When we are miserable and look for anything that remotely looks like happiness, a lot of the times what we find is just a longer way back to misery.
It is only normal to want to be happy, after all, that is all we directly and indirectly desire.
But when is happiness ...wrong? When it is not happiness.
Let me clarify this:
When we fall into the clutches of pain (any type of pain) it causes the brain to be on the lookout for whatever relieves the grip. Anything!
We seek to feel better at all costs,which means doing all we can to avoid pain.
And that is the definition of suppression under the guise of feeling good/happiness. Suppression is when we use temporary fixes for life long problems.
Suppression is when a negative emotion comes up and we decide "I should get a drink" instead of dealing with the negative emotion.
Going out and partying heavily because we feel like shit is what we think choosing feeling good over misery looks like.
Forgoing our real needs of connection and intimacy and pretending they are not there while superficially talking to strangers with a beer in our hands at 4 in the morning is what we think choosing happiness is.
Reading a book or watching a movie because we feel in deep distress is what we think choosing happiness is.
Shooting up drugs that make us high because we are severely hurting inside is what we think choosing happy is.
Coping takes on the guise of happiness in childhood
We don't know how to be happy because we don't know how to be in pain. This is how coping mechanism are born. We first learn to cope in childhood when we first learn that we cannot be as we are. Society dictates that which is lovable and unlovable about us and we need to conform, otherwise we will face punishment in the form of withdrawal of love. We cannot survive without love, so as children, we start maiming our being to the point society says `Enough, now you are lovable.`
What that means is we rejected the part/s which that was unacceptable and therefore bad and hence creating a split in our consciouness, by pushing it into the subconscious and far away from what we call conscious, aware mind.
It is a painful process we don't know we are doing. But the part that we ostracized never goes away. And that's our pain... It will start showing up when least expected, in unconscious, uncontrollable ways. As children, we ingrain into our being the shame of not being able to do better and be better and not being able to get rid of the unlovable side in us. And that brings an even more intense pain.
Self deception is better than unbending torment
And when we don't know what to do with the grip of this misery, the only choice we are left with and the only thing that is in our control is to turn to things that promise to lessen the grip of that pain. We choose to deal with our pain through insubstantial, fragile fixes that we loosely learn to call happiness.
Maybe it's binge eating, maybe it's video games, books, even early sexual behaviour. As children, we don't know that we are choosing to cope, we think we are choosing to be happy. Because it does make us happy, that is the greatest deception. It does. Binge eating does make us happy in the moment and we learn to associate it with relief. But for how long and at what costs?
Our brains are wired to seek for alleviation and solace, hence it's is NOT your fault, you should not feel guilty for how your being and your mind chose to deal and cope with something that seemed insurmountable when you were a child. You chose to survive - that is the most important thing - and fight for it and how you did it mattered less. However, becoming aware of this mechanism becomes your responsibility. Healing is your responsibility.
What that means is that you need the patience to sit with the emotion when you get triggered and get to know it and what is underneath it and how it originated.
Offer unconditional presence to your pain. Hold space for the wounded aspect in you and stop running. It is tiresome! You cannot run away all of your life pretending that what you choose is happiness when all you do is bypass and abandon the wound in you. No one else can do it for you.
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