The Three Stooges of the Mind

If you sit still and try to clear your mind, as in meditation, one of the first things you’ll notice is how quickly you start judging your experience and yourself. This is boring. My back hurts. I must not be doing this right. Meditation isn’t for me. This is the voice of your judging mind, your Inner Critic. All of us have one. The voice is a product of stress, of the need we feel to classify our experiences quickly into simple categories without experiencing them too deeply—so we can quickly move on to the next thing stressing us. When we’re scared or anxious, that Critic is most active, putting down your friends and loved ones, your accomplishments, and yourself. It’s the voice that gives you a disproportionate share of the blame when things go wrong. It’s the voice that makes mountains out of molehills. What’s wrong with you? There’s nothing to be scared of, don’t be such a baby! Why haven’t you started exercising yet? You can’t stick to anything! Sound familiar? It’s something most of us hear whenever we’re feeling stressed. Automatic judging like this your frontal lobe, the “higher” mental center, trying desperately to hold on to control, while you’re trying to clear your mind. Most of us, when we’re unhappy, are caught between that Inner Critic and another part of the self that is busy defending ourselves. I call it the Timid Defender. It wants to silence the Critic, but it can’t, because it uses the usual habits of the mind—denial, rationalization, dissociation. Alcohol and drugs. Shopping and overeating. It has us trying to escape or forget about the Critic, but that only works for a little while, because while we’re escaping or forgetting, we’re giving the Critic more ammunition. You idiot, pretending to be something you're not. Trying to drown your sorrows. You can’t get rid of me that easily! The critic and the defender are both sealed up together in the same little tuna fish can, and they’re not even trying to get out, they’re so preoccupied with each other. When we’re bouncing around between the Inner Critic and the Timid Defender, who’s at the controls? Who’s running our lives, making our decisions? It’s like we have the Three Stooges up in our heads. Moe the brutal sadist, torturing us while the ineffectual Larry whines pathetic excuses. Curly, the id in this metaphor, full of appetites and drives, causes all the trouble in the first place. Nobody’s in charge of our lives, and the plane is yawing and swooping all over the sky, never getting anywhere and always in danger of crashing. And this is how unhappiness persists. We blame ourselves far too much, and make ourselves more miserable. Then we defend ourselves ineffectively, and perpetuate a vicious circle. We have to try something radically different. That’s what therapy does. I don’t turn off the Inner Critic and I don’t strengthen that Defender for my patients; instead, I help people detach from this struggle. That’s what mindfulness does too. A good friend of mine uses the phrase compassionate curiosity to describe the ideal therapist’s attitude toward the patient. We begin therapy with a much more compassionate, kind, understanding stance toward the patient and his problems than the patient has himself. And we are curious, in a calm, unafraid way—we want to understand how things got to be so bad, and we assume that by fearlessly facing reality we will help the patient find relief from his distress. Compassionate curiosity is the attitude most of us, depressed or not, need to apply to ourselves as well. What a change that would be for almost everyone I know! That battle between the Inner Critic and the Timid Defender is much like the way inconsistent parents treat their children. When the Defender is in charge we indulge and spoil ourselves; we let ourselves off the moral hook, we make promises to ourselves we know we won't keep. But that Inner Critic is still there, waiting for our defenses to slip—as they always do—ready to condemn us, always finding that we don't measure up. We vacillate between spoiling ourselves and punishing ourselves. And, as with children who are raised that way, we end up frightened and traumatized, with no self-esteem and a lot of self-hate. Compassion replaces all that with patience, gentleness, love, grace, mercy, concern. It suggests giving up judging and replacing it with empathy, a willingness to face the truth and all your feelings about it, without fear but with confident strength. Curiosity suggests a little cool detachment from the emotional heat, a desire to understand objectively why we feel what we feel, why we do what we do—especially when it’s troublesome or self-defeating. Why did I get angry just then? What’s making me so blue today? We look at ourselves, not to torture ourselves, not to give ammunition to the Critic, not with desperation for a quick fix, but with compassion, sincere interest, and the belief that there are answers that make sense. No matter how nonsensical our behavior, no matter how odd our feelings, there are always reasons—and knowing the truth will help set us free. We look a little deeper than usual, with more objectivity, and we don’t just slap ourselves on the wrist and make an empty promise to do better next time. Why? What’s bothering me? Why am I afraid to look? We understand that our feelings are just human; they won’t destroy us or drive us crazy. Most likely, they are tapping on our shoulder, trying to tell us something important.

