Uncovering Happiness: Overcoming Depression with Mindfulness and Self-Compassion by Elisha Goldstein

Author:Elisha Goldstein [Goldstein, Elisha]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2015-01-26T23:00:00+00:00

What Is Play?

Children play. Nobody has to show them how to do it; they’re just born knowing. But as adults, we become so disconnected from it that we forget what it is and how to do it. So let’s start by looking at what play is and what it means for adults to engage in play.

Psychiatrist and clinical researcher Stuart Brown, who founded the nonprofit organization National Institute of Play in Carmel Valley California, says “Play is an ancient, voluntary, inherently pleasurable, apparently purposeless activity or process that is undertaken for its own sake, and that strengthens our muscles and our social skills, fertilizes brain activity, tempers and deepens our emotions, take us out of time, and enables a state of balance and poise.” Play is happening when you are so engrossed in something you enjoy that you lose all sense of time and don’t want it to end. It’s where that inner critic finally shuts up, self-consciousness fades away, and we can open up to new possibilities. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-born psychologist and researcher, calls the experience of play a state of “flow.” In flow, while there may be a goal, the activity is its own reward. The degree of difficulty is just enough to keep you interested but not so difficult that you’re tempted to give up. This balance of play is a feeling of engagement and satisfaction—the opposite of depression.

When we’re depressed, play can seem like a foreign concept. Sometimes when I ask my depressed clients what they envision when I say the word play, they look at me with a blank stare. So I decided to conduct an experiment about play with a number of people I worked with, as well as some family and friends. It was simple: I asked them all what play meant to them. I found that many people I spoke with had a hard time conceiving what play is for grown-ups, because it’s different from child’s play, which was the only kind of play they knew. In fact, in a culture that prizes productivity, adult play seems to be defined as a negative, unproductive, self-indulgent activity—or even something X-rated. I believe that we need to update our definition of play.

My questioning led me to believe that play means different things to different people. For example, after my kids go to bed, I enjoy playing around in the kitchen making homemade granola—but my wife would see this as a decidedly unplayful chore. I enjoy being creative and engaging in the process of playing with different ingredients. For one of my clients, play means getting lost in the book Fifty Shades of Grey, while that would be torture to her boyfriend. Another client revealed that one of her “guilty pleasures” was lying down in her pajamas and immersing herself in the TV show Game of Thrones, a purposeless yet pleasurable activity. She was surprised to identify that as a moment of play for her, and she no longer felt guilty about it. She had redefined what play was, and soon you will too.

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