 Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to the anxious truth. This is podcast episode number 185 tonight We're talking about happiness and joy and when you might reasonably be able to expect those things to come back And what that process looks like during recovery because I know many of you are asking the question Why can't I feel happy? Why can't I experience joy? Is it ever going to come back? That's what we're gonna talk about in this episode So I am drew lince a lot of creator and host of the anxious truth And if you are new here, if this is your first episode this podcast is all about everything anxiety and anxiety recovery So if you're dealing with panic attacks panic disorder agoraphobia OCD health anxiety social anxiety This is the place we got you covered here. And if you are a returning listener and you've been around for a while Thank you. I appreciate your continued support. I'm glad you're here, too. Before we get going with today's episode I just want to remind you that this episode of the anxious truth is brought to you by me Because this is more than just a podcast There's a bunch of other stuff that goes with it including these three books that are up over my left shoulder if you're watching the on video I have written three books that anxiety and anxiety recovery and by all accounts the many many thousands of people who read them all seem To love them and feel that they are very useful So if you'd like to know more about the books I have written and you don't know about them already You can head on over to my website at the anxious truth calm and check them out If you have one or more of those books and you are digging them and you haven't done this Maybe take a minute and write me a review on Amazon because it really helps me out And I appreciate that. Thank you all. So let's get into this episode. We're gonna talk about happiness Enjoy and when can I feel happy again? I can't feel happy. When is that gonna come back for me? And I understand that because I was in the grips of that too So when I was in the midst of the worst of my anxiety way back in maybe 2007 like that time 2006 2007 2008. I was working with a therapist for a little while. I loved her She was so tremendously helpful for me. I owe her a debt I will never be able to repay and I want to tell you a little bit of a story to illustrate how I Experienced this problem and this question of why can I feel happy? So I was in a session with my therapist one day and this was a thing that that had been really stalking me this problem of Not being able to feel happy and I brought it up to her and and you know, I said listen I have a problem here because aside from everything else that's going on I seem to have lost the ability to be happy. I can't feel happy I cannot experience joy. She said, okay, you know what tell me more I said, I look at my kids and I know how I should feel But I can't feel that way like something is wrong like a switch has been turned off and I look at my family and I look at that nature and I look at things that are supposed to make me happy And I can't feel that I cannot feel happiness. I cannot feel joy So this is freaking me out and it really was a I don't mean to make light of it It was really really weighing on me in a big way. I thought that I was broken I thought that there was really something wrong and that somehow this anxiety had turned off a switch And I wasn't sure if the happy switch was ever gonna turn back on So she like I said, she was wonderful and she said, okay, I get it. You're clearly in distress over this which I was Now I could feel all the other emotions because I was starting to get a little choked up in her in her office talking about that Because I truly felt that I was broken. She said, okay, so let's work this through. She said Tell me how you got here today and I'm like she really liked threw me on that one When she asked that excuse me how to cough she asked her tell me how you got here today and I said, okay What is this got to do with any she goes just tell me how you got to my office today? I said, I drove here like I always do. Where is this going? And she said okay, tell me three things that you like about the car that you drove here today to see me and She must have seen the look on my face because like I did not in any way understand Why we were having this particular conversation It made no sense to me like I was in trouble and she was asking me about my car Which was the last thing on my mind and she said just go with it Just give me three things give me the first three things that pop in off your head that you like about the car that you drove here And it was in the middle of the winter. It was pretty cold winter that year and I said, I don't know the seats I have heat I have heated seats. That was nice And she said, okay, it's really cold out, right? I'm like, yeah, it's really cold She goes in the seats are heat so keep the seats have heat so keeps you wrong. I said, yes I like the heated seats and again, I remember I was getting a little bit frustrated and I'm like, oh, yes I like the seat. Where is this going and she said you got in your car and a cold day And you turned on the heat in the seats and it made you feel warm and you like that. I said, yes I like that she goes that's happiness and I I remember just sitting back. I was sitting on her sofa I know stereotypical you're on the therapist sofa, but I was sitting on the sofa I wasn't laying on the sofa and I just sat back and I looked there and I'm like what and she said That's happiness like you were happy because your butt was warm and she made a little joke and we chuckled a little bit I said, that's happy and she said, what do you think happy is? And and honestly she kind of backed me into a corner there and she made me confront my Expectations which were a little bit distorted. I said, well, you know, like I'm looking at my kids I'm looking at my girls my daughters and like I should be Experiencing these way the joy like joy just happiness and she goes. Yeah, I know I know what you think you should be experiencing But you know, that's not the only form of happy, you know, and I'm