Lisa Find Love

Many things exist on a bell curve. Creativity, mastery, and optimal experience are just a few. But the relationship between age and happiness?

Actually the curve is upside down. We begin happy in childhood, and as we approach adolescence, autonomy, self-identification, and the rigors of the adult experience, happiness declines. And it continues to do so all the way through midlife.

But after midlife — somewhere around the age of 50 — something changes. Happiness once again begins to increase.

In his new book, The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, Jonathan Rauch shows how the trials and tribulations of midlife prepare us for a life full of gratitude, wisdom, and happiness after 50.

After giving numerous people a questionnaire, three words that described midlife emerged: confused, searching, and scared.

And yet, there is apparently nothing wrong. “The disease model doesn’t seem to fit,” writes Rauch.

While life may begin and end with happiness, in between is a time where many things are revealed. We emerge from our childlike reverie to discover a world that often demands more than we can give, delivers less than it promises, and ceases to keep its wonder.

Rauch quotes Thomas Cole, “It is only when experience has taught us the realities of the world that we lift from our eyes the golden veil of early life; that we feel deep and abiding sorrow.”

However, drawing upon his own experiences — achieving more success than he ever imagined and finding love and security, Rauch is puzzled. He writes, “It strikes me as a crime to be blasé about these changes. Why don’t I walk around filled with fulfillment?”

Evidence, Rauch tells us, confirms that midlife is burdening, demanding, jammed with expectations.

The problem, however, is even when these things are factored out, we are still unhappy in midlife.

“The downturn is gradual, gentle, but cumulative, and it sinks into a trough, a frequently years-long slump when instead of savoring our accomplishments we question and reject them, feeling least fulfilled just when we have most cause for satisfaction,” writes Rauch.

The reward for accomplishment, strangely, is often misinterpretation. Rauch points to the work done by Carol Graham, the author of Happiness Around The World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires, who found that objective economic outcomes don’t equate to subjective levels of happiness: “It turns out that, of the ones that had done the best, so they had the most movement up the income ladder, roughly half said their economic situation was worse than it was before.”

What economic outcomes do — and perhaps why we pursue them — is symbolize something deeper. More money can mean more friends, greater social esteem, and as Rauch notes, applause.

However, what we make is not as important as where we perceive our ranking to be. “Our subjective wellbeing depends not on our absolute material wellbeing, not even where we stand relative to others, but where we think we stand,” writes Rauch.

These are the ingredients of Martin Seligman’s recipe for happiness, a setpoint that we inherit combined with our life circumstances and our voluntary response to them equal our happiness level.

Yet the formula, according to Rauch, is missing the element of time. Like circumstances and our responses, time is an absolute value, while aging is relative.

And both time and our response to it matter. Rauch writes, “The discovery of a relationship between age and happiness among our closest primate relatives implies that time itself — chronological age rather than social age — matters. After all, chimps age physically, but they don’t know how old they are or celebrate birthdays or retirements.”

Partly it is our response to time, but also our expectations about what time will deliver. When we are young, we consistently overestimate our future life satisfaction, and reality becomes the undertow with which our ebullient moods are soon deflated.

With age, however, the expectation gap closes and pleasant surprises, gratitude, and happiness replace disillusionment, regret, and unmet expectations.

Time will often do the work for us. As we shift from pursuing progress, adapting to gains, raising the bar, and once again tackling lofty goals, we learn that happiness exists in the connections we make — not the comparisons.

Rauch writes, “That would be an environment rich in the ingredients of sustainable satisfaction: ingredients like a high-trust social environment, adequate health and income, a goodly amount of control over our lives, and above all, strong and supportive social bonds.”

Stress declines with age, challenge and ambition don’t occupy the driver’s seat, we feel less regret, we manage our emotions better, our bias toward positive emotions increases, and we appreciate those lifelong connections that are only developed through the passage of time.

While old age may have its share of adversity, we might just be better prepared to cope with it, focusing not on the hardships, but rather the unexpected satisfactions, meaningful pursuits, and the wisdom of letting go.

Drawing upon compelling researching, fascinating interviews, and timeless wisdom, The Happiness Curve offers an insight that might just change your life: happiness exists not in the achievements and acclaim of our most productive years, but rather in the contentment of letting go of the need to pursue them.

The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50
Thomas Dunne Books, May 2018
Hardcover; 256 pages

Lovenheim stumbled on attachment theory while skimming his daughter’s college textbook several months after the end of a significant and tortuous relationship in his life. It was too late for his relationship, he writes, but curiosity triggered a quest to understand how John Bowlby’s significant and groundbreaking theory — later advanced by the research of Mary Ainsworth — plays out in venues from romance to parenting, sports to politics to religion.

