Existential Psychology

Silver Lining

By  | 

Imagine a middle aged guy who has a heart attack and almost dies. Most of us will qualify this event as a bad thing. But what if, due to coming face to face with his mortality, he starts to make some important life changes. His doctors inform him his lifestyle is unhealthy, which he already knew, but now he begins to take the fact seriously. He starts exercising, eating healthier, and finding ways to lower his stress levels. He also spends more time with his family, and really starts to appreciate the small things, becoming more aware of the precariousness and miraculousness of his existence.

Now can we really call his heart attack a ‘bad’ thing? Without it, he would have kept living the same way he had before, and it’s entirely possible that a heart attack a few years down the road would have been even more massive and killed him. ‘Every cloud has its silver lining’ is one of those expressions that isn’t going anywhere. It reveals a profound truth that most of us don’t spend much time considering. There is usually the possibility of good embedded in the bad.

Of course, it presupposes that you look for and become aware of this hidden truth rather than simply staying mired in self-pity, learning nothing from the experience. It’s tempting to only focus on the bad when bad things happen to you, but most of the time you played some part in what happened, and if you can learn what that part was you can change your life for the better.

Related posts:

  1. Wrong Perceptions If you spend any time on Facebook you’ve probably noticed a few ‘friends’ who are painfully transparent in their efforts to spin positive narratives about themselves. Their not-so-subtle posts don’t just come out and say it (that would be tacky) but you don’t have to read too far between the lines to quickly become aware […]...
  2. Dealing With The Physical Symptoms Of Anxiety Anxiety is not limited to the quality of our thoughts and emotions but also exerts a profound effect on our physical bodies. Common symptoms of anxiety include heart palpitations, pounding heart, tight chest, excessive sweating, uncontrollable trembling and shaking, shortness of breath, choking sensations and difficulty swallowing, numbness or tingling in extremities, nausea and vomiting, […]...
  3. Free Will And Destiny If the salmon were aware of how difficult and perilous its journey upstream was going to be we wonder if it might not say to itself, “Taking into account the massive amount of effort required and the low probability of success the much wiser course of action is to stay here in the ocean where […]...
  4. Do Not Let Little Stressors Stress You Out Most of us are aware by now that sustained stress increases the probability of various physical health problems and reduces life expectancy, which should be negatively reinforcing enough on its own to make us stop and closely examine the current practice of our lives and whether the tradeoff is worth it. But we want to […]...
  5. Panic Attacks I saw a funny poster on Pinterest that reads “Even my anxieties have anxieties.” Actually this is a pretty good way to describe panic attacks. They are often the physical, visible manifestation of deeper existential issues. One of the best ways to eliminate panic attacks from your life is to bring existential anxiety into conscious […]...
  6. Autobots And Decepticons Talking about the Transformers movies with kids and adolescents is an excellent way to set a positive trajectory for counseling right from the beginning. Most children have seen the movies and they can relate in an archetypal way to some of the existential themes and to traits of the main characters. The trick is to […]...
  7. Help For Procrastinators If you are a procrastinator the number one thing you need to understand is that your life attitude is about the attempt to secure freedom in the face of external control. You probably have an ambivalent attitude towards authority in general and authority figures in particular. You rarely challenge authority figures outright but you’re definitely […]...
  8. Eye Of The Storm Many are content with yoga as just a great workout when it has the potential to be so much more. The lessons you will learn about yourself and your body can be applied to many other areas of your life. You have to do the work of consciously making the connection though. One way to […]...
  9. Increased Insight Has Its Own Drawbacks The entire therapeutic endeavor is based upon the belief that increased insight is a good thing, that becoming consciously aware of the aspects of your life that were once hidden from you will improve your situation. Encapsulated in one line, this belief is that “The truth shall set you free.” But increased insight has its […]...
  10. Violent Opposition to the Truth “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” – Arthur Schopenhauer Shopenhaure’s quote can be applied just as easily to the individual process of raising self-awareness in therapy as it can to truth in the wider sense of the word. These […]...
  11. What To Do If You Are Feeling Stuck If you are feeling stuck in some area of your life then what’s really going on is ambivalence, which is having simultaneous conflicting thoughts and feelings. When we want something with the whole of our being there’s no ambivalence, and this allows us to almost effortlessly come up with a plan of attack and then […]...
  12. Spending Time Alone And Spending Time Around People Good mental health means finding a healthy balance between spending time alone and spending time around people. But actually it’s not the presence or absence of people that counts as much as that we interpret being alone as solitude rather than existential isolation and that we interpret being around others as community rather than existential […]...
  13. Write Your Life Intentions Down Life intentions are the foundation upon which the individual life path is built but the problem for most of us is that we never translate the ephemeral into the concrete. Our intentions remain gut feelings, pleasant fantasies, images that skirt at the edge of our conscious awareness, before daily life with its myriad stimuli diverts […]...
  14. Just Being Honest When some people make a comment and say “I’m just being honest,” if they were really being honest with themselves they would probably have to admit that they are actually just trying to be cruel and have found a plausible rationalization to make themselves feel okay about it. Honesty is worthless when it is used […]...
  15. Follow Your Own Path Don’t let your important life decisions be determined by people with their own agendas or by those who only have a passing interest in what you have going on. It’s tempting to do because it frees you of the heavy burden of existential responsibility, but if you don’t follow your own path you will end […]...
  16. Body Language During The Winter Months What happens to many of us during the cold, dark winter months is that our body language changes to fit an environment more suited for hibernation than for an active lifestyle. We hunch our shoulders, stick our hands into our pockets, turn our gazes towards the ground. We close off as we fold into ourselves. […]...
  17. Setting An Intention To Change Regardless of the presenting problem, what we usually see from clients is that they dearly wish to overcome that problem but have no idea how, which is obviously why they’ve booked a session in the first place. If they were able to make the change all on their own seeing a therapist would be unnecessary. […]...
  18. Beliefs And Faith The irony is that when people desperately want their beliefs to be true they’re unlikely to take on a skeptical attitude, to do anything that could even approximate rigorous testing. But we should be more skeptical when we need something to be true than when we have no vested interest since when we need it to be […]...
  19. Universe The most arbitrary division is the idea that you exist in the universe. Actually you are the universe. In many ways scientific progress has shattered religious dogma and with it the spirituality of those who believe that dogma and spirituality are inseparably intertwined. But if you look in the right places you will find that […]...
  20. March of Years The most difficult realization for a human being, as Rollo May and Irvin Yalom would put it, is that life is not a never ending upward spiral. Decline, old age, and death wait for us all. You spend all this time climbing the mountain only to realize when you reach the summit that going up […]...
Related Items