Lee Camp
[00:00:00] I am Lee C. Camp and this is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
Judith Moskowitz
In the context of stress, and, you know, basically in the context of life, negative emotions are normal.
Lee Camp
That's Judith Moskowitz, a social psychologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. More specifically, she studies the impact of positive emotion in the context of intensely difficult life circumstances.
Judith Moskowitz
You don't want to deny or suppress your negative emotions, but even in the midst of really extreme stress, people can experience positive emotions and these positive emotions and positive events seem to be helping them cope better with this extreme form of stress.
Lee Camp
She relays some groundbreaking research in the field of social psychology and offers some helpful tools and practices for increasing one's positive emotion in the midst of acute stress. All coming [00:01:00] right up.
I'm Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
Stress, we're told, can be a silent killer, and it sometimes appears that our entire economy and social structure are oriented toward increasing our stress levels. Then add the challenges of major life events - a death of a loved one, losing a job, friends moving away, applying for college, a divorce - and a sense of overwhelming stress seems sooner or later to come for us all.
Our guest today, a social psychologist and professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, has dedicated her research career to studying the ways individuals under acute stress have navigated that stress. She particularly examines the ways in which so-called positive emotion provides much needed [00:02:00] resources for navigating those occasions of acute stress, and she's developed practical direction on the ways one can cultivate those so-called positive emotions.
And heads up, this is not a naive, positive thinking, pep rally approach, but a nuanced, multifaceted conversation about the way we humans work and the nature goods and ills of our emotional tapestry.
Judith Moskowitz is Professor of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She's a social psychologist. Having completed her PhD at Dartmouth, she studies the impact of positive emotion on adjustment to health-related and other life stress. She's also principal investigator of several NIH funded trials of an intervention designed to increase positive emotion and improve psychological and physical wellbeing in people experiencing various types of life stress.
And she's welcomed me [00:03:00] to her office here on Michigan Avenue, downtown Chicago, with spectacular views of Lake Michigan. Welcome to the show, Judy.
Judith Moskowitz
Thank you for coming. Welcome to the most beautiful day we've had so far this year.
It's pretty.
Lee Camp
I brought good weather from Tennessee.
Judith Moskowitz
You did. Thank you so much.
Lee Camp
So first let me ask about your field, or the name of your department, medical social sciences. So for those who might not know what medical social sciences are, describe this sort of multidisciplinary endeavor for us.
Judith Moskowitz
Yeah. So we are a department of behavioral and social scientists doing work in the medical and health field. So, psychologists, sociologists, epidemiologists. We have a big group doing measurement development to assess patient reported outcomes in the health field. So it is, it's, as you said, multidisciplinary and mostly focused on health and healthcare.
Lee Camp
Yeah. So describe for us how your field relates to the [00:04:00] development of positive psychology.
Judith Moskowitz
So my work started in this, in this area of trying to understand positive emotion in the midst of stress and trying to help people have more positive emotions so they can cope better with stress. This started in the early to mid 1990s, about the time that positive psychology was sort of coming online and, and Martin Seligman started that area of psychology.
And what I was studying at the time was men caring for their partners with AIDS. So some of the most extreme stress you can imagine experiencing. This was before the more effective medications for AIDS and HIV, so AIDS was essentially a terminal illness. So the, the men in our study were caring for a partner who was dying. And then we also continued to interview them after the death of the partner.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So the stress of caregiving and the stress of bereavement.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And initially we were asking [00:05:00] questions about that stress, really looking at, you know, how do people cope well with extreme stress and what can they do to cope better with that extreme stress. So asking them, 'What was stressful about caring for your partner or bereavement in the past week? What was a stressful event that happened for you? And then how did you cope with it?' And then that was the end of the interview, and we said, 'thanks, we'll see you again in two months.' They were interviewed every two months. And shortly after the start of the study, the participants said, 'Well, you're not asking us about the good things that are happening in our lives.'
And we were shocked, as stress and coping researchers, because we were studying stress and what, why would we ask about good things, 'cause of course they didn't have any good things going on, 'cause their partner was dying. But they convinced us, and the, the principal investigator on that study, Susan Folkman, is a very wise woman and she listened to our participants.
So we added a question to the end of the interview, following the, you know, 'tell us something stressful that happened in the past week and what did you do [00:06:00] in response?' We then asked about something positive and meaningful that happened in the past week that helped you get through a day. And in almost every single interview after that, even if their partner had just died, the participants were able to talk about something positive that happened.
