Damon Ashworth Psychology

Tag: quotes

Is it Better to be Completely Honest, a Strategic Truth-Teller or an Occasional Liar?
I used to lie a lot growing up. Not quite as bad as Holden Caulfield in ‘The Catcher in the Rye’:

“I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

I remember lying to my mum about cleaning my room to go outside to play. So instead, I would push all the mess under the bed or throw it in the wardrobe.

I remember lying about doing my homework so that I didn’t have to do it and could play video games. I would then lie about being sick the next day to finish the assignment I needed to do the night before.

I remember lying about how many points I scored in basketball to friends or how many alcoholic drinks I had to my parents whenever they picked me up from a high school party.

I even remember lying to my brother’s friend about my surfing skills (I didn’t have any) and to a classmate about how many languages I spoke (I can say maybe 30 words in Indonesian, Spanish, and Italian, but not much more).

I think back to these moments, and I’m not proud of saying these things, but I can also understand why I did it.

I wish I could have been a less lazy, more confident and self-assured kid who was always honest with his friends and strangers and did the right thing by his parents and teachers. But how realistic is that scenario, and is it even ideal?

“The truth is always an insult or a joke. Lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone’s comfort.”
― Katherine Dunn, Geek Love

Why Do People Lie?

We lie to:
- fit in and pretend we are like others
- stand out and pretend we are different to or better than others
- seek approval from others
- be seen as more loveable/desirable/acceptable
- feel better about ourselves
- avoid getting into trouble
- protect other people’s feelings or avoid hurting them
- be polite
- avoid feeling hurt, sad, disappointed, guilty or ashamed
- keep a secret
- maintain confidentiality
- be consistent with societal norms
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

What Happens if We Are 100% Honest?

Jim Carrey plays the main character in the 1997 comedy ‘Liar Liar’. He’s a high flying lawyer who keeps disappointing his son Max by making promises to him that he doesn’t keep by putting work first. Finally, after his dad doesn’t turn up to his birthday celebration, Max wishes for his dad not to be able to tell a lie, and the magic of movies makes this wish come true.

What results is some hilarious situations in which Jim Carrey’s character gets himself into trouble for telling the whole truth when it would be more polite to lie. It includes telling his secretary why he didn’t give her a pay rise, telling his boss that he has had better than her, and confessing to everyone in a crowded elevator that he was the one who did the smelly fart.

The moral of the story was two-fold:
1. Sometimes it is necessary to lie, or at least not always be brutally honest and say everything that comes to your mind, and
2. By being tactful and as honest as possible, you may become a better person who upsets people less and has more authentic relationships.
“One lie has the power to tarnish a thousand truths.“
― Al David

Radical Honesty

In 2007, A.J. Jacobs wrote an article for Esquire magazine about a month-long experiment on a movement called Radical Honesty. It was titled ‘I Think You’re Fat’ and is worth reading. Much more than the 1995 book called ‘Radical Honesty’ by Brad Blanton that initially inspired the article:

Blanton had worked as a psychotherapist for 35 years in Washington D.C. and ran 8-day workshops on Radical Honesty that retailed for $2,800 back in 2007. Blanton says his method works, although he may distort some of the positive benefits for personal and financial gain. He’s been married five times and claims to have slept with more than 500 women and six men, including a “whole bunch of threesomes.” He also admits to lying sometimes.

“She looks honestly upset, but then, I’ve learned that I can’t read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they’re always lying.“
― Holly Black, Black Heart

I Think You’re Fat

In Jacobs article, he wasn’t overly optimistic about Blanton’s version of Radical Honesty either. If we didn’t have a filter between what we say and what we notice in the world, in our body and our thoughts like Blanton advocates, the results would probably be less funny and more consequential than what happened to Jim Carrey in ‘Liar Liar’. He declares:

“Without lies, marriages would crumble, workers would be fired, egos would be shattered, governments would collapse.” — A.J. Jacobs

Jacobs found it impossible not to tell a lie during his month-long experiment but did cut down his lying by at least 40%. But unfortunately, he also scared a five-year-old girl, offended numerous people, and spoke about sex and attraction to the point where he felt creepy.

On the positive, being radically honest did save Jacobs time, resulting in him having to talk less to the people he didn’t want to talk to and do less of the things he didn’t want to do. In addition, it saved him mental energy by not having to choose how much he would lie or massage the truth. It also meant that people were usually more honest with him in return, and he found out that his relationships could withstand more truth-telling than he expected. So, similar to the ‘Liar Liar’ take-away message, Jacobs concluded:
1. Being radically honest all the time and never having a filter is likely to be inappropriate in many settings and lead to more confrontations with others, and
2. We could probably benefit by being more authentic, honest and truthful with others, especially in intimate relationships, as secrets tend to weigh us down.
“There is beauty in truth, even if it’s painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don’t teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one’s character, one’s mind, one’s heart or one’s soul.”
― José N. Harris

What is a Lie?

In his interesting small book ‘Lying’, Sam Harris defines a lie as:

“Anything that is done to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.” — Sam Harris

Omission vs Commission

In ‘Lying’, Sam Harris distinguishes between lies of commission, where the person is active in their intent to deceive, and the more passive act of omission, where the person fails to do something or say something they probably should. Both are deceptive and misleading to the audience who is the target of the action or lack of action.

Harris believes that lies of commission are a more serious violation of ethics and likely to be more harmful. It is similar to how pushing someone in front of a train is a more serious ethical violation than not saving someone who was hit by a train when you had a chance to do so.

Harris argues for people to stop all forms of commission and says that we can enhance our world, build trust and improve relationships by always being honest in our communication. While he believes that omission is also lying, he does not think that we can or should eliminate all forms of omission. Instead, he says that “skilful truth-telling” is sometimes required to be both honest and tactful in our words and avoid causing unnecessary harm.

Let’s look at the following three examples to see the difference between radical honesty, lying and skilful truth-telling.

SCENARIO ONE: Your husband asks if he looks fat in an outfit that you honestly believe isn’t flattering for him. You could say:

A) “Yeah. You do look fat. I’d say about 10 pounds overweight. Maybe you should skip dessert for a while.”

B) “Not at all, sweety. You look amazing!”

C) “You look nice, but I think I prefer the black jumper and blue jeans I bought you a few weeks ago. Want to try that one and see which one you feel better in?“

SCENARIO TWO: Your sister and her family are in town for the week and have decided to stay at your place for the whole time because they want to save money. You don’t dislike them, but you’d prefer to be catching up on your work that you are behind on. On night four, she notices you are a little tense and asks if you mind them staying there. You could say:

A) “I do. I wish you weren’t so tight and could have paid for a hotel if you planned to stay more than three nights. A week is pushing it, and I’d prefer you left.”

