Nicegirl111
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your happiness is up to you...except if its a health issue.... I hope everyone is happy tonight
Is happiness a choice?
- Thread starter Jada59
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Wat_Tyler
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Libsam
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In your case, I would recommend a good round of Retail Therapy!!!
Depends on who is paying?
Wat_Tyler
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Depends on who is paying?
I was just discussing the bonus situation, so we'll have to wait-n-see.
I did a good job resisting another pair of boots yesterday. I had already spent enough money on all those "really good deals."
I may buy another shotgun before the year is out, however.
afriendg
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Life is a blessing..it’s all we’ve got. The only real fear we’ve got is death.
Libsam
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Death is easy, everybody does it. Life is pain, princess.
https://i.imgur.com/kKH62uM.jpg
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Oblimo
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Happiness is a choice in that, when you are unhappy, happiness takes work, and you must choose to work.
But you cannot simply decide to be happy. You have to strive to be happy.
Becuase when your life-experience (such as childhood neglect and abuse, or traumatic experiences at any age) and/or your biology (when your brain can’t make enough of the happy juice for whatever reason) stand in the way, it is an almighty struggle.
But you cannot simply decide to be happy. You have to strive to be happy.
Becuase when your life-experience (such as childhood neglect and abuse, or traumatic experiences at any age) and/or your biology (when your brain can’t make enough of the happy juice for whatever reason) stand in the way, it is an almighty struggle.
Jada59
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Thanks!
Jada59
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You sound like my ex! I only wish it was a choice. Nobody would choose to have it.
Jada59
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Ahhh... Very interesting! I do know people who act like that when I know they're either wrong or afraid of something, Hmmm...
I didn't have the best day either but I'm still smiling.
Jada59
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Medical stuff can frustrate me but doesn't really make me unhappy. I just got what could be bad news today. Need more testing done. Left me feeling frustrated indeed because there's really nothing I can do about it but I'm not going to let it make me unhappy.
Jada59
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I'm not afraid of death. I know it will happen and when it does, it does, *Shrug*
Jada59
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It can be or... You can just take your brain away to another place. That's where writing helps me.
Kirkrapine
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Buddhists say that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
dolf
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The reason there are shrinks and therapists, the reason there's not just mental illness but also trauma and distress caused by people's lives and pasts, is that not everyone is has the skills to overcome everything, unaided and just be happy. A vet having PTSD isn't a choice, even if the soldier standing beside him was able to move on and be happy. A person who grew up in care, being repeatedly buggered by those he should have been able to trust, isn't just choosing to be unhappy, and nor is the rich bastard who had everything money can buy.
It's actually harmful, it's actually damaging, to proclaim that happiness is just a choice, in front of people who already struggle. It tells them that they are are to blame for their suffering, compounding their problems. Cunty, selfish and smug.
A more realistic statement would be that happiness is something that can be worked towards. Some may find it harder than others, but it is worth pursuing and investing in your own happiness. Forgive yourself if you find it hard, don't judge yourself by how easy others make it look. Ask for help if you need it. Sometimes happiness can only be snatched a few seconds at a time, but those seconds add up, so take what small pleasures you can. Happiness does not come from affluence or beauty or being saved by a fairytale prince. Happiness is a skill which, like art or maths, comes more easily to some but can be improved by most.
It's actually harmful, it's actually damaging, to proclaim that happiness is just a choice, in front of people who already struggle. It tells them that they are are to blame for their suffering, compounding their problems. Cunty, selfish and smug.
A more realistic statement would be that happiness is something that can be worked towards. Some may find it harder than others, but it is worth pursuing and investing in your own happiness. Forgive yourself if you find it hard, don't judge yourself by how easy others make it look. Ask for help if you need it. Sometimes happiness can only be snatched a few seconds at a time, but those seconds add up, so take what small pleasures you can. Happiness does not come from affluence or beauty or being saved by a fairytale prince. Happiness is a skill which, like art or maths, comes more easily to some but can be improved by most.
dolf
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Me? I was sad. With good reason. Life was hard.
I asked for help. I had therapy. It took time.
Now I'm burping rainbows and shitting glitter. I found my inner happy, and my outer happy followed. I smile and take cookies to work... I don't actually engage with my coworkers, because socialising is a fucking chore, but I like to add a moment of happiness to their days anyway, and chocolate chip does that. I hug my savage, drooling beast of a dog, feel my heart skip over the pretty sunsets, and allow The Ape to adore me. Life is good.
I asked for help. I had therapy. It took time.
