6/23 TFTD ~ On The (Not So) Secret

Feelings are not right or wrong, they just are ~ Anonymous

It is true that feelings should not be judged good or bad, right or wrong. This sentiment is in direct opposition with the teachings of “The Secret” which says that thoughts cause feelings and there are “bad” feelings. I disagree. There are NO BAD FEELINGS.

People have asked me, for some time now, to comment on “The Secret” but I have refrained because there are good things there and I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The concepts of gratitude and positive thinking are spot-on but they are classic concepts from general psychology and 12-step programs and not really a “secret.” The issue that I have with it are the “just think happy thoughts and you will feel happy” line of direction and its tendency to label unhappy thoughts as “bad” and the instructions to just push them away.

To me, this way of looking at things precludes necessary grief and working through painful, unfinished business. It also might make people who are grappling with depression or appropriate sorrow guilty for having “bad” feelings.

If you’ve never had a bad thing happened to you, if you’ve never had a loss or if you have worked through every single thing in your life, then The Secret is for you. For the rest of us, “success” and having everything you want is a bit more complex and nuanced than that.

I don’t know what the “deal” is with the authors of The Secret and I don’t know if they have actually worked through issues, hurt, loss, abuse and abandonment, but I have and “thinking a happy thought” was NOT NOT NOT going to make that stuff go away.

Part of my problem in my life was that I hadn’t faced all the “bad” things and felt the “bad” feelings. I was running, constantly, from the underlying feelings and hurts and problems. I had to come face to face with the ugly truths of my early life, grieve my losses, work on the parts of me that were vulnerable to abuse and abandonment, work on the SUBCONSCIOUS things that led me to unhealthy people and unhealthy situations (yes, like does attract like) WHILE applying cognitive techniques like positive thinking and affirmations and gratitude for what I HAD and behaving “as if” I was a successful person in order to be successful.

Those of you who have been to the GPYP seminars know that the philosophy of the program is 3+3:

1: observation, 2: preparation and 3: cultivation

of the

1: cognitive, 2: behavioral and 3: emotional.

This has ALWAYS been the philosophy of GPYP. The cognitive component is the same as The Secret because it is CLASSIC cognitive psychology….no secret there…the behavioral is also very similar to “The Secret” … again, CLASSIC behavioral psychology…NO SECRET THERE….

I absolutely believe in gratitude as “The Secret” espouses but having a grateful heart is a 12-step concept, first espoused by Bill W., founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, who said (or words to this effect) “A grateful heart will never drink.” but being grateful for what you have does not preclude working on what you didn’t have or healing the scars and wounds of the past. 12-step programs do a “fearless and searching moral inventory” as part of their 4th step and other steps work out the garbage of the past and lead to sometimes painful introspection…WHILE keeping a grateful heart. Being grateful and working through distressing past events are not mutually exclusive. Issues like past abuse, depression and addiction are complicated matters that no amount of “keeping a happy thought” is going to cure or address.

I also believe, as GPYP students know, in visualization. It is absolutely necessary to getting where you want to go. You move toward that which you think about…again, standard, classic cognitve concepts.

Where The Secret and I part ways is on their “Disney” philosophy which comes down to “Whistle While You Work” or don’t let those bad old thoughts keep you down.

Nonsense. It’s complete nonsense to expect someone to just “be happy, don’t worry” all the time. Especially if there has been pain and strife and abuse and abandonment and loss that has not been dealt with. The PROBLEM is that people who don’t want to deal with their “stuff” try to put on a “don’t worry, be happy” front but the wreckage of the past continues to play itself out in their lives.

The Secret says “like attracts like” which is similar to the GPYP concept that “water seeks its own level.” GPYP teaches that we attract others who will do the dance we know, who are broken in the same way we are broken and UNTIL WE FIX WHAT IS BROKEN IN US, we will continue to attract those whose similar brokenness dances with our own.

However, in order to heal our brokenness we have to go back and look at some things that might be painful, that might be difficult, that might elicit “bad” feelings in us such as sadness and anger. Furthermore, we have to “feel as bad as we really feel” (as recommended by John Bradshaw and other family therapists) FIRST in order to feel as good as we CAN feel. If we’ve been sad and broken and have not acknowledged that, we BEHAVE like sad and broken people whether we recognize it or not. And unless and until we acknowledge that sadness and brokenness, no amount of “wishful thinking” (and YES, it IS wishful thinking) is going to help us in any way.

In a famous exchange during the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan made a remark about the fact that Jimmy Carter had admitted to being depressed or having had bouts of depression. He was roundly criticized for his remarks and Reagan didn’t get it. He said, “It wasn’t a criticism of his character, I just said he had dealt with depression. And he was depressed because depressing things happened to him.”

As simplistic as it seems, it is true. People are depressed because depressing things have happened to them. And depression or trauma in early life can permanently alter brain chemistry making a person prone to depression or melancholy. That doesn’t mean you can’t ever be happy, but you can’t be happy by just willing yourself to be or keeping a happy thought. Clinical, organic depression is a serious issue that requires therapy, sometimes medication and other means. Dealing with deep-seated depression or even an on-going underlying depression is no easy feat and thinking happy thoughts will not cure it.

