HAPPINESS: IT'S A TOUGH JOB BUT SOMEBODY'S GOT TO DO IT!

In today’s New York Times there’s an article about the resurgence of electro-convulsive shock therapy as a treatment for severe depression. Last week, also in the Times, a psychiatrist, Dr. Friedman, wrote an article about insight not being enough to make for a happy life. These two articles illustrate the challenge and opportunity we have for dealing with our problems in a myriad of ways other than the extremes presented in these two articles.

             In one article we read that most therapists feel that insight is the cornerstone of healing psychological problems, and is the foundation of a happy life. Dr. Friedman does not agree. Though Dr. Friedman accepts that insight can be helpful, he points out that often insight is not enough, nor is it always necessary.

We know he’s right. Just because we know why we do something or react a certain way, does not mean we can change our behavior or our reactions, though it may make us feel better to know why we do certain things. With traumatic material, knowing what happened and being able to play it over again and again can actually make things worse.

Dr. Friedman shares that he feels good that he can use meds and some talk to alleviate suffering. Happiness, well, Dr. Friedman says, that’s another matter. Happiness, like self-esteem, you have to work for.

And I couldn’t agree with him more, but unlike Dr. Friedman, I feel that professionals can do a great deal to help clients live happier lives and improve their self-esteem. 

What can we offer that might help? Dr. Friedman points out a very well researched finding that most forms of therapy seem to do about as good a job as any other form.

What distinguishes good therapy from not-so-good therapy is not the therapy, but the therapist. It ‘s the quality of the relationship between the client and the therapist, coach, teacher, minister, or social worker that makes the difference. As professionals, we can offer a trained ear, and more importantly, a trained heart and mind. Most of us don’t listen very well, not even to ourselves. One of the most powerful things we can do is to learn how to ‘listen’ to ourselves better. I’ll talk more about this later.

            The other article offers that in difficult cases ECT can help with very severe depression. Though the treatment remains controversial, ECT can knock out a serious bout of depression and buy the client some time and breathing room while they try to address issues and make life changes and get on a track that does not once again lead to depression.

Clearly, ECT is for extreme cases, and no one is suggesting, otherwise, but we often take for granted the many things we can, and often must do to keep ourselves functional and happy throughout the ups and downs of life.

As Dr. Friedman said, for many of us, happiness takes work. So let’s not forget the basics.

If you want to be happy, start with your foundation: your body. Make sure you get enough exercise every day, especially if you’re prone to depression, anxiety, or moods.

Aerobic exercise may be a better antidepressant than anything you can buy. Make exercise part of your daily routine.

Watch what you put into your body and when. Do not run yourself down by not eating and then collapsing. Watch how much caffeine, sugar, and refined carbohydrates you eat. Notice what happens after meals, especially at midday.

Make sure you get enough sleep. Teenagers are prone to depression if they don’t sleep enough. It may be true for the rest of us.

Get outside, especially during the day when the sun is out. SAD, seasonal affective disorder, is real. Sunlight is the cure. 

Meditate every day for at least 15 minutes. There is a lot of research out there that supports the claim that sitting quietly every day for fifteen to forty five minutes, simply letting your mind be quiet, for example, observing your breath, can have many beneficial effects on mind, body, outlook, and mood.

Learn to pay attention to your body, noticing how you breathe, how you hold tension, how you collapse in certain situations. Meditation or mindfulness practice will help you become more aware of how your body is reacting to your life.

Watch what you think and say to yourself. Watch your ‘stinking thinking’.

Watch what you say to yourself as you face challenges. If one thing goes wrong, is everything wrong? If the weather is bad, does that mean the world is against you? Do you take temporary setbacks as evidence that you and/or the world are fatally flawed? If so, there are books, workshops, and practices that can help you change what you say to yourself and increase your happiness and wellbeing. This is powerful stuff and you need to do what you can to make sure that your mental machinery is not grinding you into the ground.

There are daily practices that can help you. Practice gratitude. Take note of and give thanks for the good things in your life. See where the glass is full, not where it’s empty.

