A Quiet Crisis of Unhappiness

Submitted by tonyplant on January 23, 2006 - 15:03.

There’s an interesting piece about the political need to address optimism and happiness in today’s Guardian. Jackie Ashley quotes from a report by Mulgan and Buonfino of the Young Foundation who conclude that british social fabric has been bruised over the last few decades and that Britain is suffering “a quiet crisis of unhappiness”.

Many of the issues are the same ones that I’ve been writing about in my attempt to explore what would make Harlow happy. Similarly, one of the issues that Ashley refers to is the ready deprecation of happiness as an optional extra. Both as individuals and communities, we seem to be in the grip of the same psychological process. We are deferring our happiness ‘until’ other things are achieved first: in transactional analysis terms, this is known as running an until script. Sometimes, the shopping list of what must be sorted first keeps growing to ensure that it will never be the right time to address the outstanding issue. Or we pack out our list of ‘to-be-dones’ with wicked problems that can never be resolved satisfactorily.

A common finding in transactional analysis is that the until script often runs concurrently with the injunction “Don’t have fun”. Fun is too frequently seen as equivalent to play, and therefore the opposite of work, achievement and productivity. However, Pat Kane argues for a play ethic that is essential for us to maintain “our adaptability, vigour and optimism in the face of an uncertain, risky and demanding world”. Kane quotes Brian Sutton-Smith: “The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression”. It’s a startling observation that seems to have a remarkable amount of validation in the world around us, whether that is at work, school, college or our homes.

read more | add new comment | unhappiness | transactional analysis | resilience | play ethic | optimism

Auld Angst Whine

Submitted by tonyplant on December 31, 2005 - 14:37.

New Year tends to be a set-piece review date. A time for introspection on how we can improve our lives. An opportunity for reflecting on the past year and realising that we achieved everything that we wanted, and more. Or we confront ourselves with our failure to follow through on any of the plans and actions that we thought might bring us greater happiness and fulfilment.

 

Emotional self-flagellation makes it hard to view the up-coming year with optimism, so for some people New Year is an opportunity to re-visit the angst of past years. There is the usual laundry-list of unspecified goals such as losing weight, getting fit, earning more money. We hope that these things might make us happier despite the research that says, “Not necessarily”.

However, does this ritual introspection actually do us any good? Theodore Roethke robustly dismissed it:

Self-contemplation is a curse

That makes an old confusion worse.

There are few “Eureka!” moments that arise from pitiless self-assessment and rumination. Research by Susan Nolen-Hoeksema shows that when people are depressed, rumination just worsens their mood. Trite though it sounds, if we focus on the negative in our lives, we sink into a state from which it is difficult to recover motivation and energy. Rumination can suffocate our ability to come up with solutions for our predicaments. Nolen-Hoeksema reports that even when ruminators come up with a solution (such as joining a bereavement support group) they fail to follow through on their intention.

read more | add new comment | Theodore Roethke | rumination | optimism | Nolen-Hoeksema | new year | happiness | Aritstotle