Category Archives: Happiness

Happiness, Personal Reflections, Writing

The Benefits of Singing, Adolescent Awkwardness, and How to Make a Music Video of Yourself

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I like knowing a little trivia. It’s probably related to wanting to maintain a positive view of myself. If I know a little trivia, maybe that makes me more competent.

Trivia of the day: Hardly any of you know that my friends Mike Bevill, Neil Balholm, Greg Hopkins, and I invented Karaoke in Mike Bevill’s basement back in 1974. Neil had a portable microphone system. We’d plug it in, put on background music, and belt out tunes, as if we were Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Bevill, Balhoum, Hopkins, and Sommers. We created a fake band, named ourselves the “Nugget Brothers,” and sang with great enthusiasm, but little talent, along with a variety of pop musicians.

One odd outcome of this was my continued preoccupation with creating fake bands into and after college, despite nearly complete lack of talent. As an example of the awkwardness of youth, I could “fake perform” to large groups, but I was unable to speak up in classes. Weird, I know. My guess is it was safer to publicly perform with no talent that it was to do so in areas where I was serious.

Here’s a photo attesting to my fake band performance legacy.

As a part of the Montana Happiness Challenge, we’ve been encouraging people to share their favorite songs. . . and now we’re taking it to the next step. Please, if you will, share yourself singing a song that makes you happy, or that you find meaningful. Post it on social media and give us a tag or hashtag: #MHPHappinessChallenge or #MontanaHappiness.

You may wonder, other than embarrassment and social media humiliation, what’s the point? The point is that singing is nearly always therapeutic, partly because of what’s happening in the brain. Think about it.

Singing involves movement, creativity, feedback and adjustment, listening, planning, memory, and language. Some researchers emphasize that singing triggers the release of the so-called “feel-good” neurotransmitter dopamine, which is a limited view, because there’s also more serotonin at the synapse, an oxytocin shower, and more or less involvement by 100s of other neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, and brain structures (including, but not limited to the hippocampus, insula, frontal lobe, Wernicke’s region, occipital cortex, and motor cortex). If you want to light up your brain, sing!

For the Montana Happiness Challenge, we highly recommend singing out loud. Although we would love to watch and listen to you singing on social media, if that’s not your thing, go ahead and sing in the shower, while housecleaning, in the car, or anywhere else you can let your joy happen.

One last point. Research on positive emotions indicate that we don’t need to have BIG positive emotions to experience happiness and well-being benefits. What’s important is to weave in many intermittent small positive emotions. IMHO, singing privately or publicly is one way to give yourself frequent positive emotional boosts.

For my part, I’ve recorded three videos on my social media singing. These videos are silly and embarrassing, which I’m completely embracing. I got nervous for each of these videos and didn’t even say all of what I planned to say. Feel free to skip them and/or #neverspeakofthem.

Video One – Prep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmja7e4SnyE

Video Two – Your Brain on Singing: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UXhDPYEEq0E

Video Three – My Performance : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJLtckXrnUY

Thanks for reading this. Please share everything you can about the Montana Happiness Project. Our goal is to reach MANY people with free ideas about positive emotions and meaningful happiness.

Happiness

Music, Mood, and Meaning

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Today is the official launch of the Montana Happiness Challenge. For the next 20 weeks we’ll be trying to spread happiness from social media into classrooms, kitchens, boardrooms, ballrooms, and everywhere else you’ll help us spread it.

The concept is simple.

  1. Happiness takes work and involves behavior. We’re not JUST talking about “smiley” hedonic happiness; we’re also talking about eudaimonic, meaning-filled happiness.
  2. Today’s activity involves music. You can interpret this and share this in nearly any way you like. You can just post your #Happysong somewhere, or share it with a friend, family, coworker, or classroom. You can also sing. . . and post it on Youtube or Facebook or Insta or wherever you like. You can include our cumbersome hashtags #MHPHappinessChallenge and #MontanaHappiness and Tag us, or just stay quiet. But, if you like, don’t shy away from posting photos of yourself singing, even if they’re slightly embarrassing, like this one.

