Happiness As Emotion And As Feeling
In last week’s article, I looked at our difficulties defining happiness, and how often people do not tune in to their feelings, whether involving happiness or otherwise. Recently, in fact, I worked with a patient who was unable to identify or name any emotions. He told me that he is a Torah scholar and has no feelings, only thoughts. He insisted that what some people refer to as emotions are really just thoughts. He reminded me of a famous professor from years past who built an entire system of psychotherapy upon the premise that feelings are only the way you think and believe about things. Change your thoughts, change your beliefs, and you will change your internal experience. I did not accept this paradigm and when he once did a demonstration for a full auditorium and asked for a volunteer, someone from the audience came on stage and he asked her what her problem was. The woman began weeping and said, “I’m so sad. I feel like I’m fat and ugly.” The professor told her: “You are fat and ugly, but why do you think you’re sad?”
I could not condone the professor’s approach, and I believe quite a few others in the audience felt the same way.
But let’s posit that happiness is in fact an emotion, and that feelings are normal, legitimate, and natural experiences. While the terms “feelings” and “emotions” are used almost interchangeably, emotions are reflexive, visceral sensations that arise under various conditions such as rage, fear, shame, and disgust, while feelings are the product of our processing of an emotion, so what started as fear might turn into a feeling of discomfort about what triggered that fear. And what began as rage might lead to feelings of hostility, anger, or irritability.
As for happiness, some people have an emotional happiness, which might be an instantaneous, short-lived sense of joy or euphoria when we see someone or have a nice experience that exceeds our expectations. Babies sometimes seem to experience the emotion of happiness reflexively when they see a familiar friendly face. As for adults, many of us seem to outgrow that reflex and assume a more guarded and wary attitude about others. This is one reason why many seldom experience the emotion of happiness.
As a feeling, happiness might involve the urge to share something positive, experience pleasure, or find fulfillment upon completing a meaningful project or task or when we like what we’re doing. Happy feelings tend to last a while because our brain associates them with many internal connections such as our actions, beliefs, the way we think about our feeling, and the sense of comfort we hope to maintain once we reach that happy state.
So, it is always useful to study our “happy” emotion, noticing what tends to elicit that reflexive experience, noting its intensity and endurance, and evaluating whether or not we are happy to have that happiness at the moment, or whether we are reacting with that happy emotion over something that may not be truly good. An example of this, to paraphrase a famous comedian, is the difference between tragedy and comedy. The comedian said if I have a hangnail, that’s a tragedy; if some well-dressed aristocrat walks down the sidewalk and falls into an open manhole, that’s comedy. While slapstick is generally funny, many of us who have a happy reflex at someone else’s downfall will probably not feel too good about ourselves later on for laughing at another’s misfortune.
As for our happy feeling, in that a feeling includes some behavior and some cognitive process, we can learn about ourselves by analyzing our happy feelings. What action did I take that may have generated that happy feeling? Was I helping someone in need? Did I assist someone voluntarily or perhaps anonymously? And did those actions leave me feeling good and happy? Was I acknowledging and expressing my gratitude about someone or something? Expressing appreciation and gratitude often correlates with feeling happier. Was I being silly and that brought on my happy feelings and in those who observed me? Or was I being sincere and engaged in an act of integrity that demonstrated my wholesome values? Behaviorally, am I smiling, am I radiant with joy, is there a spring in my step and a song in my head?
The above concepts offer us a deeper sense of what happiness can feel like and what are some of the correlates of happiness. In a future article, I plan to look at some tools to put to use in order to recover your lost, vague or forgotten feelings of happiness. Purim Sameach. n
Rabbi Dr. Dovid Fox is a forensic and clinical psychologist, and director of Chai Lifeline Crisis Services. To contact Chai Lifeline’s 24-hour crisis helpline, call 855-3-CRISIS or email [email protected]. Learn more at ChaiLifeline.org/crisis.
