We have learned to perceive life through a binary way of seeing and thinking: black and white, good and bad, success and failure, pleasure and pain. But all experiences — both those that give rise to pleasant feelings and those that are difficult for us — are information about something. Especially the things we did not manage, the things that disappointed us, hurt us and angered us: these are all messages we need to decode in order to get where we need to go, or to learn, or to make meaning differently.
From the perspective of existential psychotherapy, difficulty and dissatisfaction are not states to be avoided but an existential matter. As Viktor Frankl teaches us — having spent three years of his life in Nazi concentration camps — he observed that those most likely to survive were not necessarily the physically strongest, but those who had a meaning waiting for them in the future. He concluded that suffering and pain become unbearable only when they are deprived of meaning. So all our unpleasant experiences push us towards a shift and towards taking up a different position in relation to what is happening. Anxiety and discomfort are the inevitable parts that accompany existence and development. They push us to abandon the safety of inertia and to take responsibility for another position.
In Gestalt psychotherapy, mental health is defined by the unobstructed flow and alternation of needs and experiences in the here and now. For a new figure (a pleasant feeling, for instance) to emerge, there has to be a different ground (for example, a prior state of lack or dissatisfaction). Without contrast and alternation, our senses do not register different feelings, and adaptation and habituation set in.
As Andreas Elpidorou writes in his book Propelled, what distinguishes happier people from the rest is not the absence of negative experiences. Rejections, hardships, difficulties and disappointments happen to all of us. What is different in happy people is that they have the capacity to handle their negative experiences by learning from them.
Even our brain itself is built to get used to what we live, however pleasant or difficult it may be. Even when something positive is repeated many times, it stops being pleasant for the brain, because the brain adapts to it and becomes accustomed. Experiencing something positive continuously, dopamine receptors become desensitised, because they do not respond to constancy but to change. In order to feel pleasure, we also need to experience intervals of other feelings. Small doses of discomfort wake the brain up and mobilise it. The neuroscientist Indira M. Raman argues that the secret to being happy is probably small alternating doses of unhappiness. She concludes that happiness is a dynamic process requiring alternation, rather than a static state. As Elpidorou writes, the good would not be good without unhappiness and dissatisfaction, or without lack.
The capacity to make meaning out of a difficult condition is the strongest predictor of psychological processing and recovery, even in cases of trauma and bereavement. The process of constructing meaning helps us adapt emotionally to something difficult. We know from research and from people’s accounts that, for example, those who recover more quickly after the death of loved ones are those who can give some meaning to their grief.
It is also interesting that even negative information — such as a poor prognosis patients may receive about their health — can be more helpful psychologically than uncertainty and not knowing. Even a negative prognosis can lend meaning to life, compared with uncertainty and doubt.
The most interesting research described in the book is the study of emotional complexity and diversity in relation to inflammation in the body. Experiencing many positive emotional experiences and feelings was found to be associated with lower levels of inflammation. The researchers argued that this probably has to do with the capacity for adaptability, which also has a protective effect in negative experiences. The more someone is able to see something from many perspectives and to experience the different feelings present in a situation, the greater their capacity to cope with unpleasant and difficult circumstances — something that, as it turns out, also improves health.
A telling example described in the book is that feeling continuous sadness over a long period can lead to depression, but feeling other emotions alongside it — such as anger — has a protective effect. Emotional complexity works in the same way as it does in the natural world: diversity of species increases the chances of survival.
References:
Elpidorou, A. (2020). Propelled: How Boredom, Frustration, and Anticipation Lead Us to the Good Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
