An Interview with Dr. Patrick Myers
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Piece of Mind (British Columbia Psychological Association, Unpublished)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/03/08
- What is the importance of Psychology Month to you?
For me, it is important. I am big into the idea of bringing our field out into the general public in raising the discussion about mental health. I think that this is one of the ways. In Psychology Month, we start raising the discussion about mental health, when we start reducing the stigma that goes against mental health.
- Why did you get involved with it?
(Laughs) Because I am an executive member on the BCPA, that’s how I got involved in it. I am the chair or head of the community engagement committee of the BCPA.
- With respect to The Happiness Trap: Finding The Middle Way Through Life, what was the inspiration for it?
The inspiration for that was twofold. One is there is actually a book out there called The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. He very much uses acceptance and commitment therapy to explain the happiness trap. That is a small inspiration for it. The bigger inspiration is that I get a lot of clients coming into my office. And when you ask them what are their goals, their goal is to be happier. And I think that denies the fact that the reality of life is that life is not always happy. And if we’re striving for a life that is continually happy, this black and white perch, if it’s not all happy, then life is the pits. People pick this black and white approach to life. It has to be all happy or it’s the pits, but the reality is there are times when we are not happy. For instance, you are working really, really hard on this document. You cannot tell me that every single moment that you are writing you are going, “Oh, boy! This is so much fun!” Some of it is plain hard work. The end result is that you will be happy, but if you have this black and white attitude towards happiness. That I should be happy all the time, which I see a lot in my clients. Then you are going to get very discouraged, and you are going to stop doing all of the wonderful stuff that you do, and you’re just going to become depressed, anxious, and all of those other things. One of the things that I very much try to convey across to people is the sense of balance. And yes, we do want to be happy. We want a good balance of happiness in our life, in our relationships. All of those kinds of things. However, the plain and simple fact is that life is hard. Sometimes life is boring. Sometimes life is…you name whatever it is. So, it’s all about balance, and that was the impetus behind The Happiness Trap. To look at life and say, “Life is not always going to be happy. This is how to get tracked into it, and this is how you get out of it.”
- You put this in a large context. We live in a ‘Benthamite’ society (Jeremy Bentham, early Utilitarianism). We want pleasure in the short term at a consistent rate. We do not take into account a broad and long term sense of happiness. That seems like the basic interpretation of your work.
That’s basically what I’m saying. People will sometimes define their life by the individual moments. I’m saying, “Wait a moment, let’s take a look at your life in general.” I had a client. She had a really rough day, yesterday. I have to admit, “Boy, that was a crappy day you had.” Then, I asked her, “How’s the week before been going?” She says, “Oh! It’s been going pretty good.” But she was extremely unhappy in our session because of yesterday, right? The luck of these clients is relatively resilient. So, she doesn’t totally measure her happiness by the barrier of one day, but it was getting her down. I had to remind her about all of the good days that she had as well. So, there are three presentations that I do. They are all wrapped in together. There is The Happiness Trap, which I presented this year. Passion, which I presented last year, and The Science of Happiness, I think all three of them go together. It describes a more balanced or realistic perspective to living.
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