The Secret says: “You can change your emotion immediately .. by thinking of something joyful, or singing a song, or remembering a happy experience.” That happens to be true but do you always want to? Should you want to? If you are “working through” you need to have unhappy memories and reliving painful times. It’s necessary to WORK THE GARBAGE OUT AND LET THE GOOD STUFF IN.

The teachings of “The Secret” as to positive thinking, visualization and acting as if, come into play as you are working the stuff out but again, these are all very very classic cognitive psychology concepts used by everyone from Tony Robbins to Zig Ziglar to Lou Tice. Packaging these concepts as a “secret” is somewhat misleading since they are nothing new. As you work out your unfinished business, you can work in all the positive and happy thoughts you want. You can say, “I’ve done this work and I’m refusing to let things get me down now.” That is what I do.

I’ve lived through the pain, the first time and then when I worked through it. I’ve dealt with the pain and went through months of feeling raw and aching as I worked it out and came face-to-face with what had happened to me. I HAD to go back and be angry and sad and all those “bad” emotions to see what was done to me and how I was repeating the patterns of abuse and abandonment OVER AND OVER in my life. All the while I was doing this REALLY tough work, I also did my affirmations and visualizations so that I knew what I was working TOWARD but at the same time I had to look backwards and work through the sorrow, the grief, the loss, the abuse and the abandonment and as I worked that out, let new things in.

At some point I had to MAKE CHOICES and MAKE DECISIONS (cognitive components) about letting good stuff in my life. It was a NECESSARY step toward a wonderful future. I had to tell myself when applying to law school and applying to law firms, “I can do this.” It was what I learned from Lou Tice and other cognitive teachers like Wayne Dyer.

The concepts used by Tice, Robbins, Dyer, Ziglar are rooted in Cognitive Psychology as championed by Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis et al. These are important and wonderful concepts and help you turn your attitude into something positive and life-affirming.

I left an abusive and unhappy marriage in 1987 and I finally came face to face with THE ABYSS as I call it (or borrowed it from Stephen and Ondrea Levine). I had to look at my life and all that had been wrong. All that had led me to this unhappy place. I had tried cognitive and behavioral psychologists and they DIDN’T work because I was CONSUMED with the underlying feelings and the acting that out in my life.

So in 1987 I was in psychodynamic therapy with a therapist who used Adult Children of Alcoholic and Adult Children of Divorce techniques and who encouraged me and guided me to look at and work through my “historical stew”. She helped me deal with the things I was always afraid to deal with and I HAD to go back and revisit them. I attended support groups doing a lot of difficult, historical work trying to finish my unfinished business and work through unresolved loss. I journaled, I talked about it, I went back and looked at it. I grappled with my own dysfunction, codependency and penchant for abusive and abandoning people.

My therapist also worked with me on my “presentation” … saying that I needed to “act as if” I owned the place when I walked into a room. I had to take care of myself and tend to my appearance. These are similar concepts to the “Laws of Attraction” in “The Secret” but were one part of the program. My therapist taught me, using standard behavioral psychology techniques, how to act like I owned the world in order to own the world. Yes it works…but in conjunction with other work.

I did this psychodynamic and behavioral work for two years when I took the Investment in Excellence (IIE) program as taught by Lou Tice. It WAS the missing component to my program. I needed the positive self-talk and affirmations and visualizations and “comfort zone” resetting as taught by Lou Tice (which is based on classic cognitive psychology). I was so taken by the program and the POSITIVE effect it had on my other work and my life that I became a facilitator of the IIE program because I thought it was so wonderful and so full of promise. And it is. I’ve used IIE in various settings and incorporated it into GPYP. The Introduction to GPYP relies heavily on the IIE philosophy of self-talk and comfort zones combined with the behavioral and psychodynamic work of others.

While using and teaching IIE, I still did my psychodynamic work including doing an adoptee workshop and an anger workshop and conferences and retreats. I continued to use the cognitive psychology program heavily in my life while continuing my psychodynamic and behavioral work and went to graduate school to become a therapist.

While in graduate school, I went back to psychodynamic work when I needed to work through loss. I used the Grief Recovery Handbook by John James to organize a grief group and work through the program twice. Later on, I became a certified Grief Recovery counselor and studied with John James of the Grief Recovery Institute and author of the Grief Recovery Handbook. I worked through some remaining loss issues and studied grief and loss recovery and read Freud, Bowlby, Murray-Parkes, Raphael, Kubler-Ross, Rando and Stephen and Ondrea Levine. I studied Eastern philosophies and incorporated meditation and visualization into the program because they are very powerful and powerfully healing.

Doing “inventories” as done in GPYP is a 12-step concept (the 4th Step Inventory), a Grief Recovery Institute concept (as well as a few other schools of psychology) and technique that I have expounded upon and modified it for GPYP. But when I did the grief recovery work, I combined it with my other work…not only the IIE concepts but the concepts I learned in graduate school…and in my early ACoA therapy and in my support groups.

