Essay No. 6: Peace, Power, Pain, & Positive Psychology

Essay No. 6: Peace, Power, Pain, & Positive Psychology

2019 was a hard year for me.  I wasn’t really vibing with the city I was in.  I wasn’t really vibing with the people I was getting to know.  I wasn’t really vibing with the ministry I was a part of, or the people, really.  I was in an unhealthy living situation.  But honestly, I think more than anything else, I wasn’t on speaking terms with a really good friend… and really, that was the nail in the coffin.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for all the other awesome things God did… but, 2019 was a pretty bad year.  Admittedly, the year before wasn’t all that much better.  I’ve kind of been in a bit of a rut the past few years, to be honest.

I spent most of 2019 angry and sad.

I remember I was thinking one day, and I realized I had been angry and sad for so long, I had, legit, forgotten what it was like to wake up and not feel like that.  It’s not normal, at least not for me, to wake up every day and feel angry and/or sad.  It was just weird, TBH.

2019 was difficult.

I feel like that’s part of why I end up traveling as much as I do.  Don’t get me wrong, I DO like to travel.  Point blank, period.  But I also feel like part of me just wanted to get away and not come back.  I always leave, sometimes for rather long stretches, and when I eventually return, people inevitably ask me, “Are you happy to be back?”

No.

In fact, highkey, I’m kind of sad I had to come back, since we’re on the topic.

I remember March 2018, I went to New York for Spring Break.  I was probably there a good 10 days.  I got to kick it with Tanasha, Bria, Linnea, and Steve.  I lost 25 pounds my 1^st year in my PhD program.  I looked like TRASH; on most days I felt like it, too.  I’m super grateful for Tanasha and Steve for loving up on me while I was in town.

Because God knows I needed it.

But I’ll never forget… when I was in JFK, at the gate to fly back home, I felt particularly bad… it was the weirdest thing, and I couldn’t really figure out why.  As I eventually made my way through security, I noticed my palms and armpits started to get really sweaty.  I took a seat at my gate, and my heart started racing.  I lined up to get on the plane, and my stomach started to bubble.  My shoulders tightened.  I started feeling faint of breath.  And I was thinking to myself, “Yo, this is crazy.  I just had a GREAT spring break.  WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU FREAKING OUT ABOUT?”

I was left wondering about that most of my flight, and I never did figure it out.  2+ years later, I know exactly what was happening.  There’s an inextricable link between the mind and the body (we’ll talk more about that in a second).  In my case, my body was having a physiological response to an impending threat to my psychological, emotional, and (apparently) physical wellbeing: in 2 hours, spring break would be over and things would go back to life as usual.  And I was on my plane having an anxiety attack… probably my second since starting the PhD program.

While I think part of that episode was pretty circumstantial to my 1^st year (which was awful for a lot of reasons), I think, in general, the episode is part of a broader theme.  When I leave, it can be hard to come back.  And honestly, it isn’t just the school stuff.  In fact, school’s actually been pretty spectacular as of late.  I just think, socioemotionally, the last several years have taken a toll… life is about a lot more than school after all.  But being here does make me feel a lot of pain and disappointment.

And honestly, I’ve been angry and sad about it.

I feel like it was towards the end of 2019 that I started to have conversations that really scared me though.  People would ask me if I felt peace or if I felt free, and I would consistently tell them, “no”.

And that scared the crap out of me. 

You know, the centerpiece of the Christian faith is the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.  And it scared me because one of the principle reasons for the crucifixion of Christ was so that I could be free… His life in exchange for mine.  Every day, I should have the luxury of indulging in that liberty and freedom.  Cashing it in… every, single day.  Money in the bank.  While that’s certainly no guarantee to a life without challenges or difficulty, it is a life of liberty and freedom.  If I’m not feeling free, then there’s something terribly, TERRIBLY wrong.  I mean, if I’m not feeling free, then this is just one, big elaborate charade.  If I’m not feeling free, then what has this whole thing been about?  Sure, it’s not unusual to be in a rut for a few days or a few weeks (we’re human after all)… but I’ve had a black cloud for a long, long time.

And honestly, that was scary.  And I wasn’t feeling it.

In Isaiah 9 (vs 6), Jesus is referenced as the Prince of Peace.  That’s an unusual name, but Jesus was also an unusual guy.  He came, and He didn’t come like Santa, with a bag of priceless electronics or giftcards to our favorite retailer.  He didn’t come like a family member from a foreign country, with refrigerator magnets or collectible shot glasses.  He didn’t come like a politician, with a 10-point plan for an 8-year strategy to make the Kingdom of Heaven the number 1 producer of WWJD bracelets.

He came and He gave us peace.

But peace is EVERYTHING.  Because peace is POWER.  A man or woman with no peace will NEVER experience rest.  The reason why I didn’t feel free is because I didn’t have my peace.  I felt like I was robbed of it; it was unexpectedly taken away from me.  And I was angry and sad because I wanted it back and I didn’t really know what to do.  Navigating through life is hard when you don’t have peace.  Everyday, I found myself wanting something different for myself, and yet I found myself in the same rut.  If you don’t have peace, you don’t have power.  I mean, sure, you can have a huge house, and an amazing job, and a generous salary, and all the things that society tends to generally value… but peace really isn’t about any of those things.  Peace is about freedom.  And if at the end of the day you don’t have something as consequential as your own freedom, then it’s no wonder I felt like I didn’t have any power.

