Happiness

Essay for my Social Psychology in my final year of university . I got a first for this.

Write a case study describing an experience you have had, witnessed, or were indirectly involved in, and analyzing that experience in the light of the knowledge acquired in this course

Happiness is something that everyone seems obsessed with. It is not a modern phenomena as poets, philosophers and writers have tackled the issue of ‘what makes us happy?’ throughout the ages. There never seems to be any definitive answer. When we look at the research there are two broad approaches used when studying the concept of happiness; the hedonic approach that views happiness as the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, and the eudaimonic approach which views happiness as constantly striving to achieve the best of one’s self – whatever that may mean for you personally (Ryan & Deci, 2001).

Despite the wealth of research on the topic the questions that are yet to be answered satisfactorily are; why is it that happy people are considered ‘better’ than unhappy people in a lot of the literature (e.g. Diener and Lucus, 1999); and is true happiness ever really possible?

To attempt to answer these questions I will be looking at the case study of my life. I am now at a point where I believe I probably fit snugly into the scientific definition of a ‘happy person’ but I am not sure that I view myself in this way. I personally believe the most anyone can ever aim for is contentment but having accepted this fact, paradoxically, I am probably the ‘happiest’ I have ever been. I am comfortable with the way I look; with the way I interact with others; with the close relationships I have; and with where I am in life at present, as well as with my future goals and ambitions. These are all the general characteristics that are measured when looking at subjective well-being (Ryff, 1989). However, my mind set has never really been this way before – the way I am now is a relatively new phenomena for me. I will be looking at how the available literature fits with my personal experiences of how I reached this state of being. 

I was the first born of two children into two-parent household. I was always considered a very shy and quiet child and school was not something I actively enjoyed, but I was academically towards the top end of my class. When I was eight years old my father left the family home for his mistress and he has subsequently been remarried and divorced two times. As a child I would probably have told you I was happy when asked but, looking back, I do not believe myself to have been a particularly happy child. If anything I felt I did not fit into the world around me and found new experiences scary so tried to limit my exposure to new situations as much as possible.

Secondary school took me a while to settle into but once I made friends with the ‘right’ people I was regarded as funny, if a little weird and geeky by my classmates but was, crucially, accepted for who I was. At this point if asked ‘Are you happy?’ the answer would have been a resounding ‘Yes’.  When I was 13 I was forced to move schools as my mother had gotten remarried and the family had to relocate to accommodate the extra four children of my step-father. I did not get along with my step-siblings so home life became difficult to deal with. My new school was much more focused on academic results and had many more above-average students than my last school so I was now regarded more as ‘capable’ rather than ‘able’ and, once again, I felt like I did not fit in with the world around me. As a result I feel I missed out somewhat on a ‘normal’ teenage experience and did not go to parties or date any boys. I did my best to avoid any interaction with my environment at all costs. From the ages of 13 to 16 years if you had asked me ‘Are you happy?’ the answer would have been a resounding ‘No’. Yet I did not attempt to do anything to change this.     

My college years were slightly more encouraging. I found all my A-level tutors recognized my potential and offered me plenty of praise for my work which started to rebuild some of the confidence I had lost in my academic abilities. I finally started to date a few different people and subsequently embarked on the (thus far) most serious relationship of my life that lasted two years from the age of 17. At the end of my A-levels I felt a little lost at what direction my life should take next so I applied to university to do a degree in psychology as this had been my favourite lesson in college, but took a gap year first so I could save some money. During this time I embarked upon an evening class in Fine Art. My art tutor for this suggested that I had enough talent to do a degree in art. In the spirit of trying something new and doing something I was passionate about, I deferred the start of my psychology degree course in order to give art a try. Sadly, half way through the first year of the art degree I dropped out citing the fact that I was not motivated enough to succeed in the art world. However, it was mostly due to the fact that I had broken up with my, now long-distance boyfriend, and, pretty much hit ‘rock bottom’ and was the unhappiest I have ever been. I began drinking to excess three or four times a week, regularly taking drugs and having promiscuous sex. If you had asked me if I was happy at this point in my life I would have said ‘no, but at least I’m having fun’. Although I had not been planning to begin the psychology degree I had not bothered to decline the place and so two weeks before it started made the decision to give it a go with a view to becoming an Educational Psychologist.