Now I'm burping rainbows and shitting glitter. I found my inner happy, and my outer happy followed. I smile and take cookies to work... I don't actually engage with my coworkers, because socialising is a fucking chore, but I like to add a moment of happiness to their days anyway, and chocolate chip does that. I hug my savage, drooling beast of a dog, feel my heart skip over the pretty sunsets, and allow The Ape to adore me. Life is good.
CandiCame
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Read this as I was taking a drink of coffee. So... not sure how I feel about that.
So I've talked about general "being craziness" a lot- but I have a mood disorder and like... that's what mania is. What you're describing. I literally take medication to get rid of that feeling. Because if you're feeling emotions to THAT extreme, like literally, left wanting NOTHING, wanting to "make people laugh and smile"- that's great for about a week. After that, what was "he's so funny and energetic! He's always full of life!" Becomes "Jesus Christ, what a fucking spaz, he's so annoying how does anyone stand to be around him?". Maybe if that was the only one you got, but then that pendulum swings and your other emotions- anger in particular, is like... if you're bypassing happiness and going straight into joy, you bypass anger and go straight into rage.
As far as "Can you choose to be happy?" No. Flat no. You can't choose your emotions, but you can lie to yourself about them if you know how to hack them, because usually the positive and negative aspects of the same emotion are the same dendrites lighting up taking in the same chemicals.
So like... people who know me make fun of me for having no fear, but that's because I realized pretty early on that "fear" and "excitement" are the same thing. And your brain checks with you before it decides which one to go with. So it's like, "Hey we've just released a LOT of adrenaline. Are you scared or excited? Are we flight/fight or arousal right now?" You can tell it, "Oh we are EXCITED! WE ARE GONNA GET TORE THE FUCK UP!" And then you'll do real dumb shit because you've convinced yourself not to listen to your fear response, and all your friends get to make fun of you for rolling down a hill or whatever.
That euphoric kind of happiness is anxiety. When your brain is like, "Hey are we anxious or giddy right now? We're just pumping out energy, is that because we're nervous or because we're dancing?" And you're like, "Oh we are happy as FUCK!" I had to learn this, because that's how you do things like not get stage fright and I just lived a life where I was the center of attention a lot because of a bunch of reasons. So you can very much train yourself to be an attention whore instead of nervous wreck. This'll project itself as confidence for some reason. Like... I guess all confidence is is a lack of being nervous in situations where other people think you should be nervous.
But you don't get to pick what state you're in. You just get to pick the perspective of that mental state.
I got really depressed for a while when I first started trying to get off drugs, because my neurochemistry was all fucked up and I had a lot of meatspace shit to be depressed about. I actually don't get sad, at all, that often, like not as an emotion that you feel on that deep spiritual level, because of my mania and sadness being a low-energy emotion. But I got real fucked up for probably a full year.
When that shit happens, when you've got a bunch of bullshit in a row and you're out of spoons- wait some people might not know what that means- every person is born with a bullshit threshold. Some people can store more bullshit than others because they have more psychological coping schemas, but everyone does have a preset, innate, maximum bullshit capacity. And if your bullshit capacity overflowith and the excess bullshit exceeds your resources for dealing with bullshit- then you're going to get depressed. So you have to either reduce the bullshit with problem focused coping schemas or increase the resources with emotion focused coping schemas- and sometimes all you can do is what you can do because the amount of bullshit you're dealing with is more than anybody ought to have to deal with and you have every goddamn right to be depressed.
There are people on here who knew me during that time who thought I made up the shit I overshared about my life, because they were so sheltered they literally didn't think anyone could live like that. I had some run-ins with the cops, I lost my job, I dropped out of school (with a shitton of debt and no plan to pay it back), my brother got arrested, my papaw died, my mamaw died, I had an unplanned pregnancy, my ex got shot in the head in his house a couple days after his baby shower, a long-term relationship ended, I was going through DTs, I had medical problems, just all at once on top of me, like boom boom boom- and that's not all the shit, that's just some of it.
There was no way in hell I could have chosen to be happy. Unless I just fucking snapped and started living in a fantasy land. Because sometimes life genuinely is just shit, and you just have to keep your head above water and believe that nothing that terrible can last forever. Eventually you'll either beat it or you'll die and either way it'll be fucking over.
Like... happiness is not a choice, and if it were, it wouldn't always be the best choice. That's WHY we have a full range of emotions, because they're all appropriate for different situations. You shouldn't be happy all the time. It's not healthy. If there's an external stimuli that should provoke anger, then it's HEALTHY to be angry. Same with every other emotion. You're supposed to experience a full range.
