What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [127]
Sexual orientation (homosexuality and heterosexuality—not, to my way of thinking, problems, but simply patterns of behavior) is almost as deep. Part of its basis is probably laid down during gestation, and it probably has specific underpinning in the brain. Once orientation is adopted, evidence steadily mounts for it—you enjoy it and it fits. That a woman is attracted to members of her own sex is easy for her to confirm and hard for her to disconfirm, and this attraction is of high power—pervading much of what she does. While the desire itself resists change mightily, whom you perform with is a bit flexible.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a disorder of the soul. It probably has little evolutionary basis and is not known to be heritable, but the underlying belief is powerful and readily confirmed. If, for instance, your child dies, you have been robbed, by a stroke of cruel fate, of what you hold most precious. Your worldview changes: This world is cruel, there is no justice, I have no future, there is no hope, and I wish I hadn’t survived. There is pervasive reality to what you now believe, since your child is never coming back. All you have to do to confirm your new philosophy is turn on the eleven o’clock news. The cascade of bad events that usually follows in the wake of a tragedy further confirms your pessimism. Sometimes surprisingly good things happen and your view softens, but only reluctantly. Therapy and drugs might make you less afraid of the specific place of the tragedy. Little more, except for rape victims, has so far been accomplished in alleviating PTSD. You now know just how fragile all happiness is.
Weight is quite a deep matter. Dieting works only temporarily for more than 90 percent of “overweight” people. Your weight is defended by powerful biological and psychological processes that served your ancestors well through famine and hardship. Appetite and weight have layers of biological and psychological defense: brain centers firing, blood-sugar level dropping, metabolic slowdown, fatigue, fat storage, changing number and size of fat cells, intense food cravings, stomach rumbling, and binge eating. Natural selection has assured that we will be able to starve ourselves voluntarily only with the greatest of difficulty. The evidentiary criterion is not applicable to overweight, but the power criterion is. Your habits of eating are part of your way of life. Your styles of working, loving, and playing are often tied up with what, where, and how much you eat.
Alcoholism has some biological underpinnings. It is moderately heritable, and part of what it means to have a biological addiction is that cells living in an alcohol-laden environment become dependent on the presence of alcohol to function well. That I need a drink to get through this interview, or this class, or this date is hard to disconfirm—particularly when I don’t abstain and find out that the date goes well anyway. Usually, I drink and it goes tolerably well, or I don’t drink and I have the shakes. Alcoholism has power. It is a way of life. Like the intellectual who goes to a party and sees it in terms of her interests (“Isn’t that guest politically naive? How many books does the host have in the living room?”), so, too, the alcoholic (“How well stocked is the bar? Who will make the rounds with me afterward? Who knows my boss and might report my drinking heavily?”). Alcoholism is therefore not easy to change.
Everyday anxiety is not as deep as alcoholism. Fear and courage are basic facts of personality and genetics. They have a strong evolutionary basis (“It is safer in the cave”). Those of us born fearful and timid lead, for the most part, fearful and timid lives. We are assailed with frightening thoughts. These thoughts are hard to disconfirm if we manage to avoid the feared circumstances, and they are frequently confirmed (muggers do come out