Psychology for Dummies (92 page)
Read Psychology for Dummies Online
Authors: Adam Cash
Tags: #Psychology, #General, #Body; Mind & Spirit, #Spirituality
After you decide to do something about your unhealthy lifestyle, what can you actually do? When the decision to change has been made, you can do a couple of things to get the ball rolling. Health psychologists or other health professionals can design
interventions
that help you change and maintain that change.
Behavior modification
is a powerful method of behavior change. The most basic, yet very powerful, form of behavior modification is to use punishments and rewards for either not engaging or engaging in the target behavior. If I schedule myself to run three times a week at 5:30 p.m. and I don’t, I have to clean the kitchen, bathroom, and do the laundry that night. If I comply though, I get to treat myself to a nice dip in the spa. The trick with this technique is to enlist a partner to keep you from cheating on your rewards and punishments. I may decide to go in the spa, even if I don’t run, or skip the laundry in the same situation. That’s why a partner helps; he or she can keep you honest.
Cognitive change
is a process by which I examine the mental messages I give to myself that may prevent me from changing a behavior or maintaining a change. We all have
automatic thoughts
— thoughts that we don’t realize automatically go through our minds in situations. I may tell myself or my wife that I really want to run three times a week, but I also may be having the automatic thought, “You’ll never do it, you never follow through with anything.” Well, thanks for the positive reinforcement. The good news is that automatic thoughts can be replaced with positive self-statements. This process takes a lot of practice and encouragement from other people, but it’s usually worth the hard work.
I’ve only really begun to scratch the surface of health psychology and stress-related issues, but I hope that this chapter provides a good overview of the subject and whets your appetite for more knowledge about living a less stressful and healthier life. Remember: Relax, don’t avoid things, and believe in yourself. And reward yourself when you follow through with this advice.
In this part . . .
W
hat’s a
For Dummies
book without the Part of Tens? In this part, I first introduce you to a new orientation in psychology called “positive” psychology. The focus here is on psychological
health
instead of the traditional focus on
sickness.
Within this discussion, I provide some practical advice on maintaining your psychological health. After getting you fired up with those positive tips, it’s time to go to the movies! In the final chapter, I play Ebert and Roeper as I lay out what I think are ten good psychological flicks.
In This Chapter
Defining “healthy”
Maintaining relationships
Helping others
Going with the flow
T here’s no magic formula for being a psychologically healthy person. There’s no absolute standard. Is being psychologically healthy simply the absence of mental disease or mental illness? If so, a lot of us are healthy. Is the absence of physical disease the same thing as being physically healthy? Some people think that there’s more to being healthy than being disease free. Unfortunately, this chapter may create more questions than answers.
Psychology is not necessarily in the business of deciding what we should value as a society or not. A lot of scientists feel that values are beyond the scope of science and that they don’t have much to say about the “good life.” These scientists feel that values and morals are too subjective and personal and often can not be reduced to scientific analysis Some psychologists however feel that psychological health is as close to a universal value as any. Who doesn’t want to be healthy after all? Psychology has learned a lot about human thinking and behavior over the years, and it would be a waste not to try to apply some of that knowledge to our quest for well-being, happiness, and health. I agree that psychologists may be overstepping their bounds when they advocate a particular set of values. But, as a professor of mine once said, “That’s an empirical question, isn’t it?”
What did he mean by that question? He meant that opinions can be evaluated empirically, and one opinion can be judged with respect to another as long as agreed upon criteria for evaluating the opinions are in place. In other words, we may actually be able to evaluate the “good life” with psychological science as long as we can all agree upon a definition of what the good life is. For example, we may agree that a good life is one in which our needs are met without much effort and we’re relatively free to do what we please. Then, we could scientifically evaluate circumstances, behaviors, and thought processes that lead to such conditions. If we can agree upon a standard, we can investigate what contributes to the achievement of that standard.
The standards, however, are a matter of much philosophical and theological debate. Each individual, each culture, and each society may have a very different definition of the good life. Nevertheless, it again comes back to ascertaining a definition. If we can do this, we can investigate what contributes to that particular version of the good life with the methods and tools of science.
Because this chapter is about tips for psychological health, I have to set a standard. So, I define psychological health broadly as
optimal living.
This is a safe position because each of us can tweak the meaning of optimal living to fit our own values. If I’m a devout Christian, my definition of optimal living may be to live as sin free as possible and conduct myself as Christ would have wanted me to. If I’m an anarchist, I may define optimal living as being completely free of all reigns and limitations on my freedom. My use of optimal living in this chapter is a
subjective
view of psychological health. For years, psychologists have studied the concept of
subjective well-being.
This concept refers to my sense of personal well-being and happiness without reference to the views of anyone else. It represents my personal values, and it may or may not be in harmony with others around me.
Some philosophers have argued that it is morally preferable to hold values that correspond with the values of others or, at the very least, to hold values that don’t impinge upon or impact the values of others. Subscribing to a value system that doesn’t impact the values of others is kind of like having a “different strokes for different folks” philosophy. Another definition of psychological health is perhaps more objective. This definition holds that psychological health centers on behaviors and mental processes that lead to the ability to adjust and function well in one’s life. This view can also be subjective to some degree. For example, I may adjust quite well to prison, but this adjust- ment may involve behaviors that could be considered quite unhealthy in other contexts. But, for most people and societies, the norms for good adjustment and functioning often involve surviving within the typically acceptable rules and boundaries most of us live in, and most of us don’t go to prison.
At the very least, psychological health involves being happy. I’ve never met a person who didn’t want to be happy, even if being happy to him meant being miserable. You can’t escape the desire to be happy. That reminds me of a joke: If a masochist prefers cold showers, does he take a warm shower instead?
Enough of the philosophical, let’s get down to practical suggestions. The following ten tips for maintaining psychological health are not in order of importance. Each of them is as important as the other.