The Expectation to Suppress Joy
People talk a lot about suppressing anger (including myself) and how harmful it can be. I think it's equally harmful to suppress joy, and that's not something we often hear about. One of the issues I see is that as a society we have decided "negative" emotions have more value than "positive" ones. Some say it's a product of our brain's ability to empathize with pain more easily than with happiness, but I think it could be the biological responding to our environmental cues. Empathy is a social belief we teach as part of our culture to promote kindness and compassion. Problem is, empathy can also be taught through guilt and shame (muting pride and self-esteem is holy), which solves one problem by creating another. Let me give you some examples of expected harmful behaviors that will show you what I mean.
- A friend is going through a divorce and you purposely don't talk about your great marriage in their presence so as not to "rub it in their face". You may even focus on fights between you and your spouse as a means to identify with your friend more and help them feel more comfortable. The expectation is to mirror their negative emotions as proof of empathy.
- A family member is having a hard time financially and you find yourself sharing less of your adventures on social media, so as not to make them jealous or feel worse about their situation.
- Your spouse is dealing with depression and you find yourself sinking into depression with them, believing the compassionate thing to do is stay with them on the couch instead of going out with friends like you had planned.
- You win a prestigious award and instead of celebrating and being proud of yourself, you downgrade its importance so as not to seem like you "have a big head". You find a way to give credit to everyone but yourself.
- You love your job, but don't share it with anyone you know because they all hate their jobs and you're worried they'll be jealous or angry.
- Your kids sleep through the night, they all get along, and you have great times together or apart. According to everything you see, parenting should be a constant battle, so instead of feeling happy you feel anxious and guilty about your "luck" and take no credit for decisions you made to create your environment.
We are taught that jealousy is the fault of the happy person, and should be avoided by being compassionately dispassionate about the things we love. Joy is for children. Audacious happiness is not "adult-like". Empathy is our highest good, and it is the job of the less sad person to be empathetic. But as with everything else, too much empathy is bad, and the empathy trap tells us another person's emotions are more important than our own. I think empathy is important, but only expecting empathy for our negative emotions is creating a poisonous environment. By only sharing our stories designed around negative empathy, our entire society is getting compassion fatigue. Additionally, negative empathy culture may be keeping us from taking personal responsibility to heal from emotional pain. In fact, the only thing accomplished by constant negative empathy is a constant pain cycle.
Are others to blame for initiating pain? Sure. Absolutely. There are bullies out there who seek to hurt others and need to be called out for their actions. Competing for who has the worst pain though... well that's just disturbing. There is a difference between blame and responsibility. I think of blame as the catalyst and responsibility as the present reality. You can take responsibility for yourself without blaming yourself. The difference is how and when you deal with the situation. Responsibility is being in charge of your healing and growth after an injury (I wrote a year ago about the idea of authority and responsibility that touched on this as well). Responsibility breeds resilience! Personal responsibility means we acknowledge our present state and grow from it... and nowhere in that journey are we accepting blame. If we think of our psychological injuries the same way as we do physical ones, it's easier to understand.
Imagine someone has a broken leg and can't stop talking about how it got broken and how much it hurts. How long would you listen to them if they refused to get it seen by a doctor, have it set, take medication for the pain, or go to physical therapy? I wouldn't last very long before getting annoyed and telling them to quit complaining and go take care of it already (aka compassion fatigue or burnout)! We all believe that once that leg's broken, it's the owner's responsibility to seek help, get a cast, get some physical therapy, and get back to moving again... in the highest possible capacity they are able. We know this for physical injuries. We ask if they're taking care of themselves, doing what they should, and seeking assistance if the injury flares up again.
Well, it's the same for emotional injuries. We as a society don't teach that healing from emotional pain is even possible in some cases, and the responsibility of healing is on the therapist. The reality is that a therapist is just like a physical therapist; they give you the tools to heal, but they don't heal for you. Eventually your therapy is over and you're left with the pain and the tools to deal with it. Until the pain is gone, you keep working towards healing. Hit a roadblock? Seek help again.