Below is the full description of the first Happiness Activity. Please engage and experience and experiment as you wish. . . all week long!

Happiness Activity 1 – Music, Mood, and Meaning

John Sommers-Flanagan, Ph.D.

University of Montana

Music in general, and songs in particular, trigger happiness, sadness, other emotions, and life memories. Sometimes our emotional responses to music are all about the music. Other times our emotional responses are about personal emotions and memories that the songs trigger. For example, when I listen to “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night, I’m transported back to positive memories I had playing 9th grade basketball. The song, “Put the Lime in the Coconut” by Harry Nilsson will forever take me back to a car accident with my sister in 1973. It’s not unusual for us to turn to music for help regulating our emotions, or to deepen particular feelings. The connection between music and mood is so powerful that psychological researchers frequently use music when they want to manipulate the mood of their research participants.

For this assignment, do the following:

Part One: Your Happy Song(s)

  1. Select a song or songs that trigger positive emotions. We’ll call that your #HappySong.
  2. Listen to your happy song once or twice, or whatever it takes to let the song do its work. You can do this with your family or a friend or by yourself. Consider how you might use that song to intentionally elevate your mood.
  3. At minimum, share your #HappySong on social media or with your friends/family. You can just share the name and artist, provide a link to the song.
  4. Because creating music and singing can be especially powerful, consider making a clip of yourself performing your #HappySong.
  5. If you want to get deeper, you can share on your favorite social media platform why that’s a happy song for you or how you use it as a “go-to” happy song when you need an emotional lift, or you can share your personal memories around the song.

Part Two: Your Meaningful Songs

              Sometimes music gives us an emotional boost. Other times, it helps us go deeper into challenging emotions or allows us to find meaning in hard times. When I was struggling in graduate school, I would often listen to Paul Simon’s “American Tune” or “Immigrant Song.” I very much resonated with these (and other) lyrics “I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered, or driven to its knees.” Often the tears would flow. [I love this version, with Simon and Rhiannon Giddens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67pyIglP79U]

              For the meaning part of this activity, consider the following:

  1. Share a song that holds meaning for you. This might be a song you listen to when feeling sad or angry or scared. While I was teaching a Happiness Class at the University of Montana, a student shared a beautiful song by Mandoline Orange (now Watchhouse) titled, “Golden Embers” Golden Embers is about the death of the singer’s mother. My mother died not long after I heard this song, and even though the lyrics don’t perfectly fit my experience or my mother, when I listen I think of her and let myself feel the grief I have around the loss of her presence in my life and in the world. You can listen to Golden Embers here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEt2lf7L13g
  2. As with the Happy Songs above, you can just share the song with your friends/family/colleagues or share it on your favorite social media platform. You can also go into details about why the song is emotionally meaningful for you. Do this is whatever way you find meaningful and share what you’re comfortable sharing.
  3. Obviously, this is a much more vulnerable activity than the Happy Song version . . . and so participate only to the extent that feels okay for you. Also, if you notice others posting their emotionally meaningful songs, please find ways to offer support and respect for their insights and vulnerability.  

Thanks for reflecting on how music affects our emotions, life meaning, and quality of life. I hope you’ll stay tuned for our next Happiness Activity coming out Sunday, October 8.  

P.S.: for those of you who want to read more about music, mood, and meaning, here’s a recent Washington Post article, compliments of Lillian Martz from the University of Montana:  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/08/25/music-therapy-reduce-anxiety-strategies/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3A5VAMTGK_KeQUtjEjEU7U8OpJiA38z-QEcj0MmMzotdFf7St5bYLG350_aem_ARlXGWyvX_jt60gL3VqJ4LUgt2s2SAmSIh8xsfifQa4TqJFLecSTDtMAmzd9AL-ugvMYTVDFdxKMYThoz_gkE6P7&mibextid=2JQ9oc
Happiness, Personal Reflections, Writing

One Word to Describe Two Days at the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation (AMBFF) Home Office

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Shortly after Beth Brown, Managing Director of Mental Health and Well Being at The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation (https://blankfoundation.org/) called the meeting to order, she asked us to introduce ourselves and share one word to represent how we were feeling in that moment. 

