Let's talk about the 'tyranny of happiness'
January 27, 2017 at 8:58 am
(This post was last modified: January 27, 2017 at 8:59 am by Longhorn.)
This is something I feel strongly about. I've been guilty of it at multiple points in my life and I see a lot of people affected by it or buying into it everywhere.
Basically, the tyranny of happiness is the phenomenon of 'just be positive', 'think positively' etc. It's the extensively misguided mentality of 'if you stay positive, everything will turn out ok'.
I'm not against being happy or genuinely a positive person. There are of course people who could benefit from learning to pay more attention to the positives rather than the negatives. However, the tyranny of happiness is the belief that all your problems and misfortunes are just the result of your negative thoughts and they can be fixed with positive ones. And as outlandish as it may sound put that way, it's everywhere. Movies, books, just generally rooted in people's minds.
The danger of this way of thinking is that it disallows a person to feel negative emotions, making them something wrong, a symptom of some core issue. You're not happy, then what's wrong? With you, your life, your brain? It makes people feel responsible for their own unhappiness and doesn't let them authentically experience it, making them feel worse.
Negative emotions are human. Pushing them away and forcing oneself not to feel them will only make them come bubbling up stronger. A person can't feel happy all the time, or even realistically most of the time. As one of my favorite people JP Sears put it, happiness is our favorite emotion, but it's not our only emotion. When you're subscribed to the mentality of 'I must feel happy or there is something wrong', you don't allow yourself to feel truly sad, angry or afraid... or happy.
It's something personal to me, so I just wanted to get it out there. I think it's tremendously important to understand that you are human and as such will inevitably feel all of the emotions that come with it. And just because you aren't positive and cheerful every single day doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.
This is also why I hate the question 'how are you?'. Because if I say anything other than happy when I'm not happy, I'll be met with concerned questions about what happened and then told to not worry about it or just look at the positives.
Here are some videos talking about the subject or related to it that gave me the idea of posting this thread.
Psychologist Susan David:
JP Sears' video:
Very interesting vlog from zefrank, which made me think a while back:
Basically, the tyranny of happiness is the phenomenon of 'just be positive', 'think positively' etc. It's the extensively misguided mentality of 'if you stay positive, everything will turn out ok'.
I'm not against being happy or genuinely a positive person. There are of course people who could benefit from learning to pay more attention to the positives rather than the negatives. However, the tyranny of happiness is the belief that all your problems and misfortunes are just the result of your negative thoughts and they can be fixed with positive ones. And as outlandish as it may sound put that way, it's everywhere. Movies, books, just generally rooted in people's minds.
The danger of this way of thinking is that it disallows a person to feel negative emotions, making them something wrong, a symptom of some core issue. You're not happy, then what's wrong? With you, your life, your brain? It makes people feel responsible for their own unhappiness and doesn't let them authentically experience it, making them feel worse.
Negative emotions are human. Pushing them away and forcing oneself not to feel them will only make them come bubbling up stronger. A person can't feel happy all the time, or even realistically most of the time. As one of my favorite people JP Sears put it, happiness is our favorite emotion, but it's not our only emotion. When you're subscribed to the mentality of 'I must feel happy or there is something wrong', you don't allow yourself to feel truly sad, angry or afraid... or happy.
It's something personal to me, so I just wanted to get it out there. I think it's tremendously important to understand that you are human and as such will inevitably feel all of the emotions that come with it. And just because you aren't positive and cheerful every single day doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.
This is also why I hate the question 'how are you?'. Because if I say anything other than happy when I'm not happy, I'll be met with concerned questions about what happened and then told to not worry about it or just look at the positives.
Here are some videos talking about the subject or related to it that gave me the idea of posting this thread.
Psychologist Susan David:
JP Sears' video:
Very interesting vlog from zefrank, which made me think a while back:
