Sober Synthesis

What is Happiness?

• Subjective well being 
  • Involves joy, gratitude, and meaning.
  • Being happy IN our life is our emotional experience.
  • Being happy WITH our life is our cognitive process.
  • In the US, we seem to have more of a focus with happiness WITH our life and less so IN our life.
  • Happiness is much less about our circumstances and more about how we behave, the thought patterns we have, the emotions we seek, the social connections we experience.

What are Barriers to Happiness?

• Negativity bias: We are evolutionarily built to notice the risky, potentially scary, the negative in our environment. We learn easier from bad experiences than from good experiences.
  • We have to work harder to notice the positive. 
• Hedonic adaptation: All repetitive experiences lose intensity, whether positive or negative. 
  • Pleasure/liking decreases as we become habituated to any experience/activity.
  • We also adjust to very bad events. Statically, happiness in one year is no less than our baseline after a tragic or difficult event. 
    • This neurobiological process contributes to positive healing from negative events (e.g. grief), but can contribute to relapse from addiction by forgetting/minimizing the negative experiences from addition.
• We have different neurobiological processes that drive “liking” (present focused)  and wanting (craving, future focused). 
• Reward prediction error: When our expectations are not met by the actual experience, we experience significant displeasure. 
• Arrival fallacy: Focus on an outcome for happiness. 

How Can I Increase Happiness In My Life?

• Social Connection
  • Our motivation and reward systems don’t cause us to pursue in-person social connection as much as we used to because there are so many alternative forms of communication now. Social media connection is like “Nutri-Sweet”, it does not supply the “nutrients” of real time social connection.
    • Even the act of having your phone out is distracting – even face down or on the other side of the room, there’s an opportunity for distraction.
  • Doing for others and asking for help increases happiness for ourselves and others.
  • Pet owners are statistically happier. Pets bring us into the present. 
    • Even just seeing a dog or cat can stimulate happiness as much as receiving a gift – consider fostering animals, visiting a shelter, or animal sitting.
  • Time with children reinforces playfulness and being “in the present”. 

• Activities to decrease negativity bias. “Passing mental states become lasting neural traits” -Rick Hanson.
  • When feeling fear/anxiety, practice deliberately focusing on the fact that you are actually all right. When you take advantage of the “all is well” signals from your body, you reinforce the opportunity to step out of fear. A breathing and/or mindfulness practice can be very helpful. 
  • When having a good experience (e.g. smelling a flower), take extra effort to enrich that experience, including recognizing how that experience feels in your body.
    • Rick Hanson uses the acronym (Heal)
      • (H) Have a good experience
      • (E) Enrich the experience, especially feeling our body sensations.
      • (A) Absorb the experience with the intention to remember it in the future.
      • (L) Link the positive experience with a negative feeling/experience. (optional)
• Activities that decrease hedonic adaptation to positive experiences.
  • Space out and/or rotate positive experiences.
  • Practice gratitude and noticing delight! 
    • Write down 3-5 things that delight you and write them down; your brain will be shifted toward noticing them. A “delight” practice promotes “real time” awareness.
    • A gratitude practice promotes “a story” about the positive aspects “with” our lives.
  • Play
    • Fun is a feeling, not an activity. 
    • Play allows for experimenting with new experiences without regard to the outcome (present oriented).
  • Creative activities and music
    • Enhance spontaneity and present awareness
    • Certain patterns of music can be used to elicit happiness, joy.
• Activities that minimize “arrival fallacy” and reward prediction error. 
  • Develop a personal purpose that aligns with your core values.
    • A personal purpose reinforces the process/journey, rather than the outcome. 

https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-laurie-santos-how-to-achieve-true-happiness-using-science-based-protocols

Hardwiring Happiness

Questions for thought/sharing:

1. What activities have supported your happiness in recovery?
2. Do you have ideas of new activities to try for the future?

Disclaimer

This summary is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed.