I feel like therapists often push the power of positivity rather than actually dealing with negative feelings. I found affirmations to just make me feel worse.
its such an up and down. And accepting even bad emotions is happyness. To tell myself its ok to be angry or sad. That is happyness for me. If I accept bad feelings I can also have the good ones
React to your thoughts and feelings with passion and try to understand them in order to be alive. Accepting your thoughts and feelings exist and do nothing about is a road to emotional dissociation that Daniel is talking about
@@elenabalyberdina2393 - I don’t think the two tactics have to be mutually exclusive. Plenty of meditators have done lots of therapy and self archaeology. At some point when you’ve understood and processed your past it’s then time to stop letting it define your life or impeding happiness. I find that’s most often the point that people who practice meditation are at in life, in my experience.
@@67NewEngland As long as they aren't using it to numb their feelings. My experience with meditators is this...and they have NOT done a deep grieving process. Once you do the feeling work, you don't really need something to quiet your thoughts. That's just my experience with it. I see people meditating and getting into so-called spirituality who have never re-experienced their original rage and grief on a deep level. I see it as dissociative, not healing. When you've done the feeling work and as you said "understood and processed your past"...there really isn't any need for meditation.
Daniel I don’t think you realize how paradigm shifting your videos are. The part about is the goal to be happy in life or is the purpose of healing our trauma is to be better at operating in the world, with other people and animals, and ourselves and I wholeheartedly agree. I thought I would be happier after dealing with my trauma but it really only made me feel worse but I can confirm it has made me more mindful of my decisions and the impact it has on myself and other people. It’s made me want to help people, not just people like me either. All people. Healing my trauma is making the world a better place by reducing the likelihood of the cycle of trauma. That’s how the world, everybody ends up happier when we stop perpetuating each others pain by dissociating from it.
The majority of my life has not been happy. As far back as I can remember I was at least anxious and always had a sense of being unsettled due to growing up in such a toxic family environment. I had depression for many years. I was just thinking today of how much I grew and how healthy I got as I achieved more and more independence. I think my struggles made me a stronger person.
I completely agree. I’m healing from trauma and I have depression and I’m suicidal but I was invited to have a party today and I just didn’t feel like joining them even though they wanted me to join I know they don’t know about my mental health issues and how bad it is and I just couldn’t feel like putting a fake smile on my face infront of them.They’re in the other room having fun and they’re so loud while I’m watching this video and in my room and I feel so much better being alone and this is much more quality time than joining them and having blank happiness with shallow relationships.. I’m trying to say no to things that dissociates me from myself and I think I protected myself this time.
'Life is nice and there to be enjoyed.' A final response from a friend when talking about existential questions, like how to deal with all the suffering in the world, something like that. So it was what you mention, this goal of blindness to the dark things that are a huge part of reality. This supposedly upbeat, good boy response felt so rejecting, numbed and dead to me. Shortly before I head from a very different person 'When I was only positive and happy I felt like I was making a huge part of myself homeless.' It seemed so much more true and alive.
Being at peace with yourself feels to me like the goal, like that should be the state of idle. That natural peaceful curiosity that occupies the mind sorta like it does with kids. Emotions like happiness, sadness, fear and anger are all reactions to things.
Wow! That was an intense video. Thanks for clearing some things out. I'm not taking abuse from my coworkers anymore. I'm setting boundaries more. It is a slow process but I can't be dead inside. I don't want to be just to fit in.
Agreed. Mindfulness is the new "tune in and tune out" movement of the 60's. It's used to help one disassociate even more and not bother trying to see the systemic problems all around us, in our family and societal (corporate consumer) systems. I think it was not long after Bobby McFerrin had a hit with "Don't worry, be happy" that he attempted suicide. Life is suffering. The goal is to try to relieve that suffering for others (and for oneself). If everyone felt this way that would go a long way to achieve at least fulfillment.