Having taught my fair share of group counseling and psychotherapy courses at the University of Montana, I immediately recognized Ms. Brown’s icebreaking trickery. The trickery is, while ostensibly asking about the emotional tone of participants, the “one word” question simultaneously evaluates participants’ ability and willingness to comply with group leader requests.

It was a raucous group. People immediately began bending, breaking, and straying from Ms. Brown’s one-word rule. Some participants took 30 words to introduce themselves; others took 50 words to frame the rationale for their one-word choice. One participant (who spoke second, and may or may not have been me), immediately displayed annoying attention-seeking behavior by interjecting an anecdote about the worst icebreaker activity ever in the history of time.

Had Sigmund Freud been a Mental Health and Wellness grantee (and therefore invited to the two-day event), he might have used the word delighted. Not only was the one-word activity intrinsically projective, Freud also once famously quipped,

Words were originally magic, and . . . retain much magical power, even today. With words people can make others blessed, or drive them to despair; by words the teacher transfers . . . knowledge to the pupil; by words the speaker sweeps away the audience and determines its judgments and decisions. Words call forth affects and are the universal means of influencing human beings [n.b., this is not a perfect quote because I engaged in minor editing to make Freud more quippy and less sexist].

I have some magic words to describe the participants. They were smart, fun, funny, dedicated, committed, clever, brilliant, generous, compassionate, empathic, connected, passionate, and cool. During Lyft rides, some of them even engaged with each other as if they were live podcasters. My particular program officer is so kind and generous that I now just think of her as Saint Natalie.

Words were the theme and the tool. On the afternoon of Day One Michael Susong, PR Lead at Intrepid, taught us how to use asset-based, instead of deficit-based words on our websites. His presentation was complemented by a gallery-walk through an adjacent room where life-sized word cloud posters of the words in our websites were set up and numbered; we perused the clouds, absorbing the language and seeking to discern which cloud belonged to which organization. I, of course, quickly found the Montana Happiness Project (MHP) word cloud, primarily because the biggest word was SUICIDE, which may or may not have implied that we (the MHP) have a bit of work to do on using more asset-based language on our website. I also felt jealousy because other organizations had way cooler words, like “Nintendo” and “LBGTQ+” and “Youth of color” and “Belonging.” 

At the close of Day 1, the prevailing descriptive words were “Tired” and “Exhausted” not principally, but partly because this was a group of people who had likely added this retreat into their already too busy lives and consequently were emailing and doing business-related calls during breaks and lunch and on the airplane the day before and possibly into the night.

Looking back at the previous paragraph, I notice I used the word “business” which connotes a particular entrepreneurial feel, which requires a particular explanation. All of the organizations and people in attendance had a shared passion for the business of helping others achieve greater well-being, mental health, and happiness. IMHO, that’s good business. . . which leads me to sharing a few words about the man behind the curtain.

We all convened at the Arthur M. Blank Foundation headquarters for two days because of one man’s business. That man is Arthur M. Blank, co-founder of Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, the Atlanta United professional soccer club, and PGA Superstores. But along with his businesses, Arthur Blank has expanded his service mentality into the business of philanthropy. On the evening of the first day, Arthur Blank joined us as we listened to renowned Harvard researcher Robert Waldinger talk about the world’s longest study of Happiness [n.b., in his usual buoyantly optimistic style, Freud once noted that a main goal of psychotherapy is to move patients from neurotic misery, to common unhappiness].

Although I didn’t get a chance to meet Mr. Blank and impress him with my witty repartee, knowledge of icebreakers, or arcane Freudian quotes (I wish I could have told him, “Where id was, there shall ego be!), I did hear him speak. In one long, hyphenated word, I’d describe his message as gracious-supportive-humble-encouraging-empowering. Had Freud been there, he might have just said, “Arthur Blank’s words were magic.”

