When The Heart Is Empty. What Prevents You From Being Happy

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

I'll start right away with disappointments. For those who believe that happiness is a permanent substance and can be experienced continuously. No you can not. And this is an axiom.

Happiness is always only moments and episodes in life. And, most importantly, they are always unpredictable. Remember Forrest Gump? You never know what kind of candy you will pull out, and what is inside!

In general, the composition or recipe for human happiness is very simple. In fact, these are three main types of human experiences, the combination of which in life gives a feeling of being happy.

Of course, the more often such episodes occur, the more reason to conclude that life is still successful. And there are far fewer reasons to look for any meaning in it. He has already been found, he is in these episodes.

So…

Components of Human Happiness

The first and basic human happiness is biological happiness (in Gestalt terminology - schizoid). Remember the last time you were in the mountains. Or at sea (in the forest). Remember your feeling next to these giant natural formations - mountains, sea, forest?

It is a very pleasant feeling - merging with nature, when I am part of these mountains and this sea. When I am majestic and omnipotent - as they are!

Such an experience of happiness is also called monadic. That is, experienced alone, in a monad. It has nothing to do with other people, no other person is simply needed here. This biological happiness, in fact, is the strongest basis of human happiness, this is what is called the background of experiences, something that is difficult to take away.

But biological happiness alone is not enough for a person. After all, we are, after all, social creatures.

Therefore, the next type of happiness is dyadic. That is, the one that we get, being in a dyad - in a relationship with another person.

Happiness in a dyad (pair)

This type of happiness can include both love and friendship, everything pleasant that can be obtained from the relationship and communication of two people - and for some time be in a sweet merger with another, and for some time - on the border of contact (that is, to meet differences, experiences, ideas at the "customs" between the personal territories of each other). On the border of contact there is also a lot of pleasure and interest - what kind of other is he? How does he like me?

Exactly everything related to the quality of dyadic happiness is often a request of people for psychotherapy, this is what consultation of a psychologist in Kiev or other cities can help. After all, it is not so easy to achieve a good quality of dyadic communication. It is not easy to be in a confluence with a mountain or sea. This is much more difficult - after all, next to a constantly changing, unpredictable substance - another person. And no guarantees! But nobody canceled the attachment …

Therefore, finding the happiness of a dyadic is such an elite bonus! Which is important to learn and which often comes at a very high price.

This happiness is constantly associated with both loss and disappointment. Important people die, leave, change. And these processes are inevitable. Again, I want to mention the movie "Forrest Gump". Check it out if you haven't seen it yet.

Happiness in a triad

Actually, the third kind of happiness. When there are two, but there is also some third - for example, a society, recognition and belonging to which you really want to receive, and better - to receive constantly. What are you good, well done. Achieved a lot. A worthy member of society. And your relationship with others is just as good and right.

And the whole thing is that often we are chasing just this, the third kind of happiness. Desperate for the recognition of society, we reach many peaks of social success, but we may still not be very happy with this. For example, because there may be little in our life, for example, happiness of the first and second types.

However, there may be completely different "alignments of forces". Let's say there is a lot of schizoid happiness, but dyadic and triadic happiness is somehow not very good. Something does not work.

What prevents you from being happy

This is the most important question, to which, probably, the entire previous text boiled down.

What prevents you from getting biological (monadic), dyadic, triadic happiness?

Obtaining schizoid or biological happiness may not be available to people who have been taught that "you cannot have pleasure", especially for yourself. Do you remember how in the "Pokrovskie gates"? When Savva Ignatyevich told Lev Evgenich that "they live not for joy, but for conscience." Therefore, it is bad to rejoice and receive pleasure, one should be ashamed of it! It is necessary to work out a sense of duty to people all the time, to be busy only with this and, God forbid, to feel internally happy - without anyone! Selfishness!

Dyadic happiness is not available to those who find it difficult to build close relationships. For example, a person perceives both himself and the other as some kind of functional that must do something - take care, work, guess desires, play the role of a good man (woman, husband, wife), etc.

Such people in their own relationship with each other, in contact - feelings, experiences, needs - do not enter. They are guided by their stereotypes about what the relationship should be, and do not interact with a real person.

They just don't care! It turns out such an artificiality, a shell, where, in fact, it is very lonely and desperately sad.

Or, for example, people who are very afraid of intimacy. They seem to thirst for it, want it, with every fiber of their soul, but as soon as they smell its alluring aroma, they “roll off” wherever their eyes look, like hares! The fear that, on the one hand, this very closeness will absorb them, and they will lose themselves, and on the other hand, the fear of rejection is so great that they cannot afford long-term safe and close relationships. They suffer greatly from this.

Triadic happiness is difficult to obtain for those who somehow weakly believe that something can be important and useful to society, that in general they are capable of something and can achieve something. These are people with low self-esteem, afraid to take a step forward, to somehow prove themselves, to do something important. They, as a rule, are unsuccessful - they have a bad (or not at all) work, they are attached to the parental figure (or whoever fulfills her role), they reject themselves as a worthy member of society, they cannot receive recognition from people, they remain essentially his own - infantile and unhappy.

The fact is that it is important to be able to organize for yourself all three types of happiness - if not in equal, then in sufficient proportion. It is clear that the feeling of sufficiency is very individual. At least for now, you can try to listen to yourself and feel what kind of happiness you lack. And start working to replenish it. Of course, receiving psychotherapeutic support. This is our profile!