How to be Happy

The one where I mention suicidal thoughts and talk about anxiety, depression and feeling like life is passing me by.

**Please remember, the title and subtitle are there to give you an idea of what this post contains. If it’s not one for you, please don’t read on.**

How do people manage to be happy?

Seriously, answers on a postcard, please.

I think I should be happy. Although, ‘should’ is a strange word. Why ‘should’ I?

I am happy. But also I’m not.

I don’t feel happy. I feel anxious and constantly….well, just flat. I have so many things in my life that are amazing and which I appreciate and am ridiculously thankful for. I have a lovely husband who I’ve been with for twenty years, who has a job that pays the big bills and affords me the luxury of running my small business in these difficult times, I have two great, grown up stepkids, a new grandson, a lovely dog, my health (notwithstanding the tiresome ailments that can be expected at this stage of life), a nice house with a garden where I can see nature doing its thing and hear the birds while I’m working. But, I have this overarching sense of worry and anxiety that looms all the time, and most particularly whenever I feel some positivity creeping in. It’s my normal and it feels like a more comfortable place to be.

I know people who can laugh and dance and sing and just be joyful in public. You may be one of them. I am too self conscious to feel able to do those things in private most of the time. I very rarely feel relaxed and unburdened. I mostly feel like I’m being watched and criticised. Yes, even when I’m on my own.

I regularly have moments of panic during the day, when I think I’ve forgotten what I should really be doing or where I should have been an hour ago. I wonder if this is compounded by the generally unstructured nature of my life. I have a routine of sorts, I work hard but I have no set commitments most days, no meetings, no trains to catch, nothing that can’t be done tomorrow….unless I’ve got orders to fulfil, then I’m completely focussed and purposeful, with just an amuse bouche of worry that there’s something else I’ve forgotten about!

Things that I really should have been able to deal with a long time ago just hang over me, and I can’t seem to shake them off. And no, CBT/EFT/hypnotherapy won’t help (didn’t help), but thank you.

I was looking down from a bridge onto a fast flowing river recently and remembered how, when I was at my lowest point some years ago, I used to find myself doing this and wondering if I should/could throw myself into the water. My first stepdad killed himself (or tried, didn’t succeed and then died from the damage) and knowing his reasons and the effects it had on those of us around him, it’s always felt like an ultimately selfish act. I never truly thought I could/would do it, despite the possibility of it occasionally flashing through my mind, and I certainly haven’t been in a dark enough place to be able to ignore the impact it would have on those around me.

High Force in full force.

I was on medication for depression for a few years in my thirties but I became more depressed that it didn’t make me feel any better. Prozac made me weird. Citalopram made all my nerve endings hyper sensitive. I now take Sertraline for my anxiety and have done for about ten years. It’s been an absolute game changer for me. I’m so much more resilient than I was. Don’t get me wrong, I can still turn things into a personal criticism if the mood takes me, but I no longer feel the need to explode and throw things, or to curl up into a ball and shut the world out for days at a time.

The downside of this ‘ironing out’ of my moods is that I now live on a weird plateau. I don’t really cry anymore, even when I feel moved and emotional and really feel I want to. In extreme circumstances I may ‘well up’ and sometimes feel a single tear escaping, but I can’t actually let it out and sob. Maybe the weird plateau is also why I don’t feel pure, unadulterated joy….or really even manage to scrape together a well-diluted version.

It’s not that I’m unhappy, I just have a deep seated worry that any good thing has to be temporary and if I start to enjoy it then it’ll all be taken away just to spite me. I had a very real irrational fear for many years that if I started to feel content (never mind happy) I would find out I was terminally ill. It has successfully prevented me from making the most of things for much of my adult life.

This fear of being punished for being happy has only really dissipated over the last ten years or so, and to be honest it’s not fully gone, there’s a bit of it that’s still lurking. That, “Oh, here we go, this is all going to go tits up before I’ve had time to enjoy it!” feeling applies to everything. If my husband is late home, the first thing I think is, “Oh, it was going so well and now he’s probably had a fatal car crash.” If I get a review from a customer it’s, “Oh, here we go, just when I thought I was having a bit of success, they’re going to tell everyone that my work is shit.”

This feeling about my work is a tough one. I really struggle to say positive things about myself, so promoting my work is extremely difficult. I don’t like to brag or look like I’m ‘showing off’ so it’s hard to stand up and say “This is beautiful and original and you should buy it!” (…even if it is, and you really should!!)

It’s here if you want to take a look, but please don’t feel obliged - I won’t cry, I can’t.

At 58, I have pretty much come to the conclusion that my brain just isn’t wired that way. My Mum tells me I wasn’t a happy child (thanks, Mum……and Dad, you were studying sociology and Jean Piaget ffs!) so I guess I’ve just never had a sunny disposition. I really honestly don’t know how to be carefree and joyfully happy, even in the moment, and no amount of trying seems to make the slightest bit of difference.

That little gremlin, always on my shoulder.

I wrote most of this yesterday afternoon, before heading to the beach with my dog. As I walked along the shoreline, paddling in the receding waves, with the heat still in the low sun, the sight and sound of sand martins reeling above the cliffs and barely a soul to be seen, I realised I felt happy. Just for a moment.