The Arthur Blank Foundation has given well over $500 million to philanthropic causes. None of this is required. Arthur Blank could take his money and keep it to himself and his family. Instead, he has embraced philanthropy. Arthur Blank also has a book titled “Good Company.” In a word (or maybe 20 words), if I were offering a New York Times Book Review (which will never happen because the NYT always rejects my editorial pieces, and yes, I’m clearly hanging on too tightly to my resentment toward the NYT), I’d describe his book as: A rather surprising treatise on companies doing values-based good work in the world as a part of a larger philosophy/vision of service-oriented capitalism paradoxically infused with egalitarianism in the workplace. In other (or additional) words, I enjoyed, appreciated, and valued the book and its philosophy WAY more than I expected. Now I want to become as wealthy as Arthur Blank so I can join him in contributing to the culture and welfare of places like West Atlanta, South Chicago, North Philly, Livingston Montana, and East Missoula.

In the end, Beth Brown asked us for a final, departing single word. I cleverly used my hyphenated last name as an excuse to say “overwhelmed-hopeful” but I might have just as easily used “connected-inspired” or “challenged-to-do-more-good” or “I’m-on-a-rocket-ship-headed-to-a-city-called-mental-health-and-wellbeing” or, given the fire of inspiration lit under my feet, I could have decided to demonstrate the worst icebreaker of all time, and just spell out my name and feelings with my hip movements.

Thank you, Arthur Blank, thank you to the AMBFF team, and thank you to the grantees. I am humbled by your generosity and vision of greater mental health and wellbeing for all.

Happiness, Personal Reflections, Writing

Thoughts on Forgiveness from My Friend, Dr. Bossypants

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I’m taking the opportunity this fine Sunday afternoon to post a blog piece that Rita wrote earlier this week. Oddly, or perhaps not that oddly for those who know her, Rita has an alter-identity that she refers to as “Dr. Bossypants.” In this alternate voice, Rita refers to herself in third person and lets herself be a bit more pedantic than she is in real life.

In this blog post, Dr. Bossypants jumps into the domain of forgiveness and offers up ideas that I found exquisitely interesting and very helpful.

Without further ado, I’d like you to meet, my friend, Dr. Bossypants.

An Eye for an Eye Keeps the Body Shops in Business
Happiness, Personal Reflections

The Happiness Challenge is Coming Soon

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Turns out, yesterday was Tuesday, not Friday. I got so disoriented yesterday that by the day’s end, I was emailing people and telling them to have a great Labor Day weekend. My excuse is that I got 17 new stitches in my forehead during a 4.5 hour marathon Mohs surgery on Monday. Sheesh. Now I’m a poster-boy for sun block. See the photo at the bottom of this post for the evidence.

I’m posting today (Wednesday, not Saturday!) to let you know about a unique opportunity, and to ask for your support.

Beginning this September (National Suicide Prevention Month), the Montana Happiness Project, L.L.C., in collaboration with Families First Learning Lab, is launching a 20-week Happiness Activity Challenge. Using various social media platforms, this campaign guides participants through 20 distinct evidence-based positive psychology interventions designed to increase personal happiness and life meaning.

This Campaign will be available for free, online, through social media. Because we’re offering it for free, we’re looking for two levels of support.

  • Collaborator: Being a collaborator costs you nothing. All it means is that you’re publicly saying that you support our efforts at spreading evidence-based happiness and will share our happiness activities with colleagues, friends, and perhaps formally engage your organization to participate. If you’re a collaborator, we’ll put your name or organization name and logo on our website.
  • Sponsor: We’re asking specific organizations to partner with us to sponsor each week. To sponsor a week, we ask for a $500 contribution. In return, we’ll include your Logo and our Thanks in our social media posts for the week. This will include posts on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, WordPress, and on our Squarespace Montana Happiness Project website. If you’re a sponsor, we’d love for you to encourage your staff to participate in this happiness promotion activity, talk about it with each other, and post about it on social media.

You may wonder, if we can be collaborators and my staff and colleagues can participate for free, why be a sponsor? That’s a great question. We’re doing our Happiness Challenge as an act of kindness for the people of Montana and beyond and acts of kindness are evidence-based happiness strategies. We hope you’ll join us, perform an act of kindness, and sponsor at least one homework week.