So it was a real eyeopener for us to see that, oh, even in the midst of really extreme stress, people can experience positive things and positive emotions, and these positive emotions and positive events seem to be helping them cope better with this extreme form of stress.
Lee Camp
And then in time, you all began to ask about how those sorts of positive experiences can be multiplied or even, uh, learned?
Judith Moskowitz
Yes. So after, after that study and [00:07:00] another study or two and other things were starting to come out in the literature, including positive psychology, that was starting to look at these things, we were able to see that it wasn't that unusual for people experiencing various types of extreme stress to also have positive emotions.
Absolutely, there were, there was sadness and depression and anxiety when people are experiencing stress. But there was also happiness and satisfaction and relief and contentment. So, at that point, I started asking myself whether it would be possible to teach people how to experience more positive emotion, even if they were experiencing stress.
So we put together a multi-component program and started testing that in various groups. Usually it was health-related stress, and now we've expanded into li-- all kinds of life stress where we can look at whether practicing these skills is helpful in maintaining [00:08:00] wellbeing.
Lee Camp
Yeah. That raises loads of questions, but before we go into those, let me go back to the question about positive psychology just a moment.
So of-- as, as I understand the discipline of positive psychology, Seligman is, as a practitioner, helping people with various forms of dysfunction, and as I heard him say in one lecture, he realized that he could help his patients not be depressed, but once they're not depressed, that doesn't make their-- make them happy, or it doesn't help them thrive.
And so then he begins to ask the question, can psychologists identify ways of living that facilitate flourishing, not just help them overcome dysfunction? So your, your work seems to fit squarely in, in that sort of relatively new tradition in psychology. Is that right?
Judith Moskowitz
Yeah, that's, that's absolutely right.
And what was really groundbreaking about what he did by promoting this idea that just because you're not depressed doesn't mean that you're doing great, right, that [00:09:00] separation of negative emotions and experiences from positive and that, the idea that you can experience both... where we've taken it from there is that we're very clear when we're teaching these skills, again, usually to people experiencing pretty extreme stress, we are clear that in the context of stress, and you know, basically in the context of life, negative emotions are normal and expected.
They give you information, they're important. You don't wanna deny or suppress your negative emotions. That said, what we learned from the caregivers and in studies since then, is that even though you're having negative experiences and the negative emotions that go along with it, you can also experience positive emotions as well, and the more you can experience those positive emotions, the better off you'll be and the better you will be able to cope with that stress.
Lee Camp
Yeah. So [00:10:00] before we look at the positive emotions more, let's talk about the negative a bit more, um, because it seems like negative, what we call-- and I'll come to asking what we mean by negative in a moment as well, but when we talk about negative emotions, they seem to get such a bad rap. But I hear you saying, they have their place and they're important, I think you just said they're important forms of information to us. So unpack that a little bit more for us.
Judith Moskowitz
That's right. So humans have evolved to pay attention to the things that are dangerous to them, right?
So, you know, going back to, you see a bear, you see a tiger running at you, a negative emotion will tell you, that's bad for me.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And I need to respond. Right? Our whole physiological stress response is built around this concept that when something bad, something threatening, the stress response then helps you become physiologically ready to flee.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
To run, to fight, to-- sometimes it's freezing in fear. [00:11:00] But it's a long evolved process that has helped humans stay alive, right? So it's really important.
The problem becomes, that in modern life, you know, not many of us are facing tigers in our day-to-day life. Not many of us are facing that kind of life-threatening situation that our negative emotions may be signaling to us. So that's where it has sort of gone awry and that our negative emotions now point us to what is maybe going wrong, like there's, there's a lot of traffic, so I've got a negative emotion--
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
--this is threatening to me, for example, just as a random example, not that you'd know anything about that.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Yeah. So the negative emotions are important to help us identify what's going wrong.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And where we need to make a change, right?
Lee Camp
Right.[00:12:00]
So this whole notion of being able to hold the positive alongside the negative seems immensely helpful to me at a practical level. And for me, as someone who has done a fair amount of work in even learning to pay attention to myself emotionally... so I'm, I'm flashing back to years ago, being in a therapist's office and he asked me, what are you feeling?
