Why do people stop themselves from being happy?

[DoW Lowen]

Title says it all. I'm about to enter my PhD in Psychology and for the life of me I still can't find a reasonable answer to this question.

Happiness is a rather overrated emotion and we often tell people to 'be happy' as if that is the solution to all the problems. It teaches us the least and is not any more important than anger, pride, guilt, sorrow or envy; however I often wonder why people consciously sabotage themselves from experiencing it.

The examples are common enough:

The man/woman who finds a loving partner but drives him away or settles for a lesser partner. The person who cannot feel pride or joy in their achievements or who refuses to even pursue them. The defeatists, the self-loathing and the down right hopeless.

I've been attempting to approach this as academically as possible, and every conclusion I've reach has a gaping flaw. So I'm reaching out to the internet; my brain is racked and I'm out of ideas, I've come up with some although I don't feel satisfied with any of them (see below).

So what do you think? Can you think of/recall an example that could shed some light on this?

Spoiler: Some ideas I've already considered...

They are afraid of happiness: My immediate thought and it makes the most sense; they believe that happiness is fleeting and can pass as quickly as it comes therefore they do not bother with the emotion in the first place since the disappointment would hurt more than the state they are in now. However with many people their actions are consciously self-sabotaging, they go well out of their way, with the knowledge of the damage they are inflicting, to ensure that they never feel the emotion. If their reasoning is based around what they believe will result in the least amount of discomfort or distress than why take that course of action when you know self-sabotage is worse than happiness?

It is a psychological disorder such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder or Depression: Already considered and considering how under diagnosed GAD is, only 1 in 20 GP's can properly identify it, it may account for a proportion of the cases of 'anti-happiness' however I don't want to get ahead of myself and lay blame on mass malfunctioning cognitive faculties.

Attention seeking behaviour or martyr orientated rationale: Are people secretly happy being miserable? For some people, undoubtedly so. But is rather cynical to believe this is a majority of the case. Television and cinema (which can sometimes being interesting character studies) don't often reveal a masochistic desire to be the root cause of self-sabotage.

Emotions are retarded: Yeah, possibly.

All of some combination of the above?

 

[Stormcloud23]

It's pretty simple, people don't want to be happy because then they'd have nothing to complain about.

 

[somonels]

This should be something a psychology PhD knows.
I do not have a psychology PhD.

 

[Woodscare]

Sometimes it is outside sources such as peer pressure, wanting to impress someone and not being contend with what they have are factors too

 

[Ruwrak]

People love complaining
People love beeing miserable.
Beeing miserable allows them to complain about every single petty thing in life.

There you go. Without a PhD a reasonable explanation.
It feels good to be able to whine about beeing miserable. As odd as it sounds, some people are feel happy beeing unhappy. Only they don't realise they are happy complaining =/

 

[FamoFunk]

It's pretty simple, people don't want to be happy because then they'd have nothing to complain about.

This, with attention thrown in too. I've known a few people who will go out of their way to not do things to make them happy, or make things harder for themselves. I don't get it, being happy is awesome.

Sometimes, though, it could be serious things like depression. That's a nasty thing to have.

 

[Fanta Grape]

Most of the time, as I understand it, there are risks involved in certain decisions. These risks may come in the form of emotional problems. Making one decision may make you happier for the short term, but more miserable in the long term (or vice-versa). Sometimes there may not even be a risk but the illusion of a risk projected by societal values or ideals. These make people take alternative decisions which they feel in their mind as more safe and/or familiar.

Am I getting close?

Edit: Why are people being so cynical? People may enjoy attention seeking from complaining about their misfortune but surely there's an underlying problem (or maybe not a problem at all but just a reason) behind it for the individual. People choose actions for a multitude of reasons and saying people like to be whiney for the hell of it just isn't very applicable or logical.

 

[])rStrangelove]

I think it has to do with learning and information filtering in our brain.

We get used to positive things after a while (becoming a routine) and we tend to pay more attention to negative things in order to see whether they could get worse or stay that way.

Animals pay attention to changes in their environments. Humans are afraid of loosing things they hold dear and so maybe we're concentrating on bad things too much.
Some just want to keep the status quo if there's some uncertainty that by reaching out and trying to gain more they could do some mistake and end up with a lot less than before.

