If you feel happy, you do not need to read this article, but if you feel that something is missing in your life, if you are not completely happy or you feel very unhappy, please spend a couple of minutes reading these ideas, which maybe They open doors in the process of self-knowledge. I do not intend to theorize about the concept of happiness, I only propose to make you reflect on what prevents most of us from being happy. Rather, I subscribe to the definition of the Greek philosopher Socrates, who considers that the path to happiness is self-knowledge.
In this PsicologíaOnline article, we try to answer the question of why can’t we be happy.
Unhappiness acquired in childhood
A few days ago I finished reading a book that a student once gave me. I confess that she had leafed through it, and that she had read its first chapter, but she had not advanced much further in reading it, despite its very suggestive title, “Addicted to unhappiness”. Its authors, a couple of American psychoanalysts, professors and researchers at the University of Chicago, spouses Martha Heineman Pieper and William J. Pieper.
Apparently, when they gave me the book I wasn’t feeling so unhappy, or at least, if I felt that way, I hadn’t become aware of what it was causing me to feel unhappy. I am of the opinion that readings take on a special significance when one is sensitive to them, when one is vulnerable to the topic in question. To paraphrase an old Chinese proverb, when the disciple is ready, the master appears.
This book gave me a lot of light to analyze the problems we face during life. The Piepers are of the opinion that we have a series of behavioral habits that prevent us from enjoying the life we want (1). The origins of this, as of most of the habits that shape our behavior, are located in the childhood. As children we assimilate the patterns of affective behavior that accompany us in adulthood and that are very difficult to modify, since they have an involuntary and automated nature. We are slaves to our habits, precisely because to do them we don’t have to think about what we are doing, they speed up our lives. When a situation gets in the way of our behavioral stereotype, a load of anxiety ensues that makes us feel uncomfortable, upset, agitated. This is typical of addictive behaviorwhen something gets in the way of its achievement.
Our parents try to educate us based on their concepts of authority and discipline, with the full conviction that they do so for our good, in most cases. The child is born with a whole series of physiological needs such as breathing, drinking water, eating, eliminating waste, sleeping, etc. During the first months of life, other emotional needs arise, such as communication and acceptance, and other cognitive needs, such as curiosity about the world around them. A lot of These needs are frustrated by the prohibitions, punishments, threats, fears that adults impose on the child, according to the educational models they believe are relevant.
Parents are often unaware of these child’s emotional and cognitive needs and they interpose their psychological ignorance to their satisfaction. The child interprets these emotional and cognitive deficiencies in terms of abandonment, guilt, lack of esteem, etc. This is minted in his unconscious; only form of reflection in the first stage of life. As the main need that the child has is to feel love from his parents, the connection is established at an unconscious level, between what they are capable of giving him and the feeling of well-being, which he later comes to define as happiness. For example, if we were very punished children, or very limited, we interpreted in our childish minds that that is what loving is. That is to say, if our parents punish us, or force us to do something we don’t want, then, since they surely love us, that is what love is. Therefore, we feel “loved” in this way, leading us to false happiness or false well-being.
The “false happiness”
This, in a general sense, means that we do not achieve true happiness, but rather a false happinessor a special type of masochism, where we fall in love with the person who makes us suffer the most, despises us, abandons us or is unfaithful. However, the person who goes out of his way to protect us, loves us, accepts us as we are, then becomes invisible to our eyes, or we find unacceptable defects in him, according to our opinion. We simply become “hooked”, like a drug addict, to suffering.
There are times when things are going very well for us, we are about to achieve what we are looking for and, suddenly, a problem arises that makes us take three steps back, when we had advanced one. We justify this inconvenience and even feed it, because we need to feel that way unconsciously. Our thoughts become our worst enemies, because we begin to justify all inconveniences or obstacles to achieve what we want and even a secret magic happens around these facts.
