Sunday, January 10th, 2010
Happiness and Well-being
According to the recent PBS Special, “The Emotional Life”, the key to happiness and well-being are good relationships with family, friends and lover(s). Relationships seemed to trump, work, money and health. I found the portion on “attachment” or bonding to parents very interesting. Infants brought up in institutions without much “physical touch” seemed to have lots of problems in adjusting early on in life and this continued into adolescence and adulthood.
The good news was that intervention in the form of counseling and therapy was mostly helpful to people in improving their relationships, behavior and adjustment to a wide range of problems and challenges.
In my own clinical practice, I have found methods like EMDR, hypnosis and cognitive-behavioral therapy useful in overcoming long standing problems encountered early on in life.