Tag Archives: life

Happiness, Personal Reflections, Suicide Assessment and Intervention

The Invention of the Strength Warning

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Now that I’m immersed in positivity every day as the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Positive Education, I think I’ve become weirder.

Some of you, including my sisters and brothers-in-law may be wondering, “Wait. How could John become any MORE weird than he already is?”

You know what they say: “All things are possible!” [Actually, I don’t know why I just wrote all things are possible, because, even in my most positive mental states, I don’t believe that BS. All things are not possible. I could make a list of impossible things, but I’ve already digressed.]  

Here’s what I mean by me becoming even weirder.

I find myself more easily hearing and seeing the pervasive negative narratives emerging around us. I could make another long list of all the bad ideas (negative narratives) I’m noticing (think: “fight or flight”), but I’ll limit myself to one example: The “Trigger warning.”

Trigger warnings are statements that alert listeners or viewers (or people attending my suicide assessment workshops) to upcoming intense and potentially emotionally activating content. Over the past 10ish years, we’ve all started giving and receiving trigger warnings from time to time, now and then. A specific example, “The next segment of this broadcast includes gunfire” or “In my lecture I will be talking about mental health and suicide.”

As a college professor in a mental health-related discipline, I became well-versed in providing trigger warnings. . . and have offered them freely. Because some people have strong and negative emotional reactions to specific content, providing trigger warnings has always made good sense. The point is to alert people to intense content so they can take better care of themselves or opt out (stop listening/viewing). Trigger warnings are important and, no doubt, useful for helping some people prepare for emotionally activating content.

As a college professor, I’m also obligated to keep up with the latest research. Unfortunately, the research on trigger warnings isn’t very supportive of trigger warnings. Argh! In general, it appears that trigger warnings sensitize people and might make some people more likely to have a negative emotional response. You can read a 2024 meta-analysis on trigger warning research here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21677026231186625

In response to the potential adverse effects of trigger warnings, I came up with a clever idea: I started giving trigger warnings for my trigger warnings. These were something like, “Because research suggests that trigger warnings can make you more reactive to negative content, I want to give you a trigger warning for my trigger warning and encourage you to not let my warning make you more sensitive than you already would be.”

Then, about a year ago, I had an epiphany. [I feel compelled to warn you that my epiphany might just be common sense, but it felt epiphany-like to me]

I realized—perhaps aided by my experiences training to do hypnosis—that trigger warnings might be functioning as negative suggestions, implying that people might not be able to handle the content and priming them to notice and focus on their negative reactions.

Given my epiphany, I was energized—as the solution-focused people like to say—to do something different. The different thing I settled on was to invent “The Strength Warning.”

[Here’s where I digress again to pitch a podcast. Paula Fontenelle, an all-around wonderful, kind, and competent professional, has a new podcast called, Relating to AI. And, lucky me, I got to be one of her very first guests. And, lucky Paula (joking now), she got to have me start her podcast interview by explaining and demonstrating the strength warning. Consequently, if you’re interested in AI and/or in hearing me demonstrate the strength warning, the link to Paula’s podcast is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHDIYrXw_2Y]

Although watching/listening to me give the strength warning with Paula is way more fun, I will also describe it below.

For strengths warnings, I say things like this.

In addition to warning you about sensitive content coming up, I also want to give you a Strength Warning. A strength warning is mostly the opposite of a trigger warning. I want you to watch out for the possibility that being here together in this lecture and with your colleagues might just make you notice yourself feeling stronger, feeling better, feeling more prepared, feeling more knowledgeable, and maybe even feeling smarter. So . . . watch for that, because I think you might even be stronger than you think you are.

Please, let me know what you think about my invention of the strength warning. I encourage you to try it out when you’re teaching or presenting.

I also encourage you to try out Paula’s new podcast. If you do, you might feel smarter, stronger, and more prepared to face the complicated issue of having AI intrude on our lives.

Happiness, Love, Writing

Happiness as a Butterfly (or Elephant)

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[Photo by Jean Bjerke, from a post in the Henrys Fork Wildlife Alliance – Wildlife Weekly Archives – July 15, 2021

Rita and I are working on a short “Happiness Handbook.” It’s a secret. Don’t tell ANYONE!

Below is a short and modified excerpt of something I’d written a while back on happiness being “hard to catch.” I’m looking for a place to put it in our secret handbook . . . so, for now, I’m putting it here. There’s one line in this little story that I love so much that I wish I could turn it into a quotable quote for everyone to use on the internet (haha). See if you can find it!

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Several days prior to driving across the state to a party she was planning with her family, a friend met up with us and we talked about happiness. She said she liked the word contentment better than happiness, along with the image of hanging out in a recliner after a day of meaningful work.

After her family party, she wrote me an email, sharing, rather cryptically, that her party planning turned out just okay, because,

“Sigh. Some days, happiness runs so fast!”

I loved her image of chasing happiness even more than the image of her reclining in contentment–although savoring contentment after a meaningful day is unequivocally awesome.

As it turns out, being naturally fleet, happiness prefers not being caught. Because happiness is in amazing shape, if you chase it, it will outrun you. Happiness never gets tired, but usually, before too long, it gets tired of you.

In the U.S., we’ve got an unhealthy preoccupation with happiness, as if it were an end-state we can eventually catch and convince to live with us. But happiness doesn’t believe in marriage—or even in shacking up. Happiness has commitment issues. Just as soon as you start thinking happiness might be here to stay, she/he/they disappears into the night.

But don’t let our pessimism get you down. Even though we’re not all that keen on pursuing happiness, we believe (a) once we’ve defined happiness appropriately, and (b) once we realize that instead of happiness, we should be pursuing meaningfulness.

Then, ironically or paradoxically or dialectically, after we stop chasing it, happiness will sneak back into our lives, sometimes landing on our shoulder like a delicate butterfly, and other times trumpeting like a magnificent elephant.