Attachment theory proposes that the way we relate to other people develops according to how responsive and reliable our earliest caregivers are. The holy grail of attachment is secure—the result of caregivers who are responsive and available and who support independence while also providing safe harbor. Insecure attachment can be anxious, which is clingy and fearful of abandonment; avoidant, which is emotionally distant and unavailable; or anxious-avoidant, an exhausting mix of needy and distant.

In The Attachment Effect, a mash-up of memoir and pop psychology, Lovenheim first determines his own attachment style by undergoing the Adult Attachment Interview with psychiatrist Maurico Cortina, who founded the Attachment and Human Development Center at the Washington School of Psychiatry. Lovenheim recounts the interview in detail, revealing a great deal about his experience growing up. Ultimately, he learns, his attachment style is “earned secure” — hope for anyone whose early caregivers were less than ideal. An “earned secure” is someone who is essentially anxious or avoidant, but who has learned through experience how to maintain secure attachments. In a later chapter, Lovenheim also lets himself be put into an MRI to see how attachment plays out in the brain. However he so dislikes the experience, which includes taking an electrical shock to the leg, he declines to complete the test.

And as sympathetic as you might feel toward a person declining a painful electrical shock, this is the first of the frustrations of the book, in which Lovenheim takes what he’s learned and ventures out into the various worlds to see how attachment plays out. He builds each chapter around characters and anecdotes: an attachment-parenting mother (attachment parenting is a hot topic in parenting circles); a hapless amateur basketball team; a coffee shop; and former governor of Massachusetts and one-time presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.

It’s a fun approach in theory, but ultimately unsatisfying. Lovenheim presents some research focused on the chapter’s premise, then speculates and assumes, posits and guesses, superimposing attachment theory as best he can over the things he observes and what he learns in interviews. His are plausible speculations, posits and guesses, but reminiscent of the first-year psych student who psychoanalyzes everyone around him according to newly learned theories.

One wonders, too, how and why Lovenheim selected the people and situations he highlights. Why this coffee shop? (Was it random? Convenient? Had he observed some particularly compelling behavior there prior to featuring it?) Why this particular basketball team? Why this church on Christmas Eve? Why Michael Dukakis, of all politicians? Not that Dukakis is necessarily a bad choice on which to overlay guesses, speculation and assumptions, but a word or two about what brought the author to him would liberate the reader’s brain from the effort of wondering.

The Attachment Effect is an entertaining read that might nonetheless cause social science researchers to pound their heads on their desks for its dependence on anecdotes and a loosey-goosey approach to interpreting research. Still, the theory itself contains multitudes, and so the ideas floated here are interesting, and each chapter of this book begs for a book of its own — even if we might finish this one feeling like the knowledge we’ve acquired is only half-baked.

The Attachment Effect: Exploring the Powerful Ways Our Earliest Bond Shapes Our Relationships and Lives
TarcherPerigee, June 2018
Paperback, 304 pages

Imagine going through your morning routine, getting the kids up and ready for school while also trying to get yourself and partner ready, when the rug is suddenly pulled out from under you and your world is changed. Rather than having a partner to help you, you are now alone.

You are now a single parent.

In Robert Beeson’s book, Going Solo, he discusses his experience of going from having a partner to going it alone to help other single parents navigate the same situation. Whether you have become a single parent through divorce, death, or you have never been married, there is helpful information in here for every situation. The author is honest, explaining his part in the divorce, what went wrong, and how to deal with different situations a single parent may encounter.

Going Solo aims to help single readers find hope and ways to keep going, to understand they are not alone, that God is there, and to find balance in their lives once again. While the focus of the story is Robert Beeson’s experience, the book also features “solo confessionals,” where other single parents share what they went through and how they handled the situation, giving readers a connection to other single parents.

Beeson discusses what single parents might be feeling — alone but free, broken but helpful, guilt when thinking about starting their lives over again and including a new person to their family dynamic. Parents often feel guilty about their kids not having both parents in their lives on a daily basis, which relates to Bowlby’s attachment theory that kids are programmed from birth to form attachments to others. This allows them to survive, but can be heightened when they feel threatened, such as when they are separated from a parental figure. This can lead them to form unhealthy attachments to others, or they may cling to the remaining parent. Beeson shares his fear for his girls not having their mother in their lives, as well as the consequences of that separation, such as depression, anger, lack of drive, etc.

Robert Beeson is honest in his story, detailing some of his poor choices and short comings. He explains that everyone has their bad habits, but we must try to incorporate simple good habits, like making the bed every morning, praying, meditating, and living each day with gratefulness. He points out that one can be saved but still feel a little broken.

