Dear Dick
articles about wide ranging psychological issues
from "The Local Bulletin" (Brisbane Australia)
by Dick Rigby
©all articles are copyright 2006

May 2004
“I have a dream……” (Martin Luther King).  We all deserve to have a dream.  We need a vision of the future to give our life meaning.  How we see the future effects our quality of life. 
Pessimistic people have negative dreams of the future.  They tend to focus on the things that might go wrong.  Their dreams are occupied with thinking of catastrophes so that they are well prepared when things go astray.
Sound good to protect yourself doesn’t it?  Not if it’s overdone.  If the dreams are too focussed on what might go wrong, we can become depressed.  Arnold had been on the edge of depression most of his life.  His mother and father were both pessimistic and they taught him their model.  There was not a lot of laughter when Arnold was growing up.
When he started dating girls, his mum and dad would always wait up for him to get home just in case something went wrong.  One night he was two hours late.  By the time he got home, his parents had rung all the local hospitals and reported him missing to the police.
That’s OK for concerned parents to act like that isn’t it?  Not really.  They didn’t enjoy life and didn’t have any fun.
Arnold met Pat.  Pat gave him hope.  She taught him how to dream.  She had wonderful dreams of the future.  Most of them didn’t come true, but it was fun dreaming them anyway.  The dreams that did come true wouldn’t have happened if Pat didn’t dream them in the first place.  Pat believed in her dreams.
Teaching Arnold to think this way was not easy.  He had no experience with optimism.  Pat taught him how to develop a vision of how he would like things to be.  She taught him how to focus on the positive outcomes of his dreams and to look forward to them.  She taught him how to protect himself if the dream didn’t turn out the way he pictured it.
She taught him how to make changes as things developed. When things didn’t work out, Arnold usually said “That’s just my rotten luck.  I always miss out”.  Pat taught him to take the positives from the situation and fit them into a new dream.
It worked.  Arnold doesn’t get depressed any longer and he looks forward to his dreams.  We all need a little help some times.
 

Pessimism the silent killer

December 2004
Dianne believes that everything in her life will turn out badly.  She has been a client of mine for quite some time now.  She is afraid of life.  Over the years she has had many friendships.  She believes that they have all ended in betrayal or in some other form of disaster.
Maybe you are like Dianne, or you know someone who is like her.  It is an awful way to run a life.  For Dianne, when things work out O.K., she explains this as an accident or a temporary state before the inevitable disaster.  She selectively gathers evidence that fits her theory that “It will all end in tears”.  She ignores evidence that contradicts this theory.
Studies have shown that pessimists live a shorter life than optimists and the quality of their life is poorer.  Pessimism is often associated with debilitating depression and substance abuse.
I ask three questions about Dianne: If pessimism is such a lousy system, why is it so resistant to change?  How did Dianne get to be this way in the first place?  What can we do about it?
It is so resistant to change because it is run by a subconscious part and it is based on fear.  The fear of change is really strong.  The subconscious part believes that to adopt an optimistic view of life would expose Dianne to disappointment and hurt.
How did it start?  Dianne’s parents were both pessimists.  They believed that there was a social catastrophe just around the corner.  They lived on a farm where they tried to be self sufficient and kept isolated from other people.  The psychological environment that Dianne grew up in was that of imminent disaster.  Lots of fear.
What to do?  Pessimism is like an addiction.  It is a way of avoiding looking at things the way they really are.  Just like any form of addiction, the person has to admit to the problem. Dianne has to admit honestly that she distorts reality in order to fit her subconscious theory that all will end in tears.
She has to say “I have been lying to myself for years, and I will not get better until I stop lying”.  The question Dianne then asks is “How do I know if I am lying or not”?  The answer is to bounce her reality off trusted people and really listen to the feedback that she gets. 
I am optimistic about Dianne’s recovery.