Recognizing choices: Empowering or blaming?

I think (after 3 years of therapy) that figuring out what "happy" means to each of us, and choosing the actions/reactions that will get us there, is an ongoing process and both go hand in hand.

I didn't know until right this second that I had figured that out and I just scared myself a little right there. I am a person who does not embrace change easily. Have fought tooth and nail for the changes I've made in myself through therapy. I have always been the type of person who wants to, say, work for one company my entire career because it's so hard for me to change jobs. I like to be "settled". And what did I just say in that opening sentence? I said that figuring out our "happy" and making the choices to get there is an "ongoing process" which inherently means it CHANGES as we go along. Maybe if I were "settled" as far as love for, and belief in, myself and my own worth as a human being, I wouldn't be so afraid of EXTERNAL change and could move up in my career like a lot of my friends have done instead of staying stuck on the same rung of the ladder for umpteen years because I'm afraid of change.

Wow.

This therapy stuff works in amazing ways, my friends!!

I didn't choose to get cancer, or to have debilitating effects from the surgery for nearly a year.

I didn't choose to have my husband die of cancer when we were in our late 40's and had a 13 year old.

I didn't choose to have some of his family scapegoat me after his death.

What I did choose, and continue to choose every day, are to live my life in ways that nourish my self and my dreams. To parent my child consciously and supportively. To leave behind people who are not nurturing or are a negative presence in my life. To tell the truth about who I am and what I want.

And when I'm doing these things, I feel happiness. I don't think that happiness is an end state, but a collection of feelings that arise when I pay attention and make choices that facilitate my goals. I can't choose happiness because it is not mine to have or not, but it is mine to experience in the moment. What anyone else does or whatever bad things might happen do not take away my happiness, either.

The Secret and Glasser--these concepts, when used to this extreme, seem to be what psychology refers to omnipotence. I really think the cult-like nature of this type of thing (look how many millons the Secret book) is scary.

I can see not believing in mental illness the way it's currently constructed, but to say being schizophrenic is a choice (according to that author)? That's just way out there.

That's like Hannity on the Fox political show. He comes off to me like this. That's the problem with disavowing your needs and dependence and powerlessness aspects--the underlying anger or hatred is still there. It's can get distorted and projected outward when not acknowledged.

Omnipotence is also a defense, but I think the cult-like extreme view tap into this, like many cults are able to do. I think Byrne and Glasser may have used omnipotence elements of our psyche to ostensibly craft their theories.

Anyway, the power/powerlessness things can be good as long as there's balance. The extremist stuff is scary thought. Not in itself, but that so many people follow that line of thinking. Just my 2 cents.

Believing that one can control the weather/natural events is actually a kind of delusional mental illness. What a strange statement about the tsunami.

By the time we choose to be happy, we're normally already that

That is very interesting to think about. Perhaps recognizing how much choice we actually have is one important thing that promotes happiness.

That kind of omnipotence is a crazy kind of naive to bring to adulthood. I don't know what you're quoting from, but it doesn't seem to be a post in the thread. Seems to be a much-distributed (on the internet) short article by a grad student who misjudged Glasser when in a course covering Glasser's work. Anyway, I'm kind of excited to reacquaint myself with Glasser from this thread and use the concepts on the page Snakecharmer linked to.

But I wouldn't call mental illness a choice ... in all cases. There is an element of choice in saying "This is not something I can handle on my own. I'm struck down by this and need professional help, which may include someone classifying my condition as a disorder." One could be correct or mistaken in that interpretation, but how you interpret things is your choice. There can also be denial, another choice that defines reality without determining it.

I know someone with some schizophrenic symptoms, who chooses to manage without medication the scary things he experiences, and has never been diagnosed with anything. So, does that person have "schizophrenia" in some form? While a layman might think so, isn't it for a professional to make that call, and if it's not been made, does the person have a mental illness? Not officially. And I think not, particularly as he is not utterly overcome by his experiences! Did the person make a choice to manage his life experience without medicalizing it, turning it over to a professional? In his case, he made a great choice and I'm glad he did, because both he and I have a horror of the profound side effects of medications. Different strokes for different folks - it's all about choices in life. Not every case of such symptoms can necessarily be managed by the individual alone, I expect.

There is an element of choice in identifying, "Yes, I've been victimized" or the opposite. All the above is certainly not a simplistic choice in the sense of "you create your own reality" or "the Secret" which are ridiculous.

Since your sense of reality is based on your understanding, broadening the latter can change your sense of things, but generally not change the things themselves. Sometimes understanding better can allow changes to be made, again not in that simplistic, magical and omnipotent way.

Looking at the Wikipedia article on Glasser's choice theory, I note it says:

>"Choice Theory posits that most mental illness is, in fact, an expression of unhappiness and that we are able to learn how to choose alternate behaviors that will result in greater satisfaction."

It doesn't say ALL mental illness. I do agree with the above, that often normal but painful human experience gets managed medically instead of dealt with directly on a human level, by making choices and learning to make various choices. It makes me sad that our culture shuts away human experience out of shame in so many cases, and medicalizes is.

It's unfortunate, but understandable, that Glasser's Choice Theory has been confused in this thread with the ideas expounded in The Secret, or with the idea that we choose to be washed out to sea by attracting a tsunami with our negative energy, just because the word choice is involved in both ideas.

That's a misunderstanding. The concepts are not related in any way whatsoever, so I hope nobody confuses them. They don't even exist in the same philosophical spheres.

The quote in the above post is from a blog post here at PsychCentral, written by someone who rejected Glasser and Choice Theory when she was in grad school. Glasser's recent passing caused her to reconsider and the blog ends this way.

The difficulty with discussing Choice Theory in a forum like this is it really can't be understood by reading bits and pieces and pulling sentences or ideas out of the complex, inter-related whole. To add to the confusion, if you google it, you'll get a bunch of sites related to economic theory. So, if you do decide to do a web search be sure to put in Glasser's name, too. Like this: William Glasser + Choice Theory. Otherwise you might up in the economics departments at Stanford and MIT and that will only add to the confusion.

Happy reading.

What suggests to you that anyone here would confuse these things? The discussion is about choice, about which each of the talking points you mention has derivative relevance existing within a greater landscape about the meaning of choice. Hence the lively discussion. I'm not aware of any correlation being drawn between Glasser's theories and the "laws of attraction".. even in this thread.

It's the way I read it ... I'm open to other interpretations.

In almost every theory I've learned about so far, there are elements that people resonated with and elements that didn't. There wasn't one person who felt 100% aligned with any one psychological theory or approach which is probably why so many Ts describe their style as eclectic. Even when studying choice theory and reality theory, which I like, there are certain points where I thought to myself "seriously?". Some of the things Glasser said on mental illness are largely regarded to be a little "out there". With his theories it's the concept that's most important.

[QUOTE=H3rmit;4065068] Seems to be a much-distributed (on the internet) short article by a grad student who misjudged Glasser when in a course covering Glasser's work.

Maybe it was much-distributed article for a reason? There's an article from the NY Times too:

I just sounded like, to me, that it had cult-like underpinnings, which usually tap into others' unconscious psyche to get followers. I'm fairly well-read on psychology and wondered why i never heard of this. It used to be called "Control Therapy" and I hadn't heard of that either.