We all try to find safety in different ways. For some of us, it is to be compulsively happy. We insist we are happy most or all of the time. We act as if we are happy. And what we are really doing is escaping an uncomfortable feeling.
This may work for a while, but it doesn’t work in the long run, and it doesn’t really work even in the moment.
Whatever we try to escape is still here.
This is just another unfreedom. Another way of leaving ourselves.
There is of course nothing wrong with feeling content or happy.
There is not even anything wrong with trying to escape uncomfortable feelings by seeking happiness, or acting as if we are happy. It’s just that it doesn’t really work, and there is another way.
That way is to feel what’s here, and look at any images and words associated with it. When sensations are felt and recognized as sensations, images are recognized as images, and words as words, there is a release of the charge that initially seemed to be in it. And here, there is a freedom to allow happiness, unhappiness, and whatever feelings naturally come through. There is a deeper and less effortful contentment. We are more consciously aligned with what’s already here: an effortless and built-in noticing of what’s here, and an effortless and built-in allowing of what’s here.
Note: We all have our habitual ways of escaping feeling certain feelings. For me, it’s more going into understanding, seeking feeling loved, and the usual distractions of modern life (reading articles online, talking with friends etc.). I think I did the happiness one to some extent in my early twenties, but not so much anymore.
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Initial notes…..
- compulsively happy
- as a way to avoid uncomfortable feelings (s/i/w)
- attractive on the surface, but not when look/feel more closely into it
- is just another escape, another unfreedom, another way of leaving ourselves
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