Take healthy action in small incremental steps that move you where you want to go.

Help others. It’s a great way to help yourself.

Get out of your head, specifically, your left hemisphere, listen to great music and dance--scary for many of you guys out there, I know.

            Be mindful of your body. The philosopher Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am.” Many of us fall into the trap of thinking, “I am my thinking.” That’s it. Period. We think thinking is all there is to us. We forget that we don’t simply have a body, but we are a body.

You are not separate from your body. If you were, why would magic mushrooms or prescription drugs radically alter your experience and how you feel? Why would sending electricity through your brain shake you out of depression? Why would exercise make you feel better?

Since you have and are this amazing being with body, mind, and possibly soul,

it makes perfect sense to use the zillions of cells and receptors and nerve endings and synapses to help you live your life.

But to do that you’ve got to slow down a bit and let yourself feel what your body is trying to tell you.

That’s not exactly right.

You’re not smart enough in this area.

Your body couldn’t tell you all that’s going on even if it wanted to. You wouldn’t get it all. Just imagine the overload you would experience if you had to consciously work every muscle and fire every nerve and control every gland necessary for you to successfully chew, swallow, and digest lunch. If you think about it, we’re morons in this area. And yet, when faced with emotional challenges, we deal with them primarily from the neck up, though emotions, by definition, involve motion within our bodies.

So, pay attention to your body when you’re going through difficult times. Notice your breathing, your areas of tightness and discomfort. Do not try to make them do anything, but let yourself feel and experience what is going on.

            Silently give a name to what you are experiencing, such as sadness, anger, anxiety, joy, anticipation, or whatever. Really let yourself feel the emotion, the movements and changes and sensations in your body. Pay attention and notice the change. Don’t try to change anything unless you feel it is really sucking you in and bringing you down. If so, then bring in resources that feed you. Breath more deeply. Imagine places and people you know and love that inspire you, make you feel alive, grounded, and present. Let yourself get to a place where you feel a little better. This should show up as a change in breathing or muscle tone. You might yawn or take a deep breath or relax a bit, whatever it is take note of it.

            Over time, as you do the work, like the star athlete you are, you will find that you get better and better at dealing with life’s challenges. So good, in fact, that you may find yourself feeling good, and feeling good paves the way for feeling happy.

            It’s great that we have meds available to us when we need them, and that in extreme cases things like ECT are available if we need them, but happiness is not to be found there. Happiness, for many of us, requires work, attention, commitment, insight, practice, tools, and good friends. The Dalai Lama said happiness is the purpose of life. That’s because life is tough and being happy throughout the ups and downs is a profound and radical act that takes work and a transformed human being. Maybe being happy is the most important work we can do.

I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572

JUST WANTED TO SAY 'THANKS'

It’s that time of the year. December 21^st, the shortest day of the year has come and gone. The New Year is approaching, and the season of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas is upon us. Firstly, I want to say thanks to everyone and everything for help and support, for gifts seen and unseen.

There are a bunch of people out there I need to thank, because, garbage doesn’t pile up in front of my house but gets carted away and somehow dealt with intelligently. I want to thank the men and women who make that miracle happen.

Last I checked, my house has clean running water. I want to thank whoever is responsible for that. My family and I greatly appreciate it.

Oh yeah, and the people at Trader Joe’s and Ralph’s, I’d like to thank them for having all this amazing stuff on hand, fresh, clean, friendly, so that my family, friends, and I could have wonderful things to eat during the holidays.

It was a pain at times to do all that Christmas shopping, and there wasn’t as much money as years passed, but, my gosh, what a complaint to be blessed with! I get to complain about having too much shopping to do for my family, friends, and loved ones. Please forgive me for complaining. I want to thank all those responsible for me having such a thing to complain about.

For a few days it rained like a son-of-a-gun, but someone—obviously a whole group of someones—had planned for this and so the torrents of water were not much problem. And with all the wind and rain and fallen tree branches, I barely noticed a flicker from the lights in my house. I want to thank the men and women who make that kind of thing happen so seamlessly.

