Why Striving for Happiness is a Waste of Your Time.
“Don’t worry, be happy”, “Happy Hour” , “Happy as Larry”, “Happiness is a Choice…” What’s with all the fuss about being happy? In this blog post I’ll explain why happiness is a bust flush and why you’d be much better off ditching good vibes only for a more considered approach to leading a meaningful and fulfilling life.
Nobody:
Me: “What do you hope to achieve in therapy?”
You: “I just want to be happy…”
Nobody:
In my therapy practice “I just want to be happy…” is an answer I’ve heard many, many (many) times in response to the “what do you want from therapy?” question. It runs neck and neck with “to feel better” and “to get rid of/control these feelings.” All of these hopes are noble ones, but they run counter to how we operate as complicated, messy human beings.
Russ Harris in his life-changing book “The Happiness Trap” points out four happiness myths that keep us all stuck in the eternal doomscroll of the anxious mind. They are:
Myth 1: Happiness Is The Natural State For All Human Beings
Let’s think about that for a moment. How many genuinely, permanently happy people do you know in your life?
Now think about how many depressed, anxious, suicidal, unhappy people you know? What’s the ratio? Is this evidence for or against the myth that all of us are naturally happy?
Jon Kabat Zinn, a mindfulness teacher, once said that life is a series of catastrophes and even wrote a book about it called “Full Catastrophe Living”.
Life throws a lot at us - illness, death, relationship issues, identity issues, toxic systems, money problems, workplace bullying, sexual difficulties, an ageing body to name just a few - and we really have to learn to surf the waves of catastrophe or go under.
Yet at the same time we walk around thinking that everyone else is happy and it’s just us who aren’t doing life right. “If I could just get everything right - the job, the house, the relationships(s)- then I would be happy….”
Well the bad news is that happiness comes and goes and to quote Mona’s Law: ““You can have a hot apartment, a hot lover, and a hot job, but you can’t have all three at the same time.” In other words everything is changing all the time, and the more you try and hold things together by seeking to control them, the more they will fall apart.
However, the good news is also that happiness comes and goes. We need to learn to savour it when it’s here, and realise it’s one of many, many emotions we experience during the course of a day, a week or a life. Happiness is not our baseline go-to emotion and it’s not a good idea to set life up that way either - just ask any burnt out insta-influencer how it worked out for them…
Myth 2: If You’re Not Happy, You’re Defective
How many times have you asked yourself “what’s wrong with me?” or “why am I such a failure/loser/rubbish adult?” Then followed it up with self-criticism about being weak or stupid - “everyone else is happy (see Myth 1 above) so there must be something wrong with me and that’s why I feel so terrible….I must be depressed/anxious/broken (or insert label here) which is proof of how useless I am…” and on and on it goes.
The big secret though is that it’s not your fault; this is just your mind doing what it’s supposed to do - scanning for threats and problems and then trying to solve them. This is called negativity bias and there’s a reason why the brain operates in this way - it’s trying to protect you, but doing a pretty bad job of it.
Luckily though, thanks to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) it’s possible to get to know your brain better, and make friends with the fact that it will inevitably produce upsetting thoughts. ACT teaches us how to unhook from our thoughts so they no longer push us around.
Myth 3: To Create A Better Life, We Must Get Rid Of Negative Feelings.
In my therapy practice I often tell clients “I don’t do happy-clappy, I don’t do toxic positivity either…” and while that’s sinking in, I mention that moving towards what’s important to us in life brings with it a whole range of feelings.
Think about times you’ve achieved things - passing a test, keeping a relationship going (or ending one), running a marathon, learning a new recipe, going to the gym, training as a CBT therapist(!), or simply managing to get out of bed and dressed without falling apart - all of these things involve a range of feelings - joy, pleasure, sadness, frustration etc.
The fact is that anything that is important to us involves excitement and disappointment, enthusiasm and times when we have to force ourselves to continue, hope that things will work out along with stress, anxiety and fear that it might not. You can’t create a more fulfilling and meaningful life without experiencing pleasant and unpleasant feelings. If we try and avoid or suppress negative feelings rather than make space for them, they will come back and bite us even harder.
4: You Should Be Able To Control What You Think And Feel
Many clients I work with have strong “control agendas” and believe that if they can simply control their thoughts and feelings all will be well. Mental health becomes a battle of wills - us versus our brains, (spoiler alert - our brain wins every time).
There is a ton of research that shows we have very little control over our thoughts and our brain produces thousands of weird and wonderful thoughts every day. If we try to suppress or avoid making room for those thoughts, they get stickier, louder and more frequent. Trying to replace “negative” thoughts with “positive” ones (such as affirmations, visualisations or “putting it out into the universe”) as many self-help books and therapies suggest, is just another form of suppression. It doesn’t end well.
Remember the brain is wired for threat (see Myth 2,) so sooner or later it will reset itself no matter how many rainbows and unicorns you conjure up to make it all feel better. The minute life gets stressful (see Myth 1) those unicorns will be toast, and you will be back in the trenches again, trying to suppress or avoid the inevitable difficult feelings that come up as part of human experience (see Myth 3.)
Instead of trying to control our thoughts which is almost impossible, we can control our actions. It’s what we do rather than what we think that helps us to lead a meaningful and fulfilling life. This is why Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is referred to as ACT - the emphasis is on doing.
In conclusion, striving for happiness is a waste of your time because happiness is only one of a multitude of emotions we experience. Life is complicated and the brain is tricky. The Happiness Myths are potentially destructive for our wellbeing because they create a Happiness Trap that puts us in direct conflict with human nature and the way the world is. We keep trying “to just be happy” and beat ourselves up when we “fail” to accomplish it.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) challenges the Happiness Myths and offers a different, more flexible way of dealing with our normal, fear based thoughts and feelings, along with a values based approach to taking meaningful action to face life head on, in the moment, open to whatever comes up for us along the way. Ironically, not pursuing happiness at all costs is what will make us happier. How do you like them apples?
You can find out more about the Happiness Myths via Russ Harris’s website and also via his excellent books “The Happiness Trap”, “The Reality Slap” and the “Confidence Gap.”
Rhizome Practice also offers ACT for depression, anxiety, trauma and other related problems.