If your mamaw, who practically raised you, is on her death-bed and you're on top of the fucking world, you're just an asshole. I almost kicked a guy's ass over that- the ex I had, the one who got shot, we all went over to that house to clean it, because the cops don't do that shit. His GF had also been shot, and the trailer they lived in reverted back to my ex, let's just call him W's mom. So they're just like, "Here's this house you inherited. Go clean your kid's fucking brains off the wall, because your kid's brains are on the wall."
And also in the carpet. Fun fact. I'm not a cop, I don't know how that happened, but I was on my hands and knees trying to scrub that carpet, waiting on another friend to get back because she went to rent a steam-vac thing, but like... it was gross and I was trying to spot-clean it while my current BF cleaned the wall. W's mom and step-dad (I had always hated his piece of shit stepdad) were packing up his shit because they wanted to rent out the trailer to someone else or sell it or someshit, basically make someone who wasn't them live in it because bad memories.
And I hear that motherfucker, who was always so shitty to W, fucking singing and laughing and shit. This was like the day after the funeral while we were all still in town and could help with the cleanup. He may not have chosen to be happy, but he chose to display that happiness. I was on my feet and shaking before I caught myself, and my new bf had to talk me down because I just... I couldn't. I couldn't deal with him being /fucking happy/. I was literally picking his step-son's brain out of the fucking carpet.
That was the last time I ever interacted with him. Because he's a piece of shit.
My point is, even if you COULD choose to be universally happy, you shouldn't. Because that's real fucked up. Human people are supposed to have a full range of emotions.
And not to shit on your diabetes thing, because no, you shouldn't wallow in misery when you're managing a disease, but being happy and carefree about diabetes is how you lose your foot or go into a coma. There's a difference between being happy about it and not letting it control you/make you paranoid or sad or whatever. I feel like a support group like that should really have more been dedicated to like, splenda cookies and shit. Like go full cooking class and actually make the food and then eat it. I'll go just about anywhere if I'm promised free food, even though splenda really is the devil's splooge. That's satan's kool-aid you absolutely can taste the difference.
But like, there's a lot of stuff you can do when you have diabetes if you don't let it get real bad. My dad has that and he just kinda monitors his blood sugar and goes about his life. He's not an alcoholic. Like it doesn't necessitate a support group. Like it does not affect his life enough for him to feel an emotion about it unless he's trying to pretend to be sick for sympathy, which is something he does pretty frequently. But also he doesn't have it that bad, like he just has to monitor his blood sugar and take pills, he doesn't have to do the shots or anything, so that's probably why. If it was bad enough to affect his quality of life I could see that being something that necessitates a support group. But also like, that's worth getting pissed about. That's, again, an emotion that you've earned and are allowed to feel and process. You just don't want to get so bogged down with those negative thought schemas that you can't get back out. Like you need actual information so you can make informed decisions and get better.
The thing about that is- with chronic illnesses, there's a lot of shit worth getting upset about. Being in pain is worth getting upset about. Not being able to move, or not being able to feel your feet, or having big weird flesh holes that won't heal, or losing mobility to the point that you need mobility aids, like all that, yeah you can get pissed. Especially if there were environmental factors and you did it to your damn self.
I love the shit out of sugar. I've thankfully not gotten diabetes but I'm missing like 6 teeth, all in the back but still, those are my eating teeth. About 3-4 weeks ago, one of my fillings just kind of exploded and now there's an exposed nerve in my mouth and I am in EXCRUCIATING pain, so I went to the dentist and told the receptionist what happened, and she said they couldn't get me in until the 12th because god knows what they're gonna have to do to fix it-
I did that. My dumb ass did that. I smoked, I drank the coffee, I drank the pop, and I ate the candy (we had a lot of Halloween candy and also I just eat candy all the damn time. That's actually how I broke the filling. I was trying to bite a sucker off the stick because I didn't trust my dumb ass to eat a sucker, smoke a cigarette, drink a cup of coffee, and drive at the same time, because I'd have to keep taking the sucker out of my mouth. Bit down and felt a crunch and INTENSE pain.)
Are you telling me I don't have a god given right to be mad at that stupid bitch for causing me this pain? Look at his dumb ass! He drank a whole cup of coffee and like half a diet red faygo while writing this post. Knowing goddamn well there's an exposed nerve in my mouth. That's an ASSHOLE is what that is. Fuck that guy. Like that's justified. I've earned that emotion. I can't, and shouldn't choose to be happy about the fact that I just have huge flaws that I don't work on.
I'm realizing that I could go on about this all night, so I'm gonna end it since apparently this is a button issue for me. Did not know that about myself but here we are. Also, to be fair that dentist did give me pain pills and I did take one like twenty minutes ago and I am seeing those wavy lines that you get so a lot of this might just be me being high and it may make no sense to read over.
thør
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