“Happiness is a choice.” It’s a message that you probably come across fairly often. While it’s probably meant to be motivational and positive most of the time, if you start to poke at it a bit, it has some fundamental flaws. I believe that happiness is not a choice, at least not when something like mental illness takes it off the menu of options entirely.
The fallacy of happiness as a choice
There’s a whole field of positive psychology that focuses heavily on happiness. Beyond that, though, there’s a lot of messaging that ventures into toxic positivity territory, where only happiness and other “positive” emotions are considered acceptable. During the current pandemic, I’ve seen various people talking about feeling like they’re only allowed to have certain emotions.
A quick search on Amazon reveals a multitude of books entitled “Happiness is a Choice”. A Huffington Post headline claims “This is Scientific Proof That Happiness is a Choice“. Then there’s the law of attraction, which suggests that toilet paper (and anything else that might make you happier) vibrates at a certain frequency, and as long as you want and believe you have that toilet paper enough that your thoughts start vibrating at toilet paper frequency, you will have all the happy bathroom experiences you could dream of.
I call bullshit. Saying that happiness is a choice is just a short hop, skip, and a jump from saying that mental illness is a choice. Mental illness is not a choice, and happiness is not a choice either.
You can’t wish mental illness away
If you can frame things more positively to help you live the life you want, great. All the power to you. However, saying that happiness is right there in your closet waiting for you to put it on, and you just need to choose to walk into the closet, is basically a slap in the face to those of us dealing with mental illness.
Multiple mental illnesses can affect emotions, whether it’s intense levels of certain emotions, or more of a lack of emotion with numbness, apathy, and anhedonia (an inability to feel pleasure). Besides our emotions, our symptoms involve our thoughts, bodies, and sensory experiences. It’s complicated. That’s why we need therapy and/or meds to try to get the whole shebang running a little more smoothly. How does all of that fit in with “happiness is a choice,” pray tell?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
I don’t think these positive psychology cheerleaders are necessarily trying to make us feel bad, but there really does seem to be a fundamental lack of understanding. Mental illness tends to (at least temporarily) limit our capacity to experience certain things; this can include positive emotions. This is not a matter of choices we make; these are the direct effects of illness. We can’t choose our illness out of existence. However, with effective treatment, we can at least start to gain back the capacity that we lost.
Perhaps happiness isn’t hanging in the closet for you to wear because the illness monster tossed it in the thrift store donation bin. You can choose to go into the closet until the cows come home, but that doesn’t change the fact that your happy t-shirt is hanging in a thrift store somewhere rather than in your closet.
The happiness trap
Is happiness even a good thing to focus on? Dr. Russ Harris, an expert in acceptance and commitment therapy, challenges that idea in his book The Happiness Trap. He argues that being perpetually happy is neither realistic nor desirable, and it’s part of the normal human experience to feel a full range of different emotions. Instead, he suggests that we’d be better off working on mindfully accepting what we’re experiencing, and then making choices that keep us more in line with our identified values. Sticking to values can offer a much more meaningful existence than chasing happiness because it’s what we society thinks we “should” feel.
Probably the reason this idea of happiness as a choice bothers me so much is that it feeds into stigma. While it probably has more to do with well-meaning ignorance than intentionality, the end result is the same nevertheless. If people are being told that happiness is a choice, they may be more likely to think that other emotional states (like depression or anxiety, for example) are also a choice. That, in turn, can set us back in the fight against stigma. Mental illness affects what’s hanging in our closet, and often we can’t control what stays and what goes in the donation bin. Happiness is not a choice, and if it was, we probably would have made that choice already.
Amen!
I think that a lot of people do do this weird blame-the-victim thing, but I think that in some situations, including ones we’ve spoken about, I can choose to fixate on this person/thing that pissed me off, thus making things suck for me, or I can choose to focus on something a little nicer, thus breaking that cycle for that minute. I have severe ptsd so I know that sometimes the idea of ‘letting something go and thinking of something else’ would result in me cursing and completely not doing it because I can’t and the idea would give me fits of rage, but at other times I can do something like say mantras or affirmations or just list to myself stuff that I love, from food to pets to nice things outside, and that is a way of the jargony ‘choosing happiness’. The way many people say it is so bogus-sounding to me, like ‘choose to be gorgeous and young and great and rich’ and then they look at you like you’re bad if you didn’t do it yet.
Great points. The choices that are available to us are going to be different depending on the moment, and other people shouldn’t judge us for it.
I think that is the problem with that The secret thing–it’s too bogus without a real system of how to go about it. I really like the Abraham-Hicks books (they were actually in that movie but pulled out when they saw it was just a sort of fake thinking infomercial) where they say that feeling good is the most important thing in life, and that when you feel like crap it’s worthwhile to ‘reach for a better-feeling thought’, even if it’s just the teeniest bit less sucky. Their book Ask and It Is Given is great, since it lists about 30 states of mind people can be in, from great to the worst, and how to improve what you’re feeling depending on what you’re feeling. I enjoyed it and look through it every few years and find a lot to use every time.