Pribram’s holographic brain theory
Our thoughts, although we cannot see them, exist, they have energy and strength that are projected into the universe. Allow us a little digression. We will briefly refer to a very interesting theory about the functioning of the brain. According to Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist at Stanford University and one of the most influential architects of brain interpretation, deep structure of the brain is essentially holographicIn other words, the brain is a hologram that interprets a holographic world. Holograms are three-dimensional images projected spatially with the help of a laser. This does not mean that the brain is made up of laser rays, but rather that it has the properties of a hologram (2).
Pribram considers that the brain isIn fact, a kind of lens, a transformative machine that converts the cascade of frequencies we receive through the senses into the familiar realm of our internal perceptions. In other words, everything we perceive is about holograms created inside our mindswhile what we call the “external world” would be nothing more than a kaleidoscope of energy and vibration. Memory storage is not the only neurophysiological enigma that is easier to address using the holographic model of the brain proposed by Pribram. In this way, the brain manages to translate the avalanche of frequencies received through the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies, etc.) until they are transformed into familiar sensory perceptions.
This projected energy causes certain events or other energies to join it. It is as if it were a telephone, you dial a number and on the other side they answer, based on the number you have dialed. More or less, like the idea that God hears our prayers. It is a physical phenomenon, or metaphysical if you like, but real, objective. That is why the universe or that energy that lives in another dimension that is not what we see, connects with what we think, a magnetic attraction occurs. It’s as if the universe pleased us, or responded to our “call.”
We may not be aware that the thoughts we project are addictive to unhappiness. The “phone number” that we have in our brain “file” is that of unhappiness. We consciously think that we are looking for happiness, that we want to be happy, but what we have is a distorted idea of happiness, it is a false happiness, it is a sado-masochistic happiness, the result of our childhood experiences. That is, we consciously seek happiness, but unconsciously, we need a certain degree of discomfort to maintain inner balance.
Addicted to unhappiness
Professors Pieper define true satisfaction as the well-founded inner certainty that one is affectionate and worthy of affection, and that we choose for our lives that which is constructive and appropriate. True satisfaction makes life always better, never harmful, neither for oneself nor for others. That there are ungrateful people, there are, who try to harm us, but we will decide to distance ourselves from them, in the name of happiness, because we do not deserve them and we will not seek them. Only the addiction to unhappiness would lead us to remain hooked on those people who violate us, who despise us, or who want to abandon us.
For this reason, when we are about to achieve things, bang! They evaporate in our hands, because an unforeseen event arises that ruins our plans (an illness, a refusal, a loss and even an atmospheric phenomenon). This is because from our unconscious That happiness seems unattainable to us.
They made us believe, while we were children, that for “misbehaving” (deep down all we wanted was to satisfy our natural needs of curiosity, affection, physiological, etc.), we deserved a punishment. How many times did they force us to do something we didn’t like (do homework, throw out the trash, tidy up our room, etc.), so they would let us play, walk, watch TV, etc.! It’s not that we should be allowed to do whatever we want. On the contrary, it was about teaching us to understand our needs, to learn how to prioritize them or satisfy them at the most convenient moment, with joy and not, necessarily, link them to rewards and punishments (it is also very common in the religious field to see the happiness as a reward, if we comply with the established precepts). Our parents showed us a list of duties, which had nothing to do with the needs of a child (they force us to be adults before our time), as synonymous with behaving well, and that only in this way would we obtain their long-awaited approval and with it , his affection.
This is how one becomes a addicted to unhappiness, to suffering, to renunciation, to frustration. When we are well, problems “fall from the sky” for us. I say “fall” because we begin to give ourselves justifications for why we should assume this or that. Instead of considering other alternatives that do not involve giving up what we must do, we let ourselves be carried away by rigid moralistic codes of what is right or wrong. For example, I give up getting married or going to work somewhere else, so as not to leave my mother alone. So if I do the opposite, I can be called selfish. If I am selfish, I feel guilty. If I am guilty, then I will not be able to be calm wherever I go. So, I better stay, I sacrifice myself, I spend my whole life dreaming of a happiness that never comes and that when Mom is gone, then I will be too old to do anything and I will die very frustrated, but deep down, with an overdose. of “the cocaine of unhappiness,” just as most addicts die, “happy.” It’s not about abandoning mom to her fate, but it’s about…