My dog, a miniature dachshund named Zeke the Geek, is a joyous little creature . . .
Zeke doesn't care if we are rich or poor, ugly or gorgeous, acclaimed or sneered at, and he doesn't seem at all concerned about what the poodle down the block thinks of the way we live. Zeke is happy as long as he has good health and enough food, a warm place to sleep, and a little affection.
I would feel very fortunate if, when asked how I am doing, I could respond (with Zeke in mind): It's a dog's life.
For it seems to me that human beings ought to experience at least as much pleasure from living as a dog does.
But how many of us do?
Writer Taki Theodoracopoulos notes, "We have finally reached a state of such anxious discomfort over how to be happy that lives have dwindled into an unending process of fulfilling obsessive lists. It is the trendiest of anxieties, and to prevent it a whole industry of shrinks, gurus and books has sprung up and is doing a brisk business."
Many of the adult children I have talked to find their lives dreadfully intolerable. They don't have trendy anxieties. Underneath their smiley faces, they feel dissatisfied or unhappy most of the time. They want to like themselves and their lives, they tell me, but they don't know how to begin.
Some even doubt that such a state as happiness and self-esteem even exists. Dulcie described the feeling this way:
"Sometimes I seriously question whether I can continue going though life this way. I have no faith in the future. I feel gloomy, pessimistic. Life should be better than this. I have a good job, but work is a charade. Everyone thinks my marriage is wonderful . . . everyone except me. Greg and I never talk about important things. Our sex life is a joke. I've got pretty clothes, a nice car, a beautiful son . . . but my life is empty. I'm faking it. I hate this life, I just hate it. I hate myself and the constant unending struggle just to keep living. That's what life is . . . a constant struggle. And it's not fair."
Dulcie is not alone in her misery. Thousands of other adult children share similar feelings, and too often each one is living a secret life of emotional isolation, faking it, putting on a pleasant mask for friends and family and co-workers while inside they feel empty, almost dead.
They don't know that it can be different.
There are two distinct and separate kinds of unhappiness which are best dealt with as two different conditions.
External, situational unhappiness strikes all of us at some time in our lives. It is the unhappiness of grief and loss. It hits us when we lose someone we love through death, divorce or separation. If we are fired from our job or passed over for promotion, if our house burns down, or we break a leg or develop a heart condition, if our best friend rejects us or our child is arrested, if our spouse is unfaithful or our divorced father marries a woman we can't stand-- we may experience both sadness and anger.
"It's unfair," we cry. We feel the same sense of shocked betrayal that William Saroyan felt when he uttered his last words: "I always knew that everyone had to die, but I always thought that in my case there would be an exception."
Well, yes. We'd all like to be exceptions.
So it's normal and natural to feel unhappy at various times in our lives, normal and natural to feel as if the world is out of joint and there is no one to set it right.
This kind of unhappiness is a reaction to a bad situation. If the situation changes for the better or if we are able to grieve and finally accept an unchangeable loss, then our ability to again derive pleasure from everyday living will return to us.
External, situational unhappiness is, by definition, a temporary condition.
Of course, the idea of temporariness is relative to the intensity of your pain. For example, if you lose your wallet, but it is returned the next day with all your money and credit cards in place, a normal unhappiness reaction would be short-lived and of mild-intensity.
When the loss you suffer is immeasurable -- for example, your wife and child are killed in a car crash -- it may take two to five years to overcome the intensity of your pain and to accept the terrible void in your life. And, while your life may never be the same as it was before, it is possible for you to regain the ability to feel happiness and pleasure and even love.
On the other hand, chronic undifferentiated unhappiness is a persistent and enduring condition which may be punctuated by moments of extreme excitement and delight, but any feelings of joy are usually brief and ultimately unsatisfying. No matter how much you accomplish, what goals you attain, no matter how great your achievements are, happiness always seems to slip through your fingers like smoke. With this kind of unhappiness, a lost wallet is not a temporary inconvenience, it is perceived as one more concrete piece of evidence that nothing ever goes right for you. And because nothing ever goes right for you, you are unhappy, and because you are unhappy your life is . . . is. . .
Your life is . . . what?
There is one inelegant phrase that I have heard whispered, cried, screamed, groaned and bemoaned at least five thousand times by unhappy adult children who are struggling with the conflict between what they have and what they want in their lives. It is a sentiment which, in it's crudity, sums up a thousand divergent complaints. The sentiment is this:
My life is shit!
Almost every child growing up with alcoholic and co- dependent parents suffers a series of disappointments, both large and small. Emotional insecurity, physical pain, and the constant threat of loss of love, family, and self are very real problems.
So, we can say that, originally, your unhappiness was external and situational. It was a normal reaction to a dysfunctional family.