Beeson goes on to discuss how sometimes divorced/single parents tend to make their kids the center of the universe (all with good intentions, of course), but that this is not the healthiest way to live life. Solo parents need to understand that kids need stability, structure, and rules. Creating rituals in a child’s life can be helpful; these rituals do not have to be a big deal, but just something that is consistent in their lives to honor them.

Toward the end of the book, he discusses the ever-common feelings of guilt when a single parent begins to think about dating again. Before dating can occur, he suggests that one must know where they are in the healing process and how dating would affect the kids. He mentions his experience in this area and how it is important to find someone who is on the same path as you. He then gives suggestions (through his experience) on how to approach introducing a new person, and he is honest about some of the areas he struggled with.

Being a single parent is not an easy task, and the book makes it clear that this is a journey. As Robert Beeson says, “Speed might get you there faster, but that’s not what the journey of life is all about. The more weathered and worn we are…., the more life lessons we can absorb, the more you become a part of the flow, and the more in tune with the current you become.”

While I do not have any personal connection to the topic of the book, many of my friends are single parents (full-time or part-time due to deployment), and I have seen them struggle with many aspects mentioned in the book, such as helping their kids to have a balanced life and having those feelings of guilt. They may hold resentment toward their exes or even toward God for the situation that they are placed in. This book helps individuals to refocus and understand that God is still there and they can find that path again.

Let this book be a part of your journey to help you understand you are not alone, your feelings are normal, let God guide you on your new path, and remember that it is not a race to get to where you are going.

Going Solo: Hope and Healing for the Single Mom or Dad
Focus on the Family Pub, April 2018
Paperback, 224 pages

For mental health professionals, the line between coaching and psychotherapy can sometimes feel blurry. Yet both professions hold the same goal — to help the client change.

In her new book, Therapy with a Coaching Edge: Partnership, Action, and Possibility in Every Session, psychotherapist and business and life coach Lynn Grodski draws upon the powerful techniques and strategies used by coaching professions to demonstrate how, through focusing on possibilities not limitations, strengths not deficiencies, and promoting full engagement in life, clients can be moved to powerful behavioral change.

The difference between coaching and psychotherapy, Grodski tells us, can be summed up in one word: style. “I think that pure coaching, the way it is taught, defined, and recognized by the International Coach Federation, has its own modus operandi, a recognizable manner of interaction, a style of relating that seems distinct, to me, from other models of therapy of personal growth,” writes Grodski.

While the psychotherapeutic relationship is often hierarchical, in a coaching relationship, the client is recognized as the expert and the source of his own transformation. Working in partnership with the client, the coach then is collaborative, action oriented, and optimistic about possibilities.

Bringing a coaching approach to psychotherapy, however, requires some modification. Grodski writes, “Although I might have tried to borrow the coaching skills I learned and taught and insert them into my therapy sessions, coaching skills addressed a different type of client, setting, purpose and process.”

Coaching clients, unlike therapy clients, must be relatively stable, functional, and able to follow through with a plan of action between sessions.

Grodski describes the partnership that ensues between coach and client: “Imagine you are learning to ride a bicycle for the first time… A coach would climb on the seat right behind you and ask, ‘Where do you want to go today?’”

As oppose to observing your behavior, a coach works with a client in an intense partnership that keeps the client motivated toward action.

“This collaborative position is the greatest leveler when used in many forms of coaching: Since it reduces the friction of hierarchy, it promotes faster behavioral change,” writes Grodski.

Instead of exploring negative transference, for example, a coaching approach seeks to diffuse it quickly and then restore the collaborative relationship.

Utilizing a coaching approach in therapy is also measured in client satisfaction and client retention.

“In my coach training, I was reminded that the client should end each session feeling that it had been worth the time and money spent, and have verbalized a compelling reason to return, all before the session ended,” writes Grodski.

Through identifying client needs and wants, working them through, and consolidating gains, coaches leverage gains session by session, and as a result, client satisfaction and retention improves.

Much of the coaching process relies on asking the right questions, which Grodski tells us, fall into three categories: creating sudden insight, challenging existing beliefs, and prompting new options.

Coaches are also strategists, and in the therapeutic setting, work with clients to uncover hidden possibilities and find solutions for tired problems. Grodski writes, “By focusing your strategizing on client-based control, partnership, action, and possibility, clients can take a big step from being passive to active.”

One strategy Grodski offers is to start slow, tie small steps to a larger vision, and perhaps most important, make it all a game.

Grodski describes her own experience working with a personal trainer to recover her strength after a double mastectomy: “Andrew often told me, “We are just here to play.” We played games, but games that got me to think, work hard, and stay in action. I got winded and red in the face, but I laughed too. The framework of playing a game helped me suspend judgment and stay engaged.”

Client resistance can also be reduced by experimenting with ways to make action easier, keeping action steps relevant, and the focusing on learning and improving. Grodski writes, “Talking about action as an experiment, rather than as a step in a plan, can reduce pressure.”