Bobby McFerrin did not attempt suicide. This idea was rumor that spread presumably due to its intrinsic catchiness, and it suggests that people are motivated to discredit other’s wellbeing.
A life of meaning is better than aiming for happiness because you can’t maintain that but meaningful life can sustain you through periods of hardship or unhappiness
There is happy in the sense of pleasure. Then there is the ancient Greek sense of happiness, which is more like the living of a complete life. Our current culture prizes the first at the expense of the second.
I once parroted this concept to my therapist and she did NOT like it, she got defensive and couldn't even wrap her head around the idea. Really goes to show that she was more in the business of helping her clients dissociate rather than helping them heal.
Always here for a Daniel take. It's true that meditation - like any activity or spiritual practice - can be used to dissociate. For me, the goal is awakening and opening. And it's just another way to stay with and turn towards the discomfort that arises habitually. Insight meditation was foundational to IFS, not incidentally.
Whenever I do self-therapy I always try to think about how Daniel would deal with the situation. His honesty and openness about how to deal with the traumas of the past helps me immensely.
This was so refreshing to watch, Daniel. I tend to agree with the overall message, I feel like it's either paying the price of emotional awareness (and also enjoying the deep meaning that it brings to your life as you become more integrated) or dissociating by pushing down the scary/negative feelings, which results in being overly focused on superficial things that give you pleasure then ending up being all confused when anxiety/depression or both come and punch you in the face out of nowhere - the 'surprise attack' being a manifestation of the unresolved issues you've been ignoring for too long.
I mostly do not comment on videos,but the things that you talked about in this video and in general I have been noticing for the past couple of years now,with myself.I don't know if you'll see this but your channel has helped me procces a lot of my teenagehood and helped me understand how to deal with the mental battles that take place in my mind everyday.From the bottom of my heart,thank you for that
I think the goal of people like who you describe is to get along, survive, and make others believe they're happy. They've decided that's good enough, and they are convinced they are fooling everybody. A few can see through it.
I rarely ever seen my mother suffer. Which I thought was good. She worked hard, played hard and slept well my whole life that I remember. But what I didn't realize most of that time is she was basically torturing and destroying me the whole time. She was a perfectionist like Mommy dearest but played Mommy dearest better than Mommy dearest. I rarely ever seen her loose her temper out in public like Mommy dearest did. So yeah her being HAPPY wasn't so great of a thing when she's destroying me and I also HAD to be happy also or really just kind of ZOMBIED out because Mom didn't like it when I was happy or sad. Feelings weren't allowed. It was not Okay to be a human being just HAAAAPY. Yeeeeaaaah!
Do you feel like alienating you from your emotions was done to damage you specifically, like unhealthy parents do? Seems to me in order to make you disfunctional so you won't have relationships and end up avandooning them? Or was it a gender thing: Were you the only child? Did your mom treated your sisters diferent?
@@kittenm2784 I was an only child and my mom and dad devorced when I was 12. Then when I was about 23 years old just out of the Army and back from the first Gulf War and traumatized she and her husband adopted a baby girl. Mom's treated that one like gold. It's really discusting and a long story and I just started learning about this narcissism stuff four or five years ago and realizing most of my family are basically psychopaths so mother has done just about anything to destroy me from small things to large things like stealing a home and a family from me. I remember one time many years ago when things were starting to go well for me and I was looked up to by authority figures she was getting sick and saying she thinks she needs to see a therapist and even that she was going to die. I have no idea what she was talking about. But she stuck it to me several times since then and have ruined all that and I've never heard her complain about needing to see a therapist or dying since. She is just Demonic and evil to the core. And an extreme coward. God bless you and anyone affected by people like these.
@@russellm7530 OMG That's horrible. I hope you get to stay away from her. What she done is incredibly disconsiderate. I also hope you could get some theraphy for the PTSD. Thank you for your service, and I'm so outraged by what she done to you.
