Self-Care

Scroll through your Instagram or Facebook feed, and chances are most images feature smiling faces. From beaming couples celebrating an engagement to festive groups of friends toasting over drinks, happiness is the name of the social media game. While some do post about more somber topics, overall, positivity outshines negativity. The problem is, real life isn’t always peachy keen. It’s full of disappointments, both small and large. Real life throws plenty of curveballs at us, from layoffs to losing loved ones. But in an age when people put only their most perfect moments on display, it’s easy to feel as if you’re the only one who ever goes through a tough time. Yet you’re not alone. And the hard stuff is actually just as important for a life full of happiness as positive experiences. “It would be irrational to think we can rid our lives of all negative experiences,” says Michelle Gielan, a positive psychology researcher and author of Broadcasting Happiness. “But it’s less about what happens and more about what you do about it.” Read on to learn about the positive side of negativity and how you can learn to handle it better. The Purpose of Negativity Despite what countless articles, books and social media suggest, “Human beings are not designed to feel happy all the time,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, and author of The How of Happiness. Negative emotions serve a purpose, both evolutionarily and emotionally. Think of emotions such as sadness, stress and anxiety as red flags that your mind wants you to pay attention to. “Sadness and other negative feelings indicate that we need to make a change,” Gielan explains. If you’re angry, for example, it likely means there’s an injustice that you want to correct. If you’re anxious, there may be a threat you need to attend to. And if you’re sad, it means you care about a situation so deeply that it’s causing you distress. Negative feelings can also serve as the catalyst you need to transition to a better place in your life—such as a new job or relationship. And don’t beat yourself up for feeling down. Trying to repress negative moods can actually make you feel worse, according to research. People who accept their emotions—both dark and light—without judgment are better able to cope with stress and feel better in the long run. Remember, happiness isn’t static—it’s more about moving toward goals than achieving them. “Happiness is the joy we feel as we grow toward our potential,” Gielan adds. Living in the Gray It’s easy to try to sort things that happen into neat categories—either good or bad. “We have a tendency to be obsessed with extremes: We’re either happy or sad, dieting or not dieting, rich or poor,” says Cheri Augustine Flake, L.C.S.W., a therapist in Atlanta. But life isn’t always so black-and-white. Focusing on either end of the spectrum ignores the in-between part, or the gray area, as Flake calls it. The gray area is actually an exciting, even fun, place to be, and it signals you’re changing and transitioning, even if things haven’t fallen perfectly into place. After all, the happiest people in the world wouldn’t feel that way if they didn’t also know what it was like to feel blue. “We grow and we become who we’re supposed to be,” Flake says. “No one says it’s easy. But they do say, ‘I went through this tough thing and I got better because of it.’ ” In other words, we get so wrapped up in how things should go down that we don’t see the opportunity in less-than-ideal situations. “The strange thing about the worst things that happen to us is that they can sometimes become the best things that could happen to us,” Flake notes. How to Get Through the Worst of Times This isn’t to say that negative situations, like a breakup, aren’t difficult. But the experts reveal there are some strategies to help you navigate the rough waters of life. For starters, try to simply focus on the present moment. “Even if you’re weeping and crying, can you just be okay with that?” Flake asks. And remind yourself that you are safe and sound: “If you’re sitting in your car, for example, feel the back of your legs touching the seat. Feel the cool air-conditioning blowing on you,” she suggests. “This helps remind your brain that everything is okay—that you can find some peace, no matter what else is going on.” You can also seek some good old-fashioned distractions from your problems. This doesn’t mean putting your head in the sand or turning to vices like drugs or alcohol, but rather allow yourself to feel fully absorbed in something else, Lyubomirsky says. During a rough patch, take time out of your day to do something enjoyable—perhaps see a movie, work on a creative hobby or go to your favorite restaurant. “This can allow you to take a breather, refresh yourself, and then come back and address the problems,” she notes. Finally, take small steps to deal with the issue at hand. “When we’re facing a problem, many of us, women especially, tend to ruminate and get stuck imagining the worst,” Gielan explains. But the best thing we can do is to focus on what she calls a “now step”—a small, meaningful action you can take right now, even if it may not solve the problem completely. If, for example, you need a new car but you can’t afford it, consider what you can do at this moment. It can be as simple as opting for the small coffee instead of a mocha grande. That won’t solve all your money problems, but “a small step like that allows your brain to register a small ‘win,’ moving you forward from the problem to what you can do about it right now,” Gielan says. And moving forward is really what happiness is all about.

