When Kristen Adams, an Emmy Award– winning television news producer, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis
in 2008, life began to feel like a series of things
she couldn’t do. “There’s a tendency to do a lot
of ‘I can’ts’ when you’re first diagnosed,” she says.
“There’s a lot of fear about the future, because you
have no idea what it holds.”
Four years later, the Fairfield, Conn., mother of two
has learned it’s possible not only to survive an MS
diagnosis, but to thrive. Adams is one of a growing
number of people using positive psychology to
feel better. The relatively new field cites research
showing that happiness can improve physical health
and well-being. “It underscores the power of your
mind to reframe your circumstances, interpreting
what’s going on in positive ways,” Adams says. But
what, exactly, is “happiness”?
ILLUSTRATION BY SUSAN HUNT YULE
Nature vs. nurture
By most accounts, happiness is a complicated
combination of physical and environmental
interactions. Just as people are born with specific
physical characteristics, research by Dr. Yoram
Barak, a professor of psychiatry at the Sackler
Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University,
suggests that roughly 40 percent of our happiness
may be genetically determined. His findings
were presented at the 2008 World Congress on
Treatment and Research in MS in Montreal and
published in the April 2009 Expert Review of
Neurotherapeutics.
“There is no single gene for happiness,” Dr. Barak
says. “We calculate that several hundreds of genes
are involved in our happiness, which means that
we all carry the happiness genes to some extent.”
If scientists can isolate these genes, he says, they
might be able to make them more effective.
In the meantime, at least 60 percent of our
capacity for happiness is within our control, says
Dr. Barak—which is good news for everyone,
including people with MS. “The science of
positive psychology gives us psychotherapeutic
interventions that help people living with chronic
illnesses increase their happiness overall.”
A 2012 analysis by Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD,
author of The How of Happiness: A New
Approach to Getting the Life You Want (2008),
and graduate researcher Kristin Layous, both of the
University of California, Riverside, demonstrated
that fulfilling people’s basic psychological needs—
autonomy, competence and social connection—
contributes more to happiness than do seemingly
more exciting events like a wedding or a raise.
And most people have more control over meeting
those needs than they think, according to the
paper, which will be published as a chapter in the
forthcoming book, The Light and Dark Side
of Positive Emotion (2012). For some practical
strategies, see “C’mon, Get Happy,” pg. 29.
Positive approaches to living with MS
“The natural reaction of many people is to think
they’ve lost control over the things that matter
to them when they’re diagnosed with MS,” says
Rosalind Kalb, PhD, a clinical psychologist
and vice president of the National MS Society’s
Professional Resource Center. “Positive psychology
offers a whole new way to approach their
experiences, and gives back that sense of control.”
Dr. Kalb explains that positive psychology “isn’t
about putting on a happy face, being Pollyanna-ish
or denying the negative feelings that people with
a chronic illness may experience. It’s about using
some proven tools to enhance your own happiness,
because that, in turn, will help you to be more