Other ppl cannot feel proud because they consider what they do to be fairly normal, maybe because their focus is too limited so they cannot compare themselves to others.

 

[DoW Lowen]

The problem with the arguments so far is that people are inherently driven to be content, if not happy. Of course this doesn't apply to everyone (as with all psychological principles) however people don't enjoy excessively whining and I've dealt with enough people suffering from clinical anxiety to see that. In my experience, it's more so the happier and well off people who enjoy complaining. People with anxiety believe that people will judge them if they complain, hence why so many of them avoid conflict and confrontation. People want to get better, any person suffering from depression can tell you that, but they can't or they don't know how to.

It is a very cynical outlook on life to hold, if you truly believe this is the general nature of people outside of high school.

 

[Lyiat]

As someone who suffers from GAD, I can tell you that avoiding happiness has nothing to do with the condition. I'm quite happy, quite often. I pursue happiness whenever I can. All GAD does is randomly make me enter a Fight or Flight response to unknown and inappropriate stimulus.

 

[DoW Lowen]

)rStrangelove]*snip*

This is similar to a theory of how Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder develops in people. We experience heightened sympathetic responses and the bio-feedback does not reset and never experiences a resting level, meaning our brain believes we're constantly in a state of threat or distress.

In laymen terms, it is possible that some people are so use to being sad that they are unable to revert or progress to other feelings. It still wouldn't explain why people self-sabotage themselves though. Unless that behaviour is a symptom of something else.

*snip*

Not just a Taoist perspective but what you've said can be found in classical Greek philosophy such as Plato and Socrates as well (just an interesting side note).

People can resent growth in others as you say, but others also use it as inspiration whether from admiration or jealousy. But at least in a relatively mentally healthy individual, irrespective of idiosyncrasies, people generally have strong support groups, most people have friends who do say 'go for it', but people still do the contrary.

The reason I'm making this thread is to determine whether this action is selfish or not. I don't believe so, people with anxiety are self-aware of their actions - overly in fact which results in their continued anxiety.

 

[DoW Lowen]

As someone who suffers from GAD, I can tell you that avoiding happiness has nothing to do with the condition. I'm quite happy, quite often. I pursue happiness whenever I can. All GAD does is randomly make me enter a Fight or Flight response to unknown and inappropriate stimulus.

I agree with you. GAD is characterized by a persistent state of worry, I was merely musing whether that anxiety manifests itself in irrational decision making that is deliberating counter productive.

If you don't mind me asking, how are you coping with your GAD?

 

[Lyiat]

As someone who suffers from GAD, I can tell you that avoiding happiness has nothing to do with the condition. I'm quite happy, quite often. I pursue happiness whenever I can. All GAD does is randomly make me enter a Fight or Flight response to unknown and inappropriate stimulus.

I agree with you. GAD is characterized by a persistent state of worry, I was merely musing whether that anxiety manifests itself in irrational decision making that is deliberating counter productive.

If you don't mind me asking, how are you coping with your GAD?

Perfectly well and unmediated, unlike my mother and brother. Lets not talk about them, though. Other than having to leave early from work once or twice in the past five years, it hasn't acted up much since I left high school.

 

[Astoria]

As a certain agent said 'humans define their existence through misery and suffering'. If you're happy you don't feel like you're achieving anything. You're just coasting through. So people deliberately put themselves in bad situations so they can work towards getting themselves out of it. Also, I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm really really happy I feel like I'm dreaming and it isn't real.

 

[Zerazar]

ITT: A lot of people stating bullshit facts they don't know shit about.

I honestly find it insulting that my depression is being reduced to "he just wants an excuse to whine" by so many people.

But I guess that, to them, this is just me enjoying myself through further whining.

 

[DoW Lowen]

ITT: A lot of people stating bullshit facts they don't know shit about.

I honestly find it insulting that my depression is being reduced to "he just wants an excuse to whine" by so many people.

But I guess that, to them, this is just me enjoying myself through further whining.

I don't believe people are talking about depression, the only time it was really mentioned was in the OP where I stated disorders in general. Or at least I hope they're not...