You are the product of your culture and context. You’re the product of the information and inputs you consume. Everything that comes in—the food, information, people, experiences—shapes you. Instead of having your environment and circumstances reflect your current identity, you want to design your environment to reflect your future identity. When you change your environment, over time, everything about you will change. You’ll begin having new experiences. You’ll have new thoughts and emotions. You’ll be around new people. You’ll be engaging in new behaviors. Your identity and personality will change. This article provides a few key strategies for re-designing your environment to aid in you creating your desired future. Start Putting Yourself Into New Situations As a person ages, they tend to stop engaging in new situations, experiences and environments. In other words, people’s personalities become increasingly consistent because they stop putting themselves into new contexts. The philosopher and psychologist William James believed that a person’s personality basically became fully formed and fixed by age thirty, because thereafter a person’s life often becomes highly routine and predictable. Although culture is rapidly changing, there are still similar patterns. By the time a person reaches their thirties, they stop having as many “first” experiences. In their childhood, teens, and even twenties, there are a lot of experiences: First kiss. First time driving. First job. First big failure. First time moving to a new city. But at some point, we “settle down.” We stop engaging in new roles and new situations that bring out new and different sides of us. Because people’s lives become highly routine, both in their social roles and their environments, you begin to see very predictable behaviors and attitudes. This is one of the core reasons why personality is viewed as stable and predictable over time. It’s not that your personality itself becomes stable, but rather that your routine environments and social roles lock you into habitual patterns. Want to evolve? Start trying and learning new things. Pick up a new language. Join a new social group. Travel. If you keep putting yourself in the same situations and the same roles, you’ll plateau. Take on Big Challenges Many American teenagers are becoming increasingly inflexible. Many students across the country are demanding that they no longer be required to give in-class oral presentations, claiming their issues with anxiety make them “uncomfortable” with presenting in front of an audience. They believe they shouldn’t be required to do something that feels so unnatural. In an article published in The Atlantic entitled “Teens Are Protesting In-Class Presentations,” one fifteen-year-old tweeted the following statement, which garnered more than 130,000 retweets and nearly half a million likes: “Stop forcing students to present in front of the class and give them a choice not to.” Confidence and psychological flexibility are built by taking on new challenges and situations. Of course, in the moment, those situations may not feel great. But on the other side, you become a more capable and flexible person. When my wife and I became foster parents of three siblings, we were in way over our heads. Neither of us had ever been parents before. But over time, we adapted to our new situation. It became our new normal. And we changed dramatically through that experience, becoming more flexible, patience and empathetic. Want to transform? Take on new challenges that may initially feel difficult or “unnatural.” Over time, you’ll adapt, becoming more flexible, capable and confident. Become “Strategically Ignorant” Peter Diamandis, one of the world’s foremost experts on entrepreneurship and the future of innovation, has said, “I’ve stopped watching TV news. They couldn’t pay me enough money.” Peter is strategically ignorant. He’s created an environment to shield himself from the distractions and negativity of the news media while staying informed on the topics he cares about through careful and deliberate research. Being a successful creative person requires selective ignorance. Another example is Seth Godin, who purposefully doesn’t read the comments on Amazon about his books. He used to do so, but it only left him feeling horrible and questioning himself. So now he has stopped. Seth is selectively ignorant to what the trolls say, and he’s better off as a result. He doesn’t need that noise coming into his psyche, confusing his identity and purpose. Selective ignorance is not the avoidance of learning. It’s not the avoidance of getting feedback. It’s simply the intelligence of knowing that with certain things and people, the juice will never be worth the squeeze. It’s knowing what to avoid. If you want to transform your life, you’ll need to transform your environment. This includes the experiences you have, the people you surround, and the information you consume.