And the gas, thanks for the gas that magically gets piped into my house so my vintage 1940’s stove can be fired up and we can cook all that great food I mentioned earlier.

Heat, can’t forget heat, the gas that flows to my house kept my house toasty warm during those wet, windy days. Thanks for the heat.

And in the midst of it I caught a cold. Poor me. But I had herbal tea, vitamin C, aspirin, soup, and a comfortable bed. I want to say thank you to all the people I will never meet who made it possible for me to have a pretty bad cold with such ease and comfort and without serious risk of getting pneumonia or dying. I always knew if things got really out of hand I could run down to the med center and get antibiotics if I needed them. I want to thank the local docs and nurses who I knew were out there if I needed them.

I want to thank all those people at all those disease control centers around the world who track outbreaks wherever they are and try to deal with them rapidly and intelligently so that we don’t once again have tens of millions of people dying from the flu like we did early last century in this country and around the world.

I want to thank the wine makers out in the valley, the farmers who grow and sell such wonderful food in the local farmers market, the masters of the baked good, the people who design all the window displays and put up the lights and decorate the shops and public places in my town and all the towns and cities around the world.

I want to thank those make things beautiful. I want to thank those who teach, those who raise children well, those who inform, those who care, those who work for justice, those who protect, those who study, those who learn new things, those who preserve old things worth preserving, those who amuse us, those who surprise us, those who transform us, those who remind us of the sacred, those who inspire us.

I want to thank the plumbers and the electricians and the handymen and handywomen, the makers and the builders, the maintainers, the cleaners, the sweepers, the sanitation guys and women. I want to thank the doctors and the lawyers, yes, the lawyers, the ones who keep the system straight even with all its kinks.

I want to thank those who pray. I want to thank those who sing. I want to thank those who dance, those who write, those who paint, those who film, those who photograph.

I want to thank them all.

I want to thank you, for everything, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing, for caring, for teaching, for appreciating, for being there, for the laughs, for the insights, for the friendship, for the help, for the mutual life we co-create here on this wonderful crazy planet.

May you find many things and many people to be thankful for. May you be thankful for yourself, for who you are, and for what you’ve been able to give. May you be your own greatest fan, appreciative of your gifts and your insights and your contributions, grateful for the love, kindness and service you have been able to show others.

            So, go out there, do your best. I know the Holiday Season can be hard in ways, but shine your light. Give as much thanks as you can and make it as wonderful and joyous a holiday as you can. Give us the gift of you. And again, thanks for everything.
            All the best, John 
           
            I can be reached at drjohnfluca@gmail.com and 805/680-5572.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF THANKSGIVING

            This one has to be about Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. Though it wasn’t my favorite back when I was more of a bah humbug kind of a guy. Fortunately, that was then.

Of all the things I have to be grateful for, I am especially grateful for my deepening sense of gratitude.

I am thankful that I am thankful.

I am not trying to be cute here. I know too well the self-inflicted misery of an attitude of not enough in the midst of plenty.

So often we think if we just had that then we would be happy, and then we would have something to be grateful for.

But it’s gratitude that opens the door to happiness, not the other way around. Gratitude allows happiness to find us.

 I, for one, have never found an end to my desires. What about you? And we all know what happens when we get what we want: often we want more, we want different. We get unhappy.

Gratitude breaks the unhappiness cycle.

Gratitude is an acceptance and an appreciation for things just as they are, including ourselves.

Gratitude is a sigh of relief. With gratitude you can feel your shoulders relax and your heart open.

“Thank you for everything.”

If we can say that and mean it, it’s like tasting the timeless beauty and perfection of the world as it is, right here, right now, even if just for a moment.

It’s pretty cool. And pretty profound.

It opens you to the possibilities of your life as it is. It makes you happy to be who you are, where you are.

And it’s a choice. Gratitude is a choice. Either it’s a gift we choose to give ourselves and those around us, or it’s something we choose to withhold.

