Why you will never be happy (and nothing happens)

• REBECA YANKE

  @rebecayanke

Thursday, October 31, 2019 - 01:47

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That between pain and nothing William Faulkner chose pain we know it because he wrote it in one of his most famous books, The Wild Palms (1937), a novel in two parts, or two stories set that distress anguish at every turn of the page . That between pain and nothing, now, almost a century later, perhaps we prefer the latter is intuited because, at the gates of 2020, we go through with ease and rapid passage one of the wildest transformations with respect to the individual since Freud said that of which we are one and triune: the id, the self and the superego. Today, for now, the triad becomes, of course, a superlative: yoism. What mothers tell us when they are young: me, me and then me (again), in case it wasn't clear.

Because we are the result of a process that culminates in what the Danish psychologist Svend Brinkmann calls "the madness of self-improvement . " It has been a long time since positive psychology was established, also the fact of going to the psychologist. We read many years of self-help books -remember El secreto , or Who has eaten my cheese , and so many from Jorge Bucay or Paulo Coelho-, it began to seem normal to abandon bad habits -to quit smoking, leave the sofa- and acquire others New and also good. We became runners , people worried about what they eat, appeared the phrases that in two lines solve your life, influencers , coaches (of all kinds), gurus of optimism and masters of the universe that, by force of globality and coup of social network, we have become slaves of diverse tyrannies: that of health, of giving the best version of yourself and, perhaps the most perverse, of the social mandate that tells us that we can be happy only with our will .

Until, in 2017, Svend Brinkmann, quite tired of the matter, wrote a manifesto entitled How to stand firm in a runaway world . In it he asked: "Do you buy one self-help book after another without feeling really happy? Do you go from mindfulness to positive psychology? Are you constantly looking to develop yourself, with therapy or with coaches ? If so, you are addicted to self-improvement and need anti-self help . " From there, he gave a series of clues to get it and the first one reads: "Stop looking at your belly button . "

Brinkmann maintains, whose book will be published in a few months in Spain with Ned Ediciones, that "we live under the mandate of the culture of positivity" and "we tend to identify happiness with certain positive emotions and, if we do not have them present, we think we are unhappy. "

"But what if happiness has more to do with the meaning of things and the ability to compromise than with certain feelings? Maybe we should think more about having meaningful lives together and less about how to optimize our individual happiness." And that is how Brikmann gives in the hardest bone of this matter, that we are focused on personal happiness rather than collective happiness.

This would be, according to the psychologist Antonio Cano , president of the Spanish Society for the Study of Anxiety and Stress, the general framework from which we would have to study the situation we currently live or contribute to form. "We must talk about narcissism, this lifestyle that permeates many, especially young people, in which anyone can be a guru and everyone believes that his photos, his travels, his things, are the most of the most . Social networks reinforce the idea that we are very important and that we all have to be happy all the time. "

Social networks reinforce the idea that we are very important and that we all have to be happy all the time

It is true, you see, that the academy is pending. Until recently, studies related to how to always be better abounded: more empathetic, more compassionate, more grateful, more, more always. Now, these are combined with research that states, for example, that "seeking happiness can make us unhappy" or mention, in this case from Stanford University, that "the paradox of happiness is that seeking it can make us less happy" . And he proposes: better to go to the concrete - make someone smile, recycle better - than more abstract goals like "make someone happy or save the environment".

Gonzalo Hervás, president of the Spanish Society of Positive Psychology and professor at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) clarifies (a bit) the terms. "Do not confuse Mr. Wonderful's philosophy and positive thinking, both superficial and counterproductive in many cases, with positive psychology, which tries to understand human well-being and capabilities from a scientific point of view," he says. "That said, there is an overdose of messages related to happiness, a consequence of the hundreds of books that have appeared in the last decade, of the avalanche of beautiful phrases on social networks and the consequent misconception that being happy is easy " It is neither easy, nor does it make sense to aspire to it from one day to the next, nor can you be happy all your life from beginning to end ."