B) “Mind? Are you kidding? I love it. The more, the merrier, I always say! Stay for as long as you’d like.”

C) “It’s a busy week for me in terms of work, so it wasn’t ideal timing for me. If I seem a bit tense, I’m sorry. I do want to be able to help you guys out because family means a lot to me.“

SCENARIO THREE: You’ve been unemployed for six months and get a job interview to wait tables at a restaurant in town. You’d ideally prefer an acting job. The restaurant boss asks what your career plans are, as they want to hire someone who will stick around. You could say:

A) “Well, acting has always been my passion, so this is just a stop-gap job to pay the bills and put food on the table. I couldn’t care less about the job or your restaurant. I want a regular paycheck so that I can pay my rent and bills until I get a real job.”

B) “I’d love to become a professional waiter. I’ve always thought that providing great service to people is my calling in life, and I plan to stick around for at least five years and show everyone just how amazing your restaurant is. So I’m in it for the long haul.”

C) “I’m not too sure about what will happen with my career, but at this stage, I’d like to be able to work here. I am available seven days a week and will put in 100% effort whenever I am on shift. I am also willing to learn whatever skills are required, and I can promise that I will give you as much notice as possible if my plans ever do change in the future.“

In each scenario, A is the radically honest response, B is the active lying or commission response, and C is the skilful truth-telling response. Some truths are unsaid in the C responses, which is technically a lie of omission.

Many people still believe that omissions are a big no-no:

“When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.”
― Yevgeny Yevtushenko

“A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.”
― Alfred Tennyson

“At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Is it Ever Helpful to Lie to Ourselves?

The short answer is yes. It is psychologically healthier to be slightly optimistic rather than entirely realistic. Research indicates that people with depression are often more realistic in their appraisals of situations and other people’s judgments than people without depression. Most “healthy people” believe that they are better drivers, more intelligent, better workers, better parents, and better lovers compared to the average person.

People lie to themselves because they like to feel that they are important and maybe more unique or special than they are. To prove this point, how would you feel if someone told you that you were just “average”? People also like to see themselves as good people who behave in particular ways for sound reasons. Even people that consistently cause harm to themselves or others.

Anyone with an unhealthy addiction becomes an expert at lying to themselves and others. This secrecy and dishonesty only further fuel the sense of depression, shame and guilt that people with addiction feel. As long as they are in touch with the truth of the situation and the consequences of their actions. Most addicts are not, however, thanks to in-built defence mechanisms.

Defence mechanisms are mostly subconscious or unconscious methods that we engage in to protect our ego or positive sense of self. Some of the more famous ones are denial, humour, repression, suppression, rationalisation, intellectualisation, projection, displacement and regression. My personal favourite is reaction formation (click here for a full description of these defence mechanisms and how to identify yours). Most people will deny engaging in defence mechanisms if you ask them directly about it, but they’ll tell you that others do. The reality is we all lie to ourselves at times, and maybe we need to lie to maintain a “healthy” outlook on ourselves, others, the world and our future.

“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”
― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

“The best lies about me are the ones I told.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Anybody who says they are a good liar obviously is not, because any legitimately savvy liar would always insist they’re honest about everything.”
― Chuck Klosterman

So What Can We Do?

The most accurate recommendations that I could find on lying were also some of the simplest:

“If you don’t want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.”
― Bruce Lee

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.“
Mark Twain

I agree with Sam Harris that it is a worthwhile aim to never be actively dishonest. Furthermore, this approach is consistent with one of Jordan Peterson’s better rules from his ’12 Rules for Life’ book — Rule #8: “Tell the truth — or, at least, don’t lie“

The philosopher Robin Devenport wouldn’t agree with either Harris or Peterson. He states:

“it is impossible for anyone to be truly honest about many things, as long as he (or she) carries biased perspectives, hidden resentments, unresolved longings, unacknowledged insecurities, or a skewed view of self, to name just some inner human conditions… if absolute honesty is impossible, then we are all liars by nature, at least to a degree.”

Dan Ariely concludes in his excellent book ‘The Honest Truth about Dishonesty’ that we all tend to lie to everyone, especially ourselves. We lie only as much as we know we can get away with, but not so much that it becomes hard to keep seeing ourselves as good people.

Devenport continues:

“Perhaps the best we can do, then, is only to lie in ways that are intended to promote another’s well-being or spare her unnecessary pain, and so further our integrity. The ‘noble liar’ is someone who tries to live by good intentions, even if that means intentionally lying to another person, if doing so is the lesser of two evils…Before we cast too harsh a judgment on the liar, let’s first understand what his motives are.”
Robin Devenport

We all need to be as honest as we can, especially with those we love and make sure that it is for a good reason when we lie. We also need to realise that it will never be possible to be 100% honest about everything to anyone, including ourselves, and that is okay. Other people won’t be 100% honest with you or themselves either, which doesn’t make them bad people. It’s what we lie about and why that matters.
May 16, 2024
Why Do Some People Cheat in Relationships and Others Remain Faithful?
With the development of the internet, dating websites, social media, smartphones and dating apps, it is now easier than ever for someone to cheat on their partner or spouse.

This same technology can also make it easier to get caught due to the potential digital trail created by these unscrupulous liaisons.

The Ashley Maddison hack and the scandal were examples of technology helping people have extramarital affairs and leading to them getting caught. The hackers tried to blackmail the company and many users and then released all their details in a massive data leak when users did not meet their demands. As a result, families broke up; and the scandal ruined reputations and even lives in the aftermath.

The consequences of infidelity continue to have a devastating impact on individuals, partners, children and society. Yet, it remains a prevalent issue in every country and culture. Maybe even more so today with the advent of technology.

Given the massive changes that we have gone through in the past 30 years, I am interested in finding out the prevalence rates of cheating, if our attitudes towards infidelity have changed, and if there is anything that we can do about it.

What is Cheating?

The definition of cheating depends on who you talk to and their expectations for their relationship. The stereotype is that males tend to perceive cheating as exclusive to physical encounters or actions. In contrast, females also see emotional infidelity as cheating. Emotional cheating is sharing something with someone you wouldn’t say to your partner. Many people also believe that relationships that exist purely over the internet or phone are also cheating, especially if you share explicit words, photos, or sexual acts on these devices.

Weeks, Gambescia and Jenkins (2003) define infidelity as a violation of emotional or sexual exclusivity. The boundaries of exclusivity are different in each couple, and sometimes these boundaries are explicitly stated, but they are usually merely assumed. Because each partner can have different assumed limits, it is difficult for all exclusivity expectations to be met (Barta & Kiene, 2005).

Leeker and Carlozzi (2012) believe that when someone has a subjective feeling that their partner has violated the rules around infidelity, sexual jealousy and rivalry naturally arise. If an act of adultery has occurred, the consequence is often psychological damage, including feelings of betrayal and anger, impaired self-image for the person cheated on, and a loss of personal and sexual confidence (Leeker & Carlozzi, 2012).

