Resilience

This issue of the MAPP Magazine introduces the new magazine staff for the magazine with articles about their passion areas: Abi Tschetter writes about the power of personal narratives, Pax Tandon about the directions she thinks positive psychology should take, Mark O’Brien about a deeply personal experience of post-traumatic growth, and Kimberly Dickman about the importance of touch.

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” gets most heads nodding like a metronome. Except, of course, when the apple does in fact fall far. This stunning documentary takes you behind the scenes with several incredible families where individual children are outliers, entirely distinctive from all the other kinsfolk. Right now the film is opening in theaters across the United States and I encourage you to observe positive profiles in resilience, hope, and the enduring power of love amongst five amazing families.

The strengths of hope, humor, and love seem particularly vital for healthcare, where close connections between caregivers and patients are essential for good outcomes and high-stakes challenges are an everyday occurrence.

If you or someone you know is going through any kind of major challenge during this holiday season you might want to read these five easy actions to help reduce holiday stress. Better yet, share this post with your friends and family and then figure out something simple that you can do together to make the holidays meaningful.

Self-compassion is a way of relating to ourselves kindly, as we truly are, flaws and all.

This article contains an invitation to the Saturday party at IPPA on June 27 to benefit programs for hospitalized children by Soaring Words.

I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did, but I found myself thinking about some of the stories long after I read them. I especially enjoyed the stories by individuals who personally experienced mental health disorders. They described the essential features of their recoveries, some of which are completely unexpected. Each story, whether by a therapist or a patient, is well-written from a personal perspective and reads like a mini-novel.

Having recently completed the dissertation for my MAPP program, I can now reflect on the final few weeks before my submission. I felt pressured, had a drop in overall well-being, and struggled to get into flow. Worse still, I wasn’t great company to be around. I thought to myself, as a student and researcher of positive psychology, how could I be unhappy and not flourishing? But at least I wasn’t languishing. What kept me from dipping into languishing?

Certain work habits run deep in our culture. To name a few: Work ourselves to exhaustion, don’t take breaks, stare down a problem until a solution is reached, and multitask. Do these habits enhance efficiency or effectiveness? Do they lead to creative solutions to the problems we face?

Wonder by R.J. Palacio is about the highs and lows of a boy with a severe facial disfigurement as he attends middle school for the first time. It’s a brilliant book, very thought provoking on the nature of resilience and friendship and courage and kindness. It has led me to think about kindness, from random acts such as the challenge to NekNominations from South Africa to all the non-randomly kind people who are thoughtful, and helpful to others simply because that’s who they are.

What do we do when truly horrible things happen in life? Most of us can dream up a long list of disasters that could happen, and sometimes they do. What can we say to clients or friends facing major difficulties in order to help them effectively manage their moods without sounding like we are downplaying the true magnitude of their sorrow?

I learned an important lesson last week: When we relinquish control, we give others the opportunity to flourish. So, the next time you’re charged with designing a highly effective team-building session, imagine what would happen if you just didn’t show up.

Pick any chapter from Chris Peterson’s posthumously published book, Pursuing the Good Life: 100 Reflections on Positive Psychology, and you’re in for a real treat. His reflections cover every aspect of what it means to be human and to live a life worth living. Even sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll get a passing mention, although you won’t find them listed in the index.

I contend that we could improve the quality of life for elders and for ourselves as caregivers if we could assess social fitness and provide suggestions for enhancing strengths and addressing areas needing improvement.

I believe that Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Positive Psychology: The Seven Foundations of Well-Being is the first book to look at the commonalities and differences between positive psychology and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Steven Hayes, founder of ACT, sums up the message of this book in its last chapter, “What you hold in your hands is the beginning of a conversation.”

We seem to be working harder and consuming more than ever before, but for all the stuff that comes with 21st century living to make our lives easier, less labor-intensive, and more comfortable, we don’t seem to be much happier. A growing number of people feel anxious and depressed. Can living a simpler life make us happier? The answer is not what you might expect.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is an effort to take the basic ideas of positive psychology and adapt them to the needs of soldiers. I contend that we could use the same approach to adapt positive psychology interventions to the needs of elders and their caregivers, achieving a significant contribution to the quality of life of this growing part of our population.

When you think of the meaning of your life, do you think of making it, searching for it, finding it, or noticing it? Do you associate meaning with times of well-being or do you believe meaning becomes apparent primarily in times of suffering?

Jeni Hooper’s new book, What Children Need to Be Happy, Confident and Successful fulfills the promise of its title, providing adults with information and tools to support development of happy, confident, and successful children.

Shame resilience theory (SRT) was developed by researcher and author Brené Brown in 2006. Given that Brown’s recent TED talk called Listening to Shame has already been viewed nearly one million times, I thought this would be a good time to take a closer look at the theory behind the phenomenon. Shame and vulnerability are topics nearly nobody wants to discuss, yet there’s something that deeply resonates with Brown’s work.

Most of us don’t realize that we have a few central narratives running through our lives because the stories we tell ourselves are so familiar that we don’t even realize they are stories. In my work with clients, I’ve found that it’s often not the events of life that allow or prevent success in love, work, and happiness. It’s the stories we tell ourselves — and we can change our stories.