Positive Psychology PDF

Lovely weather … fancy a ride (Positive Psychology) … by CAR (competence, autonomy and relatedness) Spoiler Alert !!! Currently positive psychology is an unregulated and unaccredited field of practice … shocking but TRUE … On the way you’d encounter emotional wellbeing, optimism and change, to pos...

Lovely weather … fancy a ride (Positive Psychology) … by CAR (competence, autonomy and relatedness) Spoiler Alert !!! Currently positive psychology is an unregulated and unaccredited field of practice … shocking but TRUE … On the way you’d encounter emotional wellbeing, optimism and change, to posttraumatic growth, positive relationships, self-regulation and flow, character strengths and virtues and positive relationships and on how interventions can affect happiness and wellbeing… 1. Negative Psychology ? Positive psychology authors often refer to the disciplines situated on the opposite side of the applied therapeutic spectrum as “clinical psychology”, “mainstream psychology”, “psychology as usual” or “business-as-usual psychology”. 2. Some diagrams to help us along … Figure 1 The mental health spectrum (Adapted from Huppert, 2014). Figure 2 The dual continua model (adapted from Keyes, 2005). Positive_Psychology_2024_Anthony Page 1 of 5 Figure 3 The PERMA model (adapted from Seligman, 2011). The public face of positive psychology Figure 4 The smiley public face of positive psychology According to Self-Determination Theory, wellbeing is attained when individuals meet these needs, while need frustration can significantly diminish wellbeing. Figure 5 Self-Determination Theory: three basic needs (adapted from Ryan & Deci, 2017) Positive_Psychology_2024_Anthony Page 2 of 5 3. First wave: Positive psychology challenged the emphasis of applied psychology on disease and dysfunction and offered a new, more balanced perspective on human life. Recent “second-wave” theories around the importance of recognizing negative emotions 4. Stessed out … What is stress? The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) describes stress as a psychological, physiological and behavioural reaction that occurs when individuals perceive that they cannot adequately handle the demands being made on them. Figure 6 The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Positive_Psychology_2024_Anthony Page 3 of 5 5. And like all journeys … remember … Bad is stronger than good Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, and Vohs (2001) argued that negative psychological phenomenon are more powerful than positive psychological occurrences. For example, negative events (such as losing money) have a stronger impact on us than positive events of the same magnitude (winning or finding money). Similarly, negative information, problems in relationships, losses and negative emotions attract much more attention than positive information, pleasant relationships, gains or positive emotional states. The authors proposed that this is due to evolutionary reasons. For our ancestors, being able to quickly attend to dangers was essential for survival. Accordingly, negative emotions essentially convey “a signal that something in our environment is awry and needs addressing” (Oishi & Kurtz, 2011, p. 106). Once triggered, they narrow people’s minds, focusing attention on the source of danger and prompting appropriate action. 6. A Wordle showing the 233 key positive psychology research topics (Rusk & Waters, 2013) Positive_Psychology_2024_Anthony Page 4 of 5 7. As we journey onwards … Excerpts From: Fredrike Bannink. “201 Positive Psychology Applications” “From What’s Wrong to What’s Strong” “Positive psychology does not have to be constructed from the ground up. It merely involves a change of focus from repairing what is worst in life to creating what is best —MARTIN SELIGMAN” “Downward spiral or upward spiral. As I see it, that’s your choice —BARBARA FREDRICKSON” “It is never too late to be who you might have been —GEORGE ELIOT” “Happiness depends on what you can give, not what you can get —MAHATMA GHANDI” “Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE” “In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, strung together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life —ALBERT BANDURA” Positive_Psychology_2024_Anthony Page 5 of 5