Chasing Happy
Sometimes when my anxiety is high, I will find myself chasing happy. I do it all the time; I am having a tough day, so I think about what fun thing I can make for dinner or what cool thing we can watch on TV. Or what new dress can I buy or when can I get a new haircut?
I call it chasing happy because even though I have a pit of anxiety in my stomach, I want to push it down and believe that watching a fun TV show will fix it. I can’t tell you how many haircuts I have come home from disappointed that they didn’t cure my anxiety. HA!
While I know that chasing happy isn't the answer, I also do not want to beat myself up about this behavior. Instead... I want to catch myself chasing happy and take it as a sign that my anxiety is high. I need to stop, get quiet and see what is really going on. It is a sign that I am not paying attention to myself right now, and I need to be curious about why I need a reward.
Again, back to the idea of acknowledging what is really going on. If we don’t allow our feelings, we end up stuffing them down and looking for new, exciting ways to make ourselves feel better, which, if we are honest with ourselves, doesn’t work.
Acknowledging your feelings becomes even more complex because our Monger views the feelings as messy, inappropriate, or confusing. What do we do then when the desire to chase happy becomes even stronger?
A great example: My husband and I visit my Mom, who has dementia, every Sunday, so sometimes when I get home on Sunday evenings, I am a little sad.
A few Sundays ago, we had a wonderful visit with my Mom. She was having a good day. As we drove home, I was chasing happy, madly running through my head what we could do to have fun later that evening. I thought of places we could eat—no, my stomach is upset. Movies we could watch—nope can’t think of any that I want to see. Maybe it is ice cream? We should stop for ice cream—well, that won’t help my stomach.
I know my anxiety is bad when my chasing happy ideas get knocked down. The truth is, I was exceptionally sad. I was feeling a lot of confusing, messy feelings. Probably because it was such a nice visit, I wasn’t on high alert the whole time, so my body allowed some feelings I had been stuffing down. But whenever I felt something,, my Monger would come in with, “ What is your problem…you SHOULD be fine. Nothing sad happened during the visit, Mom was having a great day, and it was a lot of fun!”
Her message was—you can’t justify your feelings, so they are not valid. Logically today was a good day—it doesn’t matter that feelings aren’t logical—YOU are logical, so you should be able to beat these stupid annoying feelings.
Here’s the thing feelings aren’t always logical, convenient, or fun. The truth is feelings can get triggered by God knows what. Yes, they are irrational sometimes, but that doesn’t mean we can dismiss them. As I said in Week 2, Day 5 of the first spiral of feelings, there is the feeling and the response to the feeling. I can acknowledge the sadness without having to do anything.
The MINUTE my Biggest fan remember her? She is the voice of Self Loyalty says, “Oh sweetheart, it is ok to struggle; it is ok to feel however you want to feel,” Is the minute my whole body relaxes.
My feelings don’t always need some big grandiose form of expression; they just need to be heard.
When I notice myself Chasing Happy I try to catch myself as quickly as possible. I then ask myself, what is going on here? What are you feeling?
I know I can stop chasing happiness with the next reward and just be with my emotions. Some days this act is a street fight with myself, and some days it is as simple as just showing up.
For many of us, it is a street fight every day to trust our feelings and, therefore ourselves. The saying just ‘feel your feelings’ is so easy to say. But the act of trusting that if you allow the sadness or the anger to come forward, it won’t eat you alive is harder to believe.