Happy Adults

Chapter Sixteen: Become Self-Reliant

How to Become More Self-Reliant (#)

Chapter Seventeen: Develop Your Self

An Individual Development Plan (#)

A Simple Guide to Self-Development (#)

Chapter Eighteen: It’s Ok to be Sad (Sometimes)

A Happiness Boost (#)

Conclusion: I O It 2 Me

Remember

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction: Why?

Why do I think I have found the secret to achieving lasting happiness and contentment? Simply because I know my formula works. I have the proof.

Let me explain.

After the publication of my fostering memoirs, in which I tell the often harrowing stories of the children I’ve looked after, I received thousands of emails and letters from around the world. Some were from readers who had been abused as children and, having found comfort in my books, wanted to share their own stories with me. I often felt truly humbled by their courage – the strength that had allowed them to put their suffering behind them and make a success of their lives. However, although many of these adults had managed to move on from the cruelty of the past – having successful careers, enjoying loving long-term relationships and raising children – others had not.

While I truly sympathized with their ongoing pain, I began to wonder why some survivors of abuse had managed to move on with their lives and others, years later, were still suffering, stuck in a really cruel and frightening place of depression, flashbacks, mental illness, suicide attempts, personality disorders, nightmares and self-harm. Was it just luck, I wondered, that had allowed some people to overcome their suffering and achieve happiness and contentment? Or were there other factors – for example, the extent of the abuse or the amount of time that had elapsed since? I discovered it was nothing like this.

As the emails continued to pour in I also heard from readers who confided that they were unhappy with their lives for no good reason. Having read your books I know I should be grateful for my life but I seem to be fed up, bad tempered and down most of the time was typical of many of these emails.

So what was it? I wondered. What magic wand had been waved over some people’s lives to grant them happiness and contentment, and was this magic available to everyone? Could we all benefit? For even if we haven’t suffered, life can sometimes seem an uphill struggle.

The answer I discovered was yes: there was a magic being worked and it could be available to all. So I began to look more closely to find a way to harness it.

I was soon able to tell from the opening lines of a letter or email into which category a person fell. Something in their language, their positivity or lack of it, said they were happy and contented with life, or the opposite. As the correspondence grew I began to see common threads appearing – in attitude and way of life. The magic was something that often the person was not even consciously aware of but had intuitively stumbled on and followed. So I extracted all the bits that had been proved to work and came up with Happy Adults: a formula for guaranteeing happiness and contentment.

CHAPTER ONE

Let Go of Anger

Being angry – at ourselves or others – is responsible for the vast majority of our negative behaviour and feelings. While feeling anger and then letting it go is good for our mental health, hanging on to anger past its ‘use by’ date, or internalizing anger, can produce or aggravate all manner of physical and psychological illnesses – from stomach ulcers and migraines to severe psychosis. There is even evidence to suggest that cancer is more prevalent in people with angry negative dispositions than calmer more positive people, such is the interaction between mind and body.

Having said that, you do have the right to feel angry sometimes, and in some situations it is appropriate and healthy to do so.

It is right to feel angry if you accidentally hurt yourself – for example, cutting your finger while opening a can of beans. Ouch! That hurt! How stupid of me! Then the pain subsides and you let go of the anger and continue with what you were doing.

It is right to feel angry if someone treats you unfairly or unkindly – for example, your boss is highly critical of you in front of a less senior member of staff. Or a less able colleague is promoted over you. How dare he treat me like that!

You will feel angry if you discover a close friend and trusted confidante has been criticizing you behind your back. Wait till I see him! I’ll show him what I think of him!

You will feel anger (and sorrow) if a loved one dies prematurely. It’s not fair: my mum was only thirty-nine. Why did she have to die and leave me?

You will feel angry (and vulnerable) if someone has harmed you – physically or mentally. I didn’t do anything to him. Why me?

It is appropriate to feel angry in all the above situations (and many others like them which crop up as part of normal life), but it is essential to know when to let go of the anger. While no one is likely to still be angry a month after cutting his or her finger on a tin, many of us can still be seething from being humiliated in front of a work colleague or gossiped about by a friend months, even years, after the event. But holding on to anger in this way will gnaw away at your confidence and self-esteem, making you depressed and bitter.

Compare these two extracts from readers’ emails. They are both talking about their mothers.

I’ll never forgive her as long as I live. Although she only lives three miles away I haven’t seen her in nearly twenty years. I won’t have her near my house. My brother sees her so I don’t see him either. I have no family. Ms A.

I wasn’t going to let her ruin my life so I told her I still didn’t understand why she hadn’t believed me, but I was willing to move on. She now visits and sees her grandchildren. They love her dearly. Ms B.

Both of these emails were from women in their mid-thirties. Both had been sexually abused as teenagers by their stepfathers. Both had told their mothers at the time what was happening and neither had been believed. Which of the two had the happier life? The second writer, Ms B. She had instinctively recognized that to hang on to her anger would ‘ruin my life’. She was able to tell her mother that while she would never understand why she hadn’t believed her when she’d told her she was being assaulted, she wanted to put the past behind them. By letting go of her anger, not only was Ms B more contented and happier but she had allowed her children to enjoy a relationship with their grandmother which they wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Whether we have a very big anger – for example, as a result of being abused – or a relatively small anger – for example, a hurtful remark – at some point we have to let go. I am not being dismissive of the shocking suffering some people go through, but after an appropriate time (possibly with the help of therapy) we have to make a decision to let go of the anger, for if we don’t we will stay trapped in misery, bitterness and self-loathing, and that will affect those around us. Ms A unfortunately had not been able to let go of her anger and was addicted to antidepressants, having had two failed marriages, and a daughter with whom she battled continuously. Anger and depression go hand in hand and are a result of our feelings of helplessness and despair. We have to let go of anger to allow ourselves to heal and depression to lift.

