3 Ways to Let Some Joy Into Your Life
It may seem obvious that feeling happy is a state that everyone ultimately desires. However, when you think about your own happiness, where do you think it comes from? How easily are you able to relax and enjoy yourself when you’re in a situation that should, theoretically, make you feel good?
According to new research by Bond University’s Michael Lyvers and colleagues (2022), the inability to experience happiness is part of a larger constellation of personality qualities referred to as “alexithymia,” a term identified by clinical psychologists that refers to difficulties tapping into your feelings and a thinking style in which you focus on experiences rather than inner thoughts.
People high in alexithymia, the Australian authors noted, don’t know how to cheer themselves up when they’re feeling down and may even be at risk for impulsive and self-destructive behaviors in an attempt to make the pain go away.
As noted in previous work by the University of Derby’s Paul Gilbert and colleagues (2012; 2014), people with the clinical syndrome that incorporates alexithymia have an underlying belief that they’re not worthy of compassion, including compassion from themselves. They, furthermore, “are dismissive of the prospect of happiness” (p. 2). With their externally-oriented thinking style, they believe that they have to show how tough they are. Happiness, in other words, becomes a sign of weakness.
Where Does This Hold on Happiness Come From?
You might be able to identify with the alexithymia mindset regarding happiness if you think about how you’ve reacted to a recent positive event in your life. Perhaps you finally received recognition from a volunteer group you’re involved with.
For years, you hoped that someone would notice all the hard work you put into the group’s efforts. Now you’ve been nominated for the group’s highest honor. The moment you learn of this, much to your disappointment, you start thinking about how undeserving you are, and no matter how hard you try, that’s all you can focus on.
According to the Australian authors, alexithymia is surprisingly common, affecting 10-15 percent of all adults and more within clinical populations. Dismissing the idea that this personality quality is based on heredity, Lyvers et al. maintained that its origins can be traced to the earliest child-caregiver relationships.
When young children feel that they can’t rely on their caregivers to provide them with physical and emotional security, they “learn to perceive danger even in positive events due to repeated experiences of rejection and disappointment” (p. 2). Potentially suffering from a lifetime of loneliness and fear of rejection, as adults, those high in alexithymia expect to encounter “disappointment, loss, and rejection” along with “aversive emotional memories.”
How Alexithymia Contributes to Negative Mood States
In their proposed theoretical model, the Bond University researchers traced out a pathway from alexithymia through to negative emotional outcomes via a combination of fear of happiness and fear of compassion. With personality’s foundation built on fear of rejection and disappointment, it’s not much of a logical leap to consider how this constant insecurity translates into believing that you’re not worthy of whatever happiness may come your way. What’s worse, you can’t even experience compassion toward yourself for this inability to feel joy.
In testing this model, the Bond University authors recruited a sample of just over 300 adults ages 18-30, of whom 206 met the inclusion criteria of completing the online questionnaire without skipping too many answers or responding invalidly. The questionnaire itself consisted of four measures of these predictors of depression and anxiety in addition to demographics:
Social desirability. To check the possibility that participants were trying to portray an overly sunny picture of their personalities, a standard 13-item scale asks participants to indicate whether they engage in common but maybe not ideal behaviors such as “always” being a good listener.
Alexithymia. The Toronto Alexithymia scale includes 20 items in which participants respond to items such as “It is difficult for me to find words for my feelings,” and “I prefer to talk to people about their daily activities rather than their feelings”).
Fear of compassion. In the 38-item Fear of Compassion scale, participants rate themselves on such items as “I feel I don’t deserve to be kind and forgiving to myself,” and “Wanting to be kind to oneself is a weakness”).
Fear of happiness. This is a 9-item scale developed by Gilbert and his collaborators in which respondents rate themselves on the worries associated with being happy, with sample items including: “I worry that if I feel good, something bad could happen,” and “Feeling good makes me uncomfortable”).
As the outcome measure, respondents provided self-ratings on items from the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale 21 (DASS) with items that include “I felt downhearted and blue” (depression) and “I was aware of dryness in my mouth” (anxiety).
Turning to the results, as the authors predicted, people with high scores on alexithymia were more likely to receive high scores on both fears of happiness and fear of compassion. Controlling for demographic factors and social desirability, scores on these two measures, in turn, accounted significantly for scores on the DASS.
These findings replicated those of earlier authors studying clinical samples. They led Lyvers et al. to conclude that: “negative or self-defeating beliefs and attitudes such as fears of happiness and compassion could be significant risk factors for psychopathology in the young adult population” (p. 4).
Three Ways to Alleviate Alexithymia and Turn Your Mood Around
With these findings now supporting the study’s initial predictions, the next question becomes how to alleviate the negative effects of alexithymia on your feelings of emotional equanimity. Fortunately, the authors provide an in-depth discussion of the study’s clinical implications.
One: The authors argued that although alexithymia may be a trait, it’s one that can be changed with the right therapeutic approach. Indeed, the model tracing alexithymia through fears of happiness and compassion almost writes its own rules for therapeutic intervention. Tackling those two sets of beliefs about whether you deserve happiness and compassion would appear to provide a concrete jumping-off point for addressing those longstanding feelings of anxiety and depression.
Two: Referring to earlier work by Gilbert on the therapeutic method involved in tackling these beliefs, known as “compassion-focused therapy” (CFT), you can call them what they are. Rather than suppress or run from them, label and identify them. Because people high in alexithymia prefer to think in terms of external rather than internal states, you can facilitate this process by looking at the behaviors that maintain these beliefs.
Three: Returning to the earlier example, let’s say you achieve an important goal but are unable to enjoy the experience. Stop as those first negative thoughts about how unworthy you are enter your head and notice that this is what you’re thinking.
Then, instead of getting down on yourself for having those thoughts or feeling that you’re “weak” or “undeserving,” take a look at the achievement itself. Why was it important to you? What does it mean that you were selected for this honor? Is it possible that there was something other people saw in you that you don’t see in yourself?
If you’re able to take one experience like this and turn it around so you can extract some degree of pleasure from it, this can be a building block to use the next time you don’t feel you deserve something good that’s happened to you. It can also be a source of, as Lyvers et al. suggested, “a compassionate self that in turn will be available… in times of distress” (p. 7). Recognizing your inner strength in having made it through that one difficult experience can have its own upwardly spiraling effects on your well-being.
To sum up, keeping yourself from experiencing pleasant feelings because you don’t feel you deserve it is one of the key ways people can create distress. By practicing greater compassion toward yourself for those moments in which you don’t dare feel happy, those feelings of distress can subside and lead to greater emotional fulfillment.