OBSESSED WITH BEING HAPPY : Why aren't we ok with not being ok?

So recently, I was talking to the one of the mums that I teach English to and as it happens in every class, we started straying from learning how to use the conditional tense and phrasal verbs and began to talk about our daily lives. She confided in me and began to tell me that she was tired because she had to see over 15 clients a day and that she felt that she wasn’t really giving her all to the clients that needed her the most (she's a psychiatrist and lecturer). So me, trying to make use of the 3 years of psychology that I studied and because of genuine curiosity, wanted to know why did she feel this way? Little did I know we were about to spend the next two hours (my class with her is one hour btw) discussing something that I deem as utterly important and relevant to our society today.

She said to me, "Darcy, this may sound bad but sometimes I think that a lot of the clients who I see, really don’t need to be here." "People are just not ok with not being ok."

"People are just not ok with not being ok"

You should have seen the look in my eyes when she said that. Those words, so simple but they really spoke to me. I wanted to know more, why was she saying this and as a bonus I could get a therapist´s take on it.As we went into detail she told me that a lot of her clients were going through situations where they would experience difficult emotions but instead of living in the moment, feeling the emotions and looking at it as a natural reaction to an uncomfortable situation, people were worried and afraid that something was wrong with them because they weren't happy.

She told me about clients who thought that they were grieving too much after the deaths of loved ones or people stuck in dead end jobs who felt like they should at least be grateful and not so negative, basically people having normal reactions to everyday problems but being freaked out by it.


That´s when we came to our conclusion,(if you know psychology, it’s just a correlation not a causation haha) people think that life is a journey where happiness is the end goal when the reality is the complete opposite. Life is a journey but happiness is just a recurring part of it(just like the other emotions). We sat down and started to describe life as a path and along that path we have obstacles , some parts of the journey we will be happy and in others the obstacles will really cause us to go through a roller-coaster of emotions.

But why is it so hard for us to see life like that? Why are we (me included) obsessed with always being happy and nothing else, even though that is not possible?


We could have spent hours talking about the whys and hows but here I just wanna talk about a few.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Oh lord, where do I begin? Social media has made so many things easier for us but at the same time complicated so many others. My Instagram is full of happy people, people on trips to beautiful places, eating at fancy restaurants, going out to the best nightclubs, at every popular concert and festival with the best clothes and the best looking friends and they all seem so happy. If you are just surrounded by happy people, I guess after a while you start to think ok, the whole damn world is happy and dancing under rainbows so I have to be the same way too. That creates a pressure (conscious and unconscious) to always portray the same mood. No one wants to see the bad days, they want the highlight reel of your life and if everyone is happy then why aren't you too?right?

COMPARISON

20´s are definitely a trying time for us all. We are all on different journeys in our life and although we know that, we still end up comparing ourselves to others. No matter how many quotes you read and how much you convince yourself that everyone is different, it's normal that some days you feel a little down about where you are in your life. I'm definitely no exception. Sometimes I see people my age with careers that seem so amazing and I think OMG what am I doing with my life or friends who are married and getting married and I'm here single like a pringle. (Na don’t worry I don’t need that plus one on the wedding invite haha). Most days I'm ok but I also know that I have days when I'm like wtf am I doing with my life besides working and watching Netflix meanwhile Alejandro just got a promotion in his job as a consultant erm Alex..consult me please because ya girl is lost and confused hahaha. Seriously, can't we just find joy in the process? Instead we compare ourselves and think that everyone our age has it together so we should too.

PEER PRESSURE

Remember when we first learned about peer pressure? That scenario where you´re underage at a party and all your friends are drinking and they are encouraging you to drink too, what do you do blah blah. Great. But how come no one talks about peer pressure as an adult? Like we continue having peers but the pressure…I don’t think it just disappears. I remember reading an article about young workers who were going broke because they were trying keep up with the Jones´at work. They talked about how they had no money because they were going out for drinks and dinner with coworkers and their bosses just because everyone else was doing it and also because they didn’t want to feel left out and miss out on an opportunity to network. They felt that pressure to keep up appearances, to be the happy and well off employee and coworker all because they felt as if that is what was expected of them.

Link to that article here

Ok I can go on and list a few more reasons but I wanna wrap this up.


I can´t help but wonder why we are so obsessed with only being happy?Does happiness work like a drug that gives us a high when we have it and leaves us craving more when we don´t? We would think that in a world where everything is more or less easily accessible to us that we would be more content but maybe that is the problem. We place a lot of our ideas about happiness in relation to material things and individual achievements so much so that when we don´t have the latest gadget or we didn't get that job or didn't go on that trip to Bali, we are depressed af and don´t know what to do with ourselves. Why is it so hard for us to accept that life is not always going to be happy and fun and that’s ok? If I don’t feel good today doesn’t mean that I'm going to be this way tomorrow and it certainly doesn’t mean that I'm going to be this way forever.

So, what do I want you to take away from this?

• Happiness is not a journey with a final destination, it’s a rough path filled with obstacles, some more difficult than others.

• Happiness has to come from within. If it comes from external factors then you will always rely on those factors for happiness and will be a hot mess without them.

• It's ok to feel other emotions. Sad, angry, grief, depressed, hurt etc. It only becomes a problem if the feelings are prolonged, unwarranted and start to affect your daily functioning.

• I wrote this article but I'm struggling just like you guys so don’t feel like I have my shit together based on this post or the things I post on Instagram haha.

Check out a few articles that talks about the same topic but just a little more in depth

• I absolutely love this article Shannon Molloy wrote and think it talks about this topic better than I ever could. Check it out here.

• This article by Carolyn Gregoire for Huff Post Life here

• Scary Mommy's take on it here