And I, I said, I don't know. And, and he kind of chuckled and he said, I think you're telling the truth. 'Cause I, I really didn't know what I was feeling, you know? And so, having to learn that--
And at about the same time I was in a another group with, with some guys who are good friends of mine now, 'cause we've been doing stuff together for years on Saturday mornings, and one of the guys in this group said that he had recently been to an art museum, I can't remember if it was here in Chicago or New York. [00:13:00] And he came upon this painting that was just white on white. And he said, he said, when I started doing the work I'm doing, he said, this was like what my emotional tapestry was like. It was just blank, right? And he said, then I went a little further into the museum and I saw a white canvas that had a big, bright red blotch of, of color. And he said, that was like the next phase where I couldn't identify anything except anger. I just knew I was angry. And then he said, then I went on to see a Jackson Pollock painting that was just, um, a splash of all sorts of beautiful colors.
And, and he said, I, I began to realize this is what my emotional experience can be like on a daily basis. I can have a little dash of red, but I've got the blues and the greens and the yellows and this beautiful tapestry of all sorts of emotions. And that was just so helpful to me. But it was like, I can carry all of these things with me on a daily basis, hourly basis, and that be okay.
Not only okay, but it enriches my life. I don't know, commentary on that?
Judith Moskowitz
[00:14:00] It's, it's such a beautiful way to describe it. And originally when we were starting to teach the skills to various groups, we just dove right in and we're like, here's what positive emotion is, and here are things you can do to have more positive emotion.
And we realized that we needed to take a step back and talk about emotions.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Positive and negative emotions. And help them understand the sort of rich tapestry, like you said, of emotions and the different nuances of emotions before we dove right into talking about positive emotions. Because there are a lot of people, often men, but not exclusively, who can't name their emotions and when they might try to learn some skills for having more positive emotion, that doesn't make any sense to them because they can't differentiate their emotions beyond, you know, how are you? I'm okay.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
I'm fine. Like there's no, there's [00:15:00] no diversity of emotions in their experience. And so we try to help people learn that-- how to, how to be aware of their emotions and how to label them.
Lee Camp
Yeah.
So let me ask a, uh, dig into that question about your comment about mostly men, but not just men.
So obviously we're, we're beginning to wade into perhaps fraught waters of gender essentialism and things of that sort. But let me, but let's ask some questions about that. So is there data showing that men have more trouble with that, or is that kind of anecdotal in your experience?
Judith Moskowitz
It is both of those things.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So definitely anecdotal in my experience in teaching this program. Men have a harder time labeling what they feel, or at least maybe they can label it in their heads, but they aren't, uh, as adept at expressing what they feel. And I don't have the studies on the tip of my tongue.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
But I would bet good money that there's a lot of literature that men are [00:16:00] not as emotionally diverse in their experience and expression as women are.
Lee Camp
And do you think that that is something particular to American culture, Western culture, or do you think that's more universal?
Judith Moskowitz
Oh, that's a great question. Emotions are very culturally bound and swayed by the values of the culture that you're in.
It, it's one of the reasons that when I am approached by a colleague who wants to do this work internationally, see, I wanna-- So, true example. I have a colleague who has convinced me to write a grant to deliver this program to men in Bangkok. And my first response was, absolutely not. Like this, I, the program would need to be completely different.
The values that people living in Thailand, so more, you know, Eastern, Eastern Asian cultures, the value that they place on positive emotion in particular is different. [00:17:00] Their culture is much more communal and not as individual. And this, this program, my program, has been developed in the United States and is very culturally bound to the American way of individualism.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And it's very focused on the individual, which is not a bad thing, but it's a cultural thing. So I think it's possible to translate this program and these ideas of emotional awareness and emotional value to other cultures so that it can be beneficial to other cultures. But I am very careful not to just assume that the program that I've developed in the US can be translated into a different culture.
Lee Camp
You're listening to No Small Endeavor and a conversation with Judith Moskowitz, Professor at Northwestern School of Medicine, discussing her research on positive [00:18:00] emotion.
I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com.
You can get show notes for this episode in your podcast app or wherever you listen. These notes include links to resources mentioned in this episode, as well as a PDF of my complete interview notes, which sometimes includes material not found in the episode, and you can also there find a link to a full transcript.