Pure gratitude opens us to experiencing grace—that is, the awe-inspiring awareness of the gift of being alive. Through the eyes of pure gratitude, everything looks more beautiful. We are touched with awe. I came to experience the pure gratitude of simply being after living through immense tragedy and loss: In 2008, a California wildfire took my home, a lifetime of memorabilia and the space where countless wonderful memories had taken place. Then, a year later—in the span of eight weeks—I lost my husband, my father and my youngest son. I’ve written about all of this in my memoir Six Funerals and a Wedding.  Here is what I learned for unlocking and experiencing the pure and simple gratitude of being which people may find especially helpful in these times: Look at life through the lens of love and what is real. If the old saying “It’s all in how you look at it” is really true, we can decide how we want to see our situation. Practice this feeling and nurture the awareness it creates. You can even have fun with it by asking yourself questions such as: Does a new car inspire you differently than the smile of an elderly neighbor you have called on to just see how she has been doing? You can ask yourself the same question as applied to other situations, too, and make a list of the things that inspire you most. Chances are, they are not material, but instead, have to do with human connections and moments spent together with others. Appreciating the profound joy in these moments will bring immense gratitude is one key to experiencing pure gratitude. Celebrate goodness. Look around you: there is goodness everywhere, even in the most surprising places. But we tend to forget that. As a reminder, try acknowledging and celebrating this goodness wherever it is. One way to do this is to thank everybody present before a meal and acknowledge any special events that may have occurred since you were last together: birthdays, new jobs, new children or grandchildren. Lately, during the COVID-19 crisis, I have been finding myself more aware of the importance of acknowledging events that are happening around me. The recent celebration of Cinco de Mayo, for example. With restaurants being closed to diners, many friends were doing delivery or making their own dishes. A family member suggested we make margaritas to celebrate the occasion. And I thought, why not? Why not do something special to join in the fun. We don’t make margaritas all that often but ended up having a great time together. My point is this—don’t miss your opportunity to do your version of a holiday or celebration. It puts you in the spirit of things and keeps you connected to friends and loved ones. Surround yourself with grateful people. There’s a saying: “We are who we spend time with.” We can influence others by being our best selves, and can become better, more grateful people by surrounding ourselves by others who do the same. I think it’s okay to do inventories of your friendships from time to time. We are at our best and feel most grateful when we have more to give to the world. But if we find that the people we’re spending time with are making us feel drained or don’t live in a place of gratitude themselves, gratitude can be hard to experience. Allow yourself to decide how much time you’ll spend with people who have that effect on you, and to limit it as needed. On the flip side, indulge in spending time abundantly with people who you feel grateful simply to be with. Let go of material things that burden you. If you find yourself spending time or energy worrying about your things—how to care for them, the expenditures they require, where to store them—they are getting in the way of your experience of the gratitude of being. Letting go of them will free you to connect with gratitude more profoundly. It also brings an opportunity to remember the joy each thing once brought you, to be grateful for the memories of those times and to imagine the joy these things might bring to a new owner. I tend to get easily overwhelmed with stuff. Something as simple as buying a new kitchen rug can feel good for a moment until I realize that I didn’t really need it. It is important to notice when enough is enough. You have everything you need. If you like to buy pretty things, maybe look into providing them for someone else. Contact a shelter or senior center and see what they may need. That can be a very joyful experience. Anyone of these four steps has the potential to unlock a new level of gratitude. Taken together, they can unlock a beautiful way to simply be.

Depression drains our energy and gathers momentum with repetitive thoughts, indecisiveness, and a gloomy outlook. The symptoms of depression are well known: too much or too little sleep, weight loss or gain, lack of motivation, fatigue and little or no sex drive. With depression, the lack of energy often makes it difficult to shake it off and make effective changes. But some people have found a way to beat it. What’s their secret? The real problem with the depression trap isn’t about getting out—it’s staying out. People take medicine—and then stop. They exercise for a while—then give it up. They go to therapy—then take a break. People try many things to feel better and then slide back into the trap. If this has happened to you, you’re not alone. It is estimated 80% of people with a depression relapse—those who don't have learned to handle their repetitive negative thoughts. Wellness Through Awareness Research has shown that there are some direct ways to challenge these thought patterns and turn despair around. The 20% who don’t fall back into it have learned to master shutting down or turning around their negative thoughts. Your thoughts are like the front wheels of a car. If they are turned to the left, that’s the direction it goes. Those kept out of the depression trap have grabbed hold of the steering wheel and pointed it in the other direction. Sometimes these thought patterns are automatic and happening just under the radar, and