like, holy cow. You're right She blew my mind She literally blew my mind in that moment and it was such a turning point for me in terms of that that particular Problem of being worried about my emotions and not being able to feel joy and things like that because that is really pressing on me So she said let's finish this exercise. I want you to make a list of anything that makes you happy I don't care if you write it on an any index card or a piece of paper You keep it on my phone or whatever it was. It doesn't matter and I did I was I was keeping it on my phone I had the original iPhone back then by the way. So and yes, I had the notes You know, I was keeping a note on the iPhone And we wrote down five or six things that were silly like that I don't know. I like pizza like, you know, I like the seeds in my car I like classic rock music and she said, okay So when you feel that you are unable to experience happiness One thing that you can do sometimes will be to just go to that list Just use the list look at the list for a second and think oh, yeah Those things do bring me enjoyment enjoyment enjoyment as a form of happiness And she explained to me that happiness exists on a spectrum and that the default state for human beings is not Nirvana like if you're watching on video, I got my hands way up here like our happiness our default state for happy is not at the Super level 10 happy. It's just not and I have lost sight of that So I often talk about anxiety being a great magnifier and distorter, right? And distorts things that twist things it magnifies things and yes, that's exactly what my anxiety was doing for me It had twisted and distorted and like Irrationalized my view of what happiness was I expected happiness to be this Spiritual experience when in reality We can have those experiences as human beings certainly and we do in our lives from time to time But that's not the default state of happiness and that's not the only form of happiness So my therapist and that they really really helped me put that into perspective now I so struggled with it because you can't just reason with an anxious mind, but it did help me a lot to Understand that nirvana like extreme unbridled joy Even when like looking at our children or our partners or whatever the glory of nature is not Guaranteed nor is it to be expected nor is it the default for people So if you are in a situation and that lesson has stuck with me to this day And by the way that list was on every phone. I have ever owned since then including the one I have right now I'm never gonna delete that list I never look at it anymore, but it's very meaningful to me So I hang on to it and that might be an exercise that you want to try it was really helpful for me Give it a shot. It might help you. It's just a reminder. So if you are in that situation where you are feeling That you cannot conjure up joy and I hear the word joy a lot with this question I cannot experience joy. There's no joy in my life. I can't be joyful or sometimes it's expressed as I can't I can't find gratitude I can't be grateful. I can't feel happiness. I cannot conjure happiness gratitude Gratefulness joy. I can't none of those things and I have to remind people all the time. Well, you know, that's not the default state for a human being a default state for The for a human being is just neutral like most of the time if you think about a time that you were not in an anxious state You're not dealing with these anxiety problems. You most of the time were neutral You actually didn't have an opinion about how you felt because how you felt was not the most important thing in the room All the time like it might be for you now So right now how you feel is the most important thing in the room all the time Right, you're constantly judging it and you're constantly Striving to not feel bad and you think that the opposite of feeling bad is feeling joyful But it's not the opposite of feeling bad is not knowing how you feel to be totally honest with you as Somebody who has gone down the recovery path and is now on the other side of this and it's had the privilege of talking to so many people Who have gone through this the consensus is the opposite of feeling bad is not feeling great The opposite of feeling bad is feeling contented or just feeling neutral or not actually even noticing So what I want you to consider here is that you are judging this based on that black and white sort of thinking I am either feeling terribly because of my anxiety and fear or I will be happy But in reality that should really be I am either going to pay very close attention to how I feel all the time Or I'm not going to pay attention to how I feel those are really the two opposite ends here It's not sadness despair pain anxiety fear or joy and nirvana and happiness on the other side You know unbridled gratitude the to the two ends of the spectrum that we are really working with is I care about how I feel all the time and I don't really care how I feel most of the time So the process of regaining that ability to feel happiness and joy Number one would come incrementally. You have to start allowing those little things like my stupid seat heaters in my Old car that I had back then That was just the first step toward happiness for me to realize. Oh enjoying the seats is actually a form of happiness So there are moments. I know you have moments in your day Something just happened. I don't know what we'll power glitch. Okay. Sorry about that. Anyway So there are moments in your day when either you forget how you feel or you have little things here and there You enjoy your cup of coffee or your a cupcake or or you giggle with your kid Something happens during the day that puts you into that sort of neutral state not super joyful state Just a neutral state where you're no longer worried about how you feel for that one minute ten minutes fifteen minutes That's happy. That is really happy. That's what we're looking for here And as we go down the recovery process and we begin to focus less and less on how we feel all the time We become more and more ambivalent or unaware or just not caring Unconcerned contented with how we feel