Everything is good, but there is no happiness

“I have a husband, healthy children, a favorite job, a cozy home, enough money. But life is hard for me. I don’t know how to experience happiness at all, ”writes a visitor to our site. Another, a mother of three, thinks, “Why can’t I be happy? Because of the monotony? Or because I always want something more?

The inability to experience happiness – this is how you can define the condition from which many of our contemporaries suffer. They talk about it with friends and therapists, write on Internet forums. What is the reason?

Joy is out of place

Everyone’s story is unique, but the guilt that gets in the way of enjoying life almost always comes from childhood. Perhaps it is this feeling that spoils the lives of many, forcing them to deprive themselves of rest and give up pleasures.

“It is especially common in unwanted children or in those to whom adults made too high demands,” explains family psychologist Inna Shifanova. – Such children feel superfluous, guilty that they were born. They try to atone for this non-existent guilt with helpfulness or obscurity. In the hope of earning approval, they do not allow themselves to take care of their own well-being and live for the sake of others. Gradually they lose the ability to recognize their desires. No matter how high they reach, they do not know how to be happy.”

The inability to be happy is often found in children of depressed parents. Father and mother, who look at the world through black glasses, pass on this property to children along with gloomy instructions and superstitions: “Do not rejoice so that they do not envy”, “Whoever laughs today will have to cry tomorrow.”

In such families, the house is always in danger of fire, the car – an accident, and loved ones – illness and misfortune. Children who grow up in an oppressive atmosphere get used to blaming themselves for manifestations of joy that look out of place against the backdrop of gray everyday life.

Suffering is noble

Our culture is permeated with Christian values, such as the rejection of selfishness, compassion, love for one’s neighbor, and a sense of one’s own imperfection. Lying on the ground prepared by a bleak childhood, they take extreme forms and turn into a ban on subjective well-being.

“Every day I see people suffering. And I don’t feel entitled to be happy when there are so many unhappy people around!” 32-year-old Sofia admits. Even if she does not face grief in reality, television daily shows her refugees in Europe, starving in Africa … But will we help them by forbidding ourselves to enjoy life?

“When our thoughts are constantly occupied with other people’s suffering, especially those where we are unable to really help, this speaks not so much of our heightened sympathy as of hidden pain,” explains psychologist Elena Ulitova. “Due to the mechanism of psychological projection, our attention chooses in the world around us what is consonant with our unconscious experiences.”

Effectively helping others can actually make us feel better for a while. But it is useful to allow yourself to seek help, including psychological help, and accept it. And remember that happiness is not a limited and redistributable resource. Giving up our happiness, we do not increase its quantity in the world, but decrease it!

Looking for meaning

Does this mean that guilt and the inability to feel happy are just unpleasant personal characteristics that should be eliminated, and immediately? Not always. To begin with, it is worth thinking about them, says psychotherapist-sophrologist Marite Cushvelu. Complaints “I am doing well, but there is no happiness”, “I am unhappy, although I have everything for happiness” can be the first step to the question: “Who am I? What do I really need? The internal dissatisfaction that they testify to can be the beginning of a more mature attitude towards oneself.

The world pushes us to the thought “If I have everything on the list: a house, a summer house, a car, a family, children, a job, then I have everything for happiness.” But this may not be enough, and not because we are insatiable or fastidious.

“Having a roof over your head, eating enough, not being afraid for your life are our basic needs, and happiness is a matter of inner aspiration,” emphasizes psychoanalyst Virginie Meggle. “Born with a silver spoon in his mouth” – they say about a beautiful and capable child. But let’s not be mistaken, notes the psychoanalyst, “for parents, this is a way of saying: he has absolutely everything he needs, he has nothing to complain about. That is, he has no right to complain.”

Having absorbed this approach, the child will grow up with the idea that he really has “everything” for happiness, and will feel guilty if he is unhappy. Until the day he admits that he really can want something more than he has. And then he will turn to his inner “I” and see that only something unique that he needs can give meaning to his life.

Choose direction

The modern world is built by adults who, in their youth, went through deprivation, hunger and fear. Therefore, it is natural that they want to protect their children and grandchildren from this and sincerely believe that material wealth is the main condition for happiness. But is it sufficient?

In the pursuit of various benefits, we often forget to ask ourselves how valuable they are to ourselves. “We buy endlessly, and in the end “everything ends up in complete confusion: a cat, a child, a motorcycle, a summer house, the last smartphone, vital and secondary needs, all mixed up,” continues Virginie Meggle. “But an abundance of goods cannot in itself be a source of joy. My closets can be full of clothes and I still won’t know how to dress to please myself.”

The dependence of life satisfaction on material security is non-linear, emphasizes psychologist Dmitry Leontiev. “Of course, while suffering disasters, hunger and cold, one can hardly feel like a happy person. But when the basic needs are satisfied, the level of happiness ceases to be significantly dependent on well-being. Multimillionaires have only slightly higher life satisfaction scores compared to the middle class. Therefore, the answer to the question of whether a doubling of GDP will make us happier is negative, ”the psychologist is convinced.

How can we find our own path? If we ask for help, attend lectures or classes on personality development, we will only be given a general direction. Philosophy, for example, encourages us to enjoy what we have. But this is what turns out to be the most difficult.

habit of good

Unfortunately, the mind quickly becomes accustomed to what until recently gave living pleasure, a phenomenon that psychologists call hedonic adaptation. We get used to the fact that everything is fine. Even the strongest pleasure of meeting the man or woman of your life after a while ceases to be so sharp. Psychologically, we are not designed to experience eternal happiness.

Is it possible to fight hedonistic adaptation? Some positive psychologists suggest avoiding routine, monotony, diversifying our activities, and also remembering that we did not always have what we have, and we can lose it. The glass that we see as half empty should, in their opinion, be considered half full. But someone is more comfortable with a half-empty glass – there is sobriety of thought and unwillingness to be disappointed in this. However, there is a third approach: “The point is not whether the glass is full or empty,” Dmitry Leontiev is sure, “but that we have the opportunity to fill it.”

For happiness, we are inspired by recipes that have worked for others and have been effective for them. But we will never be happy just by copying them. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution to being happy,” says Virginie Meggle. “Therefore, my advice is this: you can test and reject different theories and approaches dozens of times, it is important that in the end we pick up our own recipe for happiness.”