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"Happiness isn't normal"
Feb. 16th, 2006 01:52 pmhttp://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1156613,00.html
A friend posted a link to this article in Time Magazine. Thanks![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tammylc!
Selected quotes:
Hayes and other third wavers say trying to correct negative thoughts can, paradoxically, intensify them, in the same way that a dieter who keeps telling himself "I really don't want the pizza" ends up obsessing about ... pizza.
...a 1998 Psychological Science study in which 84 subjects were asked to hold a pendulum steady. Some were told not only to hold it steady but also not to move the pendulum sideways. But the latter group tended to move the pendulum sideways more often than the group told merely to keep it steady. Why? "Because thinking about not having it move [sideways] activates the very muscles that move it that way," Hayes and Smith write. To be sure, cognitive therapy doesn't ask people to suppress negative thoughts, but it does ask us to challenge them, to fix them.
Apologies to members of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
buddhists and others who are getting this notice twice, albeit in slightly different form.
A friend posted a link to this article in Time Magazine. Thanks
tammylc!Selected quotes:
Hayes and other third wavers say trying to correct negative thoughts can, paradoxically, intensify them, in the same way that a dieter who keeps telling himself "I really don't want the pizza" ends up obsessing about ... pizza.
...a 1998 Psychological Science study in which 84 subjects were asked to hold a pendulum steady. Some were told not only to hold it steady but also not to move the pendulum sideways. But the latter group tended to move the pendulum sideways more often than the group told merely to keep it steady. Why? "Because thinking about not having it move [sideways] activates the very muscles that move it that way," Hayes and Smith write. To be sure, cognitive therapy doesn't ask people to suppress negative thoughts, but it does ask us to challenge them, to fix them.
Apologies to members of
buddhists and others who are getting this notice twice, albeit in slightly different form.