Coming up, Judith and I discuss toxic positivity, what is meant by 'positive' or 'negative' emotion, and the practicalities and practices for facilitating constructive positive emotions.[00:19:00]
We've been using the language of positive and negative a lot already, without defining those, and I think, intuitively, or we would suspect that intuitively we know what that means, but from a scientific, neurological, brain science perspective, social psychology perspective, are there definitions for that?
Judith Moskowitz
We don't use 'positive' in the term, in the sense that positive is good. Like, positive emotions, these are the good emotions to have. That's not a value judgment, it's a, it's a valence. So from, sort of, positively toned things like happiness and joy and, you know, the gratitude for ex-- you know, those more positively toned versus the negatively toned emotions, which are sadness and fear, for example.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So it's really about the sort of valence and then, to some extent, the [00:20:00] arousal level of the emotion. So you can have really high arousal emotions like excitement, high arousal positive is excitement and enthusiasm. And I, I'm gesturing this sort of high level that, which you can't see, um, up and with my hand.
And then lower valence positive emotions are things like calm and contentment and satisfaction and the emotions range all along that activation or arousal continuum...
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
...as well as the valence from positive to negative.
Lee Camp
Yeah. So let me ask about, step back to the language of stress and ask about good stress and bad stress, uh, which I think is a different use of good and bad, as I understand it at least.
There are forms of stress that are good for us, in the sense that they facilitate certain forms of productivity or fruitfulness perhaps, and bad stress that leads to dysfunction or inability to, to [00:21:00] do well. I don't know, commentary on that, or, you being a stress researcher, how do you think about it?
Judith Moskowitz
Yeah, so I think it is, there are definitely individual differences on this, so what might be sort of a motivating kind of stressful thing to me might be, either not show up for you at all...
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
...or be completely devastating, right?
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So there's a lot of individual variability in that.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
But I think your, your basic point that stress isn't always horrific stress, or, you know, overwhelming stress. The official definition of stress is, 'the perception that the thing that's happening exceeds your ability or resources to cope with it.'
Lee Camp
Yeah.
So back to positive emotion, negative emotion. I can't cite the researchers, but I recently heard of a study in which they identified a certain ratio, so that, so they were also saying the point is not to get [00:22:00] rid of negative emotions, but that there's an identifiable ratio of the positive to the negative.
And I, I think it was 2.97 and they rounded it up to 3 or something like that.
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
Uh, any reflections on that or commentary on that?
Judith Moskowitz
Yeah, so that research does exist. There were a few papers that came out that showed that this was sort of the optimal ratio of emotional experience of positive to negative.
There've been some questions raised about some of that work and how they quantified emotions and practically speaking, how would you go about figuring out what that looks like in your day-to-day life? Like, okay, I've had three things happen today. Two of them were bad and one was good, so I'm off, I need another. You know?
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
It's a useful sort of metric to think about in research and to, you can look in data sets of people who, uh, on their daily emotion ratios, and you could look to see, are the people who are 3:1 or [00:23:00] 2.9:1, are they better off on some outcome than the people who have a different ratio?
But practically, I'm not sure how helpful it is.
Lee Camp
Yeah.
I, I think what-- after I had heard that and was reflecting on it some, I did ask myself that same sort of question of, well, how in the world am I supposed to quantify this? But at the same time, it did help me... again, it was another, just like the notion of the, the Jackson Pollock picture I was talking about earlier.
That research helped me remember again that just because something even sharply negative happens in a given day, it doesn't have to mean that is the lens through which the whole of the day is understood, and that there are still ways in which I can embrace the gifts and the goods and the blessings of that day and, and always hold those things together.
Judith Moskowitz
Right. And it's, the goal isn't to have no negative emotions. You don't wanna be at a zero.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Because, you know, like I said, negative emotions give you information. And they also [00:24:00] add to the richness of your life.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So if they're, they're not so high and overtaking the positive emotions, it's good to have that, again, the diversity of emotions in your life.
Lee Camp
Yeah. This, this, uh, whoever was reporting-- the secondary resource that was reporting on that study, uh, also talked about some research that indicated there's a, a ratio at which there can be too much positivity. Uh, and I think, I don't know, the ratio was 18 or 20 to 1 or something like that, but it kind of, it kind of makes me a little anxious just thinking about being around someone who's that positive, you know?