Whether you’re a collaborator, sponsor, or evesdropper, we hope you’ll engage with our happiness challenge to see if participation in some or all of our 20-day happiness project helps you (and your staff, friends, family, etc.) feel happier.

Below, I’ve answered a few questions:

Who can participate? – Anyone. Our primary focus is Montana, but our goal is to reach out and promote positivity and happiness to anyone and everyone who is interested.

How much does it cost? – Nothing. Nada. Nil. This is free because we believe life is hard and people need support, skills, and to have hope for greater happiness.

Do I have to commit to all 20 homework assignments? – Nope. We’re doing this on social media. You can participate as much or as little as possible. You can be explicitly active by posting and sharing about your experiences, but you can also keep your experiences to yourselves.

Are the homework assignments really evidence-based? – Yes. Nearly all of the assignments have direct scientific support as “interventions” that increase happiness and decrease depression. That doesn’t mean increased happiness and decreased depression are guaranteed, because even “effective” interventions don’t work for everyone. . . but they’re worth a try. A few of the assignments don’t have direct experimental support, but they’re based on concepts shown to increase happiness and meaningfulness.

What’s the catch? – No catch. We’re offering this experience as an act of kindness because we think it’s a good thing. We also recognize that positive psychology or evidence-based happiness interventions are not a great fit for everyone. Just do what you can when you can if you can.

How can I contribute to the idea of sharing evidence-based happiness knowledge and skills? – We hope you will do this activity with co-workers, friend, and/or family. We hope you’ll share it on social media, or talk with your children about your experiences over dinner. If you’re especially inspired by our 20-week Happiness Challenge, you’re welcome to donate (not required, but appreciated) to Families First Learning Lab. Just let the good people at Families First know that your donation is to support the FFLL Happiness Project.

If you have questions and/or want to become a collaborator or sponsor, please let John (john.sf@mso.umt.edu), Jeanice Robins info@montanahappinessproject.org, or Dylan Wright dylan@familiesfirstmt.org know and we’ll set you up!

I’d end with “Mark your calendars!” but given that I’m still not certain that I’m fully oriented to time, I’ll just say, thanks for reading all this and considering full engagement with our Happiness Challenge.

Sincerely,

John SF

Happiness, Personal Reflections, Suicide Assessment and Intervention

Perfectly Hidden Depression and Viewing Suicidality through a Strengths-Based Lens

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Last week I did a little cliff-jumping into the Stillwater River with my twin 13-year-old grandchildren. It was only about 20 feet, but high enough to feel the terror and exhilaration of a brief free-fall.

This week I’m having a different kind of buzz. Dr. Margaret Rutherford reached out to me with a link to her TEDx Boca Raton talk. Previously I was a guest on her video podcast show (here’s the link to her podcast page: https://drmargaretrutherford.com/podcast-2-2/, and a link to her website and book, “Perfectly Hidden Depression” https://drmargaretrutherford.com/perfectlyhiddendepressionbook/). We’ve stayed in touch via email. Along with her link, she apologetically noted that she “barely” got a plug in for my work on strengths-based suicide assessment. I thought it was incredibly nice for her to give a nod, even a brief one, to my work. But then I watched and discovered that she had only mentioned three professionals: Edwin Shneidman (the “Father of Suicidology), Sidney Blatt (a renowned suicide and depression researcher from Yale), and some obscure guy from the University of Montana (that would be me).

Aside from feeling honored, humbled, and flattered to even get a mention, Dr. Margaret’s talk is fantastic. She makes the point–with a couple of articulate cases–for moving away from a strictly medical model perspective and toward working with people who may be suicidal through a lens of no judgment and acceptance. Here’s the link to her talk, which is well-worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXZ5Bo5lafA

There are other signs that how professionals (and hopefully the public) view suicidal ideation and behavior may be shifting toward greater acceptance. I’ll go into these other signs in a future post, but right now I want to emphasize that the point is not to replace the medical model, but to move the needle toward less pathologizing and more acceptance of the fact that having suicidal thoughts is often a normal part of life. To the extent that we can approach people who are thinking about suicide with, as Dr. Margaret said, “non-judgment and acceptance,” the more likely they are to be open with us about their pain. . . and . . . when people are open about their pain and suffering, then we have a chance to listen with empathy and a greater opportunity to be of help. . . which, I think, is the main point.

