Self Help Observation In the Playground

[Yarram]

I read a bunch of self help articles on the Interwebs today out of vague interest, and I've also read a bunch of other books in the past, though I can't name any specifically off the top of my head. Just think generic, "Being Happy" for Teens kind of stuff.
I was suprised to realise that most of the advice consists of conditioning yourself by telling yourself things all the time, like:
"I am a valuable and awesome person."
"People will love me, because I love myself."
"Etc."

That's not really that surprising in itself, but mostly surprising because I can't imagine telling yourself things like that daily to feel anything but lies (Assuming you have depression or low self esteem, etc.), or if not, it sound's like you're brainwashing yourself through repetition in the same way you could have a person tell you that purple elephants existed every day, until you eventually believe them.

I have several questions regarding this:
Do these techniques honestly work? Do they make the user feel happy, or are they just pretending to be?
Why is it these techniques work? (For any psyche students out there)
If these techniques are indeed brainwashing, why are they used? Are there any ethical issues associated with this?
What's big red and eats rocks? (Not relevant, but answer it anyway)
Do you have anything to add, or to discount my observation? It'd be welcome.

[SensFan]

What's big red and eats rocks? (Not relevant, but answer it anyway)

A big red rock-eater, of course!

[Yarram]

Yeah, but what about the other stuff?

[SensFan]

Haven't done any sort of research on the subject, so take this with a grain of salt.

I personally think it probably does work. I mean, there's studies to show that positive thinking can help performance in tests and such, so I assume it would apply for other things in life.

[Dogmantra]

I personally think it probably does work. I mean, there's studies to show that positive thinking can help performance in tests and such, so I assume it would apply for other things in life.

To add to this, I'd say that it probably doesn't work for everyone. It all depends on the situation. For some people, repitition of this sort of stuff is probably more to do with getting into the right mindset. While repeating that sort of phrase in a mirror won't help my opinion of myself, it will remind me that things will go a lot more smoothly if it at least looks like I think I'm a great person.

[Neko Toast]

It's a cognitive approach to Psychology. The theory is that depression is caused by faulty beliefs. This article gives a decent explanation of the ABC model, which is used for this sort of thing.

It can work for some people, but not everyone. It's like that with every psychological theory out there. You simply try doing what works best for yourself.

[Comet]

Positive thinking never hurts, that much is for certain.

I don't suffer from any serious depressions or the like , though, and my psych studies have been very limited so I can't really offer any hard data.

But I don't really think it's brainwashing or anything shady like that. I mean, if you tell yourself you're awesome enough times, you'll slowly start believing it, sure. But how is that a bad thing? If you think you have a chance of doing good in this world, won't that in fact lead you into actually doing good in this world?

That's my take. I do agree on the point that this doesn't work for everyone, but it sure is worth a try.

[Yarram]

Positive thinking never hurts, that much is for certain.

But I don't really think it's brainwashing or anything shady like that. I mean, if you tell yourself you're awesome enough times, you'll slowly start believing it, sure. But how is that a bad thing? If you think you have a chance of doing good in this world, won't that in fact lead you into actually doing good in this world?

That's my take. I do agree on the point that this doesn't work for everyone, but it sure is worth a try.

I see what you're saying, and now agree with you. But an extension, if this works for believing that you're a good person, does that mean it should work for other things, like believing in objects that don't exist?

The ABC thing seems like a good idea, but telling yourself that you did your best, rather than saying, "I'm a failure" would hardly work if you don't really believe in it. But is the point if you repeat something to yourself enough times you'll believe it, or is it that you have to change the way you think... Somehow (Because this seems impossible without some kind of catalyst).

Edit: Does pretending to be positive actually make you feel positive? Or is all of this, "Be Positive" stuff just making you lie to yourself?
Would doing so though change the way you act, until your life improves to thepoint where you actually are happy?

[Comet]

Edit: Does pretending to be positive actually make you feel positive? Or is all of this, "Be Positive" stuff just making you lie to yourself?
Would doing so though change the way you act, until your life improves to thepoint where you actually are happy?

In my experience our "self" is perhaps the only thing in the entire world we can directly force into changing through nothing but force of will.

Granted, this might work if the reasons for one's depressions or such are heavily biological. Or, at least, the change will be harder in that case.
But yeah, I have definetly become a better person by consciously adopting different patterns of thinking. Putting on a "role" until it actually becomes reality, if that makes any sense.
But that might just work in my case for all I know. It's an interesting subject, for sure.

[Quincunx]

The strength of will to resist change lies in social bonds, in the self-image inertia of some mental disorders (yet often canceled out by the same disorders' inability to assign proper significance to events--if the skewed perspective locks onto something disbelieved, it's as good as believed now through the force of obsession), and in the self-examined life. Now look around at a sample of folk

--I have answered this before. Here. When? Did I press "submit" or discard the tab, that day?--

nearby. Pick out the ones whose social network does not change over time. Pick out the ones of sound mind. Pick out the ones who live a self-examined life and let others know that it is so. You won't have many left. In short, if a tactic only works on idiots, it's going to work on a lot of people!

Look up "hypnosis" and "neural programming". . .and for the heck of it, "memes". (Credit given to a post on the topic which I do not have permission to quote.)

To answer: Earthworms. When you're the size of a bacterium, living underground clinging to a bit of soil, everything is large and/or a rock.

