The reinforcing cycle of the happiness trap

What is the vicious cycle of happiness trap and how to escape it? Discover strategies to manage unwanted thoughts and feelings, and improve your well-being.

We have little control over our thoughts and feelings, especially in challenging situations. Yet, in western society, we tend to feel stupid, weak, or inadequate when our attempts to control our thoughts and feelings fail.

This myth has emerged from the fact that in the outside world, we can control a great deal of things. Furthermore, when we are kids, we are told not to cry, to ‘cheer up,’ to not be scared, to ‘not think’ this or that… We are made to believe we can in fact control these things. No one has told us that they cry too, and that this is a perfectly natural thing to do.

We rarely speak of what really goes on inside our heads. And because we do not, we perceive ourselves to be inadequate for not having our own thoughts in order.

Vicious cycles

In this domain, solutions can become our problems. Trying hard to avoid, get rid of, or escape unwanted thoughts and feelings leads to more unwanted thoughts and feelings. This is the struggle strategy in action. It can take one of two forms:

Fight strategies:

  • Direct suppression of unwanted thoughts and feelings.
  • Arguing with your negative thought—trying to prove them wrong.
  • Trying to take charge of your thoughts and feelings, to ‘snap out of them,’ or try to force yourself to be happy when you are not.
  • Bullying yourself through hard self-judgement: “don’t be so pathetic.”

Flight strategies

  • Opting out of situations or activities that trigger uncomfortable thoughts or feelings.
  • Distracting yourself of the thoughts and feelings by doing something else.
  • Avoid or get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings through substance use.

These strategies can be helpful or even useful—emotional intelligence of sorts. Often, though, we use them to the extent that the net effect is negative. They become ‘away moves,’ distancing us (even further) from the person we want to be.

Excessive experiential avoidance comes at three big costs:

  1. These strategies eat up time and energy that could be invested in more meaningful, life-enhancing activities.
  2. We develop additional feelings of hopeless, frustration or inadequacy because the unwanted thoughts and feelings keep coming back. 
  3. We lower our quality of life over the long term (we move further away from who we want to be).

Sometimes struggle strategies are automatic and unconscious. For example, when we experience intense pain our vagus nerve literally numbs us. It ‘cuts off’ our feelings to spare us from the pain. This gives rise to other unpleasant feelings: numbness, emptiness, hollowness, or a sense of being ‘dead inside.’

This is the ‘happiness trap.’ To increase our happiness, we try hard to avoid or get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings. The more effort we put into this struggle, the more difficult thoughts, and feelings we create—the more unhappy we become.

Exercise: personal strategies

To really grasp the above, we need to identify which strategies we ourselves commonly apply. An exercise to do this is outlines below.

What have you tried?

  1. Start by finishing this sentence: The inner experiences I most want to avoid or get rid of are… Where ‘inner experiences’ can be anything like thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, urges, images, and sensations.
  2. Write an exhaustive list of everything you have ever tried to avoid or get rid of these unwanted inner experiences. Think of both conscious and unconscious strategies. Use the list of flighting and fighting strategies above to produce as many as you can.

How has this worked out in the long run (what were the gains)?

Many struggle strategies give you short-term relief from painful thoughts and feelings. But do they permanently get rid of those unwanted thoughts and feelings?

What have you missed (what were the costs)?

When we use these methods inappropriately, they have significant long-term costs. Consider: When have you excessively or inappropriately used them? What have these methods cost you (health, money, wasted time, relationships, missed opportunities, work, increased pain, tiredness, wasted energy, frustration, disappointment, and so on)?

How many of these methods give you relief from pain in the short term but keep you stuck or make your life worse or have significant costs in the long term?

Struggle strategy or value-guided action?

Advice about how to improve our lives comes at us from all directions. We should find a meaningful job, do this great workout, get out in nature, start a hobby, join a club, contribute to charity, learn new skills, have fun with your friends, and so on.

All these activities can be deeply satisfying if we do them because they are genuinely important and meaningful to us. If we do these activities to escape from unpleasant thoughts and feelings, they will not lead to fulfillment—eudaimonia.

When you do things because they are meaningful to you, we would not classify them as struggle strategies. We would call them ‘values-guided actions’ (see chapter 10) and expect them to improve your life in the long term. If those actions are motivated to avoid or get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings, they are struggle strategies instead.

How to escape the happiness trap?

The first step is increasing self-awareness. Notice all the little things you do each day to avoid or get rid of unpleasant thoughts and feelings. What are their consequences? Keep a journal or spend a few minutes each day reflecting on this.

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