[Neurons] 2016 Neurons #17 The 3 Magic Words of Resilience

Sun Apr 17 16:47:10 EDT 2016

From: L. Michael Hall

2016 "Neurons" Meta Reflections - #17

April 18, 2016

Resilience Series #3

       THE THREE MAGIC WORDS

OF RESILIENCE

There are three magic words that conveys the inner spirit of resilience.  I
stumbled onto them in reading Martin Seligman's work on Learned Helplessness
and then on Learned Optimism.  In his books he tells the story of moving
from being a strict Behaviorist to integrating cognition into his
understanding of human nature and eventually becoming a Cognitive
Behaviorist.  It happened with his studies with animals and how he was able
to train them to learn to become helpless.  

What later happened, if I remember the story accurately, first he trained
the dogs to learn to be helpless.  They would just sit on the electrified
grid having learned that there was no place they could move where there
wasn't the electricity and so they would just lie down and "take it."  It
was as if in doggie think, the dog had concluded there was nothing he could
do.  "I'm helpless to change things, and so hopeless."  This is "learned
helplessness."  Then one day, one of the lab technicians physically moved
one of the dogs, who had learned to be helpless, off of the electrified grid
to a place where there was no electricity.  

That's when something magical happened.  Whereas previously the dog had
"learned" he could do nothing and so sat down in a helpless state, now
having experienced something beyond the pain, the dog "learned" something
else.  He learned "there is a place where there is no pain."  He learned
that there is hope!  Something did make a difference.  And even more
incredibly, after that the dog could not or would not re-learn the learned
helplessness.  Seligman's conclusion was that the dog had now "learned"
optimism.  That is, the dog had essentially learned, "There is always
something that I can do.  I am not helpless."

Seligman said that what the dogs "learned" was as if they thought that the
unpleasant experience they were having was everywhere (pervasive), forever
(permanent), and about them (personal).  Comparing that to people with
severe depression, he recognized that this is also the structure of clinical
depression.  People assume the same things-about space, they assume that the
problem is everywhere.  About time, they assume that the problem will last
forever.  And about the source of the problem, it is about them.  This gives
us three Ps- pervasive, permanent, and personal.  Use that template to think
about a problem and you will draw the conclusion that you are stuck!  You
are helpless and hopeless.  And, if you draw that conclusion, you inevitably
create a good case of depression.  It is a formula for personal misery.

Structurally, this gives us what he called the pessimistic explanatory style
for interpreting events.  It is characterized as seeing things through the
following lens:

         Permanent in time: unchangeable, insoluble, insurmountable.

         Pervasive in space: effecting everything and undermining every
facet of life.

         Personal in source: positing the problem with the self.

With these three perspectives, when facing a set-back a person sees himself
as inadequate, deficient, lacking, selfish, mean, criminal, etc.  That, in
turn, creates dis-empowerment and non-resilience leading to feeling
depressed, passive, and suicidal.  Not a pretty picture!  And when facing a
set-back or a knock-down, looking at an experience with these lens makes
things much, much worse.  For humans it creates depression.  But there is
good news: You do not have to view things through these lens.  There's a
better choice.

The better choice is to use an opposite explanatory style.  Seligman named
it the optimistic explanatory style.  Here a person interprets the set-back
in a "positive" or optimistic way.  The "optimism" here is not "Thing will
turn out great!"  It is rather an optimism that enables you to do something
tangible about a set back.  It keeps the "bad" or "evil" thing from getting
into your inner game.  The optimistic explanatory style enables you to
interpret the unpleasant event or bad thing through the following lens: 

         Then- temporary in time: The event is about this person and
situation in this moment of time.

         That - specific in space: It is that thing in that space. 

         There - external in source: It is there, not me.

In the place of the pessimistic Ps, you have three new magic words to say,
all of them start with T: "That- there- then."  Or if it is occurring
currently, then "This- here- now."  With this style, you see the problem as
in the environment, the behavior, etc., but not you. "Not me!" This
explanation prevents you from over-generalizing and coloring dark the
future, life, or another person.  You perceive what happened as occurring at
a specific time, in a specific situation, involving specific people, etc.
This contains the "evil," thereby preventing it from spilling over onto
everything else. It keeps you open, hopeful, and responsible to taking
effective actions.

What Seligman discovered concerned a person's attitude (or meta-state) about
three facets of his or her Matrix- Self, Time, and World which, in turn,
then affects one's sense of Power, Meaning, Intention, and State.  Framing a
set-back or problem as you (your Self) undermines your power to do anything.
What can you do if you are the problem?  By making it everywhere in your
World you over-generalize and imply, "nothing is exempt." And by making it
last forever, you make the problem permanent.  No wonder you feel helpless
and hopeless.  Here, as always, the problem rests in these frames.

Changing the frames (meta-states) so that the problem is outside and not
you, limited to the here and now and not everywhere or forever contains the
problem.  And as it limits the problem, it frees you to be able to do
something about it.  And when that happens, then you can be resilient.  You
can bounce back from the problem.  Ready for some magic?  Try on the three
magic words: That there then.  Or, This here now.  Whatever the problem, say
these three words to it.  It will contained the "bad" thing so that you can
bounce back.  There's more to resilience than this, yet this is the
beginning and a powerful beginning at that!

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

               Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

               Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

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