You've really nailed something that is extremely important and done so with tremendous lucidity and courage. I have understood for a long time that the constant pursuit of happiness not only misses the point of life but is psychologically damaging. And your account fills out the reasons perfectly. Thank you for this.
This is so thought-provoking, thank you! This is prompting me to reconsider my motivation for self-healing work. I do have the hope of more happiness as a result of self-healing work, and maybe I need to rethink that. But, like you, I never was able to completely push away all the ugliness in order to "be happy". And yes, I find myself feeling a twinge of envy when I see other people able to be happy gliding on the surface of life. But I haven't been able to manage to do that...so I keep doing the work of facing the discomfort lurking under the surface of life. I guess I need to just understand the fact that I am not cut out to be a surface dweller. And appreciate the richness that can come from dealing with those deeper aspects of life. It often sucks, no doubt, but sometimes it can actually be something much more substantial than surface-level happiness, a kind of positive feeling that I don't have the words to describe.
I feel the same. The word that I like to use more and more is congruency. To come to a state where body, mind and speech are perfectly in line with the flow of life... Maybe peace or reconciliation is the better term. In my process I definitely noticed more happiness and that happiness actually came from within... But I also have to be careful to see if that happiness is really for sure or if I was jusf fooling myself.
Yes, I love this, I have long told people that I don't think happiness is the meaning of life. I would often use the example of Ï was happier when I believed in Santa Klaus "
Like the way a flower's goal should be to be a good flower, making the world better simply by being what it is, a human should try to be the best expression of a human's potential and their own uniqueness. A human isn't whole and can't really be a good human when shutting down all emotions and dissociating. That's more like a robot. Society is a macrocosm of dissociating toxic families, trying to push down anyone who tells the truth, and trying to make everyone else fake their own happiness, so those in power never have to face their own true selves.
Modern society expects everyone to be good little robots operating in a giant heartless machine that isa capitalist economy that worships only one thing: money.
Wow, intense video. Just had a conversation about happiness a few nights ago. I was you Daniel. The other person did not understand. So wow, this video came at great timing. You are such an interesting speaker too, thanks for your 'wild truths', I resonate with a lot of them it seems.
Thank you, this give me great hope. It's a high-strung happiness that is forced. It's actually deeply exhausting for the soul to be like that. I feel I can shed this now, by going into my pure energetic experience -- not needing to control it by requiring happy emotives
I can so relate to everything you are saying. Our world is sick. And those who are considered insane are probably mentally more healthy because at least they feel empathy and see injustice. I think jesus said something about us not being of this world - we must be in it but not accept it as it is. Keep doing your thing truth and justice warrior.
The two best lines in the book: "It's not what I want out of life, it's what life wants out of me." "The Statue of Liberty on the East Coast should be supplemented with a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast."
Blessings upon you Daniel, cause you are one of the more adult self conscious and honest soul we couod meet on our way.. Thank you, to be you. People tgat are empathetic, not always looks happy and ues this brings others to dislike them. But even more self conscious empathetic are kept aside, because people do not want to dig insidetheir own discomfort, and an honest self conscious person pushes them to question themsekves. So it is a solitary road untill you dont find your pack.. And i think this is what you fid creating so many your followers that are very likely hobest and drspised by the systems that these disconnected people created, like you.. And this is freedom, a space in which, by our own and with our pack we can all grow and trive.. Thank you Daniel🤗💕
The goal of life is to achieve a happy life and not evade your unhappiness and just pretend that you are happy. You are confounding two different concepts.
Traumatized people give a shit about other people. Your story about stopping the guy from beating up the old man struck a cord. I work in a hospital and I'm constantly told how caring and kind I am, which i feel should be the default for Healthcare workers!!! I am constantly angered by those who have been in Healthcare too long who seem to have deadened their natural empathy response as a survival tactic.
This is on point. I think a lot of this "happiness" is just wanting to not feel bad. Being comfortably numb, as lyrics in one of Pink Floyd's songs says.