But what child is able to rationally analyze the family dynamics and say, "Oh, yes, I see that the unpleasant emotions I am experiencing at the moment are normal reactions to the stressful circumstances of my father's disease. I will again be able to experience the joy of living in about twelve years when I turn 18 and can legally move away from this funny farm. Boy, I can hardly wait to wallow in all that happiness out there."
What really happens is closer to this:
We experience all the anger, fear, frustration and pain generated in our external environment and we internalize it. It becomes a part of us, coloring everything we do and feel and think. We are steeped in dissatisfaction, we are soured on life. Unhappiness is no longer a temporary reaction to an unpleasant situation.
Chronic unhappiness becomes our way of life.
As one adult child named Sydney told me a year ago, "My unhappiness has taken on a life of its own. I used to think I was miserable because the people around me treated me badly or I got bad breaks or because I didn't have the things I wanted and needed. Now, I'm coming to realize that no matter what I have or how well I'm treated, I'm still unhappy. I keep on setting these goals for myself, thinking that if I can just get the things I want that I'll finally be happy."
Sydney could look back over a lifetime of achievements that were supposed to make her happy and didn't.
"I'm embarrassed to talk about this," Sydney said, "so, you have to promise not to laugh at me."
I assured her I wouldn't.
"This story seems so trite," she said, "especially when you consider there are people in the world who are starving to death, but this is one of the most painful incidents in my life and it represents every disappointment I've had since I was a child."
"This represents a pattern of unhappiness in your life?"
She nodded vigorously. "Yes, that's it exactly. And I think that by recognizing the pattern in my behavior I can start making positive changes. It's like I've been playing this same scene over and over again, but in a different setting and with different actors each time."
"And you're always playing the same role?"
She nodded. "When I was in the eighth grade, I wanted to be a cheerleader so badly I couldn't stand it. I tried out and lost. I was devastated. You see, being a cheerleader represented the pinnacle of success in my school. Cheerleaders were popular and admired and all the boys wanted to take them to the dances, and I knew, I just knew, that if I was a cheerleader I wouldn't feel shy or inferior or inadequate anymore. I would have arrived."
"You would be happy?"
"It would be Bliss City. It would be a magic charm, something like an invisible force field against the cruelties of life."
"And you lost?"
"I didn't even make the finals." As she said it, I heard a catch in her voice. "But I didn't give up. I had three more years of eligibility. I practiced and practiced my cheers and tried out again the next year. And, God, I made it to the finals." A look of remembered pain passed over her face. "I lost by two votes."
Sydney and I sat together for a moment in silence. Her face, with eyes staring blankly at a spot on the floor a few inches in front of her feet, showed that twenty years had not erased the pain of her eighth-grade defeat.
Sydney's voice became small and distant. "Hearing the names of the girls who had won read out over the loudspeaker, and waiting to hear my name called . . . and waiting and waiting . . . and then all six names had been announced and I wasn't on the list and everyone was jumping up and down and clapping and cheering and I . . . I wanted to die."
For Sydney, it wasn't just a defeat, it was a total humiliation. "I got so sick that I had to stay home from school for a week. I was the most miserable, dejected, creature you ever saw. I told everyone I had the flu. It was terrible. I knew that if I didn't make the cheer team that I would never be happy in my entire life. For me, this was almost a life and death issue. For two years I had lived and breathed Two bits . . . four bits . . . six bits. . . a dollar . . . all for Central stand up and holler!"
I laughed, remembering my own junior high school gyrations. (I didn't even make the first cut.)
"You promised not to make fun of me," Sydney reminded me.
"Believe me, I'm not!" I said. "But you did make it, didn't you? I thought you were cheerleader in your senior year."
"That's right."
"So, it was worth it. All the practice and hard work and pain finally paid off. You did achieve your goal."
Sydney shook her head. "No, I didn't."
"But, I thought . . ."
"Don't you see?" she asked plaintively. "What I wanted was to transcend the pain and unhappiness of my everyday existence. I wanted to rise above everything and everybody. I wanted to be special. I thought being a cheerleader would magically make everything in my life better."
"So winning didn't make you happy?"
"That's what I've been trying to tell you. Winning was a delirious experience for me. Next to the birth of my daughter, hearing my name announced over the school loudspeaker was the happiest moment of my life. This is it! I thought. My troubles are over! But don't you see? That was merely an illusion. After the initial excitement wore off I was still little, shy, self-conscious Sydney McCallum and nothing was different. My dad didn't stop drinking because I was cheerleader. I didn't get more dates, and my boobs didn't get bigger and I didn't suddenly have more friends. Here I was, sitting on top of my pinnacle of success . . . and nothing had changed. What I didn't realize at the time was that the unhappiness was inside me. I spent the next twenty years struggling for knowledge and success and power and money and I have achieved most of my goals, but still . . . I'm little, shy, self-conscious Sydney. No matter what's going on around me, I find something to be miserable about. I'm some kind of misery junkie! I've finally come to the conclusion that I've got to change me, not my situation."