GPYP is a result of these different schools of philosophy, the cognitive, the behavioral and the psychodynamic, brought together in a way that makes sense to people who have not gone to school to be a therapist or who have not studied for the many years that I did. I’ve tried to package it so that you can short-cut a lot of the things I found by trial and error, searching and finding, investigating and either dismissing or accepting. I share with others what I believe works from my own work and my work with clients over many many years.

You MUST work through the unfinished business while affirming yourself and visualizing a new and wonderful life. That is how it works.

GPYP talks about making a DECISION at some point that it’s time to turn the page…time to MOVE ON and resolve this stuff.

That is what I did–I worked through it until I could not work through it anymore. It is a cognitive decision that it is time to let this stuff go…to move on and be happy and the time of that decision is very individual and very nuanced. But at some point you have to break free of the work and recognize you’ve done it — you have felt as bad as you really feel, you have worked through unfinished business and unresolved loss — and it’s time to move on. (this is explained wonderfully by Elizabeth Harper Neeld in the chapter “The Turn” in her book “Seven Choices”).

That is the time, and not a moment before — when you resolve to be happy. For me, today, that is where I am. I’ve done my work…the psychodynamic, the cognitive and the behavioral…I don’t deal with drama, I don’t deal with dysfunction, I don’t deal with sick unhealthy people. I simply don’t. It’s not the way I live my life. I made a decision that my life is about good and positive things and that is what I ATTRACT into my life and have for the last ELEVEN years (long-term and permanent success). I didn’t need the Secret to tell me how to do it. I figured it out for myself.

I come from extreme dysfunction, incredible abuse and abandonment and today I am a happy person, a successful person and a grateful person. MY LIFE WORKS. But first I had to feel as bad as I really felt and do the work involved in getting to where I am today. Not always easy…definitely not happy most of the time, but I did it and it worked.

If you are prone to depression or grieving your losses, you might feel guilty if you can’t just whistle a happy tune, think happy thoughts and have a happy life. DON’T FEEL GUILTY because if anyone tells you that you can just “buck up” and smile and all will be well, they are, for lack of a better term, full of crap. If you need to take antidepressants: TAKE THEM. If you need to be evaluated for depression: GET AN EVALUATION. If you’ve just suffered a loss or are just coming to terms with past losses: YOU NEED TO FEEL AS BAD YOU REALLY FEEL before you can “feel” better…and feeling that way is NOT WRONG OR BAD.

A former student wrote me to say that she read in “The Secret” that “Thoughts that bring about good feelings mean you are on the right track. Thoughts that bring about bad feelings means you are not on the right track.” and what did I think of that? I said I think that is crap. CRAP. Sometimes you have to think about what happened and go back there and work through it and FEEL BAD ABOUT IT in order to heal it and then move on. Now if you’ve done that and you are still laboring in negative thoughts or being negative about yourself then THAT is not the right track.

My problem with The Secret and other programs like it are the generalizations. Healing is much more nuanced, how the basic tenets of cognitive, behavioral and psychodynamic psychology work for you is much more individualized.

GPYP espouses BALANCE…you must do your work–yes the difficult and the painful…the Relationship Inventory, the Life Inventory….your grief work, your historical stew…but you MUST MUST MUST take frequent breaks, be good to yourself in the meantime (learn to treat yourself right and you will learn to INSIST that others do the same…THAT is how the law of attraction works)…and affirm that you are worthwhile and lovable while setting and visualizing long-term and short-term goals.

As students know, that is the GPYP philosophy and program. You must do the difficult work and you MUST be good to yourself and do loving, positive things for yourself including making a blueprint for a loving, positive future at the same time.

If the secret to happiness was just thinking happy thoughts, it would be no secret.

And be skeptical…of what supposed “gurus” have to say…inspect their credentials and bona-fides….see where they’ve been and what they’ve done.

Be skeptical, be questioning, be knowing. And don’t fall for ANYTHING (including GPYP) or shell out money for books or conferences or audio or films or anything unless you have given it informed consideration.

So investigate and BE SKEPTICAL.

Your emotions and your life are not commodities on the open market. They are your heart and your soul and your future. You can, ABSOLUTELY, heal from past hurt and past sorrows, and you can find your own way to a life that is SECOND TO NONE, but there is no easy fix, no ultimate cure that works in a few minutes.

Just as crash diets will work in the short-term, there are crash self-help programs that will lift you up MOMENTARILY and give you a false sense of hope that it’s easy as ONE TWO THREE.

Healthy, permanent weightloss requires long-term healthy eating and exercise. There is no “short cut” that will work forever. Similarly, building a positive and happy life takes healthy healing and work. There is no “short cut” that will work forever. And like weight loss, there is no gain without pain…but it gets easier over time.

Like weight loss, if it were that easy everyone would be thin and happy but unfortunately most people are overweight and unhappy. But YOU don’t have to be

Do your work.

Be skeptical and make educated, informed decisions.

Take what you like and leave the rest.

Avoid anything that promises fast, instant results (no matter what it’s about).

Know that is is possible. In your life GREAT THINGS ARE POSSIBLE.

You just have to work at it. :)

Peace.