Given how much we all long to be happy, we might presume that accepting the possibility
of happiness in our lives would be an uncomplicated, serene and automatic process. But for many
of us, however theoretically attached we might be to the notion of being happy, the possibility
of actually being so is liable to trigger deep ambivalence and fear. We would – it
appears – often prefer to be worried and sad rather than attempt take on the risks
surreptitiously connected in our minds with positive moods. We may – however paradoxical
it sounds – be nothing less than afraid to be happy. As ever, our fear has a history
that begins in childhood, where one of the following is likely to have occurred. Someone
we deeply loved, and perhaps admired too, was unhappy. Their sorrow moved us profoundly
and led us to identify with them so that our caution around contentment continues to function
as a secret tribute to them. To be happy would, in a way that would pain us profoundly, mean
being disloyal. However much they might on the surface have encouraged us to venture
out and seize opportunities for joy, an important part of us wishes to stay with them under
the canopy of grief. So without knowing we’re doing this, we ensure that we will always
have a modest career because they never had educational possibilities or we turn down
sexual opportunities because they were sexually neglected. Alternatively, someone we were
close to might have been jealous of us and led us to want to downplay our achievements
and hide our contentment – in order to feel safe from their envy and rage. We learnt to
associate gloom with safety and joy with risk. More generally, we may have lacked any plausible
role models for happiness. We may have grown up in an environment where being anxious and
panicky was the default state, where it seemed natural to picture the plane crashing, the
police showing up, the business collapsing and the mole morphing into cancer. We may
be intellectually aware that there could be other ways to interpret the future, but equanimity
doesn’t feel like what our tribe does. To this resistance, we might have added a layer
of intellectual superiority: happiness seems for the little people, the leading symptom
of understanding the world intelligently must be sadness. All such positions contribute
to a psyche where the onset of happiness is a cause for grave and glaring alarm. When
we are finally on holiday, or in love or surrounded by friends or free of financial pressure,
we panic. Our senses have been jammed for so long in fear mode, they are filled with
dread when the alarm stops wailing. To return to a more balanced state, we’re liable systematically
to sabotage the conditions of contentment. We start working on holiday and soon uncover
a cause for concern at the office; within hours, we may be protesting that we need to
return home. Or else we do our utmost to convince a new lover that we’re not worth it, by
seldom calling them or (if they really don’t get the message) having an affair. It feels
so much more normal to be abandoned. In order to acclimatise ourselves to joy, we need to
return to the past and unpick how we learnt to use anxiety as a defensive strategy to
protect us against other threats we were too young and too easily overwhelmed to answer.
The manic worrier worries, as it were, about ‘everything’ because they are unable to
be appropriately concerned with, and in mourning for, one or two big things from long ago.
The anxiety that belonged to one particular distant time and place has been redistributed
and subdivided across hundreds of ever shifting topics in the present (from workplace to reputation,
money to household tasks), because its true source and origins remain unknown to the sufferer.
We are using the flotsam and jetsam of everyday worries as a proxy for an unmasterable trauma:
shame; humiliation; a sense we don’t matter to our caregivers; neglect or abuse. We should
not sarcastically point out to worriers that they need ‘something else to worry about’,
we should realise that something terrifying that they have buried deep in their unconscious
is lending a continuous sense of dread to their fragile present. We manic worriers need
not sarcasm but supportive and intelligent company to give us the love we need to dare
to look back at the past – and the insight with which to try to do so. Our dread is a
symptom of an ancient sorrow, a sign that we keep not finding anything in the outer
world that answers to the horror of the inner one. Needless to say, it isn’t the case
that there is never anything to worry about in the present, just that there is a lot less
than the manic worrier tends to believe. Furthermore, what there is to worry about can be coped
with with far more resilience than the manic worrier can imagine, for they are operating
with what is essentially a child’s sense of their own powers and capacity for survival.
Manic worriers should gradually come to exchange their feelings of dread for the future for
a patient understanding and mourning for an unfairly traumatic and as yet insufficiently
explored past. There is nothing greedy or stupid about happiness. The ability to take
appropriate satisfaction from the good times is a profound psychological achievement: it
is a mark of deep seriousness to be able to giggle, have a pillow fight with a child,
delight in a fig, sunbathe, sometimes knock off work early to have an ice cream and appreciate
a daffodil. Sorrow is obvious; there is always a richness of reasons to despair. Fear is
safe as well; if we are waiting for the enemy with sword in hand, we may gain a vital few
seconds were the blow to come. But the trulycourageous and heroically defiant move
would be to dare to put down our weapon, lessen our preparations for catastrophe,
resist the terrors ingrained in us over decades and once in a while believe that, astonishingly,
for a time, there might truly be nothing to worry about.
Our Emotional Barometer is a tool that can help us to more clearly explain our moods. Click the link on screen now to find out more.