Yeah. Totally agree. I remember when I was doing an internship at a job training program for "psychologically ill" juveniles and I was grieving that I had been locked in my house for like half a year. I had figuered out after like 2 seconds being there that the so called "psychologically ill" juveniles were way more present than the supposedly healthy tainers there. (Not saying the juveniles weren´t troubled...) And so after 4 days the manager kicked me out telling me that basically he doesnt want depressed people (and immature people, cus I´m 21) to do an internship there. Yes. Well.... Quite ironically that now I won´t become a therapist any time soon and the dissociated trainers there, half of them are doing the therapist´s training and will probably be done all the sooner.
I have heard this sentiment -- that happiness is not the goal of life -- in a few different ways, but I found Viktor Frankl's view on it to be the most interesting. In his book "Man's Search for Meaning" he argues that the true goal of life, the key to satisfaction is to find and fulfill one's own meaning (whatever it may be), that meaning is the most important aspect of the human experience to find (hence the book's title)
Thank you so much for addressing this.. for years decades I have been trying to figure out my unhappiness as people often called it. I mean people would tell me I am as happy as I make my mind to be., or that I need to believe in goodness and kindness of others when the predominant experiences in my life from my biological parents have been abuse, violence, brutality, neglect and abandonment. I don’t want to even begin telling you how my other relationships have been after I ran away from the abuse and neglect from my parents., you can deduct they were far from loving and caring. And for years I must have been suppressing the rage, anger and resentment towards those who abused me.! And now I am here listening to you tell me suppressing my most natural emotions and feelings is perhaps causing all that build up rage and misery ..!
Maybe the goal of life should be to not have goals. For almost, every other species on this earth, their life's work is pretty basic: find enough to food to survive and find a mate to pass on their genes. They never once have to justify their existence and seek out a raison d'etre.
I opine the goal is to do the best you can and leave things better off for your having been here. We'll all be dead soon and enough, so fight the good fight while you can.😊
Oh you hit this out of the park... The existential angst and confusion I feel being named Happy??!! Repress, deny, disown, drug, isolate- my life everytime I am at odds with my name. Which is a lot. This video was ripped from the recesses of my mind .
Hi Daniel, thanks so much for this video. I really like the idea that happiness is a possible by-product or side-effect, rather than a goal. I like to think about success in the same way.
Loved it! Stay you please! And since you are becoming such a whole and wonderful human being in the process, i would feel it is a shame that you wouldn't want any children. You are the exact person who is needed to have children so the good and sane can continue in the world and doesn't die with you!! :) Your heart is so pure.
People don't owe the world or anyone to have children. Even if they're healthy and healed enough, it's still their decision entirely about what to do with/in their lives. If it wasn't their willful decision, children would still suffer. There are a lot of ways people like that can shine in the world and that doesn't necessarily involve procreating.
Thank you Daniel 🙏🏼 in the times of war, genocide and crimes against humanity around the world and in our city of NYC this message helps very much. All love to you Daniel 💚 hope to see you out in the streets fighting for a free Palestine, Sudan, Congo and everyone else 🤍
I appreciate you so much. It seems you have retained such empathy despite the suffering you must have experienced to get to this point in life. That plus your unending self reflection: maybe that's the goal of life! Suffering, self reflection, retain empathy, repeat. Thank you for sharing. I'm out here listening.
Why do I suffer? On the other side of that question is a freedom I am starting to catch brilliant glimpses of. Simply “letting go” things is a spiritual platitude and I agree that Buddhists seemed to be in a trance. It’s not my position to say that is wrong for them. I meditate but I don’t aim to be at peace and ease 24/7. The world is amazing yet we are, as humans, very lost and headed in very bizarre directions. To be truly human is to be thoroughly curious as to how and why I think, feel, and operate. That is my goal thus far on my journey.....that could change. “God” or “the spirit of the universe” (the name does not matter) has a sense of humor and is beyond our comprehension. This is only a blip in the life of my soul.