Prevalence of Infidelity

Most of the research presented in this post comes from the surprising and entertaining book ‘Modern Romance’ by Aziz Anzari (the actor and comedian) and Eric Klinenberg (a Sociologist).

Unfortunately, people who are suspicious of infidelity sometimes have a reason to be. More than half of all men (60%) and women (53%) confess to having tried to mate-poach before. Mate-poaching means that they attempted to seduce a person out of a committed relationship to be with them instead. I can’t believe that these figures are so high.

I also can’t believe that in “committed relationships”, where the partners are not married to each other, the incidence rate of cheating is as high as 70%.

It gets a little bit better for married couples, with only 2–4% of married individuals admitting to having an extramarital affair over the past year in the USA. However, this increases to 30% of heterosexual men and 25% of heterosexual women who will have at least one extramarital affair at some point during their marriage. It’s scary to think that nearly one-third of all married individuals have affairs. However, it’s good to know that two-thirds of all married people stay faithful to their spouse.

Attitudes Towards Extramarital Affairs

In ‘Modern Romance’, an international study examines people’s views on extramarital affairs across 40 countries.

84% of people strongly agreed that cheating was “morally unacceptable” in the USA. In Australia, 79% view extramarital affairs as morally unacceptable. Canada, the UK, South America and African countries all have similar rates of cheating disapproval as Australia. Areas with the highest disapproval rates are typically Islamic countries, with 93% of those surveyed in Turkey stating that marital infidelity is morally unacceptable, second only to Palestinian territories with 94%.

France is the most tolerant country for extramarital affairs, with only 47% saying that cheating is unacceptable. Unsurprisingly, they also happen to be the country with the most extramarital affairs. The latest data indicates that 55% of men and 32% of French married women admit to having committed infidelity on their spouse at least once. The second most tolerant nation is Germany, with 60% finding extramarital affairs morally unacceptable. Italy and Spain are equal third, with 64% each.

Expectations vs Reality

When you compare the level of disapproval towards infidelity with the data on the actual prevalence of extramarital affairs, the numbers don’t quite add up. Furthermore, many people who cheat themselves still condemn the practice and would not be okay with being cheated on themselves.

A Gallup poll on cheating found that disapproval of infidelity is higher than animal cloning, suicide and even polygamy. Although it is against the law, being married to two people is seen as less offensive than being married to one and breaching the honesty, trust and connection that you share with your partner.

People also differ between their beliefs and practices regarding whether or not to confess infidelity.

A Match.com US survey found that 80% of men and 76% of women would prefer their partner to “confess their mistake… and suffer the consequences” rather than “take their secret to the grave”. However, the excuse given by most people who have cheated and haven’t told their partner is that they didn’t want to hurt their partner. Interestingly, they only worry about their actions’ impact on their partner after the unfaithful act has already occurred and not beforehand.

Unfortunately, most people try to keep their affairs to themselves and make excuses for their behaviour while demanding at the same time that their partners own up to their indiscretions if they stray. If their partner does own up, they are likely to treat them harshly for it, because, after all, cheating is considered morally unacceptable by most.

Why Do People Cheat?

Dr Selterman from the University of Maryland looked into why 562 adults cheated while in a “committed” romantic relationship. He found eight main reasons given for why the infidelity occurred:
1. Anger: seeking revenge following a perceived betrayal
2. Lack of love: falling “out of love” with a partner, or not enough passion or interest in the partner anymore
3. Neglect: not receiving enough attention, respect or love (#1 reason for women)
4. Esteem: seeking to boost one’s sense of self-worth by being desired by or having sex with multiple partners
5. Sexual desire: not wanting sex with their partner or wanting to have sex more with others (a common reason for men)
6. Low commitment: Not clearly defining the relationship as exclusive or not wanting a future with their partner or anything too serious
7. Variety: Want to have more sexual partners or experiences in their lifetime (a common reason for men)
8. Situation: Being in an unusual scenario, such as under high stress, under the influence of alcohol or a substance, or on vacation or a working holiday (a common reason for men)
Interestingly, these factors suggest that infidelity doesn’t always reflect how happy or healthy a relationship is. Instead, it says more about the person who commits adultery and their personality rather than anything else.

Ways to Reduce the Likelihood of Infidelity

In ‘Modern Romance’, the authors explain that passionate love inevitably fades within every relationship. A loss of passionate love could lead to infidelity if people don’t realise that this may indicate how long they have been together, not an issue with their relationship.

Companionate love, or that sense of building a life and a legacy with a partner, is different to passionate love. It can continue to grow across a relationship and a lifetime rather than decline with time. Couples in their 60s and 70s often rate their relationship satisfaction as much better than when they were younger and trying to raise children together and work full-time.

One way to reduce the likelihood of committing infidelity is to build companionate love and a shared life and legacy together, rather than equating real love with passion.

In his classic book ‘On Love’, philosopher Alain de Botton said that:

“Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing…we fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent and witty as we are ugly, stupid and dull.”
Alain de Botton

It’s much easier to idealise or become infatuated with someone you don’t know well. Because you can imagine that they are perfect or have none of the flaws that your current partner (or you) possess.

The quickest cure for infatuation is to get to know the person a bit more (without breaching the infidelity norms of your relationship) and realise that they are just as flawed as the rest of us. Once you understand this, leaving one flawed relationship for another and having to start all over again carries much less appeal.

In another of his excellent books, ‘The Course of Love’, de Botton states:

“When we run up against the reasonable limits of our lovers’ capacity for understanding, we musn’t blame them for dereliction. They were not tragically inept. They couldn’t fully fathom who we were — and we could do no better. No one properly gets, or can fully sympathize with anyone else… there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible.”
Alain de Botton

de Botton is not saying that we shouldn’t leave abusive and neglectful partners. He means that we need to avoid imagining that there is “a lover (out there) who will anticipate (all) our needs, read our hearts, act selflessly and (always) make everything better. (This) is a blueprint for disaster.” No one is perfect. Try to be grateful for what you have with your current relationship. Trying to make your current relationship as good as possible is much healthier than imagining that “the one” could be around the corner.

We still have the issue of love and sexual desire typically being separated in our society. Esther Perel, couples therapist and author, points this out better than anyone in her groundbreaking book ‘Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic’:

“Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling… our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness… (but) it’s hard to feel attracted to someone who has abandoned (their) sense of autonomy… Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?”
Esther Perel

A way to keep the spark of desire alive is to ensure that even though you do many things with your partner, you must also do some things individually.