Adjusting the Happiness Thermostat

My last book, Happy at Last, borrowed from psychology, economics, brain science, and social research to identify how we can be happier. It turns out that each of us has our own set point for happiness, like on a thermostat. Some of us are constitutionally bubbly, others seem to be natural grumps. When good things happen to us, those who are on the grumpy side can feel good for a while, but they usually return to their previous set point. If we want to stay happier, we have to put in focused attention and practice. The good news is that it really works. Both brain research and the social sciences have shown that we can make a permanent adjustment in our happiness quotient by making a few changes in how we think and what we pay attention to.

With that in mind, here are some suggestions that will add both joy and satisfaction to your life:

1. Happiness is a skill. It’s not an innate gift. It requires that we pay close attention to our experience and see objectively what makes us happy. Our minds and our culture tell us a lot of lies about what might make us happy (getting rich, beating out the competition, acquiring a lot of things). We have to get past those assumptions and systematically learn what makes us happy.

2. Practice mindfulness meditation at least four days a week for a half hour. Just sit, clear your head, focus on your breath, and listen to the noise your brain makes while you're trying to disengage from it. Your brain really doesn’t want to give up control. But as you practice this, you will become healthier, calmer, less stressed, more aware of hidden meanings and patterns in your life, and less subject to anxiety running away with you. By some measures, experienced meditators are the happiest people in the world.

3. Practice mindful thinking and observation. Because we’re under so much stress, we feel we have to quickly categorize our experience into simple, black and white categories. This makes us miss out on the rich details of life. If you practice noticing how you judge, slowly you’ll begin to stop. View yourself and the world with compassionate curiosity, the desire to understand and the belief in your own worth. Learn to be noncategorical, detached, willing to let go, willing to think independently, willing to take responsibility. Cultivating mindfulness will make you more aware of opportunities for joy, help you make better decisions so you’ll reduce unnecessary misery and experience greater satisfaction and meaning.

4. Exercise aerobically for a half hour, three to four times a week. There’s an enormous body of research out there to prove a very simple point: the more you exercise, the better you feel.

5. Don’t fall for the belief that you’ll be happy when you get what you want. Inevitably, when you get what you want, you’ll quickly get used to it and start wanting something else. And while you’ve been waiting, you’ve missed out on a lot of opportunities for joy.

6. Work on wanting what you have. Look around you and try to appreciate your possessions and possibilities as if you were Ben Franklin popped into the 21st century. Central heating, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, a stove and refrigerator. A vehicle that will take you 600 miles in a day, in comfort, on paved roads. An orchestra you can carry in your pocket. If Franklin doesn’t do it for you, simply look carefully at your surroundings. Your furniture, books, possessions. There’s beauty and memories there. Savor them.

7. Contemporary living conditions are not what our bodies and minds were designed for. We’re designed to live in small cooperative groups; to work no more than four hours a day; and to spend the rest of the time communing with each other, making music, making art. So don’t assume there’s something wrong with you if you’re not happy. Being happy in today’s world takes effort.

8. Most unhappy people have an Inner Critic in their brains. The Inner Critic is the voice that blames you whenever things go wrong and is never satisfied no matter how well you do. It’s your brain looking for someone to blame for your stress and disappointment, and settling on the most convenient suspect—you. You can’t argue with this Inner Critic, because it doesn’t play by the rules of logic. It’s a result of crossed wires in your nervous system. Imagine that you have a volume control for it. When you hear the voice of your Inner Critic, turn the volume down a little and distract yourself with other things. The more you practice this, the easier it will get to ignore the Inner Critic.

9. Happiness is smaller than you think. Cultivate small pleasures. Learn to cook. Eat well. Cook for friends. Expose yourself to awe and beauty; get out in nature, and pay attention. Watch less television. Play more. Get a dog. Join a laughter club. Get more touching into your life.

10. At bedtime, let yourself go to sleep thinking about three things to be grateful for, things that made you happy, or simply the best memories of the day. As you do this, pay attention to the feelings in your body: the smiling reflex, a warmness in your heart, the flow of tension out of your neck and shoulders. Whenever you feel good, let your body express it. Just doing this exercise every night has been proven to raise your happiness quotient as long as you keep it up.

Introducing myself

This blog will contain features from my books, Undoing Depression and Happy at Last, as well as commentary about mental health and society. I'm a firm believer that mental illness is not simply a brain disease (though the brain is definitely affected)--rather it arises from childhood experiences, quality of parenting, trauma, and relationships, including how the individual is treated by society.

I've been a therapist for 30-plus years now, a rich experience that has definitely made me a little wiser about how I conduct my life. I've also been a depression sufferer. That doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed my life; but if you have depression finding joy and satisfaction requires more work--difficult, sustained work--than it does for other people.

Many people tell me they have benefited enormously from my books and lectures. Blogging is something new for me, but I hope it will help others, and give me the opportunity to muse on subjects that don't fit into a book.

I hope you'll become a regular reader of this new endeavor.