great vid dani and love ya! but you got it wrong on meditation. Meditation is just one practice of the eightfold path set forth by the buddah and its purpose is wisdom, not hapiness. in fact, the whole idea is to not be happy, since happines is a form of agitation and change. The goal is equanimity, through proper wisdom, not dis asociation, which would be imposible for the wise
Daniel, I used to be an extremely hard thinker - I schemed and plotted in social interactions - not to “get my way” or “win”, but just to be safe. Even when I tried to “help people” I was heavily relying on my intellect to problem solve, or imitate empathy by saying the words that mean “your feelings make sense”. Through meditation to bring my attention back to my root emotions and the present emotions and sensations in my body, and two months of trauma work (somatic therapy), I’ve become sooooo much more like what you described at the end of the video. I like to be there for my friends when they are sad, but that takes me a lot of energy because I’m introverted and now my empathy results in me mirroring their emotions in myself. The bigger their emotions, the more tiring this is. But what you neglected to focus on in the video I think is the fact that my joy from the smallest moments is also immense. Im fully in the moment in my walks to class, feeling the autumn breeze in my hair and sun on my skin. I literally feel like im melting into the sky. I think the answer to happiness is structuring your life so you can empathize with the difficulties of people who mean a lot to you, and maximize your environment so that there are more joyful things around you. Living location, hobbies, friends, etc.
These videos are tremendously helpful. Its good to know that real help comes from what is outside of the accepted convention. Truth stands alone and needs nothing to prop it up . Honestly look for truth, be sincere in quest to be healed and prioritize the well being of others...and the truth with her companions, healing and peace, will find you.
What if you are so scared to be happy that you sabotogize every chance you get to be happy? Idk how to stop that I really want to be happy. I can’t even feel it anymore.
I agree with everything you say here, anxiety is in large part a product of developmental trauma. Another factor is that our primitive brain systems are precautionary, that's what kept us alive). But... (and)... when we are active in defining and looking after our needs, then the "positive" emotions tend to increase. Its the difference between being anxious and content, between disappointed and joy, between fear and trust.
Imagine if you ran into Alec Baldwin on the street. I think he lives in New York, doesn't he? I know people have seen him there before, anyway. It disgust me that he continues to have a career after the way he treated his daughter, became publicly known. I guess people don't care about child abuse unless it leaves physical marks that would allow for legal action.
You say that happiness isn’t the goal, then you explain that peoples’s happiness isn’t real, and then you acknowledge that you are “happier” after working through your trauma and connecting with your genuine self. Your story is insightful and very helpful, and your observations ring true. But people using ‘happy’ as a euphemism for dissociation and outward appearance does not mean happiness is the problem, it means those people are actually unhappy. If we approach happiness as an actual goal and are honest with ourselves in understanding our experience of wellbeing, then certainly happiness can be a suitable and honorable aim.
I will add that some people dismiss the persuit of happiness as trivial and selfish only to later complain of various unhappinesses in their lived experience. It seems to me that understanding wellbeing and taking some authority over our own happiness will serve us well, and benefit our loved ones. If happiness is explicity not the goal, is then unhappiness explicity the goal? Of course not. The real conversation is about the methods we use to acheive wellbeing, and the way we think about ourselves and our context.
I have seen parents abuse their children and I pray for them because you really can't get involved. Sometimes I think back to these memories and continue to lift them up. This life is so painful. I think the goal is to "know God". Jesus was a "man of sorrows" and "aquainted with grief". I try to help others. And praise God. It gives me joy. I guess I look at all the pain-I'm not in denial - then "let it go"- not carrying all the pain arround- and choose to look for good and be grateful!