I had a lot I had to dig through.  I think that’s difficult for me in general, but being enrolled in a PhD program (at an elite, private institution) isn’t super conducive to that, either… the world doesn’t really stop turning because I have things I need to work through.

But I did dig through it.  I should probably use present tense; I am digging through it.

Aside from social support I have through some amazing friends, I had to really wrestle with Philippians 4:8.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”    

I think like many people, I have a tendency to ruminate on things that are really important to me.  Periodically, that results in ruminating on things that, for various reasons, make me (really) unhappy.  While the Apostle Paul’s challenge to the Philippians may seem trivial, it’s instrumental in fact… and no small feat.

In some ways, too, we’re up against science in this matter.

Psychology, as a discipline, is interested in the science of observable behavior and human thought.  In the mid to late 80’s, evolutionary psychology emerged as a field of study.  While the word ‘evolution’, for most people, usually brings to mind images of humans evolving from primates (and that is certainly a field of study), more broadly, these scientists study if there’s an evolutionary basis for specific human behaviors.  For instance, smiling tends to be a behavior we take for granted.  It shows warmth and friendliness, and you know that because, over the course of your life, thousands (if not millions) of people have smiled at you to signal their goodwill.  It’s a signal of friendliness that exists around the world and probably has for thousands of years.  And it’s a good thing we have smiling, too.  It helps us to separate our friends from our foes… family members from strangers… those who want to help us from those who want to hurt us.  Smiling isn’t just a trivial human behavior… upon further inspection, you can see how it may have served an important function concerning mankind’s existence as a whole: from the sales associate in Macy’s approaching a new customer to the man partnering with comrades to hunt a woolly mammoth.  So you have to ask, are there aspects of human behavior (like smiling) that actually improve our odds of survival, and, therefore, have been passed from generation to generation since the very beginning of human existence?

Deep questions.  Evolutionary psychologists study some cool stuff.

There’s a reason why I brought that up after highlighting Philippians 4:8 though.  Paul challenges us to think about what’s good rather than what’s bad… and like many people, I find myself doing the opposite way more.  One of the findings I find super interesting in evolutionary psychology is that there’s a bias in human memory wherein we remember negative experiences more easily, and in more vivid detail, than we do positive ones.  Negative experiences trigger deeper activation of parts of the brain that are involved in emotion processing; the more those parts of the brain were activated in the initial experience, the more deeply embedded the event will be in our memory.

Of course, over time, this can result in having many negative memories and remembering fewer positive ones.  As I’m sure you can imagine, this has pretty big implications concerning how we think and feel.

Evolutionary psychologists think this bias may have emerged as an adaptive survival trait.  After all, the things that trigger negative human emotions (fear, anger, disgust, sadness, etc.) frequently involve things that pose a threat to our wellbeing, physical or otherwise.  Remembering these in more vivid detail can help us avoid similar experiences in the future that may pose a threat to our survival.  On the other hand, we’re now left ruminating on these negative memories.

Science is really fascinating.  And it can help us out, too.  To combat this bias in our brain, we’ll need to give some thought to positive psychology.  It started in the late 90’s, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: an entire field of psychology devoted to the study of how to improve human wellbeing.

We’ve been talking about the brain, so I’ll continue on that topic and tie it into positive psychology.

Let’s talk about biochemistry… specifically BRAIN chemistry.  The brain is the most complex human organ in our body… thinking, for instance, has highly advanced neurological processes associated with it (God’s a scientific genius to make all this work).  To cut to the chase, when you think pleasant thoughts, there’s brain chemistry associated with that.  Your brain actually releases hormones that trigger reactions in your body that cause you to FEEL GOOD.

Ain’t that something.

The opposite is true for negative thoughts: these actually trigger the release of hormones that usually make us feel BAD, although there can be some nuances based on the situation (some stressors can actually be good to experience, like when we feel kind of nervous before an exam).

I’ve literally read Philippians 4:8 at least 50 times over the last year… even more than that over the last 3 years.  As I was reflecting on it one day, I remember thinking to myself, “Is it really any wonder that you don’t have peace when you don’t spend more time thinking about things that make you happy?”

It was a sobering moment.  It’s true though.  I spend a lot of time thinking about things that don’t make me happy.  And I think my peace was the price I’ve paid for it.  I told myself I would leave those in 2019.

Ironically, when I wrote this (January 2020, I think?), the world was a very different place.  And admittedly, I kind of had reservations about publishing this because the timing just… doesn’t feel right.  2020 has been absolutely WILD.  Like, literally, what do you even say?  I’m a writer, and I literally have almost no words.  Nobody would have expected the entire world to shut down because we’re in the midst of a public health pandemic.  Lot’s of people are in uncertain situations: with school, with work, with family, with loved ones, etc.  And in the midst of all this, minorities in the US are still grappling with prejudice and racism, systemic and interpersonal.  Asian people are being told to go back home, because apparently people think they’re the reason America has so many confirmed cases.  Black people are still dealing with police brutality and racial profiling.  2020 has been a lot.  Maybe this was helpful, maybe it wasn’t… but I’m still hopeful about 2020.

Because peace is precious.

Peace is priceless.

Peace is power.

Nnam’