Oftentimes in my role as a therapist, when I ask the inevitable question of what it is people want from therapy, the answer is the same: “I want to be happy.” I understand this desire, as happiness is pure joy, and boy oh boy, it feels wonderful. However, I’d like to ask you to consider if constant happiness is truly what we should strive for. The answer may be yes, and there is nothing wrong with this goal. I just wonder if we are then setting ourselves up for failure with an unattainable goal.
Emotions are fleeting, and this is a reality. Sadness, anger, fear, and even happiness, are all temporary conditions. What is your baseline? Where should you be in the absence of strong emotion? These are answers you must decide on your own. Our baselines are all different, and this is what makes us unique. Our perspectives are also different, and subjective. Your happiness is different from my happiness, your baseline is different from my baseline. I think you get the point. I consider my baseline to be calm and content- not vacant or numb, but not overly joyful either. I encourage you to take a moment and consider your current baseline, alongside your ideal baseline. Are they aligned with one another? What is causing misalignment, in the event they are not aligned? Are these circumstances within your control?
There is a children’s book I sometimes read to people sitting across from me on the therapy couch, adults included: Visiting Feelings, by Lauren Rubenstein. It seems silly to read a children’s book to an adult or even to a teen, but I cannot find the words to evoke my intended message quite like the beautiful illustrations and content of the message in this book. It invites us to consider feelings as they enter our lives, encourages us to consider how they feel, and invites them in… even the “negative” ones. The meaning is clear: feelings do not last forever, and by inviting them in we may experience them, hopefully to get a glimpse into our own experience and interaction with the world around us. In the true spirit of mindfulness, we are not trying to quiet our mind or manipulate anything within ourselves. We are solely trying to see what is happening in the very moment to remain present and grounded.
The perceived “negative” emotions get a bad rap, since the experiences are especially vulnerable moments in time. Oftentimes anger is punished, and sadness is consoled. As a society, we try to intervene to lessen these feelings. However, if we examine feelings closer, we can find a window into understanding our experience at a deeper level. You’ll hear grief as engulfing, and yet, to experience such sorrow also holds meaning into how deep that relationship or experience was to begin with, and how much we could possibly care. I often hear from mothers that they never knew they could love someone as much as they love their child, and how beautiful of an experience is that connection between two people? People term anger as “seeing red”, and how incredible is it to have an emotion that overtakes our very self, down to our perception of the world around us?
Emotional depth allows us to not only lead a life of awareness and understanding, but also then helps us to connect with others on a deeper level. Emotional attunement is vital in healthy relationships, not only with our partners, but also our children, our friends, even our coworkers. It allows us to step outside of our own experience and see another for their own experience, and tapping into the place inside us that remembers that feeling creates a bond and connection. Imagine that same scenario but where we were the person trying to help them change that “bad” feeling into something happier, or trying to instill hope for a future that doesn’t involve that emotion. Aren’t we really then saying that their experience in the moment is not right, and encouraging them to to avoid what is happening in the moment is discounting their experience? And who are we to judge their experience and try to provide our own recommendation for how another should feel?
And for ourselves… if we are wanting to feel continuously happy as a baseline, what are we telling ourselves? Our feelings are not ok, there is a better version of ourselves, and at a core level we are rejecting our experience and therefore part of us. I know feeling joy and elation is incredible, but to want this feeling ongoing is to not be fully authentic. To accept oneself is to find alignment, authenticity, and to be able to grasp the true reality. We have no control over the experiences around us, and the older I get, the more I see this clearly. We will experience loss, heartbreak, fear and most likely trauma. It is the nature of living. Our body will respond exactly the way it is intended to, as we are all hardwired to respond to these situations similarly. To accept how we are reacting as exactly the way we are supposed to, is to accept ourselves for who we are. Only then can we truly find comfort and peace, and hopefully we will find our true baseline.
~ Christy Livingston, LMFT, RPT-S