{"id":779,"date":"2016-04-27T11:34:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T11:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=779"},"modified":"2016-04-27T11:34:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T11:34:00","slug":"depression-zooey-deschanel-cognitive-behavioural-therapy-art-of-living-happiness-maria-von-trapp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=779","title":{"rendered":"The Demented Pursuit of Happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"container page-content\"><p><span class=\"dropcap\">\u201cH<\/span><\/p><\/div><p>appiness is a personal choice,\u201d intoned the woman at the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) session with a manic smile, as I filled up the form while trying to ignore the frantic jingling of her Santa hat. \u201cPositive thoughts have a positive impact on your brain.\u201d\n\nDicey, I thought. I\u2019d never been the sunshine type, but after all, it was a freezing December in England and \u201cMindfulness and Positive Thinking\u201d classes had become the rage with all the miserable, overworked, and sun-deprived college kids around me. Moreover, traditional therapy hadn\u2019t worked. So I thought to myself \u201cWhy the hell not?\u201d, and signed up to be injected with some ridiculous happiness.\n\nOn a wet Wednesday morning, I presented myself to be uplifted in a bleak hospital room. A white woman with a Zooey Deschanel pixie fringe, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OKZF0oG1E14\" target=\"_blank\">Maria-blasted-Von Trapp<\/a> voice, and a grin that stretched from ear to ear sat in the middle and began immediately asking me about things that bothered me.\n\nI began with a disturbing racist incident, where I\u2019d been mildly harassed by four white guys in a park. \u00a0No reaction. A Cheshire cat smile stayed plastered on her face. I turned the gear up and went onto loneliness, the recent death of a relative. Still, nada.\n\nThen I decided to go in for the kill. Last week, I\u2019d heard my mother casually say to a friend that she wanted to kill herself. \u00a0I waited to give dramatic pause. If this didn\u2019t get her going I didn\u2019t know what would.\n\nMaria Von Trapp jumped up excitedly and yelled, \u201cSit down right here!\u201d\n\nI looked around confused. She was pointing to a sandpit in the centre of the room, a classic little patch of kiddie playground with shiny toys, Lego bits and miniature cars. \u201cTell me what happy things these remind you of,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cUmm, I\u2019d really rather talk first, if that\u2019s okay?\u201d I began. \u201cLike I was saying, my parents are on the brink of senility, and I\u2019m not sure\u2026\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, a recurring negative thought. Unhelpful. Let\u2019s break the pattern!\u201d she insisted, her eyes now shining with craziness. Or so it seemed to me.\n\n\u201cWell \u2014 it\u2019s not so much a negative thought, as it is a situation which\u2026\u201d I tried to explain but she cut me off.\n\n\u201cYou need to stop thinking in cycles. Close your eyes and picture yourself as your own mother and father. Can you do that?\u201d\n\nWhat was this woman smoking? She wanted me to sit in a sandpit and picture myself as my mother and father and then what? Braid their hair? Lovingly whisper in their ears that insanity is unhealthy?\u00a0 As I stared at her in disbelief she went on\u2026\n\n\u201cYou can do anything, be anyone, as long as you\u2019re positive. Because being positive\u2026 is contagious!\u201d\n\nSo is your lunacy, I wanted to tell her.\n\n\u201cNow, what are your goals from life?\u201d she suddenly changed tack, figuring I wasn\u2019t going to sit in the sodden pit of smelly sand.\n\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\"><p>I don\u2019t know about you but the next time someone tells me to \u201cbe positive\u201d I\u2019ll positively sock them in the face.\u00a0 <\/p><\/blockquote> \n\n\u201cTell me, what are your goals?\u201d she demanded. It occurred to me that this woman might be reading from a Mindfulness-for-Robots manual. Or perhaps a leaflet for a zombie cult who preached how to be content through the apocalypse. What was going on? Was this <em>2001: A Space Odyssey <\/em>I was watching? I had to shake myself a little to believe that it was really happening.\n\nI had a sudden impulse to quote Woody Allen from <em>Annie Hall<\/em> \u201cI feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That&#8217;s the two categories,\u201d and stomp out of there. \u00a0But instead I smiled awkwardly and made a run for it, leaving La-La Lady to splash happily in her bubble-gum-broth.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\nI don\u2019t know about you but the next time someone tells me to \u201cbe positive\u201d I\u2019ll positively sock them in the face.\u00a0 Modern day coping mechanisms somehow almost always involve coerced happiness and it\u2019s fucking exhausting. A friend once got embroiled in <a href=\"http:\/\/jeevanvidya.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jeevan Vidya<\/a> philosophy, swallowed their tagline whole \u2013 \u201cYou are the architect of your destiny\u201d \u2014 and spent his time gazing plaintively at his hands, muttering \u201cMein bahut khush hoon.\u201d Another friend got caught up in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.landmarkworldwide.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Landmark<\/a> \u2018Change your Life in 3 Days\u2019 craze and decided to quit all \u201cnegative\u201d influences in her life, including booze, partying, and decadence of any sort and promptly fell into a deep depression \u2014 because her friends forgot she even existed. How does this crap get real people with real, horrible stories of miscarriages or abusive parents to feel better?\n\nThe happiness industry is booming like never before. Miserable people all over the world have ensured that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artofliving.org\/in-en\/happiness-program\" target=\"_blank\">Art of Living Happiness Programmes<\/a> rake in billions, and self-help books <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Business\/story?id=86594\" target=\"_blank\">fly off the shelves<\/a>, year in, year out. But secretly I think they all go to Bermuda and get some sun, sand, and sex-on-the-beach and get healed. There\u2019s no other explanation. Nobody has ever healed through delusion and repression. I much prefer my scientist friend, who has an incredible anti-bullshit approach to life. She always makes me feel so much better by laughing hysterically. The day I told her a relative was contemplating euthanasia, she made several morbid jokes comparing him to her lab rats, and had me in fits of laughter.\n\nA few days after my disaster with Von Trapp, I hovered shadily outside the Mindfulness class.\u00a0\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.positivelypositive.com\/quotes\/sometimes-your-joy-is-the-source-of-your-smile-but-sometimes-your-smile-can-be-the-source-of-your-joy\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sometimes<\/a> your joy is the source of your smile,\u00a0but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy,\u201d I heard someone intone.\n\nRight about then, I had the sudden urge to infiltrate this anti-pity party, wearing a pink tutu and sprinkling some moondust and fairy glitter on the participants. At least that would have given the poor sods something to be joyful about.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The happiness industry is booming. Miserable people worldwide ensure that Art of Living Happiness Programmes rake in billions, and self-help books fly off the shelves all year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1385,1386,1387,559,1388,1389],"class_list":["post-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-2001-a-space-odyssey","tag-art-of-living-happiness","tag-cognitive-behavioural-therapy","tag-depression","tag-maria-von-trapp","tag-zooey-deschanel"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Demented Pursuit of Happiness<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The happiness industry is booming. 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