and then you will start to make space for Those feelings of joy and happiness will come back. So yes, I can feel those things now I can't instantly conjure them because nobody really can and sometimes that's a little bit of a dangerous message that we hear You know sort of in that toxic positivity and the online mental health community the healing community as if somehow we could just Decide to be grateful and feel feel joy and can just and happiness We cannot choose to feel those things we can feel those things we cannot demand them So right now you are demanding a thing that even recovered people don't get to demand all the time and you're kind of shooting at the wrong target So first you will begin to just not care how you feel and you'll start to move toward that neutral contented state and that is really our natural state and once you get there You're standing along the way you're starting with these tiny glimpses of happiness We might just call them enjoyment a quick smile an acknowledgement of something that is you like hey That's cool. I enjoy that that is a form of happiness So we look for those things while we are losing our fixation with how we feel all the time and As we are less and less fixated on how we feel. Oh my god. I feel so anxious my anxiety I feel anxious. This is terrible to nightmare. This is the worst I can't get out of this as that begins to go away We focus less and less on how we feel and we make a little bit more room for the emergence of those feelings of joy and Gratitude and happiness like you want so desperately They will be able to poke back through again right now All of the CPU cycles in your head all of the processing power is focused directly on how do I feel? This is terrible. This is awful. This is terrible. I must recover How do I recover am I doing it right and when am I gonna get better? There's no cycles left. There's no room for Nirvana, there's no room for joy There's no room for those that type of happiness that you're hoping that you're chasing right now You're chasing it, but even recovered people that aren't anxious anymore Don't get to chase that we can chase it, but we don't we never catch it You know it can come naturally when we allow it, but we don't get to get it either I don't get to instantly feel joy in Nirvana. I just don't At nor do most other people that's not a default normal default state for human beings So to answer your question and sort of wrap this up a little bit When you think that you will be unable to feel joy and happiness What I would tell you to remember is that right now all you care about is how you feel and That that anxiety state the anxious state that fear state is twisting and distorting your perception of what would joy and happiness is supposed to Be you've forgotten that that's not the default state and really you just need to stop for a second adjust that and say you know what I there are still things that for a moment here and there I can experience tiny glimpses of contentment or something that I just like and that's a form of happiness and As I become less obsessed with how I feel I will be able to experience that thing that I want so badly It will come back, but for now I just need to shoot for neutral So we're not it's you know You're needing Nirvana, but you really need to learn to navigate neutral Let me do a little iteration here in the letter n, but that's really what this is all about You don't need Nirvana. You need to navigate to neutral. That's really what we need right now And that's the answer to your question and when you get to neutral you start to get to that contented state Then the happiness and the joy that you want so badly will begin to come back in its normal state When it's warranted in your life some days will be very joyful Some days will just be neutral some days. You'll be sad. You'll be in a bad mood some days. You'll be angry That's the way human beings are So don't feel afraid. I can't tell you does not feel afraid. You will feel afraid I felt afraid but don't get stuck on the idea that you've lost the ability to be happy No, right now you're just preoccupied with this other thing Which is how you feel and how afraid you are all the time, but that doesn't mean you can't feel happy You will trust me you'll get there, but that's what the process looks like It's a march toward neutral which then opens up space for what you're really hoping to get but along the way Recognize these little bits of happiness in different forms that really do exist At least a few times in every day if you really look at them Maybe make a list like my therapist made me do it was actually very helpful I will I am eternally grateful for that exercise and like I said I carried that list around to this day So will you be able to feel joy and happiness again? Yeah, you will are you feeling happiness now? You are just not in the form that you are demanding, but we never get to demand that anyway no matter what our state So there you go. There's about 15 minutes or so on joy and happiness I hope that makes you at least feel a little better I hope that it gives you a little bit of a direction a little bit of hope on this You're not broken if you're not feeling joyful and happy right now. I promise so that is today's podcast episode Episode 185 in the books, so I'm gonna play you out as always. This is afterglow by my friend Ben Drake You can find Ben online and his music at Ben Drake music comm tell him I said hello if you go over there and you see him. He's hanging out on his website Nobody hangs out on their website. Anyway, check out Ben's music. He's a good guy Also, I'm going to ask the same favor that I always do if you are listening to this podcast on iTunes or on some platform That lets you rate or review the podcast Five-star rating is great. Leave a little review if you're watching on YouTube It sure would be good for you to hit the like button and subscribe to my channel just saying it really helps Anyway guys, thanks for coming by and spending your time as always We'll be back next week with another episode like we always are don't know what it's gonna be But we'll be here and remember this is the way