Perel also agrees that both love and desire can be maintained or grown over time with effort and a specific way of looking at things:

“For [erotically intelligent couples], love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning. They know that they have years in which to deepen their connection, to experiment, to regress, and even to fail. They see their relationship as something alive and ongoing, not a fait accompli. It’s a story that they are writing together, one with many chapters, and neither partner knows how it will end. There’s always a place they haven’t gone yet, always something about the other still to be discovered.”
Esther Perel

What About If Infidelity Has Already Occurred?

If cheating has already taken place, many people say that too much pain has occurred, trust has been breached and broken, and leaving is the best thing to do. However, breaking up may not be the most straightforward, practical, or best solution in other cases. For individuals in these cases, I would recommend reading Perel’s more recent book ‘The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity’.

In this book, Perel says that:

“Once divorce carried all the stigma. Now, choosing to stay when you can leave is the new shame.”

Perel warns against only judging the cheating, as this closes all further conversation about what happened and why. It also makes it hard to know where to go from there. Instead, Perel believes that it is much better to see an affair as a symptom of a troubled relationship or a troubled person.

If the person is troubled, and they are remorseful for what they have done and willing to try to make amends and not cheat again, they must get help to address whatever issue led to the infidelity in the first place. But, on the other hand, be wary if they are unwilling to get help and work on themselves but merely say it won’t happen again.

If it is the relationship that was in trouble, relationship counselling may help too. Perel says that:

“Infidelity hurts. But when we grant it a special status in the hierarchy of marital misdemeanors, we risk allowing it to overshadow the egregious behaviors that may have preceded it or even led to it.”

If both people in a relationship can take ownership of the behaviours they engaged in that caused pain and hurt to the other and are willing to start again to build a stronger relationship, they can have a healthy relationship in the future. It’s just never going to be the same as things were before the infidelity took place.

My Personal Opinion

Monogamy is sometimes challenging, but it is a choice. So is continuing to work at having a healthy relationship. We may not always have complete control over what we initially think or feel, but we do have the capacity to consider things properly before acting.

Relationship researcher John Gottman found that couples who turn towards each other when there is an issue in their life are much more likely to stay together. Couples who turn away from each other or turn against each other when fighting are more likely to break up.

One study found that newlyweds who remained married six years later turned towards each other 86% of the time when issues arose. Newlyweds who were divorced six years later only turned towards each other 33% of the time. Turning towards your partner when a problem occurs is the key to a close and connected relationship and is much less likely to result in infidelity or breaking up.

For me, it comes down to personal values. I want to have a close and connected relationship with openness, honesty, and trust. I don’t want to feel like I have to hide anything, and I don’t want to do anything that I am not personally okay with or that I know would hurt those I care about the most.

Anything that we hide from our partners tends to lead to greater distance and a feeling of disconnection. Especially with stuff we feel ashamed of or know is dishonest or disrespectful. Our body language, micro-expressions and tone of voice also tend to reveal how we genuinely feel over time if we hide something, even if we wouldn’t like to admit it.

Existential philosophers believe that our biggest challenge in life is to come face-to-face with the true nature of who we are. Over time, our actions rather than our intentions become our character or who we are. I aim to be the best partner and person that I can be and learn from any mistakes that I make along the way so that I hopefully never repeat them. What about you?

Dr Damon Ashworth

Clinical Psychologist
May 2, 2024
10 Traits of Highly Successful People
Tom Butler-Bowden’s book ’50 Success Classics: Winning Wisdom for Work & Life from 50 Landmark Books’ suggests ten characteristics that successful people have. They are:

1. An optimistic outlook

In ‘Learned Optimism,’ Martin Seligman shows that having an optimistic mindset or favourable expectations towards the future leads to better mental and physical health. Upbeat individuals have better immune functioning and are less likely to develop depression (Carver et al., 2010). They are also more likely to persevere in tough challenges and are more likely to experience psychological growth following a traumatic experience (Prati & Pietrantoni, 2009). Optimism can also reduce mortality rates over four years (Galatzer-Levy & Bonanno, 2014) and forty years (Brummett, Helms, Dahlstrom, & Siegler, 2006).

The good news is that you can develop an optimistic mindset. A recent meta-analysis by Malouff and Schutte (2016) showed that across 29 studies, an individual’s optimism level does significantly increase with training. The most effective way to do this is with the ‘Best Possible Self’ intervention:

“Imagine yourself in the future after everything has gone as well as it possibly could. You have worked hard and succeeded in accomplishing all the goals of your life …” — Boselie et al., 2014, p. 335

Optimism training works. However, it would be best to keep it up as the benefits typically wane once the intervention has finished.

2. A definite aim, purpose, or vision

“The primary cause of success in life is the ability to set and achieve goals. That’s why the people who do not have goals are doomed forever to work for the people who do. You either work to achieve your own goals or work to achieve someone else’s.”
Brian Tracy

Although I like this quote, Stephen Covey provides a caveat when he says that there is no point exerting all of your energy climbing up a ladder leaning against the wrong wall. First, we must determine where it is that we would like to climb.

“The key to prospering and adapting in the coming decades amidst an ever-escalating rate of change is to first be clear about and resolutely dedicated to what you stand for and why that should never change. You must then be just as resolutely willing to change absolutely everything else.”
J.W. Marriott Jr.

Successful people are clear on what their values are and what they stand for before taking purposeful action. Values clarification and committed action are two of the six essential components of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, with the other four elements focused on teaching clients mindfulness skills. According to the American Psychological Association, ACT has strong research support for chronic pain and modest research support for depression, anxiety, OCD and psychosis.

Chase and colleagues (2013) found that goal setting alone did not affect students grade point averages (GPAs) across a semester. However, it did when they provided training in values clarification alongside goal setting—furthermore, clarifying values before setting goals also significantly reduced the dropout rate of these students the following semester (Chase et al., 2013).

3. A willingness to work hard and persevere

“There is absolutely no limit to what plain, ordinary people can accomplish if they’re given the opportunity and the encouragement and the incentive to do their best. It takes risk, hard work, knowing where you want to go and being willing to do what it takes to get there.”
Sam Walton

Professor Angela Duckworth studied the West Point Military Academy students over some years and determined which ones graduated. She knew that each cadet admitted to West Point was intelligent, physically fit, with excellent grades and test scores. However, she was also aware that nearly 6% of the cadets dropped out during the first seven weeks (Beast Barracks training), and one-fifth dropped out before graduation.

Eventually, Duckworth identified two qualities that were more predictive than anything else for determining which students made it to the end: 1. passion and 2. perseverance. Together, they make up a quality known as grit. People who score high in grit are much more likely to put in the effort required, do whatever it takes and persist until they succeed. She has since found that grit is a great predictor of success in other areas too.

