Why do 'bad' things happen to 'good' people?
By Sandy (Whellum) Harris
A thought which often comes up while trying to deal with an anxiety disorder is “Why me? Did I do something to cause this? Is it punishment for something?” Of course, this is disorder thinking, and exists because of the anxiety. We need to look, therefore, at how to challenge this thinking.
One part of this may be the struggle with why ‘bad’ things happen to ‘good’ people. For instance, if a person develops lung cancer, and they have smoked 40 cigarettes a day for 40 years, we might think “Well, there was always a possibility that would happen - he did know smoking was a risk.” In some ways it is then easier to accept what has happened - there’s a reason for it. If a friend develops cancer, however, and they did not have a high risk factor for it, we still feel the need to look for a reason. “Why would he develop cancer? He’s healthy, he’s a good person”. The answer is that, really, there is no ‘reason’. ’Bad’ things happen. Things happen. If a certain cancer has a 5% occurrence rate in the population that means 5 in every 100 people will develop it, and there may be no particular risk factor, no ’reason’. What we do, though is try to find a reason so that we can make sense of what has happened. Perhaps, as well, it’s too scary to allow for the fact that things like this do just happen. If we can find a reason, then we can go about making sure that we don’t end up in that same position ourselves. The only problem is, that doesn’t work. We can’t protect ourselves from everything, and we can expend a lot of energy trying to ward off one particular possibility, only to find it is a different one that then becomes reality. Where would we draw the line? Do we want to spend our lives looking for all the ‘bad’ and trying to run from it? We also run the risk in that scenario of only seeing ‘bad’, and in seeking it out, we can ensure we find it. I would rather spend time in the light, not the dark, and it is a choice I make and work on constantly. Believe me, it hasn’t always been that way, and it has taken me a lot of hard work to arrive at that place, but I know where I would rather be.
The other way we can try and make sense of ‘bad’ things that happen is to judge the person involved. For instance, if someone who consistently drives while drunk dies when he crashes into a tree, we may say “Well, he brought it on himself”. If a friend is killed by that same drunk driver, we are back to wondering why it happened. “He was a good person, he didn’t deserve to die”. In trying to work out the ‘why’, we just don’t want to admit that these things are random, that ‘good’ people die, that death often has nothing to do with who or what a person was in their life. We think that if we can work out the ‘why’, it allows for there to be a way for us to protect ourselves against ‘bad’ things happening. Once again, this is unrealistic thinking, as life is made up of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and no amount of shrinking from the living of life will ensure a ‘perfect’ journey. Think, also, of all the experiences we would miss, and all the lessons we would not learn, if we could somehow live that ‘perfect’, pristine life. I know that the only reason I am who I am today is because of where I have been, and my life today would not be what it is without every moment of the past ‘good’ and ‘bad’.
Another factor to consider is our judgment of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’. In a particular circumstance we may feel entirely unable to cope with what has happened, whereas another person in the same situation may not have a problem with it. Or this ‘bad’ event may come at a particular time when coping skills are low for some reason -at another time we would have the ability to handle it easily. It is also important to consider that the lines of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are very fuzzy -what is seen as ‘good’ today may be ‘bad’ tomorrow. Having to live in constant judgment of everything -all actions, every word spoken, every thought— in case we may have done something ‘wrong’, can only increase anxiety.
If a series of ‘bad’ things happen to us in a short space of time, we may fall into thinking that the world hates us, that there is some sort of conspiracy by the universe, that it is terrible ‘bad luck’. We may even feel, after several of these events, that now we should be protected from anything else ‘bad’ happening for a while, because we have had our ‘fair share’. Once again, these things have just happened. If we really sit down and think about it, they have no connection. The timing is terrible, yes, and it tests our ability to cope, but we are not being ‘punished’, and thinking that this is all ‘bad luck’ will only compound the negative feelings being experienced.
We often talk of ‘bad’ luck and ‘good’ luck, but how often are there other factors involved? It may be easy to say of someone “Oh, she gets everything she wants, she always has such good luck”, when in fact, the reason she has what she wants is that she has worked to make it happen – that what she has is the result of her efforts. In victim thinking, it appears that we ’have nothing’, that we are plagued by bad luck, that others ’have everything’, because they have all the luck’. This becomes a reason to stop trying and to pre-determine a negative outcome for all efforts, which in turn can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The only way to achieve anything is to make the effort, to give it a try—the outcome may not always be ’good’, but there can not even be an outcome if we give up before we begin. What is the good side of this? I think it is the fact that as much as bad things happen, so do good things. We have the ability to decide how we will view events in our lives, and we choose not to be on the lookout for the ’bad stuff’, not to fall into the trap of negative thinking. Next time you catch yourself in one of the negative thought patterns - ”I always have bad luck”, “Nothing good ever happens to me”, “I knew this would happen” (always something ’bad’!) - stop and challenge the thought. Yes, there are things that happen in life that we don’t like, events we wish we could change, circumstances we have no control over. What we do have control over is how we think about what has happened, and what we do from that moment on. We may need time to come to terms with what has happened, but then comes the time to move forward.
All of this shows that we can, in fact, use thinking to help us handle what happens in life. Being aware of how we view life events, watching for the traps of negative thinking, taking a step back to look at what has happened and what possibilities exist -these can all be used to move forward and deal with the situation. Whatever life has thrown at me in the past, I still believe in looking forward to the future, and in my ability to cope with whatever the future may bring.
By Sandy (Whellum) Harris
Re-printed with permission (article in PADA October 2006 Newsletter)
PADA (SA) website address is: http://www.panicanxietydisorder.org.au/
