Are you working too hard to be happy?

Are you working too hard to be “happy”?

Sometimes you do have to work hard on “choosing happy.”  You might have cancer, or your child died, or your country is in a war zone, or you have lost your job.  When your Life Path gets hard, you sometimes do have to make an effort, often a huge effort, to see the light at the end of the tunnel or to even remember it is a tunnel and  not a “forever” situation.

However, if you are working hard to "feel" happy and to ensure that others around you "see" you as "happy" and this is a big effore for you even when life is generally going well, consider that a red flag.

Our natural state as a human is one of playfulness, joy, and optimism. Life events can and often do alter our natural state. In our present culture, humans suffer quite a bit in that there is not much of a “natural state” left for for us  Humans now live with industrialization, often isolated from each other, consumed by "screen time", social media, AI etc. instead of physical work, nature, socialization, play, and many other factors of  "modern" life. Just like you have to work hard to provide your domesticated pet with a lifestyle that is at least somewhat compatible with the natural lifestyle of the species, these days humans have to work hard on their own lifestyle to take proper care of themselves in body, mind, and Spirit.

While “choosing happy” can be a boost in curing cancer, it can also be a tool of denial.  Instead of drinking, sleeping around, becoming a workaholic etc.,  you can overwork at “being happy.” Denial and addictionshave sadly become very normal behaviors. Uncomfortable feelings do not go away even whe when you try to bury them with compensating behaviors.  TSadly, the suicides I have personally known presented as the “happiest” people around and their parent’s demeanor demanded that their now dead children comply with the family culture of “happy.” Am I being dramatic here? Sadly, no. This is a real warning and one worth heeding before losing yourself or someone you love to the culture of “be happy.”

People living with difficult feelings with no outlet to express these feelings and work on healing have to work very hard at compensating behaviors, spending a great deal of time and energy on creating and then maintaining the  "positive" behaviors demanded of them by the culture around them.  Healing will mean moving into a healthier balance point between feeling your feelings and learning to authentically appreciate what is working in your life even when you don't always "feel happy." Getting to an authentic new balance point will take an investment in time and effort, at first, but then will become habit. New habits of maintaining a healthy authentic balance can replace the old now destructive compensating habits, coping mechanisms, that are running your life. When coping mechanisms are dominating your every decision, you are out of touch with your true inner self . You forget that your coping mechanisms are running your life, trying to keep you from being scared or unhappy. You have lost your Self.

Spiritual Bypassing — When “Light” Becomes a Disguise

Spiritual bypassing happens when we use spiritual ideas or practices to avoid uncomfortable emotions, unhealed wounds, or hard truths about ourselves.
It’s sneaky, because it often looks healthy: meditating daily, practicing gratitude, forgiving everyone, letting things go. Those things are beautiful when they come from presence. But when they’re used to avoid what’s actually alive inside — sadness, anger, shame, grief — they become a shield instead of a bridge.

You might be spiritually bypassing if you often:

• Focus on “good vibes only” when something in you is actually hurting.

• Tell yourself “everything happens for a reason” to avoid feeling grief or loss.

• Forgive too quickly without acknowledging the hurt first.

• Meditate or pray to “rise above” emotions rather than move through them.

• Pride yourself on being “calm” or “above drama” when, in truth, you feel shut down, hopeless, scared, frantic.

None of this means you’re doing spirituality wrong. It means you’ve learned — as all humans have — to protect yourself from pain.
But what’s avoided doesn’t disappear. It waits. It shows up in exhaustion, disconnection, relationship tension, or that subtle sense that life feels flat even when you’re “doing all the right things.”

The healing path isn’t about abandoning your spiritual practices. It’s about letting them become tools of truth, not escape.
Meditation can help you feel what’s real. Gratitude can deepen after you’ve allowed anger, grief, or fear to speak.
Real presence includes all of you.

If this resonates, it may be time to work with someone who can walk beside you as you uncover what’s been hidden — not to fix you, but to help you return to your wholeness.

If you notice you are making a big effort to feel happy when current circumstances of your life are really good enough to be happy, perhaps you can pay attention enough to …. well…… pay attention!. Mindfulness, pausing to be mindful, is a simple practice that anyone can do to first start catching a behavior or thought pattern, and bringing it to consciousness. 

Mindful pausing can be used for any compulsive compensating behavior such as overeating to obsessive thinking patterns such as always assuming something is wrong with you or that people don’t like you unless you act happy.  Bringing something to consciousness is the essential first step in identifying and  working with uncomfortable feelings and compulsive or addictive habits. 

Mindfulness is only a beginning. It is your wake-up first step. Later this practice does become an essential part of your self care. But in the beginning, if you have spent years, decades, staying away from uncomfortable feelings, uncomfortable memories or truths, any mindful practice will feel extremely challenging as it will create space for your uncomfortable feelings and even memories to surface. It is hard to do this work alone.

This is the work I do. It’s not about learning to “be happy.” It’s about becoming real — and happiness follows naturally from there.   I particularly love Parts Work or IFS, Internal Family Systems. It is very popular and you can easily research it. I have been doing this work since the 80's, including it in my 

I offer this work in private sessions as well as weekly ZOOM groups. Working with the energies of the voices (parts) inside of each one of  us, you can discover the internal conversations that are silently running your life, your every day decisions and ruling your emotions. The work allows you to "hear" and identify these voices, and only then can the "big" you, your higher self along with "Source" begin to address old hurts and betrayals. Old coping mechanisms and triggers (called protectors in IFS terms) are then embraced and updated into more mature roles of self-care. It is powerful work.

If this is catching your interest, if you are having any reaction to reading about this, I would suggest you pay attention to these small but very significant signs and continut to investigate the possiblitiy of doing this work.

Journey On