“Often we are caught in a mental trap of seeing enormously successful people and thinking they are where they are because they have some special gift. Yet a closer look shows that the greatest gift that extraordinarily successful people have over the average person is their ability to get themselves to take action.”
Anthony Robbins

4. Discipline to work until goals are achieved

“Undoubtedly, we become what we envisage… Genuine success requires both courage and character — patience, discipline and rationality.”
Claude Bristol

Duckworth and colleagues (2010) have also researched self-discipline and show that you need to sustain this for long-term commitment and implementation. Without this self-discipline, adolescents struggle to set long-term goals and strive towards them.

Fortunately, it can be improved using two strategies:
1. Mental contrasting — elaborate upon a future that you desire with the relevant obstacles that you currently face.
2. Implementation intentions — identify the action you will take when an opportunity arises that is relevant to your goal.
Compared to a control writing exercise, eleventh-grade students who spent 30-minutes writing on the above two strategies completed over 60% more practice questions in preparation for a high-stakes exam. Because of the writing exercises, they had a higher level of self-discipline in pursuing a meaningful goal (Duckworth et al., 2010). Over time, self-discipline can result in higher knowledge, deeper understanding, and better results and grades.

“The first step on the road to success is good character. The second is openness to new perspectives. The third is ensuring that daily action is shaped by higher aims, with the knowledge that you always reap what you sow.”
Stephen Covey

5. An integrated mind utilising both logic and intuition

In his excellent book “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, Daniel Kahneman talks about our two systems of interpreting the world.

The first one, appropriately named ‘system one,’ is perceived quickly, instinctual, and generally our emotional reaction or intuition. ‘System two’ takes more effort and time to access but is also more rational and logical.

As Kahneman shows in his research, people typically use heuristics when making decisions or judgments. Heuristics are generally adequate but not optimal solutions to severe problems. Heuristics use our first system and help us conserve brainpower, but they are only accurate about 80% of the time.

Successful people can utilise both system one and system two. System one is excellent if the decision has minimal long-term consequences, such as what to have for dinner. If the decision has potentially significant implications, however, such as whether or not to buy a house or change jobs, the more energy depleting and accurate system two will be better, even if it takes more time to come up with the correct answer for you.

“Stroll through the open spaces of time to the center of opportunity. Wise hesitation ripens success and brings secrets to maturity. The crutch of time can do more than the steely club of Hercules.. Fortune gives large rewards to those who wait.”
Baltasar Gracian

6. Prolific reading

Reading fiction is great for developing empathy towards others. It provides an opportunity to see inside the characters heads and experience their inner world in a way that you often don’t get in movies or TV shows. It helps develop imagination, as the brain creates the visual images that it reads in words on the page. Thirty minutes of reading can significantly reduce stress, as indicated by lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure and lowered heart rate (Rizzolo, Zipp, Stiskal & Simpkins, 2009).

I love reading non-fiction because I can learn from experts in psychology and related fields for such a low cost. If I were to see them give a talk or book a one-on-one consult, I might be paying up to $1000, and it would only be scratching the surface of all of the fantastic knowledge that they have accumulated in their lives. That is if I could even get a chance to see them. A book in comparison is $30 or less and contains the majority of their pearls of wisdom in one place. Sure, some books can take a while to get through. However, the value for money and knowledge gained is worth it.

“The movers and the shakers of the world are often professional modellers — people who have mastered the art of learning everything they can by following other people’s experiences rather than their own.”
Anthony Robbins

7. The willingness to take risks

There is a big difference between constantly engaging in risky behaviour and being willing to take risks when it is a sound decision to make. Someone like Sir Richard Branson has taken many chances with his Virgin empire, and if it weren’t for these risks, he wouldn’t have been able to expand and grow at the level that he has. For optimal success, you need to take some degree of risk.

“People that don’t risk anything will inevitably find themselves behind those that do. You can lead a change or it can lead you.”
J.W. Marriott Jr.

However, recent research on female and male CEOs supports the notion that too much risk isn’t a good thing either. Faccio, Marchica and Mura (2016) found that firms run by male CEOs tend to make riskier decisions, with generally higher leverage and more volatile earnings than firms run by female CEOs. They are also less likely to remain in operation than firms run by female CEOs (Faccio et al., 2016). More significant risks may lead to higher growth but also a higher risk of overall collapse.

8. Understanding the power of expectation

Successful people think big instead of small and believe that they can achieve anything they set their mind to, even if it takes more effort, setbacks and time than they initially envisioned. Furthermore, look out if thinking big combines grit, a growth mindset, and the right timing. There’s no saying how much someone could achieve.

“When our attitude toward ourselves is big, and our attitude towards others is generous and merciful, we attract big and generous portions of success.”
Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone

Research indicates that individuals who believe they can improve are more likely to grow (Bergsma, 2008). Higher expectations strengthen hope, increase determination and goal completion (Geraghty, Wood, & Hyland, 2010). Higher expectations of the outcome can also improve distress tolerance (Williams, Thompson, & Andrews, 2013).

9. Developing mastery in what is most important to them

“The world does not dictate what you shall do, but it does require that you be a master in whatever you undertake.”
Orison Swett Marden

While it may be tempting to try to learn as many different things as possible, the saying “jack of all trades; master of none” often becomes the consequence for people that try to take on too many different projects or career paths all at once.

Warren Buffett once said to his pilot that he should write down the top 25 things he wanted to do in life. Then circle his top 5 priorities and label items 6–25 as “avoid at all costs” until you complete items 1–5.

Reaching mastery can take a long time. In many cases, up to 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, as proposed by Malcolm Gladwell and Anders Ericsson. Ten thousand hours equates to nearly 7 hours a day of deliberate practice, every day, for four straight years. So it makes sense not to spread yourself too thin unless you want to develop mastery in nothing.

“I believe the true road to pre-eminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line. I have no faith in the policy of scattering one’s resources.”
Andrew Carnegie

10. Well-roundedness and balance

Developing proficiency and accumulating achievements in one area of your life may not mean much if you are not a success as a person.

“No kind action is ever lost. You will be indebted to these trifles for some of the happiest attentions and the most pleasing incidents of (your) life.”
Andrew Carnegie

After watching ‘The Founder’ movie based on the life of Ray Kroc, I was appalled by how willing he was to trample on anyone in his way throughout his pursuit of wealth and power without a second thought. He ignored his first wife, poached the wife of another business associate, didn’t keep his word, and screwed the initial founders of McDonald’s for millions of dollars annually.

Ray Kroc was also a workaholic, with his famous catchphrase “if you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean” still repeated throughout McDonald’s franchises worldwide.

“Without time for recovery, our lives become a blur of doing unbalanced by much opportunity for being.”
Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz

Suppose you dedicate no time to personal growth, spiritual growth, health, relaxation, leisure, relationships and community. Then, it would become tough to have the well-being, vitality, meaning and support required to achieve ongoing success.

My two cents

Remember, relationship warmth is the number one predictor of long-term health and happiness, not how much money you have in the bank or how hard you have worked.

