By Geoff Thompson, Ph.D. (cand.), CCC
Program Director at Sunshine Coast Health Center
Much of the clinical program at Sunshine Coast Health Center is based on the theory and research of Dr. Paul Wong. Although Dr. Wong began as an experimental psychologist (training rats to be able to withstand more and more stress, etc.), he became very interested in the work of Viktor Frankl. What appealed to him was Frankl’s idea that the fundamental motivation of all human beings was to live a personally meaningful life. But Frankl did not have a lot of psychology to back up his ideas. Dr. Wong has spent much of his career putting a psychological research basis to Frankl’s ideas.
Dr. Wong’s new book will be published soon. It is the second edition of The Human Quest for Meaning, and it has a lot of chapters from some of the finest psychologists on what it takes to live a personally meaningful life. By the way, the number of chapters and authors should tell you that all this meaning stuff is actually quite complicated. Different authors each provide a piece to the meaning puzzle, providing all sorts of knowledge on big meanings and little meanings, how the stories we tell ourselves can be positive or detrimental, why searching for happiness may backfire when a major problem in life arises (such as trauma), how meaningful living may shift as one gets older, how struggles in life can add to meaningful living, and so on.
In this blog article, we’ll examine five major themes in Dr. Wong’s book. These five themes will help you if you or a loved one is in recovery. Viktor Frankl was convinced that addiction was a response that some people used to deal with a life that had little personal meaning. The symptoms of such a life are typically being bored, not feeling you are in control of your destiny, not having any real direction in your life, feeling different than others, not really being able to make sense of your life, feeling that you don’t belong, and so on. Addiction allows you to exist in such a life.
Many Sunshine Coast clients report that intoxication gets rid of the worries and pressures of the world leaving them with a sense of freedom, feeling stronger and in control, being able to make sense of things…at least temporarily. But as sobriety returns, all the guilt, hurt, loss, confusion, and self-consciousness return. Dr. Wong’s books provides research-based approaches to help people feel this way without drugs.
Part One: Threats to Meaning
Many people with addictions recognize that there are a number of threats to living a meaningful life. Addiction is a common one because the dynamic of addiction serves to take away any meaning the person might once have possessed.
Some of the threats to meaning that clients have told us are reflected in Dr. Wong’s book, which has chapters on trauma, sickness, aging, and death. Some threats, such as trauma, shatter how one makes sense of the world and their place in it. An inability to make sense of traumatic experience is, essentially, the problem of posttraumatic stress disorder. Serious illness often catalyzes the uncomfortable feeling of anxiety, but it can also trigger a desperate search for meaning. Many Sunshine Coast clients have had real-life evidence of how fragile we really are. Aging is a common threat to meaning and has resulted in the so-called mid-life crisis. Many in the addiction field are hardly surprised that the average age of clients is mid to late 30s; even Bill Wilson sobered up at age 39. And death is universally recognized as the greatest source of anxiety; people are the only species who are aware that they will die. This puts great pressure on people on figuring out how to live life to the fullest.
Part Two: PURE
Dr. Wong has a chapter on his PURE model. PURE stands for Purpose, Understanding, Responsibility, and Evaluation/Enjoyment. These four components provide an appreciation for how meaning functions in life. They are so important that if any one of them is missing, then you will not live as good a life as you could be.
Purpose refers to why you are living your life as you are. As you know, the purpose of life for an addict is to get the drugs and get high. But Wong points out that such a purpose won’t lead to happiness, at least not according to his research. Happy people have a more positive purpose than intoxication. They have some higher purpose, which goes beyond themselves, such as being a good father or a member of a community.
Understanding refers to self-awareness and making sense of the world in a way that matches what is actually going on.
Responsibility refers to recognizing that the decisions you make affect the kind of life you live. This includes, of course, the decision to be a victim to life. It’s the idea that you are the author of your life.
Evaluation/Enjoyment refers to two ideas. First, it is important to reflect on your life: Are you happy? What would you have to do to make your life better? And so on. The Enjoyment part is the reason why you live a meaningful life. Meaning and purpose give you a reason to be excited about your life, to feel comfortable, and so on.
Part Three: Subjective and Objective Meaning
Lots of self-help books tell us to be true to ourselves. This is meaning that each of us pursues in life. The only problem with this way of living a meaningful life is that there is a danger of self-centeredness. A purely subjective way of approaching life seems to lead to a conclusion that one could live a meaningful life by being a pedophile or robbing banks or killing people who interfere with personal goals.
It’s important that we understand the time-honored ways of living a meaningful life—the kinds of things we learn from artists, philosophers, and psychological researchers. These thinkers have helped us understand that there are general principles we can follow, or what Dr. Wong calls “objective” meaning.
Combining the subjective and objective meaning is important. This was one of Viktor Frankl’s big points. Frankl was a great believer in the time-honored values that people followed to live a meaningful life. Some examples of such objective meanings are: attach one’s life to something greater than oneself, act virtuously, when in doubt just do the next right thing, use anger positively to help yourself and the world, recognize that to suffer is natural, care for others, and so on.
Part Four: Self-Determination
Several chapters in Dr. Wong’s book describe Self-Determination Theory (SDT). It is obviously important for anyone to feel that he or she is the one making decisions for their lives.
Doctors Edward L. Ryan and Richard M. Deci are generally recognized as the leaders in SDT. According to them, “the meaning-making process is intrinsic to our natures, and responsible for helping individuals create . . a coherent life course . . . As we take in new experiences and make sense of them for ourselves, we experience greater harmony, purpose, and wholeness.” You can see from this quotation that to be self-determining is to live a personally meaningful life.
Of course, being self-determining requires that you discover who you really are. What is valuable and important to you? Two of the things that we’ve discovered in psychology is that people seem to need to connect with others and feel competent. But there are many more.
Part Five: Relationships
December is generally a time we surround ourselves with friends and families. For other cultures, this may be a different time, such as January for Asian peoples, but in Canada and the United States we generally look to December. This is a time for connecting with others, for celebrating with others, for thinking of others and how they have enriched our lives.
Aron and Aron’s chapter in Dr. Wong’s book emphasizes the importance of other people in living a meaningful life. Relationships allow one to expand one’s life by transcending it through other people.
According to Aron and Aron, “caring for others is central to meaning.” At one level, forming positive relationships with others seems is a form of survival. “Social units, whether family or businesses, small towns or whole countries…, tend to survive better if they emphasize cooperation, altruism, sharing, and the general sense that the group is more important than the individual.”
At another level, being connected with something greater than the self seems essential for meaningful living. For some people, this may be a connection with God; for some, it is the AA group; for some, it is a sense of being part of a family or community.