sometimes they are more noticeable and intrusive. If they are automatic negative thoughts (sometimes called ANTs), then you want to catch yourself thinking. If they are more invasive, you’ll want to question them right away. By noticing thought patterns, you become more aware that the repetition is generated internally rather than by an event on the outside. These thoughts typically fall into categories that cause you to blame yourself systematically or others, see everything as negative or catastrophic, jump to conclusions without enough evidence, or believe you know what others are thinking about you. The key to catching yourself thinking is to notice the repetition. A one-off negative thought isn't much of a concern—but a hundred of them are. Once you are aware, you have a repetitive negative view the goal is always the same: Challenge it as soon as you can. Take Away the Power of Negativity In noticing repetitive thoughts, you've accomplished the first step in self-regulation and true change. You’ve grabbed hold of the wheel. If you can observe the repetitive pattern, it means the thoughts are something you experience—not who you are. This is important because getting some distance from these thoughts is essential. It gives them less power over you and sets the stage for challenging them. Once you've grabbed the wheel, you have the power to turn it in the direction you want to go. Let’s say you often catch yourself thinking: “I’m not good enough.” Once you notice this is a pattern, ask yourself a question: "Am I really not good enough?" This does several things. At the very least, it slows down your thoughts by testing them, and, more importantly, it opens the door to the third step—to provide evidence to the contrary. You doubt the negative thoughts may not be entirely accurate. "Am I really not good enough?" might initiate thoughts about real examples that show competence, perseverance and willingness to learn. This kind of evidence challenge lets you soften these repetitive thoughts. “I’m not good enough,” becomes: “I’m not good enough—yet.” The old repetitive thought leads back to a depression. The new thought leads to hope. In a nutshell: Catch yourself thinking. Question these thoughts. Provide evidence to the contrary. Don’t expect all of your negative thinking and depression to evaporate overnight. But you’ll make progress if you regularly challenge your repetitive thoughts. Most of all don't get discouraged by telling yourself you don't have the skill. Instead, just remind yourself that you haven’t mastered the technique—yet.

Flowers have long been an important part of human culture. We’ve used their alluring blooms to beautify our homes and outdoors; captured their essence in the written word, clothing, design and perfumes; and showcased them in romance, rituals and special events. As symbolic as flowers remain in our lives, there is increasing evidence that their very presence has both immediate and long-term effects on our happiness and overall satisfaction with life. Famed American botanist and horticulturist Luther Burbank was well-aware of this symbiotic relationship between people and flowers, as evidenced by his quote: “Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.” Research findings concur with what Luther knew all along. A behavioral study led by Rutgers University researcher Jeannette Haviland-Jones shows that not only do flowers make us happier than we know, they also evoke strong positive effects on our emotional well-being. Just as ­flowers stimulate insects to perform pollination via their color, nectaries and scent, they also activate positive emotional feelings in people. Flowers nurture our happiness, and in turn, we cultivate them in our gardens and help nurture their growth. In addition, a report issued by the George Morris Centre in Ontario confirms in a literature review that there are significant benefits derived from flowers and other ornamental plants, including decreased anxiety, improved life satisfaction and overall well-being. Whether you enjoy your ­flowers in a vase or in the garden, the power they have on our emotional health and moods goes far beyond what was once believed. It certainly gives new meaning to the familiar phrase “­flower‑power.” Flowers have a language all their own that transcends the limits of time. Through the ages their language and meanings have adapted to countless cultures. Here are a few translations for ­today: AMARYLLIS: Pride, splendid beauty, ­determination. BIRD OF PARADISE: Freedom, joyfulness, faithfulness. CAMELLIA: Admiration, gratitude, ­perfection. DAFFODIL: New beginnings; “The sun is always shining when I’m with ­you.” DAYLILY: forgetting worries. GLADIOLUS: Strength of character, moral integrity, love at first sight. LARKSPUR/DELPHINIUM: beautiful spirit, open heart, big-hearted. PEONY: Happy marriage, good fortune, compassion. ROSE: As a group they symbolize love and passion, but each color evokes its own specific meaning. Red is enduring passion; white is innocence and purity; yellow expresses friendship and joy; pink is for gratitude, perfect happiness and appreciation; orange is for enthusiasm and desire. SUNFLOWER: adoration, longevity, ­happiness. Gardening Tips For ­Spring Spring is the best time to get your garden ready for the growing season ahead. Here are a few tips for a healthier and more beautiful garden. • Start by checking the pH of your soil with a soil test kit, available at garden centers and home-improvement stores. Plants grown in the proper soil pH are healthier, more productive, and more resistant to disease and insects. • Plant in odd numbers and create drifts of color and texture for a more balanced and harmonious look. • Apply a 2- to 3-inch layer of organic mulch around the base of plants to help moderate soil temperatures, maintain soil moisture, deter weeds and increase the population of beneficial soil microorganisms. This article originally appeared in the April 2014 edition of Live Happy magazine.