[Both laugh]
Judith Moskowitz
Yeah. And I, you know, in our research, when we're recruiting people to be in our studies, early on, I would exclude people who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. So they may have been more likely to have manic episodes, right? 'Cause my thinking as a non-clinician was that, well, maybe there are some people who shouldn't be working to have more positive [00:25:00] emotion. I shouldn't be teaching them skills to have more positive emotion.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
What if it triggers a manic episode? I've since, you know, learned through colleagues who are experts in bipolar disorder, Sheri Johnson at, at Berkeley, and she said the key is that you need to, to educate the participants on what kind of positive emotions.
So, we wouldn't-- we need to focus on the lower activation, sort of calm type of positive emotions versus being like, any positive emotions are good, which may lead some people to go for the really high activation manic, consistent positive emotions. So I hadn't heard the, whatever, 18:1 ratio that is the tipping point, but I think that's true that you, you wouldn't wanna be exclusively in a positive state all the time.
Lee Camp
At least the notion, I don't know if you've used the, this phrase in this interview, but the notion of toxic positivity, it's, it's helpful to know there, that there is such a thing.
Judith Moskowitz
Yes. Yeah. And we're [00:26:00] always very intentional when we're teaching these skills to be clear that negative emotions are normal and functional and they, full of information that's useful.
So we're not saying, deny your negative emotions, suppress them. I think the, the idea of toxic positivity is that, then you feel like it's demanded of you. You must be positive all the time. Highly positive.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Don't show any negative emotions. And that is absolutely not the case. That's not adaptive at all.
Lee Camp
So, uh, the last kind of broader cultural question, and this is just a slightly different angle on things that we've already discussed, but, you know, I've read studies or people making the argument - I don't know if these were essays or research studies - but people making the argument that there's a sort of, perhaps, toxic optimism among some segments of American [00:27:00] culture that refuse to look at very serious social ills, for example. Climate change, hostility in politics, whatever the case may be. That there's a sort of toxic optimism, if it, we'll just think positively about this, it will be okay. Any commentary on that?
Judith Moskowitz
Right. That is a bad thing.
[Both laugh]
Right? And I would never want people to-- again, that gets into the denial.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And the pretending like the negative isn't there and just, you know, sticking your head in the sand. And often when we're, we're teaching these skills to various groups, we get the question about, well, there are systemic problems in this world, or you know, in healthcare or in our justice system. Why would I want to make my outrage over that go away?
Right? Then you won't do anything. So again, that's why we say, you [00:28:00] keep the negative emotions, the positive emotions help you sort of stay in the game and, and fight against the injustices and the oppressions in the world.
Lee Camp
Yeah. Yeah.
So, let's shift then to the question of particular positive emotion interventions or skills that you're teaching-- you've been studying and that you're teaching. What are some that you all have been paying a special attention to?
Judith Moskowitz
Special attention to. So we have usually 8-10 skills, and the idea behind it is that, you know, you don't have to do them all. It's not like there's some magical synergistic package. But that, we, we ask our participants to try each one. Just try it.
You might first think, no, I'm, I, I've got that one, or I don't wanna do that, or, that sounds terrible. We ask everyone to try each of the skills and see what works for them and then make that one a habit, right?
So the skills include things like noticing positive events, which, you know, especially when you're under stress [00:29:00] can be really hard.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So you think about the, the caregivers that I talked about earlier, in this sort of really extreme stressful situation, those who were able to notice a positive event - a lovely sunset, a beautiful flower, a walk on the beach, a good meal for their partner - did better.
So we try to help people realize that, you know, no matter how bleak things are, there's always something positive. So you know, look for it and notice it. And once you start trying to notice the positive things, you start noticing more of them.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So noticing positive events is usually where we start the program, 'cause that's sort of a easy entry.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And then related to that is savoring those events, or we sometimes call it amplifying or capitalizing on those events.
And this is telling someone about it or even thinking about it later on, or writing it in your journal or putting it on social media so that you get the hit of [00:30:00] positive emotion again. You know, go back and look at your vacation pictures, for the good vacations, right?
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And be like, remember how great that vacation was?
That's savoring. And that helps you re-experience that positive emotion again. So, that's the second skill.
So, noticing positive events, savoring....
The third skill we usually teach is gratitude, which, and again, you know, these skills overlap to some extent. So gratitude has a lot in common with noticing positive events.