[Jokasti]

"Being Happy" for Teens.

That's how you know it's a scam. Teens are not supposed to be happy.

[Totally Guy]

I had a housemate that I could hear doing this in the morning.

"I am powerful. I am strong."

He always seemed ok to me.

But heck, I always seem ok to everybody else. People think I'm the happiest guy in the world. It's when I'm alone that I fall apart.

[thubby]

I have several questions regarding this:
Do these techniques honestly work? Do they make the user feel happy, or are they just pretending to be?

I've never used it to just "be happy" but it helped me a lot with my medical issues

Why is it these techniques work? (For any psyche students out there)

the same reason negative thinking causes decreased performance and/or physical symptoms, i would imagine.

If these techniques are indeed brainwashing, why are they used? Are there any ethical issues associated with this?

it's something the person has to do for themself. brainwashing, in any sense I've seen the word used, is an outside force changing your mind against your will.

What's big red and eats rocks? (Not relevant, but answer it anyway)

an earthworm, if you have a broad definition of "big", "red", and "rock"

[Savannah]

Edit: Does pretending to be positive actually make you feel positive? Or is all of this, "Be Positive" stuff just making you lie to yourself?
Would doing so though change the way you act, until your life improves to thepoint where you actually are happy?

It can. It might not work for you, given your skepticism

Remember what you have been reading is undoubtedly 'pop psychology', and is likely to have taken a real psychological phenomenon and applied it without really understanding it.

Real cognitive behavioral therapy tries, among other things, to retrain thought patterns in the same way that you retrain behaviors. I'm not sure how much just chanting "I'm great" is going to do for you, but you can learn to identify a negative thought, and replace it with a more positive thought. (Fail one test -> "I'm worthless and will die unloved" [old thought pattern] -> "No, I'm not. Look at what I've accomplished so far. This is just a temporary setback." [new thought pattern])

Does that help?

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

an earthworm, if you have a broad definition of "big", "red", and "rock"

Humans are big, pink and eat rocks, does that count?

[Telonius]

I see what you're saying, and now agree with you. But an extension, if this works for believing that you're a good person, does that mean it should work for other things, like believing in objects that don't exist?

Not really. External reality is still there. What you're doing is changing the filter through which you interact with external reality - changing the assumptions you use to decide what and how to act. This can actually lead to varying kinds of feedback loops and "self-fulfilling prophecies." Very, very simple example, but if you think to yourself, "This party is going to be boring," and act on that assumption, it will probably be boring. You might miss opportunities to talk for fear that it will be too boring, you'll get bored, and nobody wants to talk to someone who's bored. If you're looking forward to the party, you're more likely to feel interested and interesting when you get to the party, therefore more likely to have a good time. Thought->behavior->result. This isn't foolproof - a meeting of the Telephone Book Reading Society is probably going to be boring no matter what. That's where external reality bumps up against it.

The ABC thing seems like a good idea, but telling yourself that you did your best, rather than saying, "I'm a failure" would hardly work if you don't really believe in it. But is the point if you repeat something to yourself enough times you'll believe it, or is it that you have to change the way you think... Somehow (Because this seems impossible without some kind of catalyst).

Edit: Does pretending to be positive actually make you feel positive? Or is all of this, "Be Positive" stuff just making you lie to yourself?
Would doing so though change the way you act, until your life improves to thepoint where you actually are happy?

There's a common phrase in Alcoholics Anonymous: "Fake it till you make it." It can work, though I haven't seen any studies to back it up.

[SurlySeraph]

I have several questions regarding this:
Do these techniques honestly work? Do they make the user feel happy, or are they just pretending to be?

In my experience, only if you're telling yourself something that you actually believe is true. For example, I feel better if I regularly remind myself "I'm smart, I'm good at this"; but telling myself "I'm a good leader" when I know it's clearly not true would just make me feel worse. Besides, it's easier to remember to remind yourself of positive traits that you really do know you have.

Why is it these techniques work? (For any psyche students out there)
If these techniques are indeed brainwashing, why are they used? Are there any ethical issues associated with this?

Because they make you internalize a more positive view of yourself. Because they work. No, why would there be?

What's big red and eats rocks? (Not relevant, but answer it anyway)
Do you have anything to add, or to discount my observation? It'd be welcome.

Mars, since it's big, red, and pulls in plenty of asteroids.

[Tirian]

Self-affirmation isn't completely silly. It leans that way if you think of it as nothing more than a mantra. But a similar-seeming but far more useful application is recalling all the things you've accomplished over the course of a day and saying into a mirror "I'm not worthless after all" or "I'm glad that I had the courage to go to that party instead of staying at home moping". It's the ability to tie those statements to actual data that makes you internalize them as the truth (because they are the truth) and replace them with the negative messages that you might otherwise burden yourself with throughout the day.

I do think it's useful. But it's not the whole of the matter. It relies heavily on the model that we are machines that deterministically run the programs that are installed on our systems. That's true to a certain extent, but we are also big bags of chemicals that interact with each other and the environment in ways that we can't intellectually deconstruct. To tell a teenager to cheer up is to be ignorant of the fact that the teenager is a very complex and unstable system. Self-affirmation certainly can't hurt and might help, but the exact same can (and should!) be said of drinking eight glasses of water a day and getting exercise. And, even then, being aware of the fact that you are still not in complete control of your identity and should give yourself a break where you can.