The definition of happiness being very emotion-oriented - the problem is that there's too many quick and dirty ways to chase that in ways that end up being unhelpful to people. If you just have another martini or even more severe substances. But commercial culture and our media is constantly encouraging us to think that if we feel good we live well. We're only too happy to sell you goods and services from the dancing oivoids and the pill you can take, or the trips or the cars or the clothes or the women that you can get with - whatever that is that will give you the quick route to that.

Almost all people suffer some form of intense inner pain at some times in their lives. The suffering might be depression, anxiety, substance abuse, or suicidal thoughts and it results from the battles we wage against our thoughts as we futilely try to get rid of our historie.

Antidepressant medications, you still have some depressive thoughts. Antipsychotic medications, you still have some psychotic symptoms for the vast majority of the people taking them. But it gives them a little separation, and it doesn't control his behavior as much when you have a sad feeling, difficult thought, an odd perceptual experience. We can teach people those exact skills in therapy, you get longer-term benefits and without the side effects. So don't be sold just because a commercial interest wants to sell you things.

When we fly planes over countries, dropping bombs on the evil ones, I think we're doing something very similar to what's being done when the infidels are getting their comeuppance with planes going into buildings. So it's gotten to the point where if we are not healthy psychologically as a human society, we will not have a planet to live on. And that's what keeps me up at night, when I see so little focus on the behavioral side of these problems, and the idea that just politics, or just physical science, is going to solve this.

Go inside the sweetness of life, catch the places where you genuinely were moved by or connected with life, and you'll find in there kind of a light that can direct you when the cacophony gets very noisy and you get confused and lost, that can direct you towards what you care about.

Could we take anxiety to be something that may be of importance, may even be meaningful? And it says something about your history, and could we learn to sort of hold it in a way that's more compassionate, to sort of bring the frightened part of you close and treat it with some dignity, and keep focused instead on what kind of life you want to live connected to what kind of meaning and purpose. That's going to be a quicker, more self-compassionate and more certain journey forward inside things like panic disorder.

If you aren't willing to have it, you will.