The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living
Russ Harris, 2007
Why does the chase for happiness so often make us less happy? Russ Harris shows how attempts to get rid of unpleasant feelings pull us deeper, like quicksand. You will examine four myths about happiness, learn to look at heavy thoughts from a distance, and build a life around what truly matters to you.
Who it is for
For those who are tired of fighting anxiety, sadness and heavy thoughts. And for those whose life looks fine on the surface, yet who somehow feel no joy.
The mind loves to tell stories. In fact, it never stops.
Everything Looks Fine, Yet There Is No Joy
Picture Marina. She has an interesting job, a cosy flat and friends who are never dull. From the outside there is nothing to complain about. But in the evenings anxiety comes over her for no reason, and Marina is cross with herself: why? She reads articles about positive thinking, tries to chase bad thoughts away, and promises herself she will be calmer from Monday. Yet the anxiety only grows stronger.
Russ Harris is sure that nothing is wrong with Marina. She has landed where very many people land, and this place has a name: the happiness trap. We believe that good feelings should be with us almost always, and that bad ones must be defeated. We spend years on this fight, and the fight itself brings new pain. It becomes a closed circle: the more persistently you seek a good state of mind, the further it moves away.
Harris looks for a way out in an approach called acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT for short. American scientist Steven Hayes developed it together with colleagues. The approach has two aims. The first is to learn to deal with painful thoughts and feelings so that they hurt less and decide less for you. The second is to build a life around what truly matters to you.
Ahead are four myths on which the trap rests, and an explanation of why fighting feelings is like quicksand. You will learn how to look at thoughts from a distance, how to switch off the fight switch, why it helps to notice what is happening right now, and why values work like a compass. This book does not promise that painful feelings will disappear for good. It teaches you to live a full life even when they are close by. Let us begin.
Four Myths That Hold the Trap Together
Look at the adverts, at photos of other people's holidays, at the smiles in magazines. It is easy to believe that everyone around you is content with life and that something is wrong with you. Harris opens the book by taking this picture apart. In his view it rests on four myths, and each of them sounds like common sense.
• Happiness is natural. It seems that a normal person is almost always content. Harris disagrees: anxiety, sadness and doubt visit people constantly, and this is an ordinary part of life, not a malfunction.
• If you feel bad, something is broken. The second myth grows from the first: if everyone is happy, your low mood must mean a fault. Harris sees in painful feelings not a defect, but what happens to any living person.
• To live better, you have to get rid of bad feelings. Yet everything truly important comes with difficult feelings. Close relationships, a new job, the birth of a child bring joy, but also fear, tiredness and doubt.
• You can control your thoughts and feelings. We have learned to change the outside world: to fix, rearrange and throw things away. Harris believes this is where the certainty comes from that the inner world works the same way. But there, control works much worse than we think. In a calm moment it is still possible to distract yourself or switch over. The stronger the feeling and the more important the situation, the less of that power remains.
Why are the myths so durable? Harris notes that the word “happiness” carries two meanings. The first is good well-being, pleasure, a pleasant mood. It comes and goes, like the weather, and cannot be held for long. The second is a rich, full and meaningful life. Such a life does not promise pleasant feelings every minute. It contains the whole range of them, pain included.
The trap snaps shut when we confuse the first with the second and chase a feeling instead of a life. Harris suggests changing the aim. Try to catch yourself on one of the myths today. When the thought “since I'm sad, something is wrong with me” sounds in your head, answer calmly: this happens to all people, and it is not a reason to repair yourself.
About the author
Russ Harris is a doctor and psychotherapist, born in England in 1966, who has lived in Australia since 1991 and works in Melbourne. He is one of the best-known teachers of acceptance and commitment therapy in the world, and according to its publisher, The Happiness Trap has sold more than a million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages.
All books by this author: Russ Harris
Terms from the book
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
- Defusion
- Expansion
- Values
- The Happiness Trap: Harris's phrase, which gave the book its name. It is his name for the circle in which trying to feel good all the time, and trying to get rid of bad feelings, makes a person only more unhappy.
- Steven Hayes: An American psychologist and professor at the University of Nevada. Together with colleagues he developed acceptance and commitment therapy.
- Control strategies: A term from the book: any attempt to get rid of or avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings, such as distraction, avoiding difficult situations, numbing with food or alcohol, or arguing with one's own thoughts.
- Fight switch: An image from the book: an imaginary switch deep in consciousness. When it is on, a person fights any unpleasant feeling, and new feelings pile on top, such as anxiety about the anxiety.
- Thinking self: An ACT concept: the part of consciousness that reasons, evaluates, plans and remembers. It is needed, but it constantly comments on what is happening.
- Observing self: An ACT concept: the part of consciousness that simply notices thoughts, feelings and sensations without judging them. In Harris's view it stays unchanged whatever happens inside.
- Contact with the present moment: One principle of ACT: being fully present in what is happening now, with openness and interest, rather than living inside one's thoughts.
- Committed action: An ACT principle: taking concrete steps in the direction of your values, even when fear and doubt are present.
- Willingness: In ACT, the decision to allow unpleasant thoughts and feelings when they come up on the way to something important. Willingness does not require the discomfort to be pleasant.
All terms
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