Nothing can make us grateful, except ourselves. It’s up to us.

We could make a case for gratitude. We could list all the things you have to be grateful for, like your eyes—if you are blessed to have eyes that work reasonably well—but the blind often do very well, and are quite happy, without being able to see. Thank you very much. Paraplegics and even quadriplegics often do well, even with their physical limitations.

Yet others are unhappy without these challenges, like I can be.

So, once again, we see that gratitude is a choice. It doesn’t depend on our circumstances. It depends on us.

Grateful? Ungrateful?

You choose. Right here, right now. What’s it going to be? 

Like everything else, you learn gratitude by practicing. Every day, you practice. Sound familiar?

You find yourself going negative fast? You reach for a little gratitude.

Crap hits the fan? You look up, take a breath, and give thanks for the blue sky and the white clouds. You give thanks you’re still standing. You give thanks you can still remember your name.

If someone is really mean and miserable, you give thanks that you are not always around people like that.

And you power on.

You can repeat simple affirmations.

“May my heart be filled with gratitude for my life.”

You can take gratitude breaks throughout the day just because you want to.

I’m grateful for my kids. I’m grateful for my job. I’m grateful that woman smiled. 

I give thanks for love.

I give thanks for this remarkable planet.

I give thanks, even for my struggles, because they give me something to push against.

I give thanks for the food I will eat today, for the people I will get to talk with, for the chair I will sit in, and I wish for others all the comforts and satisfactions I have.

And I give thanks for the holiday of Thanksgiving which celebrates one of the most powerful and transformative gifts I can give to myself and those I love, the gift of gratitude.

Enjoy. Give thanks. And spread the wealth.

            Namaste.

THEY SAY IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY

Today is my oldest daughter’s birthday. Gianna is twenty-six. I’m proud of her. I’m proud of all my four children.

She’s working on her Ph.D. She’s a scientist. She loves lab work. 

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a scientist. Einstein was my hero. I wanted to be a physicist like him, studying the universe. I was a nerd. I had a lab in my basement. I competed in math competitions, and won both times. I dreamt of being the next Einstein.

But I never became a scientist. Just couldn’t pull it off. Didn’t even major in physics in college, or any other science. It was an unfulfilled dream that quietly gnawed at me over the years. Went back to school to get a masters in math, but didn’t go on for the doctorate. The unfulfilled dream at times became a festering wound that never fully healed.

I did teach high school math and physics. Some of my students went on to graduate school, and I did interview Walter Kohn, a Nobel Laureate, a physicist who won the award for his work in quantum chemistry. That was as far as I got.

            Now my oldest daughter is working on a doctorate in pharmacology. She researches compounds with possible applications to cancer treatment. I get to see my dream of becoming a scientist materialize in her as she does her work in Ann Arbor. 

And today is her birthday. She’s making her dream come true, a dream inspired by a gifted high school chemistry teacher.

But most dreams do not come true, at least not how we might have thought. I never became a scientist. I did not remain married to my daughter’s mom. My daughter’s life has been no different. She’s suffered her share of setbacks. Same thing was true for Einstein. Even he had his challenges, like his mentally ill son, and his strained relations with the people in his life. He struggled for over forty years to come up with a theory that would unify the forces of nature. He never succeeded. He was considered a bit of a flop by many younger physicists as he aged, though he’s not viewed that way now

            For a long time I was unhappy because I wanted my life to be a certain way. I wasn’t completely sure what it was, but I knew there was something missing and it made me unhappy. In Buddhism I would be classified as a grasping or greed type, always wanting more.

But I’ve learned. I learned to live more in the here and now, with what life offers, with the day-to-day. I’ve come to appreciate my life more than my idea of my life. Before I would argue with what is and miss it and not appreciate it. Now I see that the wonder of my life and my existence far exceeds any shortcomings I might imagine about my life. There is a hair’s breadth between me and Einstein compared to the distance between me being alive and me never having existed. The gift of life, whether mine or Einstein’s, is so staggeringly great and profound, that to lose sight of that gift by focusing on the differences between my life and his is like finding yourself at the most magnificent banquet table prepared by Merlin himself and wondering if your seat was as comfortable as the next guy’s.

