Bar­bara Ehrenreich

con­fronts the false promises of pos­tive thinking

in her newest book Bright-Sided- How the Relent­less Pro­mo­tion of Pos­i­tive Think­ing has Under­mined America.

I felt hap­pier just hear­ing about this book. Today, I breathed a huge sigh of relief after read­ing just a few pages.

I’ve felt pretty alone in my skep­ti­cism of pos­i­tive think­ing as I’ve been liv­ing in South­ern CA.

Its sort of ironic since my friends would prob­a­bly describe me as cheer­ful and I think I am innately opti­mistic. I almost always think there is some solu­tion out there or one more idea I haven’t thought of when I’m faced with hard times. And this opti­mism often does serve me well because I look for more ideas and knowl­edge and options. So, I get some of the ben­e­fits of pos­i­tive think­ing. I under­stand how it can be use­ful to envi­sion your goals and know what you want, and how its use­ful to think that you CAN do it.

But I hate this “Secret” busi­ness. I cer­tainly don’t think that the uni­verse is respond­ing to my wishes. I think its respond­ing to my actions. Sev­eral years ago, I watched What the Bleep do We Know, a movie that mixed quan­tum physics and pos­i­tive think­ing. I found parts of it intrigu­ing and parts of it absurd.

I was invited by a friend who was excited to see the movie, and brought a friend who hap­pened to be a sci­en­tist. After­wards, my sci­en­tist friend said that they totally mis­rep­re­sented quan­tum physics and I was jok­ing that if real­ity really con­formed to your wished then none of those experts in the movie would have had gray hair and wrinkles.

Ahhhh… since then, “The Secret” and all like ideas have had a greater and greater influ­ence on my many of my friends.

My the­ory for why peo­ple like the ideas: its a scary world and if you can influ­ence it with just your emo­tions and thoughts– you sud­denly have a LOT more power. While max­i­miz­ing power, it also min­i­mizes respon­si­bil­ity because, those peo­ple whose lives really bite right now, on some level they have really brought it on them­selves, haven’t they?

The down­side, well, for one thing, it can be really irri­tat­ing to try and con­fide in some­one who believes in being relent­lessly pos­i­tive. Seri­ously, there is a real lack of con­nec­tion and empathy.

For another thing, it can really bring the pos­i­tiv­ity believer down. My pos­i­tive think­ing friends blame them­selves for every­thing– its the other side of their annoy­ing smugness.

One of my friends got divorced, which she was under­stand­ably very heart­bro­ken about– but she kept ques­tion­ing the valid­ity of her feel­ings and think­ing that some­thing was wrong with her for feel­ing so bad. “You’ve been very bonded with some­one for years and it hurts to be sepearted from some­one after all that time. That’s how it is for us humans. We are social crea­tures. Its nor­mal that you feel this way right now.” I told her.

I just hate it that she had to feel so bad and then feel guilty and respon­si­ble at the same time! That’s what really pisses me off about peo­ple who pro­mote pos­i­tive think­ing– espe­cially when it comes to ill­ness. Talk about kick­ing some­one when they’re down.

Oh my gosh, it is all SO annoy­ing!! Thank you for writ­ing this book. I’m going to go read some more of it now!

I am in a self-help pro­gram right now. (I do like to change my inner world as well as my outer world– although I’m also a very, very big believer in chang­ing the outer world.) Its called Emo­tional Brain Train­ing, and there is a process– when you are upset — of notic­ing the emo­tions you are feel­ing and then find­ing your unrea­son­able thoughts, replac­ing them with rea­son­able thoughts and then find­ing the “essen­tial pain” and “earned reward” of your sit­u­a­tion. Its SUCH a relief and con­trast to pos­i­tive thinking.

Here’s an exam­ple I found online of the essen­tial pain/earned reward part of the process.

Again, ask your­self, “What is the essen­tial pain?” That is, “What is the unavoid­able real­ity, the nec­es­sary loss?”

When you have faced those losses and let them fade, the earned reward will become appar­ent. When it does, the trash has been taken out. You will feel healed.

Then ask, “What is the earned reward? The pay­off? The blessing?”

Here is the exam­ple from Sally’s lim­its tool:

“What is the essen­tial pain of this loss? To feel at peace, I would have to face the real­ity that some­times I am imma­ture in my rela­tion­ships. The essen­tial pain is real­iz­ing that I am not per­fect, and to face the fact that I can­not change the past.

“When I face that and just feel it, the pain begins to fade and, if I wait a moment, the earned reward becomes appar­ent. The earned reward is real­iz­ing that I do not act imma­ture all the time and I am not per­fect. I am human. I can’t change the past, but the earned reward is that I can do my part to change the future. I can call her. I can try to speak to her in a way that is con­nect­ing. I can do my part.”

I really like EBT, its just so much more empa­thetic and humane than “Secret” like pos­i­tive think­ing. For me, it sucks that we are so pow­er­less in some ways, as humans. I HATE that I can’t turn back time, and fly, and “man­i­fest” a mil­lion dol­lars. That would really rock my socks. But, its just so much kinder to admit that here we all are, pow­er­ful in some ways and at the mercy of nat­ural laws all at the same time; all in this together.