Focus on building genuine connections and a sense of belonging with others who embrace you for who you are. Don’t let old friendships go by if they give you these things.

“Various scientific studies have proven that if you learn how to deal with other people, you will have gone about 85% of the way down the road to success in any business, occupation, or profession, and about 99% of the way down the road to personal happiness.”
Les Giblin

Try to be kind, compassionate, patient and accepting to others, but also yourself. No one is perfect, and we all fall into the same traps time and time again. However, if you can learn from these mistakes, you will improve and grow.

Lastly, try to accumulate positive experiences, not things. Materialism and consumerism are empty pursuits, void of meaning and purpose. Doing fun, new or helpful things alongside the people you love never is.

Dr Damon Ashworth

Clinical Psychologist
March 14, 2024
20 Fascinating Paradoxes About Life
What is a Paradox?

According to the Oxford dictionary, a paradox is a noun that has two meanings:

1. A seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true.

2. A person or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.

I love paradoxes because they are sometimes funny and usually also quite insightful. Listening to the audiobook version of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu was like listening to one paradox after another. This was especially surprising to me because it is an ancient book of wisdom. So a great paradox is much more than just a cliche, even though it can appear like that over time.

Below is a list of some of my favourites, starting with one from the Tao Te Ching:
1. “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings” – Lao Tzu
2. “Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. “I’d rather be hated for who I am, than be loved for who I am not” – Kurt Cobain

4. “I refuse to join any club that would have me for a member.” – Groucho Marx

5. “You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants a magical solution to their problem, and everyone refuses to believe in magic.” – Alice in Wonderland

6. “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” – Socrates

7. “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” – Rumi

8. “We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviours.” – Stephen Covey

9. “If you don’t risk anything you risk everything.” – Mark Zuckerberg

10. “The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.” – William Hazlitt

11. “Only you can take responsibility for your happiness…but you can’t do it alone. It’s the great paradox of being human.” – Simon Sinek

12. “If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?” – George Carlin

13. “Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.” – Frank Herbert

14. “Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde

15. “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” ―Mahatma Gandhi

16. “He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”― Michel de Montaigne

17. “A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.” – Banksy

18. “If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?” ― Sam Harris

19. “Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.” ― Tony Schwartz

20. “If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold onto it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.” – Socrates

Dr Damon Ashworth

Clinical Psychologist
January 4, 2023
What Separates a Good Athlete From a Truly Great One?

Could You Be Like Mike?
Michael Jordan is potentially the greatest basketball player of all time. He is also thought to be the king of staying laser focused and composed under pressure, and consistently performing at his best. He holds the record of 866 straight games in the NBA scoring at least 10 points, and he scored over 20 points in all of his last 47 playoff games. Jordan holds ten scoring titles for the most points scored in a season, as well as the highest career regular season scoring average (30.12 points per game) and career playoff average (33.45 ppg). He went to the NBA finals 6 times, and won 6 championships with the Chicago Bulls, alongside 6 NBA most valuable player (MVP) awards. Jordan also won the defensive player of the year award once, played in 14 all-star games, made ten all-NBA first teams and won five MVP awards. He was inducted into the basketball hall of fame in 2009, and was named ESPN’s greatest North American athlete of the 20th century. Not too bad a career. How did Jordan perform to such a high level so regularly, especially when the stakes were the highest? The stadiums were packed with media and screaming and jeering fans, and millions more watched on TV around the world, and yet he managed to consistently step up, night after night. Maybe it was just was genes or natural talent. However, if this was the case, Jordan’s children should have also been great, and Jordan wouldn’t have been cut from his high school basketball team as a sophomore. Maybe it was his physical conditioning. Again, this might be true, but there have been plenty of fit and athletic players in the NBA, and not all of them go on to become superstars. There’s also the infamous ‘flu game’ in game 5 of the 1997 NBA finals against the Utah Jazz, where the commentator Marv Albert said this: “The big story here tonight — the story concerning Michael Jordan’s physical condition. He is suffering from flu-like symptoms.” Because the series was tied at 2 all, Jordan didn’t want to let his physical state prevent him from playing. Jordan started slow, and later admitted that he felt weak, had really low energy and couldn’t breath properly. In spite of almost passing out and having to slump over with his hands on his knees whenever the game stopped, Jordan helped the Bulls fight back from a 16-point first quarter deficit to win 90-88 and then go onto win the series in 6 games. In the process, he scored 38 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals, 1 block and the three-pointer that sealed the game with less than a minute to play. What separated Michael Jordan from the rest and helped him to become one of the greatest athletes of all time was his mental fortitude and mindset. He never gave up, truly believed that great things were possible as long as he put in the work and tried his best, and he never backed down from a challenge.
Jordan didn’t care about making mistakes or failing in the eyes of others. What he really cared about was trying his absolute best, and not letting fear of failure hold him back from doing everything he could to help his team win. It could be that Michael Jordan is an anomaly here, but I don’t think he is. If you look at all the greats, their mindset and mental strength played a huge role in their overall level of success. Let’s look at Simone Biles in gymnastics, who has now won 25 medals at the World Gymnastic Championships in her career, including 19 gold. Biles believed in working harder than anyone else in practice to be the best, but also prioritized being confident in herself and her abilities, and knew that in order to do this, she needed to also ensure that she looked after her mental and emotional health. What about Michael Phelps, who is the most decorated Olympian of all-time with 28 Olympic medals in swimming, including 23 gold.

Phelps, like Biles, tried to train harder than anyone else to be the best. He also focused on building belief and confidence in himself and not listening to any doubters who tried to tell him that something couldn’t be done. Like Jordan, he did not view it as failure to try as hard as he could to achieve his goals, even if he fell short. All three amazing athletes had incredible success when it mattered most. Their mental attitude towards themselves, setbacks, practice and competition was no doubt a huge factor in the results that they achieved.
The Equation for Success
Some people may still try to put their success down to talent, but hopefully all of you know that this is wrong. Psychologist Angela Duckworth, in her book ‘Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance’ developed an equation for success based on her research into the area:
talent + effort = skill

skill + effort = achievement
This means that the amount of hard work and effort you put into your training and preparation is twice as important for success than your initial level of talent. Duckworth doesn’t exactly say this in her book, but once the effort has been put in at training, I truly believe that the next most important predictor of success is your mindset and mental strength on the day of the competition.
Finding Flow

