Chasing happy

“What’s wrong?” 

I overhear an auntie and grandma repeatedly asking a closed lip teen “what’s wrong!?”, succeeded by a sigh of exasperation when there is no reply forthcoming. After lengthy yet unsuccessful attempts at eliciting a response, an injection from her mother has the presumed source of the young girls ‘moodiness’ identified. The older generations quickly turn to mollifying her. Falling on deaf ears, “you know what, it’ll be ok!” “Just cheer up.” They quickly try to change the conversation to something ‘happier’ and the girl slumps lower in her seat, hair hanging around her bent frame as she wipes her eyes and buries herself in her phone. Unseen, unheard, feelings pushed aside.

This situation is familiar to many of us who were brought up by the baby-boomer generation. Parents who due to their own upbringing couldn’t handle witnessing big or negative emotion in others, and/or being known as the most involved parenting generation to date, had their children’s best interest at heart and headed to quickly discharging the negative feeling to make room for happy. 

Whatever the motivator we have learnt from a very young age that the so-called negative emotions, i.e anger, dismay, frustration, sadness, shame, disappointment, worry, are not OK. Our subconscious absorbs what is approved and disapproved of and we become very adept at pushing down what is ‘bad’.

Then we find ourselves in adulthood struggling to identify and understand the uncomfortable feeling that washes through our bodies, the fizzy bubbles of anxiety fluttering around our tummy and shoulders, the heaviness of sadness deep in our chest, or the prickly tension of anger seated in the clench of the jaw or fist. 

We ignore our body, or pay little heed to why we react to situations in a certain way.  

We don’t know what it is that we refuse to process, let alone are we able to sit with the emotion. 

I am one who finds myself reaching for a soothing mug of something hot, or a square, or 4, of dark chocolate when that unnamed feeling of restlessness or sadness flutters inside. Others switch off by way of a numbing Netflix binge, a descent into the social media scroll, or find a high produced from another swipe of the credit card, or supposedly more ‘productive’ pursuits such as going for a run or overworking in the pursuit of career or financial success. We consume, avoid and push down the negative emotions with the inherited belief that we should not have those feelings, that there’s ‘nothing wrong’ and we should be happy. 

Positive psychology shoulders some of the  blame. While we are thankfully at a time where people are finally starting to talk about their mental and emotional health, a sleuth of self-help books point us to how to be happy. People are searching for happiness, and the modern world presents countless products, services and to provide that dose of happiness we seek. 

Ironically new research from the University of Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences in Australia shows that striving towards the unattainable goal of happy is however likely making us more miserable. 

It’s been found that when people place a great deal of pressure on themselves to feel happy, or think that others around them do, they are more likely to see their negative emotions and experiences as signs of personal failure. We experience reductions in well-being and general life satisfaction as a result.  Furthermore, avoiding negative experiences in life then results in us responding badly when they inevitably do arise. 

The research doesn’t condemn trying to feel happy; rather it points to the need to accept that we will feel both happy and unhappy throughout life, and that is perfectly normal and healthy. “Happiness is a good thing, but setting it up as something to be achieved tends to fail,” explains co-author and social psychologist Brock Bastian.

If you are up only for the good times, you will be sad for the most part of your life.

We are by beautiful design complex, and emotional creatures, and about half of our diverse array of emotional states are unpleasant. The human experience simply doesn’t involve signing up to be happy 100% of the time. 

I say stop makingbeing happy your goal in life. It’s vague and somewhat ridiculous. I am not condoning positive steps to increasing your happiness, just not to the extent of overriding all the other richness in life. If you keep going after the highs, you’ll likely find yourself fatter, poorer or more burnt out as a result. And if you continue along that path, the consistent lows will drag you into chronic depression. 

Life is challenging, but this is what makes living such an adventure. Really! I suggest that we start to acknowledge that negative states are actually valuable to learning and growth. By accepting and caring for the once-rejected parts of ourselves we can access wisdom and grow and evolve into our best selves. Negative emotions are like a compass that can guide your way. Fear, shame, embarrassment, or humiliation may arise, but don’t let them stop you.  These are the clues that will lead you to your self.

A society that embraces messy emotions and experiences is one that is poised for better mental health and a richer life.

Feel the feels. Get in touch with your body. Expand your emotional vocabulary and begin to identify very specifically what you are feeling. Then sit with it, don’t be in a hurry to change the feeling, or feel like you shouldn’t be feeling it, give yourself the space and compassion to be human. BE SAD. BE ANGRY.

Then listen to the thoughts inside your head that are coming up when you are feeling these feelings. Are you sad because your relationship ended? Are you angry over a betrayal? What are you thinking when you’re feeling like that? Lean into the emotion and expose your thoughts, and own them. Forgive yourself and give yourself the space to be messy, unproductive and...well, human.

Practice this and I promise that there will be understanding at the bottom of every negative feeling. It’s completely healthy to feel exactly what are feeling, and better yet, it’s a release. You don’t want unprocessed emotion hanging around in your body just to rear its head later. Be honest with yourself, and love yourself regardless.

Then you can open yourself up to work through them. 

Despite what you may believe to the contrary, you and only you are in control of your thoughts. Change up your thoughts and your emotions will follow course. It is your thoughts are what cause your feelings (not the other way around). It’s not our experience in the world that makes us feel. It is what we think about the experience. This means that you are in control of feeling the way you want to.

 “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Carl Jung.