The precepts of positive psychology, that knows you.
You know how to say “thank you” for being up every morning, savoring the feeling of the sun on your face, rejoicing in being healthy and surrounded by your loved ones.
You have even adopted the list of gratitude, writing down three little pleasures that have brightened your day.
The goal?
Remind you that what matters most, in the end, is that smile of a stranger in the street, and not the three bronchitis in two months of the youngest, or that cell phone that disappeared through the gratings of a license plate. 'sewer.
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Only despite this, nothing helps.
You do not reach the peak of happiness and the urge to complain regularly tickles you.
What if letting yourself go makes you more fulfilled?
This is what American therapist Jodie Cariss suggests in an article published on January 6 on the
Vogue
magazine website .
She says: “We are always encouraged to be grateful, kind, altruistic, but that leaves little room for natural emotions, such as anger, stress or jealousy.
We have to accept these difficult emotions.
In video, world tour of recipes for happiness
No more guilt
To do this, an American journalist, Liz Brown, opted for that … of ingratitude, she said in 2017 to the monthly
Good Housekeeping
.
Suffering from depression for three years, she tried the experiment on the advice of her psychologist.
"I adorned my list with all the obscene swear words that could describe all the misfortunes that had befallen me: death, illness, disappointment, taxes, hemorrhoids... Writing about these things didn't make them go away .
But my lists helped me move from shame to acceptance to action.
I still feel sick to my stomach, but at least I don't punish myself for being sad or selfish anymore.
Here is all the interest of this list, for the psychiatrist Gérard Tixier, author of
Praise of depression: no to the dictatorship of happiness
(1).
They release us from guilt as we make the choice to assume our emotions.
“Faced with them, we are very often victims, judges and executioners at the same time, specifies the doctor.
We condemn ourselves for shortcomings or errors, and we sometimes punish ourselves for it to the point of self-destruction.
We perceive more clearly what our brain could not disentangle
Anne-Laure Buffet, therapist
Knowing how to list everyday hassles, even the slightest, is not a matter of pessimism but rather of good self-awareness, according to therapist Anne-Laure Buffet.
“When we try to see life in pink, we do not take into account the complexity of our emotions, underlines the professional, also author of
Help, I'm fine
(2).
By seizing them, we do not repress them, and we protect ourselves from a future boomerang effect which can be very violent.
By writing on a notebook, we better visualize the links that are woven between certain emotions.
"We perceive more clearly what our brain could not disentangle," continues the therapist.
The list of ingratitude establishes a distance between the sources of our ills and us.
"By focusing all our attention on an event, the vision we have of it becomes distorted and we attribute to it a sometimes excessive importance".
Adorned with words, the problems resume their initial form, one can then “dissociate the facts from the judgment that one carries on them”, explains Anne-Laure Buffet.
Go beyond the complaint
In practice, how to do it?
Provided with a pen and a sheet, one lays there one's sufferings and one's complaints.
The idea is then to go further.
“The complaint is only the beginning of the work”, specifies the psychiatrist Gérard Tixier.
To optimize his quest for fulfillment, the doctor recommends creating a third column, in which we enter the questions that arise from our notes.
The complaint is only the beginning of the work
Gérard Tixier, psychiatrist
"The 'good' questions are those that question our own actions and feelings.
Those whose response does not come from us but from another person, in the case of a conflict or after a breakup for example, are almost impossible to resolve and waste our energy”, clarifies Gérard Tixier.
Second alternative, according to Anne-Laure Buffet: start by writing down all your thoughts, then sort them into two columns: one for the emotions felt, the other for what we have done and which upsets us.
Don't fall into negativity
Do we not risk brooding by focusing on what torments us?
No risk, according to therapist Anne Laure Buffet, provided you are in control.
“From the moment we start the process voluntarily, our suffering does not take over because it belongs to us”.
Finally, the ultimate way not to get locked in a negative spiral according to Gérard Tixier, is not to forget to write, too, which gives us positive emotions.
(1) Gérard Tixier is the author of Praise
of depression: no to the dictatorship of happiness
, Ed.
Milan, 18.99 euros.
(2) Anne-Laure Buffet and the author of the book
Help, I'm fine
, Ed.
Idea, 16.90 euros.