Happiness

Attention Montana Educators — Check out this low-cost opportunity to earn 3 graduate credits while studying happiness!

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I’ve got great news for Montana educators.

Thanks to the support of the Arthur M. Blank Foundation, we (the Montana Safe Schools Center and the Montana Happiness Project) have funding to support a very low cost 3-credit online graduate course titled, “Evidence-Based Happiness for Educators.”

This course is available very soon – the first class “meeting” is on July 5, from 9:30am-11:30am. I have “meeting” in quotes here because the course can be taken asynchronously, although we recommend synchronous “live” attendance on specific dates. The details follow:

When: The course begins on Wednesday, July 5, 2023. The course consists of 20, 2-hour sessions. The final meeting is on Tuesday, August 1. Live (synchronous) class meetings will be held from 9:30am to 11:30am on the following dates:

Wednesday, July 5

Monday, July 10

Monday, July 17

Monday, July 24

Monday, July 31

Where: Online. After you register, as soon as we have the final course details taken care of, you’ll receive a Zoom link for attending sessions, and accessing course videos and materials.

What: The course, COUN 595 (Evidence-Based Happiness for Educators) is an academic review and experiential practice of evidence-based happiness strategies. Participants will have daily reading/podcast/video assignments, along with experiential practice assignments. The primary purpose of the course is for teachers to learn to apply evidence-based happiness strategies (e.g., gratitude, savoring, etc.) to themselves. The secondary purpose of the course is for teachers to make plans for how they can integrate evidence-based happiness principles and activities into their classrooms. You will not be required to implement these ideas in your classrooms, but we will encourage you to experiment with the ideas on yourself and, to the extent that you desire, to share them with students.

Who can enroll: All Montana teachers are eligible to enroll. There is a class cap at 40.

Who will teach the course: Lillian Martz, M.A., a doctoral student in the Department of Counseling at the University of Montana will be the lead instructor. John Sommers-Flanagan, a professor in the Department of Counseling will be the secondary instructor.  

The cost: Due to a generous grant from the Arthur M. Blank Foundation, we can offer this course at approximately 20% of a usual University of Montana summer course. Instead of over $1,000, the course is $175.00 for 3 graduate credits. You can also take the noncredit version of the course (and qualify for 40 OPI hours), for $75.00.

What else:  Because this course is underwritten by the Arthur M. Blank Foundation, we will ask participants to complete questionnaires before and after the course. You will not be required to complete the questionnaires, but if you do, that will help us to better understand the usefulness of this course content for Montana educators . . . and we would greatly appreciate your participation.

To enroll in COUN 595 – Evidence-Based Happiness for Educators – for 3 graduate credits from the University of Montana, click here: https://www.campusce.net/umextended/course/course.aspx?C=712&pc=13&mc=&sc=

To enroll in COUN 595 for non-credit (you can receive OPI hours), click here: https://www.campusce.net/umextended/course/course.aspx?C=711&pc=13&mc=&sc=

If you have questions, email: john.sf@mso.umt.edu

Happiness, Personal Reflections, Research

University of Montana Happiness Class Research Results Round 1 (again): The Structured Abstract

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I’ve spent the morning learning. At this point in my life, learning requires simultaneous regulation of my snarky irreverence. Although I intellectually know I don’t know everything, when I discover, as I do ALL. THE. TIME., that I don’t know something, I have to humble myself unto the world.

Okay. I know I’m being a little dramatic.

After pushing “submit” on our latest effort to publish Round 1 of our happiness class data, less than an hour later I received a message from the very efficient editor that our manuscript had been “Unsubmitted.” Argh! The good news is that the editor was just letting us know that we needed to follow the manuscript submission guidelines and include a “Structured Abstract.” Who knew?

The best news is I wrote a structured abstract and discovered that I like structured abstracts way more than I like traditional abstracts. So, that’s cool.

And, here it is!

