LIFEMEDICINEPART 2:
staying optimistic
Do you handle your ‘bad’ days with style or do you muddle through
like a character from Winnie the Pooh, asks
Dr Rupert Whitaker
Beaten-up or up-beat with HIV? It can be hard to be optimistic while living
with HIV, especially if you have symptoms. The striking thing is that life
can be good despite really bad situations. Keeping a positive attitude can
help that happen and, if it doesn’t come naturally to you, it can be
learned.
‘Positive style’ gets you through the hard times; it helps you
plant a rose in almost any crap that you land in. Having a positive style
is 80 per cent optimism and 20 per cent
pessimism. The obvious questions are: ‘why, which approach, and when?’
Smiling your way to a longer life
Generally, optimists live longer (even with extreme illness), recover faster,
are happier, more successful, achieve more, smoke and drink less, take fewer
unnecessary risks, are more attentive and pro-active. They tend to stick at
worthwhile things; they’re better liked generally and have better relationships.
But in the right situation, pessimism is useful, too: there are positive and
negative sides to optimism and pessimism, and having ‘positive style’
is about choosing the positive side of both. Which is which?
‘Positive optimism’ helps you to be happy, resilient, and focus
on the good stuff. ‘Positive pessimism’ helps you weigh things
up and avoid unnecessary problems. It enables you to be accurate in your judgments,
and maintains your ego at a reasonable size.
‘Negative optimism’ however lets you become an insensitive egomaniac;
you ignore problems, duck responsibility for those you cause, have magical
thinking, and bluff through challenges. This is serious denial and both fundamentalists
and ‘speed’ addicts are more likely to have such a style. When
this works, you can be fun to have around (think of Tigger); but when it stops
working, you can spiral and crash fast.
‘Negative pessimism’ makes you dwell on problems long past the
point where you can learn anything constructive; you often take responsibility
for problems that aren’t yours, and you don’t value yourself (it
can look like modesty but is more like self-sabotage); it promotes depression
and worry, leaching the value out of living. Rather like Eeyore.
So, having a positive style means being a ‘positive pessimist’
when you face new risks while being a ‘positive optimist’ the
rest of the time. You switch the style when it’s most helpful to you.
Can you suddenly develop a positive style? No; it takes awareness of how you
think, plus practice. Groups are a good place to learn it, as others help
you see what you’re doing. Gradually, you’ll be able to meet challenges
better, resolve them more quickly, and bounce back faster.
Positive style
When something good happens you like yourself better because of it and find
it rewarding. You see what you can do to make it more likely to happen again
(after all, you deserve it). If you have a negative style, you’ll think
the good thing is a fluke or you’ll dismiss it.
Negative style
When something bad happens, you think it says something important about who
you are. For example: a bad job interview means you’re lousy at them
and you’ll never get a job. You get so paralysed by your sense of incompetence
that you fail to prepare for the next one. If you have a positive style you’ll
think it was just bad luck and the next interview will be different and possibly
successful.
Think of something as it happens: are you looking at it with a positive or
negative style? How could you look at it differently? And think about different
situations: you might have a ‘negative pessimist’ style about
your job and a ‘positive optimist’ style about your relationships.
If you have a great job and a dysfunctional relationship, it can make life
really hard going. Having a positive style is about developing an intelligent
strategy to life; one that makes life more worth living.
Dr Rupert Whitaker is co-founder of the Terrence Higgins Trust and has a clinical
practice in psychological medicine. He has lived with HIV for 25 years and
is currently writing a reference book and creating workshops called Life Medicine
for HIV.