It's just more about being grateful for things that are, or things that happened. Sometimes it has a spiritual component, but it doesn't have to. You can certainly be grateful to other people or just grateful that things happened. You may don't know the cause and there, you know, there's a lot of work showing that just taking a moment either, you know, daily or once a week to think about things you're grateful for can have a huge impact on your, certainly your psychological wellbeing, but [00:31:00] physical health as well.
Lee Camp
Yeah. Before we go on to some of the others, just a few comments about those three.
One is that, like on the daily gratitude journal, I've heard lots of people in recovery talk about how that's a huge practice for them.
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
And where their, their, uh, mentors will say, do this every day. Uh, and what a benefit that is to them.
A-- all three of these, it brings me back to something. In so many interviews I have with, with people talking about various ways about living well, it keeps coming back to attention it seems like. Because all three of those things that you've list-- recognize a positive event, savor the event, start a gratitude journal, requires a meta-habit of paying attention, it seems like.
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
And that attention seems to be this sort of ingredient that's increasingly difficult for us to get ahold of, given the world of distraction that we live in. Does that, that seem fair to you?
Judith Moskowitz
Absolutely. And thank you for the lead in to one of our other skills, which is mindful awareness. [00:32:00]
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
When I was initially putting these skills together, I was at the University of California San Francisco, where they have a really large, both public and research programmer on mindfulness-based stress reduction.
So, you know, to this day, they're still doing a lot of mindfulness work. And I was talking to our research director and I was telling him the skills and he's like, well, you're gonna include mindfulness. And I thought, well, no, 'cause mindfulness is not a positive emotion skill. It's an awareness skill. And I'm gonna be working with people experiencing really extreme life stress, and do I really wanna make them more aware of their stress?
This was my sort of naive thinking to begin with. But he convinced me, and his name was Rick Hecht, is Rick Hecht. He convinced me that it was worth trying and I, you know, went to the literature that showed that people who, you know, practice mindfulness, learn mindfulness based stress reduction, have more positive emotion.
So I thought, okay, I'll put that into my program. So [00:33:00] we, we do, we-- you know, mindfulness based stress reduction is eight sessions, usually hour and a half to two hours a session, for, you know, eight weeks. And then there's a day long silent retreat and 45 minutes a day of practice. And it's a lot. And it includes a lot more than the types of the pieces of mindfulness that we focus on.
So what we focus on is mindful awareness, so awareness of what's happening, your emotions in particular, but also other things that are going on in your life, experiences, sensations. And then we also focus on the non-judgment piece, which is really key, I think, in this program, so that you're feeling what you're feeling, you're experiencing what you're experiencing, and you don't judge yourself for it, right?
So I'm really glad that that was suggested to me early on, and I'm really glad we included it because, [00:34:00] anecdotally, it helps enhance the use of the other skills because people are more emotionally aware.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And more aware of the positive events going on in their life.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
More aware of what they're grateful for.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So that mindfulness skill and that practice of being more mindful really helps enhance the use of the rest of the skills.
Lee Camp
Going to take a short break. Coming right up, some more practices for increasing positive emotion in one's own life.
On non-judgment, I would be interested for you to tell me what you think about this. I recently-- well, first I should say that, as someone who has had to do a lot of work kind of [00:35:00] recovering from sort of shame-based Bible belt religious culture, in which I could hardly think of anything without self-judgment, you know, that was just like my, my constant mode of being right, you know, was self-judgment. So I've worked on that and, and thought about that a lot. And you know, I've learned from people like Pema Chodron, who, who will talk about in doing mindfulness meditation, will talk about, neither suppress nor indulge. That you observe whatever it is. You don't wanna hop on the train, and you don't wanna beat yourself up for the train that's coming by, but just note it and let it go... flow down the stream of one's thoughts and let it go on down. That's been very helpful to me.
And recently I heard someone say that-- and I, I don't know what I think about this, but it's, it's been helpful to me in a practical way. They've suggested that sometimes we will think crazy things because our mind is reminding us of things that we don't want to do. [00:36:00] And, like I say, I don't know what I think about that, but it's been helpful because I think crazy things sometimes.
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
And that, sort of, permission to frame that as, oh, that's my brain being my friend and just saying, ooh, you don't wanna do that.
Even though you may, even though it may put you in the kind of mode of thinking about doing it, it's actually telling me, no, you don't want to do that. I don't know.
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
So that sounds crazy at one level, but I don't know. Thoughts about that?
