Art Markman Ph.D.
Ulterior Motives
Happiness, Well-Being, and Other People
Spending time with positive people can make you happy.
Posted Apr 29, 2021
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Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
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THE BASICS
What Is Happiness?
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Source: Nevit Dilmen Creative Commons 3.0
Humans are a social species, so it would make sense that being around people who are happy was in fact a state of our wellbeing.
In an article for Course Hero, writer Diana Donovan cites the work of Dr. Amanda Sprintsk and Ms. Gia Marson, who investigated the effects that spending time with positive people can have.
"I was surprised to find that spending time with a positive person brings benefits to my life no matter how small the steps were or how great the picture was that was shown for me. What this found was that significant portions of my life never consisted of anything that anyone else could or did for me. I was more content with being empty, though that only occurred for a short time. Over the years, this experience has been used to understand not only that people are more-than-humans when it comes to feeling bad, but also that they are willing to try different paths to find the good that is within their grasp.
All people access dream self-help at some point in their lives, and although they initially look inward and pray to get help for problems in the present, these initial attempts at help are often fruitless and ultimately unresponsive to the individual requests for help. Eventually, such requests become second nature, and the individual will realize that he or she has no idea what the problem is, or what to do next, or even whether the problem exists. This happened to me several years ago when I consulted a friendly, helpful therapist whom I have known for over 40 years. He indicated to me that, although he has spent decades in the trenches helping others with mental illness, he has never consulted a psychologist who knew enough about what happens in advance to help him with his anxieties.
Another similar example follows the suicide of Robin Williams, a Green Beret sergeant who killed himself in combat. He believed that the only way to deal with his depression was to smoke, so he lit up. He thought that his depression was the result of military attachment to his Vietnam war record. It was his belief that he needed to prove to himself that he could not achieve success in the infantry and become a burden for his family.
These examples illustrate how, if someone has a strong need for self-help, it may be difficult to get it, although it is not impossible.
The Air Force Academy’s official statement on peer support:" “As
I took a different view. I believe that it is not the presence of symptoms, but the absence of symptoms, that identifies a person as an 'Air Force Academy conditioned rat.” A 'conditioned rat is said to have latent depression. If a rat is given a cocktail of cocaine, benzodiazepines, or lisdexamfetamine, and is then repeatedly stressed, the brain is reportedly unable to handle the increased demand. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica: “When a mammal shows aggression, it is most likely to be triggered by a predator.”
Williams believed that animals suffer from a severe lack of empathy for humans and are incapable of self-reflection. He referred to this inability to empathy as “Post-traumatic distortion sickness or PTSD.”
He believed that the only way to combat trauma in the military is to expose troops to independent thinking and communication skills. He said, “Every soldier who comes through our doors has this defect, a defect in some way.”
The exposure that follows is an example of tunnelling, or rewriting of a trauma experienced or seen in war. Williams explained that almost all psychotherapy had to do with this exposure:
"You expose yourself to a series of images that are constantly there, constantly reliving and repeating. The first image you expose yourself to is the original trauma. So the experience of trauma as a whole might be just a flashback.