Pessimistic labels lead to passivity, whereas optimistic ones lead to attempts to change. - Martin E P Seligman

But clinical psychologists also began to find something disconcerting emerging from therapy: even on that rare occasion when therapy goes superbly and unusually well, and you help the client rid herself of depression, anxiety, and anger, happiness is not guaranteed. Emptiness is not an uncommon result.

The genius of evolution lies in the dynamic tension between optimism and pessimism continually correcting each other.

the paradigm human experiment, carried out by Donald Hiroto and replicated many times since, subjects are randomly divided into three groups. This is called the “triadic design.” One group (escapable) is exposed to a noxious but nondamaging event, such as loud noise. When they push a button in front of them, the noise stops, so that their own action escapes the noise. A second group (inescapable) is yoked to the first group. The subjects receive exactly the same noise, but it goes off and on regardless of what they do. The second group is helpless by definition, since the probability of the noise going off given that they make any response is identical to the probability of the noise going off given that they do not make that response. Operationally, learned helplessness is defined by the fact that nothing you do alters the event. Importantly the escapable and inescapable groups have exactly the same objective stressor. A third group (control) receives nothing at all. That is part one of the triadic experiment.