Abstract

Background: University counseling center services are inadequate to address current student mental health needs. Positive psychology courses may be scalable interventions that address student well-being and mental health.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a multi-component positive psychology course on undergraduate student well-being, mental health, and physical health.

Method: We used a quantitative, quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design. Participants in a multi-component positive psychology course (n = 38) were compared to a control condition (n = 41). All participants completed pre-post measures of well-being, physical health, and mental health.

Results: Positive psychology students reported significant improved well-being and physical health on eight of 18 outcome measures. Although results on the depression scale were not statistically significant, a post-hoc analysis of positive psychology students who were severely depressed at pretest reported substantial depression symptom reduction at posttest, whereas severely depressed control group students showed no improvement.

Conclusion: Positive psychology courses may produce important salutatory effects on student physical and mental health. Future research should include larger samples, random assignment, and greater diversity.

Teaching Implications: Psychology instructors should collaborate with student affairs to explore how positive psychology courses and interventions can facilitate student well-being, health, and mental health. 

Counseling and Psychotherapy Theory and Practice, Happiness, Personal Reflections, Writing

Anger Management — Revisited

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What’s new about anger? Everything and nothing. You will feel angry over and over in your life. Each time it will be your familiar anger, which may come to feel old, tired, and boring. But each time it also will be new and compelling—as if you’ve been charged with energy to change the world.

Here’s one big truth about anger; it will come around again.

Here’s another: when doing anger management, it’s helpful to develop awareness of your usual triggers because if you see it coming, you may have a better chance to handle your anger in ways that are less embarrassing or destructive.

Here’s a third. This one I like to tell my clients and students: One good thing about having anger problems is that—and you can count on this—you will get many opportunities to work on your anger in the future, because it won’t be long until your anger visits you again (and again).

To summarize: Anger is repetitive; it’s good to develop self-awareness of your personal triggers; you will be presented with many opportunities to deal with your anger differently.

What follows is a slight revision of a post from seven years ago.

The speedometer reads 82 miles per hour. The numbers 8 and 2, represent to me, a reasonable speed on I-90 in the middle of Montana. Our speed limit signs read eight-zero. So technically, I’m breaking the law by two miles per hour. But the nearest car is a quarter mile away. The road is straight. Having ingested an optimal dose of caffeine, my attention is focused. All is well.

In my rear-view mirror, I notice a car slowly creeping up on me from behind. He gets a little to close to my rear bumper, and then slowly drifts into the left lane past me, lingering beside me and edging ahead. Then, with only three car lengths between us, he puts on his blinker and drifts in front of me. Now, with no other cars in sight, there’s just me and Mr. 83 mph on I-90, three car lengths apart.

An emotion rises into awareness. It’s anger, from a distance. I see it coming slowly, as if it’s in the rear-view mirror of my brain. At this distance, it’s only annoyance. I feel it and see it coming and immediately know it can go in one of three directions: My annoyance could sit there and remain unpleasant, until I tire of it. If I provide it with oxygen, could rise up and blossom into full-blown anger. Or, I can send it away, leaving room for other—more pleasant—thoughts and actions.

That’s not to say annoyance and anger is wholly unpleasant. Part of me likes it; part of me feels so damn aggrieved and indignant and justified.

All this self-awareness is fabulous. This is the Sweet Spot of Self-Control.

Without moving or speaking, “Hello anger,” I say, to myself, in my brain.

In this sweet spot, I experience expanding awareness, a pinch of energy, along with unfolding possibilities. I love this place. I love the strength and power. I also recognize anger’s best buddy, the behavioral impulse. This particular impulse (they vary of course), is itching for me to reset my cruise control to 84 mph.  It’s coming to me in the shape of a desire—a desire to send the driver in front of me a clear message. Isn’t that what anger, in its behavioral manifestation, aggression, is all about—sending a message?

“You should cut him off,” the impulse says, “and let him know he should give you some space.”

The sweet spot is sweet because it includes the empowered choice to say “No thanks” to the impulse and “See you later” to anger.