Most professional athletes know what it is like to be “in the zone” or in a “peak experience” as Psychologist Abraham Maslow called it. It has also been commonly referred to as a “flow state”, which was initially coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and examined in detail in his book ‘Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience’.
Flow can be defined as:
“being so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. The ego falls away. Your perception of time changes. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you are using your skills to the utmost, and those skills are significantly magnified. Physical skills, mental skills, psychological skills, social skills, creative skills, decision-making skills. Flow breaks boundaries. You are flow. It is you. There is no thought. You are fully immersed in your body and the moment. You experience profound mental clarity and a sense of oneness. Everything just works.”
I’ve never been to an Olympics before, but I can tell you that when I am confident and in the zone playing basketball or volleyball, I feel like no one can stop me, the game is so easy, things seem to move in slow motion and my level of performance astounds me. I am not exactly the best shooter in basketball, but I have had some games where making a basket was as easy as throwing a stone into the ocean from the edge of a pier. If you don’t know what I mean, check out Klay Thompson’s shooting performance in only one quarter of basketball, smashing the previously held record:
Notice how it didn’t seem to matter where he was or who was defending him; he was in the zone, and he was going to shoot the ball as soon as he caught it, and those shots were going to go down. The book ‘The Rise of Superman’ by Steven Kotler suggests that extreme and adventure sport athletes are the best at getting into flow states consistently and remaining there while competing. Because of the real risk of death and serious injury with mistakes, flow is not just a desired state to aim for but a necessity in these sports. Consequently, only the athletes that can consistently do it survive, both in the sport and in their lives. Kotler tries to go beyond flow to explain unbelievable performances, such as pro-skater Danny Way jumping the great wall of China with a broken ankle:
Kotler says that every athlete has the capacity to get in the zone. Unbelievable performances are about experimenting with the impossible once you are in a flow state, pushing your limits, and seeing what you are truly capable of. The opposite is also true. When I am not in a good headspace or my confidence is low, even the most basic moves feel difficult and scoring points can feel almost impossible. I’m going to guess that most of you have had similar experiences in your own sports too. When things just aren’t clicking. Where you start to doubt yourself. Where no matter what you try you just can’t get out of your head and you tense up. You start to miss free throws like Shaq:
What if you could be like Michael Jordan or Danny Way, and consistently perform at your best and reach your potential when it matters most? How would that feel, and how much would you pay to figure that out? Fortunately, I won’t be charging you anything, but I do hope to help you unlock your own secrets to consistently great performance. In my next article, I’m going to teach you the mental skills and strategies to bounce back from adversity, take on helpful feedback from your coaches, and remain focused and composed even in highly stressful and distracting situations. I’m also going to help you to become more consistently confident and motivated, have clear objectives and be well prepared, perform at your best under pressure and not let your worries interfere with your game or prevent you from getting into a consistent state of flow. Stay tuned. Dr Damon Ashworth Clinical Psychologist

October 25, 2019
The Four Ultimate Concerns in Life
I’ve been afraid to say this for a while because of how it will be perceived, but my favourite book of all time is actually a textbook. So before you think that makes me someone you would never want to speak to, I’ll ask if you have ever read anything by Irvin Yalom, American Psychiatrist and Author?

His book ‘Existential Psychotherapy’ is a true masterpiece he worked on for 10 years and is written as eloquently as any of his other titles, including ‘When Nietzsche Wept’, the best fiction novel award winner in 1992.

What is Existential Psychotherapy?

Existentialism is the philosophical exploration of existential issues or questions about our existence that we don’t have an easy answer for. We all suffer from anxiety, despair, grief and loneliness at times in our lives. Existential Psychotherapy tries to understand what life and humanity are about.

In the book, Yalom explores what he considers to be our four most significant existential issues in life:
1. Death
2. Freedom
3. Isolation
4. Meaninglessness
These existential issues or ultimate concerns are “givens of existence” or “an inescapable part” of being an alive human in our world. He shows how these concerns develop over time, how we can run into problems with each of these issues, and what they might look like in patients coming to therapy. He also talks about how we can try to live with these concerns to negatively impact our lives less, even if we don’t have clear-cut solutions to them.

Let’s go through each of these ultimate concerns…

1. Death

Homo sapiens, or humans, as far as I know, are the only species in the animal kingdom that are aware that one day they are going to die.

The first time I heard this, it fascinated me and made me wonder if life would be more comfortable not being aware that one day we cease to exist.

Imagine it. Life is going well. Then suddenly, it is no more. No worry about what the future holds. We are born. We experience life. Then we are no longer there. No fear. Just nothingness.

Being aware that we will die shapes and influences our lives much more than we would like to admit. This is because so many of our anxieties and phobias at their core are fear of some loss or death.

Irvin Yalom says that while the actuality of death is the end of us, the idea of death can actually energise us.

If we don’t know when we will die, being in touch with the fact that one day everything will vanish is enough to overwhelm some people and make them panic.

For others, it is enough to make them follow the maxim of carpe diem and helps them to seize the day by appreciating everything they have so that they can make the most of the precious time they have left on this planet. Time is really just a bright spark of lightness between two identical and infinite periods of darkness — one before we are born and one after.

Death is the ultimate equaliser, for no matter how much we have achieved or done with our time on this planet, the truth is that we will all one day die.

It is also true that we will not know exactly when death will happen. It might be with a car accident tomorrow, from cancer in ten years, motor neurone disease in twenty years, a heart attack in thirty years, a stroke in forty years, or during our sleep in fifty years.

Because our knowledge of our inevitable death is so inescapable and hard to confront and deal with directly, we instead focus on smaller and more manageable worries or concerns in our lives that we can do something about if we want to. If we successfully address all these minor concerns, however, we then come in contact with our fear of death again, and the cycle repeats itself.

Most people tend to have one of two basic defence mechanisms against their fear of death:

A. They can think that they are “special” and that death will befall others but not them, and try to be an individual and experience anxiety about life.

Or

B. They can think they are an “ultimate rescuer” and try to fuse with others and experience anxiety about death (their own mortality and that of their loved ones).

A breakdown of either of these defences can give rise to psychological disorders:
- narcissism or schizoid characteristics for the “special” defence, and
- passive, dependent or masochistic characteristics for the “ultimate rescuer” defence.
In general, trying to be an individual is a more empowering and effective defence than fusing with others. Still, the breakdown of either can lead to pathological anxiety and/or depression.

The way to feel better about death anxiety is through an exercise called “disidentification”:
1. To begin with, ask yourself the question “Who am I?” and write down every answer that you can think of.
2. Then, take one answer at a time, and meditate on giving up this part of yourself, asking and reflecting on what it would be like to give up this part of yourself and your identity.
3. Repeat this with all the other answers until you have gone through all of them.
4. You have now disidentified yourself from all parts of your identity. See how you feel, and if there isn’t still a part of you, that feels separate from all the labels you give yourself. This provides comfort and reduces anxiety about death and life for a lot of people.
What I try to manage death anxiety is to only focus on whatever is most important to me that I can do something about in any given moment. I try to appreciate and be grateful for the time that I have had with each important person in my life. I try to be as fully present in the moment and with others as I can be. I try to use every moment and meeting as an opportunity to impact someone’s life positively. That way, I’ll hopefully not have too many regrets and be glad for the time I have had on this planet, no matter how long it ends up being.

