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“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” It’s the most quoted line in The Princess Bride, and the man who says it is right about pain and wrong about the woman he loves.

In the first of six episodes on The Princess Bride, licensed marriage and family therapist Eddie Eccker takes the hilltop scene apart. Westley, masked as the Dread Pirate Roberts, tells Buttercup that life is pain while believing a story about her that isn’t true. The episode is for anyone in a hard stretch who keeps thinking this shouldn’t be happening.

What’s in this episode:

Why valuing happiness too highly can make people less happy (Iris Mauss, UC Berkeley)
Radical acceptance, where Marsha Linehan’s DBT skill came from, and how it gets misused
The 2018 study that found accepting your feelings helped and accepting your situation didn’t (Brett Ford, University of Toronto)
Cynicism as armor, and why Westley couldn’t tell his real injury from the story he built on it - A two-sentence practice for the next time you think this shouldn’t be happening

Haven’t seen the movie? Watch it this week. The sword fight on the Cliffs of Insanity is one of the best in cinema, and the actors did it themselves.

Sources and research notes:

• Ford, B. Q., Lam, P., John, O. P., & Mauss, I. B. (2018). The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(6), 1075–1092. Abstract | Full text
• University of Toronto summary of the Ford study: Don’t brood or wallow when feeling bad
• Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., & Savino, N. S. (2011). Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion, 11(4), 807–815. Full text
• Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. The radical acceptance skill is in the Distress Tolerance module.

Eddie Eccker, MS, LMFT, is co-owner of Voyages Counseling in Colorado and the author of You Are Not Finished (Coming soon).

More at eddieeccker.com and voyagescounseling.com

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What does it take to keep becoming? Eddie Eccker wrestles with that question on The Voyage Cast through interviews, topical discussions, and teachings on emotional health, marriage and family, faith, and the habits and stories that shape a life.

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