okay.. I mean, joy is a state of being tho, I know that I might have some things that are not solved like to 100% that tho is not an excuse for me to hold back on being happy, being empathic and understanding people dose not mean that if someone is going show a difficult time then I'm not allowed to be happy because someone else is not, that is something I have believed for a long time, I was actually put down for being happy and people would tell me "how can you, after all that is happening around the world and don't you see how terrible that is and this is.." and I started believing it, I started believing that I was a terrible person because I was not suffering, even if I have gone throw certain unpleasant thing in my life, I was happily open about being emotional and I have had the opportunity to speak with people about certain things that happend in my life and that helped me a lot, dose not mean I was done with it, I still went throw a very heavy deep depression, was suicidal actually but now, yeah my God I'M happy big time, I enjoy so many things that I love doing because I'm just be, I get to be joyous FOR NO REASON AT ALL, just because I get to, this is what I want to me and what I want to give to the world and I love it, not like faking never being sed or angry or anything like that but I do laugh much more then I cry and I have not numbness anymore, thank GOD
I think deep, true happiness involves dealing and processing trauma. And is a good goal. Maybe it’s more accurate to call it ‘at peace’. Phony happiness is most definitely not a goal - but many people don’t understand the difference, and think if they fake being happy on the surface, then they’ve mastered the goal of life, and that other people will see them as having achieved something. Mostly I think we aren’t taught the difference between content and at peace and happiness, and aren’t given the tools to accept and process. So it’s at no fault of our own that we shortcut to appearances rather than doing the inner work.
![บุษบา - วงชานเมือง [LiveCoverVertion] Original : เมนทอล](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Dm81sKcd9rs/mqdefault.jpg)
I feel like therapists often push the power of positivity rather than actually dealing with negative feelings. I found affirmations to just make me feel worse.
Yeah, they say instead of claiming something you truly don’t believe, change the way you say it. Instead of I am, try “ I want to be_____ “… etc.
Healing trauma is not a happy process BUT healing (my trauma) makes me happy!!!! Your teachings are so meaningful for me. Thank you.
Beautifully said! Here, here!!
its such an up and down. And accepting even bad emotions is happyness. To tell myself its ok to be angry or sad. That is happyness for me. If I accept bad feelings I can also have the good ones
“How can I even have a self, to have self-esteem about, if I don’t know my own history” 💯💯💯
Meditation is not to think things, but to not react to your thoughts and feelings. Simply accept they exist.
React to your thoughts and feelings with passion and try to understand them in order to be alive. Accepting your thoughts and feelings exist and do nothing about is a road to emotional dissociation that Daniel is talking about
@@elenabalyberdina2393 - I don’t think the two tactics have to be mutually exclusive. Plenty of meditators have done lots of therapy and self archaeology. At some point when you’ve understood and processed your past it’s then time to stop letting it define your life or impeding happiness. I find that’s most often the point that people who practice meditation are at in life, in my experience.
@@67NewEngland Thank you Ni Judy, Elena Balyberdina, 67NewEngland for the excellent discussion
@@67NewEngland As long as they aren't using it to numb their feelings. My experience with meditators is this...and they have NOT done a deep grieving process. Once you do the feeling work, you don't really need something to quiet your thoughts. That's just my experience with it. I see people meditating and getting into so-called spirituality who have never re-experienced their original rage and grief on a deep level. I see it as dissociative, not healing. When you've done the feeling work and as you said "understood and processed your past"...there really isn't any need for meditation.
@@anthonyiacobucci3652 from what ive seen, meditating is actually very spiritually destructive.
Society does like dissociation.
It seems to be an attitude of "Your feelings are inconvenient so please kindly stuff them, thank you."
@@katehampstead6024 yes!
Society relies on it.
Daniel I don’t think you realize how paradigm shifting your videos are. The part about is the goal to be happy in life or is the purpose of healing our trauma is to be better at operating in the world, with other people and animals, and ourselves and I wholeheartedly agree. I thought I would be happier after dealing with my trauma but it really only made me feel worse but I can confirm it has made me more mindful of my decisions and the impact it has on myself and other people. It’s made me want to help people, not just people like me either. All people. Healing my trauma is making the world a better place by reducing the likelihood of the cycle of trauma. That’s how the world, everybody ends up happier when we stop perpetuating each others pain by dissociating from it.