Great good can come from great suffering, right? Most of us believe this in theory, but when faced with tragedy, suffering and fear—such as in the time of COVID-19— we lose sight of the big picture. But Helen Keller, no stranger to adversity, kept this posttraumatic-growth concept firmly in mind, saying, “Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” As the Coronavirus pandemic has grown more dire, infecting and sickening more than one million people and putting our lives and livelihoods on pause, it’s easy to drown in a tsunami of despair and uncertainty and wonder what the hell is happening to humanity. But research shows that challenging life crises can give birth to a renaissance of enlightenment, creativity and innovation. People who have suffered great loss go through a period of searching for and creating meaning in the aftermath of a traumatic event, according to psychologist Richard G. Tedeschi of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Crises such as this global pandemic can give rise to “an increased appreciation for life in general, more meaningful personal relationships, an increased sense of personal strength, changed priorities, and a richer existential and spiritual life,” Richard says. History overflows with instances of exceptional humans who accomplished great feats after much suffering: The famous Mexican painter Frida Kahlo survived polio, miscarriages and a traffic accident to create world self-portraits that illustrate passion and pain with bold colors and rocketed her to world fame. German composer Johann Sebastian Bach overcame being orphaned and losing 10 of his 20 children to create the Brandenburg Concerto, the benchmark of Baroque music. The Scottish poet and novelist Robert Louis Stevenson was bedridden and battled a chronic depression before penning the landmark coming-of-age novel Treasure Island. Just as the Bubonic Plague spurred Renaissance art and culture in Italy, the Coronavirus pandemic will lead to a new era of enlightenment, creativity and innovation.

In 2005, Seattle-based artist Maria Coryell-Martin stopped in Ilulissat, a town in western Greenland that sits some 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle and is home to roughly as many sled dogs as people. As she waited for the ferry that would take her along the coast, she hiked up to view the Ilulissat Icefjord, the world’s most active glacial system. Twenty billion tons of icebergs pass through this fjord every year, and it’s likely that the iceberg that sunk the Titanic originated here. “I saw this massive wall of ice on a scale unlike anything I had ever experienced before,” Maria, 33, says, “and I felt an immense sense of awe and gratitude that brought me to tears.” Much of that gratitude had to do with Maria’s ability to create a singular career that fills her with joy and a sense of purpose. She is an “expeditionary artist”—a job title she made up—who travels to polar and glaciated regions, often in collaboration with scientific teams. Out in the field, she sketches with ink and watercolor, creating, she says, “my palette of place, a record of experience, climate and color.” Maria is “hooked on ice,” a passion she can trace back to her father, a retired oceanographer. “When I was little my dad would be off on Arctic research excursions and we’d have radio chats to his ship,” she says. “Then he’d come home and there’d be massive parkas in the hall closet.” In the last decade, Maria has made more than a dozen trips to remote, icy destinations. She has spent weeks at a time in the Arctic. Dropped by helicopter in the center of an iceberg, she’d set up her easel to sketch narwhal whales and polar bears while a team of marine mammal biologists captured the animals’ sounds to create acoustic profiles and study the effects of shrinking sea ice on their feeding patterns and health. (“Imaging the Arctic,” an exhibit based on a 2013 Greenland expedition, was mounted earlier this year at Seattle’s Nordic Heritage Museum.) There have also been stints as an artist-in-residence on expeditions to Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, Patagonia and the Canadian province of Newfoundland andLabrador. “I love the quiet and freedom of these vast open spaces,” Maria says, “where the only sounds you hear are the wind blowing, your own breath and the beating of your heart.” She prefers the austerity of glacial landscapes to the lushness of tropical zones, finding poignant beauty in the wildflowers that appear when the spring ice thaws and in the graceful patterns of migratory birds. “These are limited ecosystems with animals and plant life that are highly evolved to thrive in the rugged conditions,” Maria says. “But in specialization there’s vulnerability, and I hope through my paintings I can bring awareness to that.” Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman For as long as Maria can remember, she has drawn. As a toddler, she scribbled on the walls and, chastised by her parents, “I’d say the clouds did it.” Soon she was keeping a sketchbook by her bed, and she’s seldom been without one since. At the age of 7, Maria set a goal: to paint sky and water on every continent. She’s made good on that promise. When she was 11, Maria’s family spent a summer in Tokyo, and she realized how sketching can bridge cultural and language barriers. “My Japanese friends and I would use sketchbooks to explain how we spent our day,” she says. “I’d draw pictures of my life back home—school buses, my bedroom, the trees and flowers around my house.” She spent part of her junior year in high school traversing the wilderness of Alaska and British Columbia with the Juneau Icefield Research Program. “That’s where I learned basic mountaineering skills,” she says, “and began to see the world through the eyes of scientists.” Studying studio art and French at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, Maria knew, she says, “I wanted to hang out in remote places, meet local artists and paint.” The college helped her find funding for her alternative career path, guiding her to a fellowship that allowed her to spend a year traveling the world with hersketchpad. Her global itinerary included the Marquesas Island in French Polynesia, Tibet, Greenland and two months traveling with the Tuareg nomadic tribes in the sub-Saharan desert. She was, she says, “sometimes intensely lonely,” but she found solace in her sketchbook. “When I applied for the fellowship,” Maria says, “I was asked, what is it you’ll do no matter how sick, miserable, lonely or tired you are? And for me, the answer is painting and sketching. That gives me purpose as well as a way to expressmyself.” Maria was raised to be fearless, a trait that came in handy when she found herself abandoned for the night at a diamond prospecting camp in Greenland’s backcountry. (“Hey, Maria,” read the note the geologists had left for her in the cook tent. “We decided not to leave a night crew. Sorry we couldn’t find you. If all goes well we’ll be back to get you tomorrow.”) She has faced other physical risks, like nearly slipping down a glacier’s crevasse or crossing an 18,000-foot high mountain pass in Tibet’s Mount Kailash with no equipment beyond running shoes. But, she says, there’s a bigger risk in being too cautious to stray outside your comfort zone: namely, missing out on yourdreams. “I encourage people to think about what they really love to do and see if they can make it happen,” she says. “Maybe not everyone will want to hang out in the polar regions and paint, but I hope to help serve as an example of going for something a little unconventional.”

Gayle Kirschenbaum pulled up to her Cedarhurst, New York, home after dark. She and some friends had been hanging out together, and they returned a little later than Gayle’s mother, Mildred, had expected. Mildred was waiting on the lawn for her, with the family dog by her side and a glass of water in her hand. Gayle stepped nervously out of the car—she knew her mom would be mad—and with the headlights shining on both of them, Mildred threw the water in her daughter’s face. She handed her the dog’s leash and told her to walk him. “I don’t care if you get raped, if you weren’t already,” she hissed. When Gayle returned with the dog, Mildred marched her up to her bedroom, where she ripped everything out of Gayle’s closet and commanded her to put it all back, flipping it all to the floor again as soon as Gayle had finished. Being late was just one of the many things that could set Mildred off. In one of Gayle’s earliest memories, from age 3 or 4, she recalls getting ready to go outside and having difficulty putting on her sneakers. Her mother, frustrated and angry, screamed, “Tie your own shoes! Don’t come out until you can tie them yourself!” Hours later, Gayle finally emerged from her room with tear-stained cheeks, having taught herself to tie her laces. A constant irritation for Mildred was Gayle’s appearance. Mildred was obsessed with Gayle’s nose: It was too big, too crooked. She laughingly compared Gayle’s profile to that of the Native American man on the Buffalo nickel and begged her to get a nose job. Her figure was under constant scrutiny, too. Mildred forced Gayle to wear a bikini, knowing that her daughter was self-conscious about her body, and made her stuff the top to hide her flat chest. “I was always afraid of being found out,” says Gayle, now in her 50s. And she was, when during a swimming lesson, the foam-rubber falsies popped out and floated to the middle of the pool. Gayle lived in fear of her mother, and the fear took a physical toll. “I was always sick. I had headaches and dizziness and threw up all the time. I remember once in the seventh grade telling a friend that I had a headache, and she asked, ‘What is that?’ I couldn’t believe that some kids grew up without that kind of physical dread.” Why Do It? We live in a time when individuals often are encouraged to protect themselves. To examine their childhoods and relationships and then distance themselves from toxic people and experiences. Many would congratulate Gayle if she severed ties with the mother who, in her words, “looked at me with rage all the time.” She’s better off without a parent like that, right? Maybe not, says mounting evidence from the field of positive psychology. Multiple studies have found that forgiveness might be able to bestow more personal peace and healing than walking away. Forgiveness therapy has been shown to “improve depression, anxiety, destructive anger, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, well-being and self-esteem,” while also helping people find meaning and purpose, says Gayle L. Reed, Ph.D., a longtime forgiveness researcher who helped develop the Forgiveness Research Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, under the auspices of Robert D. Enright, Ph.D., co-founder of the school’s International Forgiveness Institute. “Few people fully realize the huge impact that the ability to forgive