When we believe emotional pain is not something we can heal from, our society will instead focus on trying to prevent emotional pain altogether. We're afraid of emotional pain because we don't see it as fixable. Imagine... if there was no way to heal from a broken leg, our world would be structured to prevent a break and even be afraid of walking. Perhaps we'd never allow our children to take their first steps, holding them back from growing properly. We would see our able legs as a stroke of luck that we could lose forever at any moment, treating them as fragile and temporary. We would eliminate running, jumping, sports, and any other risky behavior that could lead to an injury. We would mute our lives to protect ourselves. That's how we treat emotional well-being in a society that doesn't believe in healing. Emotional well-being is lucky, fragile, terrifying, and temporary. We avoid anything that might lead to emotional pain, which includes expressing huge emotions like joy that make us a target for jealousy or anger.
We are so keen to avoid emotional pain that we limit our children's independence because it causes parental anxiety. We have started over-controlling our children's environments because we fear introducing them to pain, which actually decreases their resilience! We need to share more healing stories! Seeing the reality of the grit and perseverance needed for psychological recovery may help us face the fear of healing.
As it stands, we are flooded with the dangers of "causing psychological damage" at every turn. Everything causes irreparable emotional harm to others, making us terrified of even the smallest interaction. We will absolutely make mistakes as we attempt to repair huge cultural problems like inclusion. If we believe we can't apologize, learn, and move on, we may resist ever trying to change (and get defensive at the prospect of ever being asked to do so). If we believe people are immutable, and beliefs are permanent products of hate and willful ignorance, we may resist ever trying to enact change (and get defensive at the prospect of ever being asked to do so). Compromise exists in common ground, but when negative empathy fuels the entire conversation we create a larger gulf between us.
Focusing on negative empathy can create gigantic trenches in communication when both parties are expressing their personal pain and expecting the other to take responsibility. Another side-effect of constant negative empathy in a relationship exists when only one party is expressing pain. The result is one party taking emotional abuse to "help" by not letting them know the truth of their harmful actions... "they're trying so I can't get angry"... the martyr complex is born of over-empathy. One side becomes so in tune with the other person's pain they lose sight of themselves entirely. This helps neither of them.
This brings me back to the social expectation to suppress joy for the comfort of others. Why don't we start overcoming our fear of emotional pain by expecting empathy to go both ways: joy and pain? If we teach empathy through honest connection it really isn't difficult.
While it does help those hurting to have empathizers around, it's also helpful for those in pain to practice empathizing with happy people. I remember being taught to empathize joy (the few times I was jealous or sad at someone else's birthday party). Being joyful around others who aren't is not selfish if it's done with love, intention and balance. You can even be helping improve their mood! I'm talking about the need for cultural balance. We can expect others to empathize with our joy without being a self-absorbed jerk, expect others to empathize with our pain without being a perpetual victim, and empathize with emotional pain without developing a martyr complex. Yes, some people start off with far less options than others and their choices are extremely limited by their resources. But I also think that well-being is a choice everyone is capable of making. Well-being is choosing to grow to your full capacity with what is made available to you. Happiness is within. Our emotions are our responsibility... all of them.
Summation:
If you find yourself caught in the unhappiness cycle, look in a mirror. Gratitude and positive empathy can help you break free. If you find you want to make a million comparisons and excuses in response to this post that prove it wrong, you're avoiding taking responsibility for your healing. If this all seems really mean to you, you might be enabling someone else to not heal (as well as yourself). What angers you the most is probably the culprit... that first thing you started making excuses for in your head. What are you telling yourself you can't overcome, deal with, accomplish, or be expected to change?
Are others to blame for initiating pain? Sure. Absolutely. There are bullies out there who seek to hurt others and need to be called out for their actions. Competing for who has the worst pain though... well that's just disturbing. There is a difference between blame and responsibility. I think of blame as the catalyst and responsibility as the present reality. You can take responsibility for yourself without blaming yourself. The difference is how and when you deal with the situation. Responsibility is being in charge of your healing and growth after an injury (I wrote a year ago about the idea of authority and responsibility that touched on this as well). Responsibility breeds resilience! Personal responsibility means we acknowledge our present state and grow from it... and nowhere in that journey are we accepting blame. If we think of our psychological injuries the same way as we do physical ones, it's easier to understand.
Imagine someone has a broken leg and can't stop talking about how it got broken and how much it hurts. How long would you listen to them if they refused to get it seen by a doctor, have it set, take medication for the pain, or go to physical therapy? I wouldn't last very long before getting annoyed and telling them to quit complaining and go take care of it already (aka compassion fatigue or burnout)! We all believe that once that leg's broken, it's the owner's responsibility to seek help, get a cast, get some physical therapy, and get back to moving again... in the highest possible capacity they are able. We know this for physical injuries. We ask if they're taking care of themselves, doing what they should, and seeking assistance if the injury flares up again.
