Are you having a fake happiness? Although pop culture would gladly have you believe otherwise, being truly satisfied with your life can be an immensely difficult thing to achieve.
If you’re not working toward something that matters to you, it can feel more like an obligation than a means to better serve yourself. If you don’t seem to find happiness at the end of all your hard work, it’s time to make some changes and prioritize what you really want in life.
All emotions have a time and place. Something like happiness isn’t expected to last forever without breaks. Fake happiness is never the answer. It comes with so many negative strings attached, you might as well have shown your true feelings.
However, having positive thoughts and seeing the good in every situation isn’t true happiness. People tend to confuse the two. If you’re faking happiness, chances are you really don’t see any reason to be truly happy right?
Let’s have a look at how detrimental fake happiness can be:
Are You Having a Fake Happiness?
Giant Mood Swings Are a Normal Thing for You
Do you easily switch between being joyful, lively, and excited to sadness, anger, or frustration? For some individuals, this type of behavior could even be an indication of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
Experiencing giant mood swings doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re suffering from mental illness, but it may be helpful to notice whether this is a tendency for you. While being genuinely happy doesn’t mean you have to keep your mood up all the time (that’s impossible anyway!), frequently going from one extreme to the other can be an indication that there are issues you may not be addressing properly.
Fake Happiness Can Lead To Even More Negative Thoughts
Clinical psychologist Dr. Todd Kashdan states that people putting great emphasis on being happy reported 50% less frequent positive emotions, 35% less satisfaction about their life and 75% more depressive symptoms.
What does this mean?
Basically, if you’re forcing happiness, your mood deteriorates. In actively faking being happy, you become more aware of how unhappy you are. So the harder you suppress negative thoughts, the more persistent these thoughts become.
Generally, society expects women to be more emotionally expressive than men. This may lead them to get more backlash from pretending to be happy. The harder you fake it, the harder it comes back to bite you.
It’s akin to feeding a fire while expecting it to die soon. The cycle becomes harder to execute each time, leading to deeper emotional issues.
You’re Living Someone Else’s Version of Happy
One of the greatest things about true happiness is that no two people can define it in the same way. However, if you find yourself living or acting a certain way just to please other people, you might be faking your own happiness. A lot of the time, this happens without you even noticing it. Your parents may have pushed you toward college to get a degree in a secure job field, one you are not necessarily passionate about. Your spouse may pressure you to make a career or financial decision that doesn’t feel right to you. Your neighbors, friends, or even the media might tell you that you need to look and act a certain way or buy certain things to achieve real happiness.
If a certain product doesn’t appeal to you, yet you are still considering purchasing it, you are likely living someone else’s version of happiness by thinking that you need it. Think about it for a moment. Are the things that you’re working toward the same things that will make you happy, let alone matter to you? Do you care if you have the fastest car? The biggest house? The largest paycheck? Questions like these are important to ask yourself in order to prevent spending money you don’t have on things you don’t need.
If you’re not working toward something that matters to you, it can feel more like an obligation than a means to better serve yourself. If you don’t seem to find happiness at the end of all your hard work, it’s time to make some changes and prioritize what you really want in life.
You’re Tired All the Time
It’s normal to experience periods of stress when we feel more fatigued than usual. But if you’re tired all the time, it can be a sign of a medical problem like diabetes or sleep apnea, psychological issues, or poor lifestyle choices.
But things are far less clear-cut when speaking about mental health. For example, fatigue is a common symptom for those struggling with anxiety or depression. If you find yourself constantly insisting that you’re fine and cheerful, but you’re tired all the time, it could be a sign of something more.
Fake Happiness Can Make You Sick
There’s tons and tons of information on how happiness is good for your health. Well faking happiness does the opposite when it comes to health and well being.
High levels of stress can come along with always faking happiness.
Suppressing true feelings, and replacing them with fake happiness may cause dissonance. This is an uncomfortable situation that leads to both mental and physical burnout. Fatigue is bound to arise from it, making you incapable to fully function.
Research shows that some heart conditions and even high blood pressure can be a result of faking happiness.
It takes a lot of energy to pretend to be happy. Short periods of faking it aren’t quite as harmful. So an occasional fake smile here and there doesn’t hurt.
However, prolonged faking can be draining both emotionally and physically. If you’re forcing happiness, then you’re wearing yourself down.
Repressing your negative emotions can also cause mental illnesses like depression. Constantly faking it might not allow you to notice how deeply trenched your misery is.
It’s safer to be gloomy and let your guard down rather than suppress your emotions and end up in a hospital.
You Tell Yourself You Cannot Do Any Better
There is a difference between being happy with where you are and thinking that you can’t go any further in life. If you find yourself trying less and less to get the things you want and feeling as though you can’t progress beyond your current quality of life, then it’s quite possible that you are displaying superficial, or fake happiness.
Sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking that we’re satisfied with what we have when in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. It’s easy to confuse the ideas of contentment and happiness to the point where we accept a quality of life that falls short of what we want or are capable of obtaining. In other words, you might think that your happiness is something that only happens now and again and that everything in between is insignificant to the bigger picture. The good news is that things don’t have to stay this way.
If you do feel contentment in life, it should come from a place of peace rather than a sense of giving up. Faking happiness can make us believe that we should make the best of a situation we’re not satisfied with. Remember, life is not merely about keeping our boat afloat—it’s about steering our ship to new and exciting places.
You’re Trying Too Hard to Show Others How Great Your Life Is
When you act like you’re content with your life just to make those around you jealous, your “happiness” may be a façade. For example, if you spend more than half of your vacation taking and editing photos for your social media account instead of soaking in your new surroundings, you might be doing it primarily to show your peers how much “better” your life is than theirs.
A recent study conducted at the University of Pittsburgh across 11 social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, discovered that heavy users of these sites are far more likely to be lonely and unhappy than lighter users. In fact, their chances increase by 3 times if they visit these networks more than 58 times per week.
So if your sole satisfaction in life comes from showing others how great it is, you’re clearly missing the point. Promoting a false sense of superiority both online and offline is a clear indicator that you aren’t truly enjoying those seemingly amazing moments in your life.
Fake Happiness May Be A Sign Of Hidden Depression
The World Health Organization states that over 300 million people around the world suffer from depression.
We always expect depressed people to be bed ridden and incapable of functioning actively. However, smiling depression is quite different.
Smiling depression is when a person appears happy and functions normally on the outside, while they’re suffering from depression on the inside.
If you’re suffering from this type of depression, you might not even know it. The forced smile a person puts on might be a coping mechanism to hide sadness and in extreme cases, suicidal thoughts.
It’s a dangerous type of depression, because unlike the inactive bed ridden type, here the person suffering actually has enough energy to go through with the suicide.
People suffering from bipolar syndrome, are also known for using fake happiness as a coping mechanism.
You Think You Are Better Than Someone Else
It can be easy to get your happiness and pride intertwined with one another. You might think that the reason you’re happy is that you have more money or nicer clothes than someone else, or because you can afford to buy more or better-quality things than others.
When you reduce your happiness to what you have versus what others have, you’re relying on pride to fuel a false sense of happiness. Real happiness cannot come from pride alone. To achieve real happiness, your ego must be in check. This requires having a true understanding of your values, beliefs and a positive perspective that you will undoubtedly reach your goals.