can have on their happiness,” writes Christine Carter, Ph.D., a senior fellow at University of California Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, in her book, The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work. “Forgiving people tend to be happier, healthier, and more empathetic.” And Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., author of The How of Happiness, writes that forgiveness “may be the one factor that can disrupt the cycle of avoidance and vengeance in which we find ourselves. …Forgiving allows a person to move on.” Frederic Luskin, Ph.D., a decades-long researcher on the topic and director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project at Stanford University, calls forgiveness “a creation of peace in the present.” His team’s research has shown the ability of forgiveness to lower blood pressure, increase optimism and repair fractured, traumatized communities in civil-war-ravaged Sierra Leone. One of their most dramatic studies showed that forgiveness could even help heal the deep hurt of a centuries-old conflict in Northern Ireland. Protestant and Catholic mothers who had lost sons to sectarian violence there were asked to rate their level of grief before and after a week of forgiveness training. Before the forgiveness therapy, the average “hurt” rating was 8.6 on a scale of 1 to 10. After just one week, the mothers’ average rating dropped to 3.6 and then stabilized at an even lower 3.4 six months later. On a standard evaluation for depression given to them before the training, the women checked an average of 17 out of 30 symptoms (such as difficulty sleeping and an unhappy mood). After the forgiveness training, though, they checked only 7 out of 30 of those depression indicators. Of course, walking away is often the wisest, safest option if you’re in an abusive relationship. And forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. You can forgive someone in your heart, but still choose to keep your distance. That point was made to the 20 women who suffered spousal emotional abuse in a 2006 study by Gayle R. and Robert. “Forgiveness is distinct from condoning, excusing, pardoning, forgetting and reconciling. Forgiveness is a decision to give up resentment and to respond with goodwill toward the wrongdoer,” wrote the two researchers. While half of the study participants received standard psychotherapy treatment, the other 10 women underwent forgiveness therapy. After several months, the women who learned to forgive experienced significantly greater improvements in depression, anger and self-esteem than those who had the typical treatment. And having a forgiving frame of mind can help smooth all your relationships. Forgiveness acts as a kind of social lubricant, helping us feel more connected to others, according to one study from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. In one of their experiments, the researchers found that study participants who were asked to recall a largely forgiven offense from their past were much more likely to volunteer for and donate money to a charity compared with participants who were instructed to think about an offense that they had not forgiven. What other type of therapy can boast such powerful outcomes? An Act of Love Gayle K., a TV producer and filmmaker, did not know about these outcomes or even that forgiveness could be considered a “therapy” when she first turned her camera on herself and her own family. Though she’d been in counseling for much of her adult life for post-traumatic stress disorder, she still found it difficult to form relationships (she’s never been married) and see herself as lovable. By chance, Gayle met another woman a few years ago who had also suffered a traumatic childhood. The woman walked Gayle through an emotional exercise that had helped her: Stand up, close your eyes, and imagine your mother as a little girl. “I saw this child with pain, and I felt it. I know she wasn’t abused, but she still had a different kind of pain,” Gayle says. “And then I imagined myself as a little girl, too, next to her. We were just two little kids who were wounded. She was no longer my mother. It really reframed how I saw her.” Soon after, she asked her mother to go to therapy with her and to allow her to film it for a documentary that would eventually be called Look At Us Now, Mother! The film follows the pair as they chat with therapists, go on vacation together and try to make sense of their turbulent relationship and past. (“My mother’s a narcissist, so she didn’t mind the spotlight one bit,” jokes Gayle). “Our journey was about forgiveness,” she says, but it was not easy. While making her film, Gayle had to relive the past, reading her childhood diaries and watching hours of home movies shot by her dad, which reminded her of forgotten incidents, like the time Mildred instructed Gayle’s brothers to put her on top of the refrigerator, from where she couldn’t jump down and bother them. Gayle also had to deal with her mom’s skepticism and denial. In one scene, as they are heading to the psychologist’s office, Mildred quips, “We’re going to find out what’s wrong with Gayle’s relationship with me. Are we looking for trouble where trouble is not? I would venture to say ‘yes.’” In another, Mildred confesses to the therapist, “One of the reasons that I might not have been nice to her as a child was that she was a bitchy little girl growing up.” Yet the two persisted. Gayle learned that her mother grew up in poverty