Well, it's the same for emotional injuries. We as a society don't teach that healing from emotional pain is even possible in some cases, and the responsibility of healing is on the therapist. The reality is that a therapist is just like a physical therapist; they give you the tools to heal, but they don't heal for you. Eventually your therapy is over and you're left with the pain and the tools to deal with it. Until the pain is gone, you keep working towards healing. Hit a roadblock? Seek help again.
When we believe emotional pain is not something we can heal from, our society will instead focus on trying to prevent emotional pain altogether. We're afraid of emotional pain because we don't see it as fixable. Imagine... if there was no way to heal from a broken leg, our world would be structured to prevent a break and even be afraid of walking. Perhaps we'd never allow our children to take their first steps, holding them back from growing properly. We would see our able legs as a stroke of luck that we could lose forever at any moment, treating them as fragile and temporary. We would eliminate running, jumping, sports, and any other risky behavior that could lead to an injury. We would mute our lives to protect ourselves. That's how we treat emotional well-being in a society that doesn't believe in healing. Emotional well-being is lucky, fragile, terrifying, and temporary. We avoid anything that might lead to emotional pain, which includes expressing huge emotions like joy that make us a target for jealousy or anger.
We are so keen to avoid emotional pain that we limit our children's independence because it causes parental anxiety. We have started over-controlling our children's environments because we fear introducing them to pain, which actually decreases their resilience! We need to share more healing stories! Seeing the reality of the grit and perseverance needed for psychological recovery may help us face the fear of healing.
As it stands, we are flooded with the dangers of "causing psychological damage" at every turn. Everything causes irreparable emotional harm to others, making us terrified of even the smallest interaction. We will absolutely make mistakes as we attempt to repair huge cultural problems like inclusion. If we believe we can't apologize, learn, and move on, we may resist ever trying to change (and get defensive at the prospect of ever being asked to do so). If we believe people are immutable, and beliefs are permanent products of hate and willful ignorance, we may resist ever trying to enact change (and get defensive at the prospect of ever being asked to do so). Compromise exists in common ground, but when negative empathy fuels the entire conversation we create a larger gulf between us.
Focusing on negative empathy can create gigantic trenches in communication when both parties are expressing their personal pain and expecting the other to take responsibility. Another side-effect of constant negative empathy in a relationship exists when only one party is expressing pain. The result is one party taking emotional abuse to "help" by not letting them know the truth of their harmful actions... "they're trying so I can't get angry"... the martyr complex is born of over-empathy. One side becomes so in tune with the other person's pain they lose sight of themselves entirely. This helps neither of them.
This brings me back to the social expectation to suppress joy for the comfort of others. Why don't we start overcoming our fear of emotional pain by expecting empathy to go both ways: joy and pain? If we teach empathy through honest connection it really isn't difficult.
While it does help those hurting to have empathizers around, it's also helpful for those in pain to practice empathizing with happy people. I remember being taught to empathize joy (the few times I was jealous or sad at someone else's birthday party). Being joyful around others who aren't is not selfish if it's done with love, intention and balance. You can even be helping improve their mood! I'm talking about the need for cultural balance. We can expect others to empathize with our joy without being a self-absorbed jerk, expect others to empathize with our pain without being a perpetual victim, and empathize with emotional pain without developing a martyr complex. Yes, some people start off with far less options than others and their choices are extremely limited by their resources. But I also think that well-being is a choice everyone is capable of making. Well-being is choosing to grow to your full capacity with what is made available to you. Happiness is within. Our emotions are our responsibility... all of them.
Summation:
- Sharing our gritty tales of healing from emotional pain will help normalize healing behavior and remove fears of being irreparably damaged by life.
- Empathizing with both joy and pain will help reinforce empathy as a practice of honest connection with others, not just a way to share pain.
- Taking responsibility for our emotional well-being will help create a healthier environment for everyone.
If you find yourself caught in the unhappiness cycle, look in a mirror. Gratitude and positive empathy can help you break free. If you find you want to make a million comparisons and excuses in response to this post that prove it wrong, you're avoiding taking responsibility for your healing. If this all seems really mean to you, you might be enabling someone else to not heal (as well as yourself). What angers you the most is probably the culprit... that first thing you started making excuses for in your head. What are you telling yourself you can't overcome, deal with, accomplish, or be expected to change?