After meeting a girl on the first day of this course that I now, only half-jokingly, refer to as my ‘emotionally co-dependent soul mate’ I came to the realisation over the first two years of my degree that, despite my upbringing not being particularly awful, I was actually quite an unhappy person. This is not something I had even really considered before, at least not in a conscious sense. By confronting this and talking extensively about all the aspects of my life with my new best friend I found I was growing in confidence in myself and my abilities. I am unsure exactly about why doing this had the effect it did but it may have been that just by talking about me and my problems to a like-minded person it meant I began to understand myself a lot better. This then had the knock-on effect of making me grow as a person and this  increased my confidence.

For my placement year I decided to get a job at a well paying I.T. firm. Although my original intention had been to try out Educational Psychology, my dwindling enthusiasm for this career path meant that I wasn’t particularly distraught that I wasn’t able to afford to take an unpaid job in this field. I decided instead to use the year to expand my other interests that I did not have time for whilst at university. I started a belly-dancing class, became an ‘appropriate adult’ volunteer for a mental health charity, and took up a creative writing class. All of this lasted almost exactly six months at which point I went in completely the opposite direction, decided I was bored with my office job so needed to pursue more exciting avenues and spent the remaining six months or so indulging in another round of partying, drinking, drug taking (including class A drugs I had sworn I would never touch), and promiscuous sex. The difference this time around was that the drinking and drugs were not being used to ‘forget’ about any unhappiness I might have been feeling. It was purely in response to a lot of the new social situations I kept finding myself in. Also, this time the sex I was having and the men I was dating were not being used as ‘confidence boosters’. I managed to learn something about myself and my behaviour from each of those men and found that, if someone mistreated or made me feel bad about myself in any way rather than ignore it, this time I was able to stand up for myself. I was forced through all this to confront a lot of the issues I had with my father. Although I have never had therapy I believe a lot of my present self-knowledge and self-belief comes from psychotherapeutic principles that I have learnt from my best friend. We subject ourselves to constant self-analysis and to all intents and purposes act almost as each others therapist.

This study presents the case of an individual who had always been seen as shy, quiet, passive, and not someone willing to engage in the world around her. Despite having had a ‘normal’ upbringing with relatively few traumatic events I was not a ‘happy’ person. Now I believe I am. The real question is; what changed and how does the changes that took place relate to what has been empirically found in research done on happiness?

Csikszentmihalyi (1999) has said that ‘happiness is not something that happens to people but something that they make happen’ (p824). Never having been a naturally happy person, I relate very strongly to that statement. My present mental state is one that I have only gained through self-reflection and self-analysis. All the changes I have made have ostensibly been internal and thus, effectively un-measurable. This is the crux of the matter where the study of happiness is concerned as most of the research, by its very nature, has to try and make happiness a quantifiable measure; when it fact most people will tell you that their mental state is not something they can reliably rate on a scale. It is clear to me and people that know me, that by becoming more outgoing, interacting with more people, and trying new things on a regular basis has meant I am now more comfortable with who I am. But it is only by being more and more comfortable with who I am that I was able to open myself up to all of these things in the first place, and I was only able to do that by analysing myself and my behaviour and therefore targeting the things that I felt needed to change.

Thus, I feel very strongly that the hedonic viewpoint is not particularly useful in the study of human happiness for reasons two fold; just pursuing the things that made me ‘happy’ did not make me happy above and beyond the time they were experienced, and all the mistakes I have made, all the things that made me unhappy in one way or another, I feel were invaluable for making me the person I am today - that is, someone I like and respect for who she is. I have no regrets for the things that I have done, only for the things I didn’t do. I feel very strongly that the only way to be content with yourself and the world you create for yourself is to follow a eudaimonic approach to happiness. This is much more flexible, and takes into account the fact that happiness and unhappiness are not at opposite ends of a spectrum. They are both vital emotions that are inexplicably linked and yet are, paradoxically, very distinct from one another.

At the start of this essay I asked why is it that happy people are considered ‘better’ than unhappy people, and is true happiness ever really possible? From examining my own life I have come to the conclusion that happy people are not quantifiably better than unhappy people. It is obviously a preferred way of being but I would class those who are ‘better’ as those who can use all the information from all their experiences –good and bad - to the best of their ability and make themselves into a self-aware and fully functioning individual; as the eudaimonic approach tends to preach. This might mean spending just as much time being sad as being happy in order to fully understand ones self. I also do not think that true happiness is possible. I think the only thing that works is to accept this and be more content with just being content. This appears to be a concept that is lost in today’s society that teaches us to always constantly be striving for something more. That is not to say that ambition to improve ones self or ones circumstances should be discouraged but the idea that happiness as a constant is an obtainable state of being is something that I think we all need to discard in order to really achieve our full potential.