Judith Moskowitz
Well, I think... sort of two things on that. The first, the, you know, your mind thinks crazy things, that-- in the, the sort of basic MBSR course they talk about monkey mind, right?
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And help people to understand that that's normal. Your mind's gonna be all over the place, it might be thinking crazy things, and then just gently guide your attention back to your present moment experience, right?
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So I, I think that understanding that that's how our minds are--
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
--is really helpful. And again, not to shame yourself over it. And I think [00:37:00] related to that is another one of our skills, which is self-compassion.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Which is, you know, the understanding that everyone is suffering on some level and you should treat yourself with the same compassion you would treat a good friend.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So, so many of us are, you know, trained, brought up in cultures where there's a lot of shame, there's a lot of guilt, there's a lot of, you know, judging, self-judgment, right? And self-compassion helps to address that. So again, reframing those ideas as, well, if you had a good friend, your best friend was saying these things to themselves, what would you say?
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Like, you would say, that's crazy. You're not a bad person. You're not crazy, you're not-- you know. So, uh, self-compassion, again, was, was one of the skills that wasn't initially in our program, because Kristin Neff, who's done the most work in self-compassion and has developed an entire program [00:38:00] in self-compassion, her work was starting to come online as we were putting this program together. So I didn't know about it until a few years in, and then it, you know, a light bulb went on and I was like, oh, we're teaching self-compassion.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So we made it more explicit. It was always kind of woven in.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
But we, we make it more explicit.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Because I think it's really helpful.
Lee Camp
Our-- I'll note here for listeners that we have, it's one of our most commented on episodes, uh, with Kristin.
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
And a beautiful, beautiful episode on self-compassion. Yeah.
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
What other skills have you working on?
Judith Moskowitz
So, what have I not talked-- so we talked about mindfulness.
One of the more challenging skills for people is positive reappraisal, or positive, it's called, sometimes called reframing in sort of the cognitive behavioral sense.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And so, what it involves is understanding that your emotional reaction comes from your interpretation or your appraisal of a situation.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So your first appraisal of a situation might be that it's [00:39:00] bad and it's very stressful. Positive reappraisals are things like noticing how maybe it wasn't as bad as you initially thought. Another form of positive reappraisal is my personal favorite: it could be worse.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Because I am naturally a, sort of a catastrophizer.
[Both laugh]
So when something bad happens, I can always reappraise it as, oh, this is bad, but it could have been worse, right? So a-- ask me anyti-- anyti-- I can reappraise anything. It, I'm sure it annoys my children in particular, but that sort of idea that yes, this, this thing is stressful and it's bad, but you know what would've been really bad?
And then you're, you're like, so this is not as bad as that. So, therefore, it's not as stressful.
[Lee laughs]
And the third type of positive reappraisal we talk about is, something good that came out of the situation.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So there are different-- you know, stress-related growth, post-traumatic growth sort of touches on these [00:40:00] things.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
That even in really awful situations, often there is something good that can come out of it.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
You know, I stopped short of trying to tell people that, you know, there, 'there's always something good in every single thing!' That's not true. There are universally horrific things that we don't need to talk about. But for many things that humans experience, something good comes out of it.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Even if it was really awful.
Lee Camp
Right. Yep.
Yeah, just that sort of possibility that we do have a certain level of autonomy or there's an element of will, to some degree, that we can bring to the frame or the interpretation that we choose to prioritize over some given experience.
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Between saying, you know, you feel the way you feel, [00:41:00] and that's okay because that's how you feel. And also empowering people to know that they have the control and can change their emotional experience.
Lee Camp
Yeah.
Another one that I, I've read that you focus on is, recognize and practice small acts of kindness daily.
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Yeah. Yeah, that's one of my favorites, based on work of Elizabeth Dunn, who, one of her studies brought in people, you know, brought 'em into the lab at the beginning of the day and measured how happy they were, and then gave everybody $20 and randomly assigned them to go out and spend that money on themselves or on someone else.
And then, although I don't think the participants knew they were gonna get a follow-up call, they got a follow-up call at the end of the day and asked how happy they were. And, you see where this is going, the people who spent the money on someone else were happier than the people who spent the money on themselves.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And it didn't matter what their financial situation was.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
It was the act of [00:42:00] doing something for someone else that led them to be happier. And this has been shown in lots of different ways and in much more sophisticated studies that she's done. But that was sort of the first one where I became aware of this.