Thanks for sharing this 😀
The majority of my life has not been happy. As far back as I can remember I was at least anxious and always had a sense of being unsettled due to growing up in such a toxic family environment. I had depression for many years. I was just thinking today of how much I grew and how healthy I got as I achieved more and more independence. I think my struggles made me a stronger person.
Well done. There is gold in that struggle
♠️
I completely agree. I’m healing from trauma and I have depression and I’m suicidal but I was invited to have a party today and I just didn’t feel like joining them even though they wanted me to join I know they don’t know about my mental health issues and how bad it is and I just couldn’t feel like putting a fake smile on my face infront of them.They’re in the other room having fun and they’re so loud while I’m watching this video and in my room and I feel so much better being alone and this is much more quality time than joining them and having blank happiness with shallow relationships.. I’m trying to say no to things that dissociates me from myself and I think I protected myself this time.
Baby steps like Daniel says....❤
♠️
🙏
'Life is nice and there to be enjoyed.' A final response from a friend when talking about existential questions, like how to deal with all the suffering in the world, something like that.
So it was what you mention, this goal of blindness to the dark things that are a huge part of reality. This supposedly upbeat, good boy response felt so rejecting, numbed and dead to me.
Shortly before I head from a very different person 'When I was only positive and happy I felt like I was making a huge part of myself homeless.' It seemed so much more true and alive.
I constantly reject negative and sad parts of myself and it makes me only worse off in the long run
Being at peace with yourself feels to me like the goal, like that should be the state of idle. That natural peaceful curiosity that occupies the mind sorta like it does with kids. Emotions like happiness, sadness, fear and anger are all reactions to things.
This is very beautifully said.
Yes!!! Peace when the environment is peaceful, happiness when happy things or interactions come into your awareness, likewise for sad, angry, etc.
Wow! That was an intense video. Thanks for clearing some things out. I'm not taking abuse from my coworkers anymore. I'm setting boundaries more. It is a slow process but I can't be dead inside. I don't want to be just to fit in.
♠️
Agreed. Mindfulness is the new "tune in and tune out" movement of the 60's. It's used to help one disassociate even more and not bother trying to see the systemic problems all around us, in our family and societal (corporate consumer) systems. I think it was not long after Bobby McFerrin had a hit with "Don't worry, be happy" that he attempted suicide.
Life is suffering. The goal is to try to relieve that suffering for others (and for oneself). If everyone felt this way that would go a long way to achieve at least fulfillment.
Agreed. Spiritual bypassing is alive and well as a defence
exactly
Bobby McFerrin did not attempt suicide. This idea was rumor that spread presumably due to its intrinsic catchiness, and it suggests that people are motivated to discredit other’s wellbeing.
Modern society teaches to not feel empathy, without empathy we don't feel suffering of others, and as a result we don't care.
A life of meaning is better than aiming for happiness because you can’t maintain that but meaningful life can sustain you through periods of hardship or unhappiness
There is happy in the sense of pleasure. Then there is the ancient Greek sense of happiness, which is more like the living of a complete life. Our current culture prizes the first at the expense of the second.
Happiness is a fleeting feeling not a goal. The goal in life is to experience your senses, form emotional connections, and gain power.
I once parroted this concept to my therapist and she did NOT like it, she got defensive and couldn't even wrap her head around the idea. Really goes to show that she was more in the business of helping her clients dissociate rather than helping them heal.
Always here for a Daniel take. It's true that meditation - like any activity or spiritual practice - can be used to dissociate. For me, the goal is awakening and opening. And it's just another way to stay with and turn towards the discomfort that arises habitually. Insight meditation was foundational to IFS, not incidentally.
Whenever I do self-therapy I always try to think about how Daniel would deal with the situation. His honesty and openness about how to deal with the traumas of the past helps me immensely.