Through shared accountability, client’s willpower can be strengthened, much like a muscle.

“Shared accountability is not an invitation to set up dependency with a client. It’s not designed to break the framework of therapy or to overburden the therapist with more work, especially uncompensated work, between session, Instead, it is a stance, based on partnership and the desire to further behavioral change,” writes Grodski.

A partnership that aligns core values with decisions, uses metaphors to expand understanding, finds solutions within the client, and ultimately develops a life plan that encompasses growth and learning is what defines a coaching approach to therapy, and what, according to Grodski, promotes powerful and lasting behavioral change.

Balancing the strengths-based strategies of coaching with the necessary empathy, boundaries, and ethics of psychotherapeutic practice, Therapy with a Coaching Edge should be on every clinicians shelf.

Therapy with a Coaching Edge: Partnership, Action, and Possibility in Every Session
W.W. Norton & Company, May 2018
Hardcover, 288 Pages

New York Times travel writer Stephanie Rosenbloom has had plenty of enviable assignments, but one of the most revelatory was a five-day solo trip to Paris. After she had been back for a while, she said, “I missed who I was in Paris.” That person was “curious, improvisational, open to serendipity.”

She longed to return, again on her own. Her goal, she said, “wasn’t to master Paris. It was to master myself: to learn how a little alone time can change your life — in any city.” She did go back to Paris. She also traveled solo to Istanbul and Florence. Back in her home town of New York City, she decided to explore Manhattan the way she had explored the other cities — as a tourist on her own, walking the city.

The result is Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude. With beautifully evocative renderings, Rosenbloom takes us along as she visits shops and museums, gardens, and a Turkish bath. We experience the sounds of the call to prayers. We relish her solo picnic and her meals in restaurants and cafes. Most significantly, we witness her splendid solitude and how a little alone time did change her life.

We also learn why solitude can be so nourishing to the soul and beneficial to the body. At a time when Americans have gone off the deep end in their panic over loneliness, Rosenbloom compellingly demonstrates how spending time alone can be blissful and meaningful and fulfilling. To make her case, she draws from her own experiences, as well as the insights of poets, artists, musicians, philosophers, urbanists, writers, and anyone else who has thought deeply about the psychology of solitude. Most important to me as a social scientist, she also shares findings from research on solitude, savoring, happiness, intrinsic motivation, emotional engagement, the value of ordinary experiences, and the joys of anticipation. Also included are illuminating overviews of studies that explain why we get it so wrong when we think other people are judging us when we are out on our own in public.

“Alone Time” is a book of delights. There are wise and witty quotes about solitude from all sorts of people. (A few of the best are Rosenbloom’s own. For example, about dining solo, she says, “When you’re not sitting across from someone, you are sitting across from the world.”) There are shout-outs to lovers of solitude across time and across walks of life. There are eye-opening statistics on just how commonplace solo dining and solo travel have become. There are great insights on the psychology of going solo. There is some shattering of myths (for example, taking time for ourselves doesn’t make us selfish, but instead “more open and compassionate toward others”). If you come to this book thinking that loving your alone time makes you a freak, you will leave realizing it makes you amazing. Alone Time, Rosenbloom tells us, is her “love letter to loners.”

The book is sprinkled with observations about the rewards of going it alone that all start with the word “alone.” For example: “Alone, there is no need for an itinerary. Walk, and the day arranges itself.” “Alone, I could listen to the rain come down, listen to it in a way you can’t when someone else is around, with bodily stillness.” “Alone, we can develop our aesthetic sense at our own pace…” I became so enamored of these quotes that I went back through the book to try to scoop them all up.

“Alone Time” is not a self-help book. It is too profound for that. But there is plenty of useful advice along the way, as well as a chapter at the end, “Tips and Tools for Going It Alone.”

I love great literary writing and Rosenbloom’s prose is gorgeous. Her storytelling skills create a vicarious vacation for those of us home alone reading her book on a couch. A few chapters in, I realized that while reading Alone Time, I had been smiling the whole time.

Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude has many audiences. It is for the joyful solo traveler, who has been waiting for someone to write an unapologetic, unabashed celebration of what it means to be out exploring on your own. It is for the wannabe solo travelers, who have been thinking of striking out on their own but just needed to see that sparkle in someone else’s eyes to motivate them. It is for the proud solo diners, who feel that obsessing about what other people think of you when you dine alone is so last century. It is for the people who cherish their time alone. And, although Alone Time is not about living single or living alone (Rosenbloom is married), it elegantly captures what so many single people love about their single lives. This is a book to be celebrated and savored.

Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude
Viking, June 2018
Hardcover, 272 pages