and that Mildred’s father, in deep debt, committed suicide—a tragedy that was never discussed in their family. She learned how her mother’s Jewish upbringing in a time and place where Jews were not always welcomed caused her to have deeply held beliefs about appearance. If her daughter didn’t “look Jewish,” with a stereotypically big nose, Mildred’s thinking went, Gayle would be able to make it further in life. For Mildred’s part, she was finally able to see how much pain she had caused her daughter. She also saw how desperately Gayle still longed to have a relationship with her. The feeling was mutual. Their gradual acceptance of each other was so hard won and so fueled by love that even their therapist cried during one breakthrough session. The Phases of Forgiveness Without doing so consciously, Gayle created and underwent her own form of forgiveness therapy and, through her documentary, encourages others to do the same. “Forgiveness is the best gift I’ve ever given myself,” she says. But what exactly is forgiveness therapy? “Forgiveness means overcoming the impact of unjust behaviors by choosing to be a virtuous, loving person,” Gayle R. says. For the research that she and Robert have conducted, they used the four-phase process outlined in Robert’s book, Forgiveness Is a Choice. The first step is called “uncovering” because you uncover your anger and evaluate the damage that the injustice has wreaked on your life. If your spouse has ridiculed your weight, for example, be honest about how that has made you feel (unlovable? weak? mad? vengeful?) and how it has negatively affected your life (have you gained more weight as a result? Did the unkind comments breed an insecurity that has impacted your work performance?). The second phase, “decision,” is simply that: You choose to commit to the hard work of forgiving your transgressor. You also admit that what you’ve been doing in the past to help heal the wound hasn’t worked. If, say, your sister insinuated that your kids misbehaved last Christmas, and you’ve been pointing out her own kids’ naughtiness ever since, this is your time to change tactics. Robert says the decision to forgive is the toughest part of the process. “Change is unsettling, and the decision to try to reduce anger and to love more in the face of betrayal or cruelty can be scary,” he says. The third step is called “work” because that’s what it is—work toward understanding and empathizing with the person who hurt you. Robert suggests asking yourself several questions about the person you want to forgive: What was life like for this person while growing up? What psychological wounds do you think she or he might be nursing? What extra pressures or stresses was the person experiencing at the time she or he offended you? Try to find any sparks of compassion you might have for him or her and fan them. This third phase also includes accepting the pain of what happened to you, instead of trying to fling that ache and anguish back to the person who hurt you or toward others in your life. Finally, in the “discovery” phase, look for the meaning in the experience. What have you learned through your suffering? Has—or can—your ordeal in some way give purpose to your life? If your parents had a hard time accepting your spouse because of a racial difference, say, then perhaps you could join or spearhead a diversity or civil rights cause. Or maybe you simply commit to viewing all of humanity with a more open mind and heart, the way you wish your parents would do. In his book, Forgive for Good, Frederic details nine steps to forgiveness, which include taking the grievance less personally, using stress-management techniques (deep breathing, meditation, focusing on something good) to ease anger, and focusing on your luck rather than your misfortune. But whether you follow four steps or nine, the gist is the same: “Forgiveness is not just wishful thinking, it’s a trainable skill,” Frederic says. (For all nine of Frederic’s steps, see “9 Steps to Forgive for Good” at livehappy.com). In one fascinating study out of Erasmus University in the Netherlands which was published last year in the journal Social Psychological & Personality Science, researchers demonstrated the actual—not just metaphorical—unburdening effect of forgiveness. One-third of the 160 college students recruited for the study were asked to write about a time when they were seriously offended by another person and ultimately forgave them. Another third wrote about a similar incident in which they had not yet forgiven the person. The final (control) group composed a short essay about a recent, neutral interaction they had had with a friend or co-worker. All of the participants were then asked to jump five times, as part of an ostensible fitness test. What happened? The students in the forgiveness and control groups jumped significantly higher than those in the so-called “unforgiveness” set. The researchers proved empirically what philosophers have been saying for centuries: “Unforgiveness produces a burden akin to carrying a load,” the study authors write. That lightening effect is undeniable when you see Gayle K. and mom Mildred these days. On the road together, promoting their film and message, they are all ease and laughter. You can see they truly enjoy each other’s company and feel all the more lucky for it having been through what they have. “How many wonderful relationships are wasted because people can’t forgive?” Gayle asks. “It’s my life’s mission now.”