“I’m happy, but I don’t feel happy.” Did you hear this phrase? Did you hear yourself saying it? **“What do I need to be happy?” “What else do I need?” **
We live in a time where dissatisfaction is a market issue. Let’s think… it is necessary for us to be dissatisfied and not so happy so that we go looking for what we are missing. All advertisers, marketing graduates, etc. know this very well. It is their job, and this text is not intended to be a criticism of anyone, but rather to help us think and establish ourselves as decision-makers. We are the ones who must receive the information and decide if that is what we need at that moment or not (or should be us).
37-year-old consultant, graduated 3 years ago from a career that she feels she really likes and in which she is successful. She has been in a relationship for 2 years, and they both have a common project of moving in together.
Recently, he received a promotion for which he worked hard, and which represents not only an economic improvement, but also a professional one. AND “I know I’m happy, but I don’t feel happy”
When we begin to investigate the root of his discomfort we can see a list of thoughts that appear intrusively that tell him: “you achieved the promotion, but you are not sufficiently prepared to face it”, “you would need to study this”, “Pedro (name fictitious of a colleague) it seems to me that it is better for that position”, “that’s where you achieved it only because they wanted to put a woman in order to be in line with the new times, but you didn’t deserve it.”
I wonder… How can one feel happy? Could anyone if they had those thoughts? The first thing to investigate is their origin. Are they your own thoughts, or do they come from someone? At what times in your life did you feel like you weren’t enough? What does she do when those thoughts come to her? How does she act? Does she start looking for courses and sign up for 1000 activities until she is exhausted? Does she become exhausted by the 1000 activities, and thus begins to fail to finally confirm that she was not good for the position? Constant self-boycott. Acting in a loop, others call it.
At this point we see that market logic feeds on our constant dissatisfaction. There are always more courses to take, there is always something that is not known, something more to know.
Various approach strategies: it is important to investigate the root of the problem, evaluate the childhood and adolescence of the person who consults to see if there are open wounds that still have an effect today. But it is also important to be able to give very practical strategies for day to day life.
As an example, we can make lists with our negative thoughts and for each of them to find an explanation or a way to refute them with elements of reality. A little list that we can always carry with us in our cell phone notes, for example, so that it somehow functions as our safe object (understanding this as the object that helps us with our well-being, an object that must be momentary). The thought stopping technique (widely used in CBT) can also help us to begin to have more pleasant thoughts, and thus kinder emotions towards ourselves.
Yes, I am a psychoanalyst, and for the most orthodox psychoanalysts the previous paragraph is sacrilegious, but I consider that seeing a client suffer and having tools to prevent them from doing so and not giving them them is as violent as interpreting someone who does not ask for it (psychoanalysts alert! ). All the techniques and therapies that we have at hand that can help reduce daily suffering are valid as long as they are carried out by a qualified professional with knowledge of them.