You can indulge in that sort of thing if you insist, but it’s a sure recipe for unhappiness, even while in heaven. Now I know that some people suffer profoundly through no fault of their own, but that has not been my lot. Though I did my best, much of my suffering has been self-inflicted.

            And so, on my daughter’s birthday, my prayer for her and for all my children is not that they get the life they want, though I hope they do, but that they love the life they have.

MAY YOUR HEART AND MIND BE OPEN

Today, we offer a brief guided meditation that you can do wherever you are, even while riding the bus or sitting at your desk. 

            Please get comfortable. Relax into your seat. Take a moment to check in with your body and your self. Feel the breath as it enters your body. Feel your chest as it rises and falls. Hear the sounds that are near and the sounds coming from far away. Let yourself slow down and simply be where you are for a moment or two.  Let go of the cares of the day. Let your mind slow down and become quiet. As your thoughts arise let them come and let them go. See if you can stay in the moment, not following your thoughts into the past or into to the future. Stay with your breath, your body, and the moment. Be thankful for all you have right here, right now. Open your heart to all that life has given you, your loves, your losses, your gains, your sorrow, your happiness.

          Give thanks for all of it. Your eyes, your ears, your legs, your heart, and everything else you have been given. Give thanks for all that you’ve been able to give to others as sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, lovers, workers, artists, inventors, as women and men walking this earth. And ask that you be held and guided by your ancestors, your elders, your parents and great grandparents, and all those who came before you. Ask that you be open to guidance from wherever it may come, from deep within yourself and from deep within the sacred mystery of existence. Ask that your heart and mind be open and that you be strong, honest, caring, loving with yourself and others. And fearless, open to the truth within yourself and in others and that you be able during your time on this earth to do good work for your highest good and the highest good of all concerned. Take your time. Breathe it in. Namaste.

JOEY PANTS SHOWS HOW IT'S DONE

He’s known as Joey Pants in the industry, as Ralphie on the Sopranos, as Joey Pantoliano on his driver's license. He's a husband, a dad, a recovering depress-a-holic, and he's got `em big, real big. Joey Pants has made a powerful movie where he shares the intimate details of his struggles with depression and the unhappiness and havoc it brought him and his family.

The term 'mental illness', no matter how you slice it, carries so much unnecessary baggage that you just wish we could come up with new labels, or somehow de-stigmatize the old ones.

Play with me for a minute. Let’s re-brand mental illness as mental diabetes. Watch what happens.

There are different kinds of diabetes, but in general the problem is regulating blood-sugar levels.

Mental diabetes comes in different forms, but in general has to do with problems regulating thoughts and emotions.

Some cases of diabetes can be controlled with medication. Some cases can be controlled by diet. Some can be controlled by a combination of both.

Same goes for mental diabetes. Some cases need medication. Some cases need therapy or coaching, which is a diet of healthy thoughts and behaviors. Some cases need both.

Which would you rather have, mental illness, or mental diabetes?

The challenge is we feel we are mentally ill, rather than we have a mental illness. It’s one thing to say, “My foot is broken.” It’s something radically different to say, “I am broken.”

The opportunity and the stigma of mental illness both stem in part from our astonishing ability to change and heal. The brain can change in ways the pancreas cannot. If we can't change, is it our fault?

We don’t ask this of someone with physical diabetes. 

That’s why it’s so hard and so brave to come forwards and tell your story and do what you need to do to make your life work. It’s not just about the heavy stuff like depression, anxiety and mental illness. It’s about joy, love, awe and gratitude. It’s about being a love machine and a light to those around you. It’s about telling the truth and setting yourself free, and helping those around you to do the same.

Check out Joey Pants and help yourself to a great day.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/an-actors-battle-with-mental-illness/3904/