Sydney had discovered that her personal unhappiness was not the result of what she did or did not have, but rather it was an internalized attitude and belief system. One of the problems Sydney shared with almost all adult children I have talked to who consider themselves to be severely unhappy was her definition of happiness. She subscribed to the Big Bang Theory of Happiness.
Happiness would be "Bliss City." "A magic charm". "An invisible force field against the cruelties of life."
I have never met a chronically unhappy adult child who possessed a realistic conceptualization of happiness. They have it all mixed up with euphoria, rapture, Utopia, Nirvana, the Astral Plane, Shangri-la, a mescaline trip, or the ultimate orgasm.
This sort of expectation prevents us from experiencing pleasure in the here and now because we're always waiting for that super-charged, blissorama, ultimate, magic something which will forever transform us and lift us out of our mortal misery. In the meantime, happiness slips by us like a soft summer wind.
So, what is this thing called happiness? How do happy people define it? After talking to many people who say they are happy and who look and act as if they are (yes, these people do exist), I've distilled out the following operational definition:
Happiness is the ability to derive pleasure from every day life. Are you disappointed?
If you are unhappy, and you want to change into a person who derives more pleasure out of everyday life, it's important to know whether you are suffering the temporary unhappiness which is a normal reaction to loss and pain or whether, like Sydney, you have turned unhappiness into a way of life.
If you consider yourself to be unhappy, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Have you recently suffered a great physical or emotional trauma, such as a death of someone close to you, a break-up in an important relationship, a job loss, severe illness in yourself or a loved one, or a severe financial loss?
2. Have you recently experienced a major unpleasant change in your work, family, or social life, such as being passed over for promotion, or having to take in a sick relative, or having your best friend get married and move away?
3. Can you remember times in the last five years when you felt happy or satisfied with your life for more than short periods of time?
4. Do you believe it is possible for you to become happy with your life again?
Now, look at your answers to these questions. If you answered 'yes' to either question #1 or #2 and also answered 'yes' to question #3, it's possible that your unhappiness is a temporary condition that can be reversed either through a specific change (a more satisfying job, for example), or through accepting that certain situations are temporary (like having two kids down with the flu at the same time), or through the process of working through the natural grief you feel if you have lost someone or something very dear to you.
If your loss, trauma or failure has been great, the recovery process takes time, but we can heal and feel happiness again. If you answered 'yes' to #4, your prognosis for healing is good. But even if you said 'no', don't despair. If your loss is very recent, it is sometimes difficult to believe you will ever feel anything but the sadness you are now experiencing. I do ask you to reflect carefully on the fact that, with time and care, even the most shattered heart can heal.
Now, what if you answered 'no' to question #3? What if you can't remember being happy in the past? Do the following statements apply to you? (Be Honest!)
1. My life has been full of disappointments.
2. I have been hurt deeply in the past and I haven't gotten over it.
3. My life is a struggle.
4. I often feel that the people closest to me don't care very much about my real feelings.
5. I've been subjected to a lot of criticism and disapproval in my life.
6. It's important for me to excel in all that I do.
7. Life shouldn't be this hard.
8. Making blunders in front of other people is, for me, worse than death.
9. It seems like other people don't have to struggle as hard as I do to get what they want.
10. I can't help feeling angry when I see how easy it is for some of the people I know to get what they want and be happy when I am having such a hard time in my life.
If you answered 'yes' to five or more of these questions, you are probably suffering from chronic, undifferentiated unhappiness.
Do you feel dissatisfied, discontented, disturbed and dismayed by your inability to grasp on to this elusive thing called happiness? Do you sometimes think there is something terribly wrong with you, but you aren't sure exactly what it is?
Though you are tired and hurting, have you continued to push harder and harder in your efforts to reach that final goal which you hope in your heart will turn the magic key in the door that blocks your way to the joy and happiness you seek?
If you are suffering from an attitude of chronic dissatisfaction, every one of life's normal disappointments will wound you deeply. And if you have been unfortunate enough to suffer a major loss recently, your habitual unhappiness will gravely hamper your ability to heal emotionally and may even set the stage for a severe depression.
But we must remember this: Chronic unhappiness does not mean permanent unhappiness.
My friend Sydney answered 'yes' to all ten of the questions. In her thirty-four years she had known only fleeting happiness. "My entire life had been a series of hills and valleys," she told me. "No, that's not right. It was more like mountains and chasms. I'd claw my way to the top of a mountain thinking this was going to do it for me, this was my pinnacle, then down I'd fall into this bottomless chasm of despair and I'd have to start all over again clawing my way back up."
Sydney's life isn't like that anymore. "I discovered that my unhappiness was directly related to my attitudes and my philosophy of life. I had to redefine my concept of happiness and I had to challenge some of my most deeply cherished beliefs about myself."