A delicate but effective example is that of people who get cancer and, instantly, they are expected to become cancer fighters, beings capable of overcoming the natural mood that knowing that you are sick infers and become disease superheroes, even capable of destroying it. One of those people was the doctor and writer Barbara Ehrenreich , who in 2011 wrote Smile or Die (Turner editorial), a critical essay with positive thinking from the vision of who was a cancer patient. For Ehrenreich, positive thinking is related to the meaning of American life, that dream that films talk about and even capitalism: the idea that someone with nothing can become, with a stroke of effort, a person of enormous success personal and professional. "

This would be an extreme that, in daily life implies, as analyzed by the psychologist José Carrión , of the Madrid cabinet Cinteco, "a society that interprets discomfort in terms of personal failure while placing responsibility and exclusive role in the individual , curiously supported by an army of coaching or mindfulness gurus, self-help readings and the 10 foods you should eat to achieve your integral health. "

It is not about trying to suffer, but we must be aware that we are not in control of what is happening outside of us.

It is not, in addition, everything as idyllic as it is intended to present. Explains the professor of Psychology at UCM Carmelo Vázquez , in an essay that analyzes psychology and positive and its enemies, that "granting an extremely high value to having an emotional state of happiness has paradoxical effects on the mood, even feeding feelings of alienation and loneliness. " And, according to the experts consulted, there are two underlying maxims that the individual ends up internalizing and that, over time, hurts him: that everything depends on oneself - and if it is not achieved, the sense of failure is increased - and that we can control everything , when we surely do not control anything at all.

This is what the psychologist Lucía Fernández , PsicoLucha on Instagram believes: "It is not about trying to suffer, but we must be aware that, in life, we do not have control of what happens outside of us. Paradoxically, the only thing that we can drive is our interior and sometimes this is what we handle worse. We do it the other way around. "

It is normal. Sometimes it costs to breathe. Taking the subway can become an odyssey and talk about the intimate even with intimates into something unthinkable. No psychologist tells us that it is necessary to suffer to manage the suffering. What they do say is that "there are no good or bad emotions in a moral or absolute sense and all, pleasant and unpleasant, fulfill a double function of individual regulation and communication." "I don't know any patient who, after overcoming a depressive episode, recommends it to anyone but I could tell you about many who, without a doubt, have come out very strong and with less fear," says José Carrión.

Because it is not about saying that suffering is useful, but that, in fact, we have little control over life and, as Gonzalo Hervás says, "it is normal not to be happy for many reasons, for the temperament itself, for the vital phase in which one is, for varied injustices and for own and conscious decisions. " In this regard, says Sara Losantos , responsible for the area of ​​Duel Psychology, the Mario Losantos del Campo Foundation, which "suffering prepares us and provides us with tools to face difficulties while illusion, love and friendship repair our wounds." Are we stronger after each suffering?

Suffering is the defect of humans and it is dangerous to romanticize both happiness and suffering

"The idea that suffering makes you stronger is a myth," the writer Lydia Yuknavitch said recently in La Esfera de Papel, who has just published in Spain The chronology of water (Carmot Press) and whose life has been the opposite of easy . He also proposed to bet on another idea of ​​strength, related to "concepts such as empathy, radical listening, emotional intelligence and the desire not to be the center but to collaborate with others." "Suffering is the defect of humans," warns Yuknavitch, and "it is dangerous to romanticize both happiness and suffering."

His reflection could join another of Ehrenreich: "We need to roll up our sleeves and fight against some terrible obstacles, some put by ourselves and others by our own lives. The first step to achieve this is that we wake up from the collective fantasy that is thought positive".

If you are considering going for your essay to the bookstore, be careful because you may find yourself on the road with one of those works that promise immediate bliss: The book that your brain does not want to read, how to re-educate the brain to be happier and live with fullness , which has already sold out three editions in half a year.

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