It's also been shown that, you know, people who volunteer live longer.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And, you know, again, independent of their own sort of personal resources, it's that, it seems to be that act of giving that makes a difference in their wellbeing.
Lee Camp
Yeah.
I know that just personally, anecdotally, and I don't know where I picked it up, but that there are occasions where if I'm in a time of intense stress, if I can remind myself at the beginning of the day simply to be kind, it, it's, uh, immense, alleviating self-intervention and--
Judith Moskowitz
Yeah, I mean, it gets you outta your own head. Right?
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
It's not all about you. You're like, oh, there, here's someone, I could do this-- you [00:43:00] know, I could buy their coffee and it's not a big deal, but to sort of focus on someone else's needs--
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
--even just by simply being kind, can make a big difference.
Lee Camp
Right. Oh, those are all immensely helpful.
So as, as we get kind of near the end, uh, could you give us a little bit of commentary about what your research is showing with regard to positive qualitative markers that come as a result of these practices, or, uh, longevity of life related to these things?
Judith Moskowitz
Yeah. So we haven't done the study where we randomize people who learn these skills or, you know, do something else, and then see if they live longer.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
That, you know, you'd have to take that up with the NIH, to fund us for that long.
[Lee laughs]
What we have been able to show is that people who practice these skills are, you know, they have more positive emotion, less depression. We've got some indication that it improves markers of health. Like in people living with HIV, we've shown that people who engage with these skills [00:44:00] are more likely to have a suppressed viral load.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Which kind of blew my mind.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
I'm like, really? Wow, that's amazing.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And we've-- that, that effect has been replicated.
So, you know, we don't have an absolutely ironclad, consistent, same findings across every study that we do, but that's kind of the fun of science is that, you know, well, what if we do the pro-- what if we deliver the program online, self-guided, and what if we do it in people who are depressed, and sort of these different nuances and see what works and for whom.
Qualitatively? So, you know, again, this gets a little bit to the anecdotal level, but we not infrequently will have participants in our studies talk about it changing their lives.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Um, so it, the program works for the people who do it. So our challenge is to figure out all the [00:45:00] ways that we can help people take these skills up as habits.
Lee Camp
Yeah. Do you all have online a course for people to learn some of these skills?
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
We just, we did have an online version that we started during COVID, at the start of COVID, and it came out of people in our department asking us if we could make our program that we were, we are still doing with dementia caregivers, if we could make that available to people to cope with the stress of COVID, and we said, of course.
So we, you know, made a copy of it and made it available as our sort of friends and family version. And then, because I couldn't help myself, I got an, you know, human subjects approval and put some questionnaires in. So we, we did have a, a version available sort of nationwide. Anyone over 18 with an internet connection could do it, you know, and they'd fill out some questionnaires for us.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
And we showed that that was effective for the people who did it, again. We just closed that one down.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So we don't have it available at the moment. There are [00:46:00] other, there are, you know, companies, uh, there's one called, It's All Good Here that has similar forms-- and in fact, I've worked with them and they have a version of our intervention--
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
--that is available. Happify is another company that does this. And again, they're not, it's not rocket science.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So you don't have to pay a company to do it, or you don't have to enroll in a, in a study.
You can, you can try these out for yourself. You know, try to keep a gratitude journal for a few weeks and see how you feel.
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
So those kind of things are, are pretty easy to take up if you, you know, ha-- have the motivation--
Lee Camp
Judith Moskowitz
Lee Camp
I've been talking to Professor Judith Moskowitz, Professor of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Judy, thanks so much for your time today, your generosity, and, uh, your good work and sharing your, your work with us today.
Judith Moskowitz
Thank you. I always love talking about it, so I appreciate you coming down here.
Lee Camp
Thanks so much.[00:47:00]
You've been listening to No Small Endeavor and our interview with Professor Judith Moskowitz.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community development, education, and religion, and the support of the John Templeton Foundation, whose vision is to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing.
Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible. Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Sophie Byard, Tom Anderson, Kate Hays, Mary Eveleen Brown, Cariad Harmon, Jason Sheesley, Ellis Osburn, and [00:48:00] Tim Lauer.
Thanks for listening. Let's keep exploring what it means to live a good life, together.
No Small Endeavor is distributed by PRX and is a production of Tokens Media, LLC and Great Feeling Studios.