, he's the scientific inheritor of Norman Vincent Peale's worldview. It's a hopeful book, and grounded too.

Hops

[Stormchild]

On balance, I hope to be a realist. Things are what they are, some good, some bad; one woman's sorrow is another woman's blessing; one man's loss is another's gain.

One thing I have noticed about professional optimism advocates: they tend to be predominantly white, well off, and the offspring of prosperous parents. Edit in: and male.

How much is nature? How much is nurture? Is it easier to be optimistic when one is born to privilege?

How do we differentiate optimism, per se, from desperation, or from whistling in the dark?

Conversely - how much of pessimism is, like exogenous depression, a reasonable response to unreasonable circumstances?

Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book, Bait and Switch, includes a wonderful discussion of the blame-the-victim mentality and 'magical thinking' - both mislabeled as optimism by their practitioners - that she encountered while studying white collar unemployment, support groups for downsized employees, career counselors and so forth. It's an extremely absorbing book, well written and brilliantly perceptive, and an excellent counterpart to Nickle and Dimed, her book about trying to live by doing minimum wage work.

That being said - there's no substitute for genuine optimism, for faith, for hope, and for the commitment to growth that gives faith and hope their traction in the human heart.

[Certain Hope]

Write,

  I know for sure that our outlook on life need not be written in stone 

Hops,

  Very neat about your interviewing the author. I'd never heard of him... at least not that I recall.


Stormy,

   Jesus isn't a professional, but He does advocate optimism. "Take heart, for I have overcome the world."

Hope

[Stormchild]

In some ways, He's really the only professional, I think. He walked it and talked it, and bore the consequences, didn't he? He went first. So we would know how to follow.

[Gaining Strength]

One thing I have noticed about professional optimism advocates: they tend to be predominantly white, well off, and the offspring of prosperous parents. Edit in: and male.

One of my new favorites is Wayne Dyer - he's male and white and well off now but he grew up in foster homes because his single mother didn't have enough money to raise her children.  Another one is a young, black man still in his 20s who lived in the projects with his single mom.  His name is Farrah Gray and he wrote a book, Reallionaire.  Read about him at www.drfarrahgray.com

How much is nature? How much is nurture? Is it easier to be optimistic when one is born to privilege?

I have honestly studied this for many years. I think both nature and nurture make a difference.  I used to voluntteer as a homeless shelter and there was a man who had nothing, never was going to have anything but who saw the world in positive terms.  I spend long hours trying to figure out how he got there.  I became convinced, as I became a student of people, that he was born with that outlook.  Then in recent years as I have read more and more about the brain my conviction found supportive scientific evidence. 

And without doubt had I been trained to view things optimistically, I would have been at least somewhat more optimistic.

How do we differentiate optimism, per se, from desperation, or from whistling in the dark?

This is the razor's edge.  This is the real crux of the matter. There has to be some grounding here instead of words used to pave over an absess.  I can't quite articulate it because I don't have a firm grasp of it.  But boy I think this is very important.  Help me work this out.

Conversely - how much of pessimism is, like exogenous depression, a reasonable response to unreasonable circumstances?

Alot - absolutely, undeniably. I know from personal experience.

Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book, Bait and Switch, includes a wonderful discussion of the blame-the-victim mentality and 'magical thinking' - both mislabeled as optimism by their practitioners - that she encountered while studying white collar unemployment, support groups for downsized employees, career counselors and so forth. It's an extremely absorbing book, well written and brilliantly perceptive, and an excellent counterpart to Nickle and Dimed, her book about trying to live by doing minimum wage work.

I recognize and acknowledge this danger.  When I am down there is no value in anyone heaping platitudes on me about seeing things through rosy glasses.  On the other hand, if I or someone else will stand with me, acknowledging where I am and then help me to focus on where I can go - that's the optomism - not where I am but where I can get from here.  That is the diffference to me.  If someone wants to tell me that where I am or where I have been is not so bad and to look at it optimistically  - well that attitude is full of c***.  But to turn my vision to a better place and to aim for that - that is optimism to me.

That being said - there's no substitute for genuine optimism, for faith, for hope, and for the commitment to growth that gives faith and hope their traction in the human heart.

That's it completely Stormy.  It has taken me so long to get here because of the misgivings you expressed here.  Thanks for letting me revisit my psychological history on "optimism".

[Stormchild]

((((((((((((GS))))))))))))

[penelope]

For so long what I thought was pessimism was me just being depressed. 

I no longer think about life in terms of optimistic/pessimistic attitudes, as these terms are too oversimplified for me.

For me, a way to escape my pessimism (which was depression in disguise), could never be found in a book - but it was obtainable for me in a pill.

It's called Effexor XR.

bean

[October]

   Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Apparently, it's possible to be a pessimist and not even realize it. This was news to me! We're not as locked into our habits of thinking/ personality styles as we might have thought.

I thought I had contributed here, but my post has got lost (or maybe it is elsewhere, on another thread.)  Anyway, the gist of it is, that what is needed is neither optimism nor pessimism, which are both capable of contributing to pathology.  And the other thing I said is that psychology today seems obsessed with inculcating optimism, as if that is the great panacea to life.  It isn't.  I am a very optimistic person, and the only advantage to that is that it takes longer to get hurt, even longer to realise that you have been damaged beyond your ability to cope and then even longer to recover from the depth of the wound.  Particularly when therapists want only to encourage more of the same optimism that got you into trouble in the first place, which is only likely to repeat the cycle for another couple of turns.

What is needed is realism.   

[Gaining Strength]

LOL October -
Way to set me straight.  I am a reforming pessimist aiming for optimist, now hyjacked towards realist. - Gaining Strength

[Hopalong]

I think expectant is a nice term...
something less mystical than hopeful and less rah-than optimistic.

Hops

[Certain Hope]

Hmm.... Earnestly Expectant... might be a neat screen-name 

I like it, Hops!

Hope