We therefore owe it to ourselves to let go of our anger, and to those around us too. Let me show you how.

The turning point

I was furious when my husband, John, left me for a much younger woman. I was seething, not only for myself but on behalf of my children. How could he! How dare he! What a shit! How was I going to manage alone and provide for my family? My anger was with me for most of my waking days and at night, when, unable to sleep, I lay awake, tormented by thoughts of John and what he was doing in his new life.

I took my revenge. I unpicked the seams of his trousers, which still hung in the wardrobe and which he intended collecting when he had the time. I gave his collection of CDs to the charity shop and followed this with many other trips whenever I discovered an item of his he hadn’t packed in his hasty departure. When his sister (with whom I’d always got on well) phoned to say she was sorry to hear John and I were having difficulties in our marriage and she hoped we could sort things out, I vented my anger on her. John had omitted to tell her the reason we were ‘having difficulties’ – that he had run off with a younger woman – but I had no difficulty in telling his sister, in vengeful graphic detail. I also said that I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised John had deserted me, as clearly lack of commitment ran in his family. This was really nasty, as his sister had recently separated from her husband, but I was so angry I wanted to hurt everyone connected with him.

I said and did things which I would never normally have done and which now make me cringe with embarrassment. However, I stopped short of using the children against John. He saw them regularly and I didn’t criticize him to the children, although I dearly wanted to.

I knew I had the right to be angry. I’d trusted John, believed what he’d told me and assumed we would stay married and raise our children together, as my parents had done. I was the innocent victim and my anger was appropriate, acceptable and a healthy outlet for my emotion at that time. But two years later when I was still too angry to give John the divorce he desperately wanted – by then his partner was pregnant and he wanted to marry her – my anger was no longer healthy or helpful. Indeed it was working against me. I had lost weight, taken up smoking again and stopped going out socially unless it was for the children. If anyone asked how I was (expecting to hear my divorce had been finalized and that I was ready to move on with my life) I lapsed again into the all-too-familiar lament of John’s dreadful behaviour. I had become a martyr to his actions, a slave to his wrongdoing: my anger was now well past its ‘use by’ date and had turned sour.

Then one morning, two years after John had left me, I was brushing my hair in the mirror and caught sight of the woman I had become – still full of pain, suffering and anger. At that moment I knew I had to do something and quickly. I found myself giving that woman in the mirror a good talking to. My opening words changed my life and set me on the path to recovery. I said simply but firmly: You have to admit your marriage is over. John has left you and is not coming back. Though that was already apparent to many, part of me still thought he would return. I continued by telling myself: Your future will be different – not the one you planned – but it can be a very good future. You have the most precious gift in the world: your children. Stop wallowing in self-pity and let go of your anger. Concentrate on all the positives in your life and move on. You owe it to you and you owe it to your children. It’s time to stop being angry.

I agree my words were not the most insightful, and the message they contained was probably obvious; however, it hadn’t been obvious to me. I couldn’t let go of my anger because I was still hankering after a life that could no longer be, and that anger was tainting all that was positive in my life. The ‘good talking to’ I gave myself was the turning point.

Likewise it had been for thousands of the readers who had emailed me with their experiences. The phrases So I gave myself a good talking to … or I told myself that … or I said out loud I had to … came up time and time again. And, my readers told me, they had turned from anger, bitterness and depression to happiness and contentment. So the first step to letting go of your anger is to give yourself a ‘good talking to’. In addressing yourself you are addressing your anger – the anger that has been making you unhappy for a long time.

When exactly the turning point arrives varies. It may come at the end of days, weeks or years of being angry. Clearly big hurts need longer to heal than smaller hurts, and while you are healing anger is acceptable and healthy. But you will know when your anger is past its ‘use by’ date. You will know when it is time to let go and move on, and when it is time look at yourself in the mirror and address yourself honestly.

Remember it doesn’t have to be a big hurt that is making you angry and unhappy. Even if you are angry about a small hurt, at some point you have to let go. In a lifetime we have to let go of anger many, many times, for life is full of situations which cause us pain and suffering, and if left unaddressed the anger and resentment fester, making us unhappy and depressed.

Here are a few more examples of the turning point:

I can still remember being unjustly accused by my departmental manager of being late on my third day at work (my first job) at the age of eighteen. I was in fact at work but attending a training session in another room, which my manager hadn’t been informed of. The manager shouted at me in front of the whole office before I had a chance to explain. I can still remember my feelings of humiliation and anger and wishing the ground would open up and swallow me. Looking back, I can see that the man may have been a bully, but it is true to say that the scene ruined my first months at work. I inwardly seethed, from both the injustice and the humiliation. My spirits sank to the point where I considered handing in my notice. Monday mornings were a nightmare.

Then I made a conscious decision to address myself: It was a silly thing for him to say but I am not responsible for his actions. We’ve got on well until now. I will not hold it against him any more. I let go of my anger and focused on all the good things about the job, of which there were many. It was a conscious decision, as letting go of anger often has to be, and once I’d let go of my anger my spirits lifted, I began to enjoy the work and the incident took its rightful place in history.