Sounds interesting. I’ll check it out.
They have a website and free daily emails and probably free stuff on the site. You might find something you enjoy.
Thanks!
I truly believe it’s different types of way’s to deal with stress and anxiety. It might work for one person, and not the other. For instance, meditation… Some say it works wonders for them, but there are others that claim it doesn’t do anything for them.
It’s an individual experience.
Great post!
Beckie
Thanks! You’re right, what works can vary a great deal from one person to another, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to anything.
I do know first hand that happiness is hard to accomplish when mental illness is involved. We suffer daily to be the so called “Normal”, but that is a pipe dream to most of us.
However, I do try to stay positive as much as I can even though there are days I want to scream my brains out and cry. 🙂 🙁
That’s great. Even on the darkest times there’s usually something, even if it’s something small, to feel grateful or positive about.
That’s my girl!! 🙂
Too right! Although it probably is true to some extent that for some mentally healthy people, happiness can be chosen, it doesn’t apply to everyone. I don’t think it’s a deliberate attack on the mentally ill, so much as ignorance and thoughtlessness.
Though I have to say that trying to live according to my values hasn’t really turned out very well for me, although I can’t think of an alternative.
I agree, it probably does come down to ignorance and thoughtlessness.
I couldn’t agree with you more! I want to throw up when a particular family member tells me to just “be happy, and lists a bunch of stuff I should be happy for/bout.” That it’s a choice is total BS.
“You should be happy about” provokes the same kind of reaction in me.
It’s like when people say ‘turn that frown upside down’ or ‘it takes less muscles to smile than frown’. Some days I’d like to reply ‘it takes even less muscle to punch you in the throat and it would definitely turn my frown upside down’.
There are days everything takes time and effort and happiness is just not there. I don’t think people should be faulted for it. I definitely don’t think it’s a choice to not feel happy.
I’m liking that punch you in the throat response 😉
Yes, things are seldom black and white, and life tends to happen in the grey areas.
😊😊
Whether it is state of perfect health or illness be conscious.. be witness of everything..if you loose witnessing you fall asleep in unconsciousness and in sleep you can assume urself happy/sad , broken or dead nothing matters all will be dream only.. truth is only being the witness of everything..
“Saying that happiness is a choice is just a short hop, skip, and a jump from saying that mental illness is a choice”. If happiness were a choice, why would I choose to have dark days and unable to get out of beg nor just be happy? I recall not too long ago being told by my own mother I decide to be weird and goofy…it hurts. I get more sympathy for swollen inflammation and Rheumatoid Arthritis, than for any PTSD symptoms and yet, I didn’t chose any. This is why I damn it and say it all as it is on my blog. No more faking or trying to be normal. There are good, very good, bad and very bad days – I go through all of them with grace but each experience is different
Absolutely. And I’m so glad you have chosen to speak up on your blog ❤️
here here! its not a choice. i hate when people say it is. drives me bonkers. xo
So true
I wonder if the folks who say that know that I also think not “choosing” to undergo emergency cranial rectum extraction – when they so obviously need it – is a choice I blame them for… 😉
lol
Love this lol!
Interesting, we have choices that will help us feel certain ways, yes. But I can literally ‘feel’ happiness or sadness wash over me with a mood swing when there are no outside factors in play. For example there is this ‘lightness’ that overcomes me when I am hypomanic, the same set of circumstances that had me wanting to end my life a day earlier will suddenly cease to even matter, that isn’t me ‘choosing’ to look on the bright side, happiness is just the emotion that overcomes me at the time. Same goes for depression only its a feeling of ‘heaviness’ as the sadness takes over. At either point I have choices that I can make which may impact those moods further.
Exactly!
Girl, PREACH.
ACT is a brilliant approach I use it, coupled with CFT (Compassion Focused Therapy or Training for those who don’t like the word therapy!). There is crossover between the two approaches , makes a real difference to me. Russ is very good. I would also recommend ACTivate Your Life by Jon Hill, Dr Eric Morris and Dr Joe Oliver. Eric and Joe are both highly respected in the ACT world.
Linked I would also recommend Dr Susan David book Emotional Ability. She refers to the tryanny of positivity. She has just done a fantastic TED talk. It shares similar principles to ACT.
My view is that we need a balanced diet of emotions to be healthy.
Cool, thanks for the recommendations 🙂
I really like this post, you make great points. I hate the law of attraction stuff. To me it’s victim blaming. It’s your fault if something bad happens because you didn’t try enough or whatever.
Agreed!