2. Freedom

The second ultimate concern is about freedom, responsibility and will.

Every country in the world talks about fighting for the freedom of its citizens and about taking away some people’s freedom to ensure the safety and security of all. Therefore, the existential dilemma is how much freedom do we give up to others to feel safe and secure, or how much safety and security do we give up to feel genuinely free? Are these concepts in direct opposition, or is it sometimes possible to have enough of both?

Responsibility means taking full ownership of:

“one’s own self, destiny, life predicament, feelings, and if such be the case, one’s own suffering” — Irvin Yalom

In the past, one’s life was set out for them by their parents or society, and many people struggled to fight for the right to live an authentic and genuine life.

These days, most people struggle instead with the amount of choice that they have in their lives. They come to therapy because they don’t know what they want to do or how to choose, given all of the available options. They also know that if no one else is telling them what to do, it is ultimately their responsibility if things do not work out the way they want them to. People wish to choose for themselves but fear not having someone to blame when things don’t work out.

There are various defences that we engage in to avoid responsibility and shield ourselves from freedom, including:
- compulsivity
- displacement of responsibility to another
- denial of responsibility (“innocent victim” or “losing control”)
- avoidance of autonomous behaviour, and
- decisional pathology
We can do something over and over again to relieve anxiety or stop thinking about things. This can present as OCD, hoarding, or any addiction ranging from technology to drugs and alcohol and even dependency on others.

We can try to coerce others to make decisions for us or seek out and find controlling partners, bosses or friends. But, we can also play it safe and try to do what we think everyone else does; focus on keeping up with the Joneses, engaging in passive activities that don’t require much effort, and feeling stuck in an unfulfilling relationship or career.

The problem with giving up the responsibility for how our lives turn out is that it creates an external rather than an internal locus of control. Depression and other forms of psychological disorders are more highly correlated with an external locus of control. It can also lead to learned helplessness, where people no longer feel like they can do anything to change their life in a positive direction.

The way to manage the responsibility and freedom paradox is to develop an internal locus of control. This is generally more beneficial for most people’s well-being unless we blame ourselves or change things out of our control. This includes what has happened in the past, what other people do or say, and acts of nature.

The serenity prayer nicely spells out how we should approach responsibility:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.” — Reinhold Niebuhr

Paradoxical intention is a good antidote too. This means that we try to do the opposite of what we typically do for a period of time and keep an open mind and observe how things go. We can then see if the outcome is better than what we usually do or if it has taught us something about what will be best for us going forward.

Anything that creates a double bind is potentially helpful for encouraging people to take more responsibility in their lives. One way is to remind someone who struggles to make their own decisions that by not deciding, they are still making a choice not to choose. This means that no matter what they do, it is impossible not to make a decision that impacts the direction of their lives. Even if we choose to follow what someone else wants us to do, we still choose to do this. Therefore, why not take responsibility for our own lives and forge our own paths?

3. Isolation

There are three types of isolation:

“A. Interpersonal isolation: isolation from other individuals, experienced as loneliness

B. Intrapersonal isolation: parts of oneself are partitioned off from the self, and

C. Existential isolation: “an unbridgeable gap between oneself and any other being.”

A common way that people try to escape from existential isolation is to fuse with another fully. This is also a strategy for dealing with death anxiety, with people trying to be the “ultimate rescuer” of someone else. It can lead to an individual feeling temporarily less alone. Unfortunately, however, the less isolated we are from others, sometimes the more isolated we are from ourselves.

Other people try to overcompensate for their feelings of isolation by never relying on anyone and trying to be fully independent. Both extremes can have negative consequences.

The main thing we can do to manage our feelings of isolation is to realise and accept that we are social creatures and have always relied on others to survive. This drive creates a desire to feel closer to, more understood, and more connected to people than we can ever achieve and sustain.

Growing up, many people feel loved and comforted in an unbalanced relationship towards their needs being met over their parents. They then try to reenact this within their adult relationships and usually end up feeling resentful, angry and disappointed as a result.

Yalom believes that a good relationship involves “needs-free love”, which is about loving someone else for their sake. This is opposed to “deficiency love”, a selfish love where we only think about how useful the other person may be to us. Creating a relationship where you want the best for the other person is a healthier way to manage interpersonal isolation than demanding for them to meet every need for you.

Some of the best solutions to intrapersonal isolation are to have time to get to know ourselves through practices such as journaling, therapy and meditation. Introverts may need to have more of this time than extroverts, so it’s important to tune into how agitated or lonely you feel to know if you have found the right balance or not.

Unfortunately, existential isolation cannot be fully breached, and therefore needs to be accepted, as it is out of our control. To feel the pain that comes with this isolation and our desire not to have it is challenging, but it can help reduce the intensity of the feeling. Being grateful for the meaningful connections we have in our lives and trying to strengthen them without losing our sense of self is another way to lessen the intensity of the feeling.

4. Meaninglessness

According to Yalom and many non-religious philosophers, humans are meaning-seeking creatures in a world without a universal sense of meaning. As a result of this, most of the world turn to a religious or spiritual belief system of one type or another that clearly lays out the meaning of the world and our purpose in it. People who truly believe these systems often provide a lot of clarity, reassurance, and guidance. The tricky part is that these belief systems can vary widely, and it is hard to know which one is more correct than another or if some of them are even harmful.

What we do know is that most belief systems tend to agree that

“it is good to immerse oneself in the stream of life”.

People can try to find meaning through:

A. Hedonism: Seeking out pleasure and positive experiences and trying to avoid pain,

B. Altruism: Dedication towards a cause that helps other people, and

C. Creativity: Transcending oneself through art.

Many philosophers believe that both the search for pleasure and the search for meaning are paradoxical. By this, they mean that happiness and meaning or purpose in life are tough to achieve when they are aimed at directly, but possible if they are aimed at indirectly.

So if you or someone that you know is complaining about a lack of meaning in life, try to see if there are other issues. If possible, address these other issues first, and see if your worry about meaninglessness has lessened or gone away.

The best indirect way to increase a sense of purpose and meaning in life is to build kindness, curiosity and concern for others. This is often best done by helping out with a charity, joining a club, fighting for a cause, or attending a group activity or group therapy.

Yalom strongly believes that a desire to engage in life and satisfying relationships, work, spiritual and creative pursuits always exists within a person. Therefore, the key to managing meaninglessness is to remove the obstacles that prevent the individual from wholeheartedly engaging in the regular activities of life.

We may never be able to find the absolute meaning of life. However, what we can do is work at creating a life that is personally meaningful to us.

Dr Damon Ashworth

Clinical Psychologist
January 25, 2019