Now I’m listening to a different voice in my head. It’s smaller, softer, steadier. “It doesn’t matter” the voice whispers. “Let him move on ahead. Revenge is only briefly sweet. Those who seek revenge should dig two graves.”

I smile remembering an anger management workshop. With confidence, I had said to the young men in attendance, “No other emotion shifts as quickly as anger. You can go from feeling completely justified and vindicated, but as soon as you act, you can feel overwhelmed with shame, regret, or embarrassment.”

One participant said, “Lust. Lust is like anger. One second you want something more than anything, but the next second you might wish you hadn’t.”

“Maybe so,” I said.

There are many rational reasons why acting on aggressive behavioral impulses is ill-advised. Maybe the biggest is that the man in the car wouldn’t understand my effort to communicate with him. This gap of understanding is common across many efforts to communicate. But it’s especially linked to retaliatory impulses. When angry, I can’t provide nuance in my communication; I can’t make it constructive.

The quiet voice in my brain murmurs: “You’re no victim to your impulses. You drive the car; the car doesn’t drive you.” That doesn’t make much sense. Sometimes the voice in my head speaks in analogy and metaphor. It’s a common problem. I want straight talk, but instead I get some silly metaphor from my elitist and intellectual conscience.

But here’s what I get. I get that my conscience is telling me that this sweet spot is sweet because I get to see and feel my self-control. Not only do I see my behavioral options, I get to see into the future and evaluate their likely outcomes. I get to reject poor choices and avoid negative outcomes. I’m not a victim of annoyance, anger, or aggressive impulses. I make the plan. I drive the car.

The other driver is now far ahead. I recognize that I could resurrect my anger. I choose to let it go instead.

I haven’t always let go of my anger. In my teen years I developed a temper. I had many sport-related fits of embarrassing anger. I went to psychotherapy. My therapist listened, and helped me grow my better judgment. He said, “I don’t believe in the bowel movement theory of anger control.” That was a little indirect, and interesting. We don’t have to expel it. We can sit with it. We can reflect on it. We can watch it go away. We can put it in the rear-view mirror, or let it pass us by. Using our functional frontal lobes, we can experience the joy of the Sweet Spot of Self-Control.

My anger is like an old, greedy, needy, and fickle friend. It has an all-or-nothing mentality. My anger wants attention and power, because it values power over long-term happiness.

Anger is also a source of energy; it can fuel us to be assertive, to fight injustice, to be clear on our values. Anger has its place, and is sometimes a useful partner: a partner whom we should keep in the passenger seat, never letting it get behind the wheel and drive—even on a wide-open Montana highway.

Happiness

Bad Sleep . . . Bad Judgment

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No one has excellent judgment when sleep deprived and so no one should expect to have excellent judgment when sleep deprived. I’m making this bold claim based on my recent personal experience of writing and posting last week’s blog titled, “Sleep Well.” Sometimes I write late at night. That’s great for the muse and creativity; it’s less great for me remembering what the heck I was planning to write. I start writing. . . I finish writing. . . and sometimes I stay with my focus, while other times, well, I forget the whole point.Last week, my main reason for writing a blog on sleep was to link readers to a specific sleep podcast. However, because I was doing my late-night writing thing, by the time I finished it, I completely forgot to mention the podcast or include the link. Has this sort of thing ever happened to you? My guess is that, if it does, it happens more often when you’re sleep deprived, than when you’re sleep restored. Now, after a nice weekend of restorative sleep, here’s info and the link to the podcast.The podcast is called “All things Vagus.” I confessed to the host (Kathy Mangan, who is great) that I was scientifically opposed to “polyvagal theory” but she still let me on the show. That’s an example of how great she is. Here’s the description for the April 3, 2023 episode, titled: Sleep Well, Be Well: Why talk about sleep? It is important to our health, so we need to get clear on the types of insomnia and how we can cope with distress and anxiety that might be disrupting our rest.The link: https://allthingsvagus.fireside.fm/10P.S.: This is a 42-minute podcast episode, which makes it a nice length to go along with the workout you should be doing every day to optimize your sleep. And if you optimize your sleep, you’re more likely to remember what you’re writing about.