How Do the Knowledge and Skills for Happiness Help at Times of Severe Distress?
Is it useful to learn to "be happy" when I am sad?
Knowledge and Skills for building Happiness and well-being, many of which shared in this Substack, can help or prepare you in a number of ways against severe distress or other negative feelings, including, but are not limited to:
As negative emotions is one aspect considered in the full concept of Happiness, dealing with negativity directly is an important area of knowledge and skills shared here.
When facing the negative emotions and negative thinking that might come with the distress, one of the skills dealing with negativity introduced here may help.
Knowledge and skills for cultivating positive emotions are important as well, as positive emotions can act as a buffet to curb the negative effects of distress.
At times of severe distress, resilience is the key to carry one through.
The skills taught here, such as cultivating an Optimistic Explanatory Style, increase resilience. Or to start, even a slight adjusting of explanatory style may help fight depression, anxiety, or some other distress.
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At times of severe distress, social support could be crucial. Happiness is attractive and naturally benefits social relationships.
Many skills and much knowledge taught here for happiness will in turn help you build social connections, and gain the benefits of social support when needed.
Gratitude has been shown to help reduce the effects of negative emotions in severe distress. Having gratitude and counting blessings help balance the negativity and put it into perspective.
When practicing gratitude, the “gratitude circuit” in our brain may even produce chemicals countering those produced with negative feelings.
These and more are continuously introduced and taught in this Substack, with general contents throughout the main page.
The relevant posts are also organized systematically under the categorizing tag “Dealing with NA” (where NA refers to Negative Affect, the scientific name for negative emotions or feelings).
Individualized instructions and coaching of the skills are provided in our Services area.