Sydney learned that chronic, undifferentiated unhappiness in adult children of alcoholics is reinforced by three readily identifiable attitudes. Confronting these attitudes is an extremely painful process for most of us.
Sometimes it's much easier to continue a life of misery than it is to take the difficult steps that lead to positive change. Why? One reason: By taking the initiative to change ourselves, we are admitting that in some ways we are responsible for our own misery.
Yes, we have had bad things happen to us, things that would make anyone unhappy -- troubled parents, lying lovers, unfair bosses, duplicitous friends, ungrateful children, physical illness, the list goes on and on.
And while we can disown our parents, divorce our mates, find new jobs and new friends, move to another town, wreak vengeance on those who have hurt us, even change our name and start over, we can never find personal happiness by making external changes if our misery is emanating from within.Unless we make inner changes, we'll simply move from one bad situation to another. We will carry our unhappiness with us. We must end the blame game, we must cease pointing our finger at those who displease us and instead stand in front of the mirror of self. For it is there that we will see the instigator of our pain.
We are chronically unhappy for three reasons:
1. We are overly pre-occupied with ourselves, our feelings, our impact, and our position in the universe.
2. We live by a set of unrealistic expectations that set us up to be dissatisfied with ourselves and the people who are closest to us. Let's face it: Our culture bombards us with messages of unrealistic expectations. In fact, we live in a culture whose whole economy depends on the chronic dissatisfaction of citizen-consumers. We're told constantly that we don't smell right, that we have bad skin, bad teeth, misshapen bodies, that our hair is the wrong color, that we drive the wrong model car, and that our clothes are hopelessly unstylish. We are inundated by images of add-on glamor and bottled sexual success.
Stephan L. Mayham, past honorary president of the Toilet Goods Association, said: "Hope is what we sell." Hope for what? Look at the ads. Hope for ageless skin. Hope for ageless sexual attractiveness. Hope for a beauty miracle in a 29 cent jar of skin cream sold for $20.
In The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard noted the signs of hope abandoned and renewed again and again: "Many women's dressers are cluttered with 'dead enthusiasm'-- stale jars, unopened bottles, half-used boxes of cosmetics."
Packard also pointed out that advertizers systematically key on "marketing eight hidden needs." These needs include
In short, we are not only born into a family that influences our behavior, we are born into a marketing system that not only relies upon our psychological vulnerability but actively promotes it. And that's why it's essential to develop the skills to deflate the hype so that our lives are not cluttered with dead enthusiasms and shattered dreams.
3. We are consumed by envy. When our self-esteem is low, we feel threatened by the success and good fortune of others, even of those we care about. Their triumphs diminish us. As our mouths murmur words of congratulations, our hearts rail at the unfairness of it. The triumph should be ours. We deserve it more than they. And when our friends fail? A secret pleasure overtakes us. Ha! There is justice, we silently gloat.
These secret feelings of envy and spite sabotage our self- esteem because they violate our higher values of caring, honor and empathy. The only cure for envy is happiness -- becoming satisfied with your own life. Yet, too often, we respond to these base feelings by trying to diminish the pleasure and tarnish the success of the fortunate, rather than by increasing the pleasures in our own lives. We think that by putting them down, we can raise ourself up.
How much better it would be if we forgot spite and put our emotional energy into appreciating and enjoying our own successes, however small they might be. For if we insist on comparing our achievements to those of others, we will always find someone who did better, laster longer or got more. These invidious comparison turns our triumphs into ashes and dust. The worm of envy prevails, and we have failed . . . again.
It is painful to acknowledge such ideas about ourselves. Our natural tendency is to deny the existance of unflattering truths. Yet, in fact, these traits are not engraved in stone. They are malleable and flexible characteristics that can be changed with practice.
Yes, that's right. Practice.
For happiness is not a magical ephemeral gift from the Gods.
Happiness is the ability to derive pleasure from everyday life.
I believe this ability is a skill. It isn't something that happens by magic, because one is favored by Zeus or Jehovah or Jesus Christ. It's a skill and skills can be learned. In other words, we can train ourselves to enjoy life.
This is possible under these conditions:
1. We are willing to redefine our concept of happiness.
2. We are willing to learn a new set of expectations.
3. We are willing to orient our thinking away from our own importance.
4. We are willing to have a more gentle, less critical attitude toward the successes and failures of others.
If we are willing to risk personal change without becoming angry or defensive or fearful, we can guide our lives in new directions. Instead of being stuck, we can move forward. Life can be a process, rather than a trap. We can affect a transformation in self-esteem.
But before that is possible, we must take a deep look at a major obstacle blocking our way -- the problem of self-absorption.
© Copyright 1986, 1997, 2003 Gayle Rosellini & Mark Worden
This Web edition is for personal use and not for distribution. Zipped plaintext copies via email on request.
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