This was so refreshing to watch, Daniel. I tend to agree with the overall message, I feel like it's either paying the price of emotional awareness (and also enjoying the deep meaning that it brings to your life as you become more integrated) or dissociating by pushing down the scary/negative feelings, which results in being overly focused on superficial things that give you pleasure then ending up being all confused when anxiety/depression or both come and punch you in the face out of nowhere - the 'surprise attack' being a manifestation of the unresolved issues you've been ignoring for too long.
man this really hits hard! thanks for sharing
How true
I mostly do not comment on videos,but the things that you talked about in this video and in general I have been noticing for the past couple of years now,with myself.I don't know if you'll see this but your channel has helped me procces a lot of my teenagehood and helped me understand how to deal with the mental battles that take place in my mind everyday.From the bottom of my heart,thank you for that
You're welcome!! Wishing you the best! Daniel
I think the goal of people like who you describe is to get along, survive, and make others believe they're happy. They've decided that's good enough, and they are convinced they are fooling everybody. A few can see through it.
I rarely ever seen my mother suffer. Which I thought was good. She worked hard, played hard and slept well my whole life that I remember.
But what I didn't realize most of that time is she was basically torturing and destroying me the whole time.
She was a perfectionist like Mommy dearest but played Mommy dearest better than Mommy dearest.
I rarely ever seen her loose her temper out in public like Mommy dearest did.
So yeah her being HAPPY wasn't so great of a thing when she's destroying me and I also HAD to be happy also or really just kind of ZOMBIED out because Mom didn't like it when I was happy or sad. Feelings weren't allowed.
It was not Okay to be a human being just HAAAAPY.
Yeeeeaaaah!
Do you feel like alienating you from your emotions was done to damage you specifically, like unhealthy parents do? Seems to me in order to make you disfunctional so you won't have relationships and end up avandooning them? Or was it a gender thing: Were you the only child? Did your mom treated your sisters diferent?
@@kittenm2784 I was an only child and my mom and dad devorced when I was 12.
Then when I was about 23 years old just out of the Army and back from the first Gulf War and traumatized she and her husband adopted a baby girl.
Mom's treated that one like gold.
It's really discusting and a long story and I just started learning about this narcissism stuff four or five years ago and realizing most of my family are basically psychopaths so mother has done just about anything to destroy me from small things to large things like stealing a home and a family from me.
I remember one time many years ago when things were starting to go well for me and I was looked up to by authority figures she was getting sick and saying she thinks she needs to see a therapist and even that she was going to die.
I have no idea what she was talking about. But she stuck it to me several times since then and have ruined all that and I've never heard her complain about needing to see a therapist or dying since.
She is just Demonic and evil to the core. And an extreme coward.
God bless you and anyone affected by people like these.
@@russellm7530 OMG That's horrible. I hope you get to stay away from her. What she done is incredibly disconsiderate.
I also hope you could get some theraphy for the PTSD. Thank you for your service, and I'm so outraged by what she done to you.
You've really nailed something that is extremely important and done so with tremendous lucidity and courage. I have understood for a long time that the constant pursuit of happiness not only misses the point of life but is psychologically damaging. And your account fills out the reasons perfectly. Thank you for this.
This is so thought-provoking, thank you! This is prompting me to reconsider my motivation for self-healing work. I do have the hope of more happiness as a result of self-healing work, and maybe I need to rethink that. But, like you, I never was able to completely push away all the ugliness in order to "be happy". And yes, I find myself feeling a twinge of envy when I see other people able to be happy gliding on the surface of life. But I haven't been able to manage to do that...so I keep doing the work of facing the discomfort lurking under the surface of life. I guess I need to just understand the fact that I am not cut out to be a surface dweller. And appreciate the richness that can come from dealing with those deeper aspects of life. It often sucks, no doubt, but sometimes it can actually be something much more substantial than surface-level happiness, a kind of positive feeling that I don't have the words to describe.
I feel the same. The word that I like to use more and more is congruency. To come to a state where body, mind and speech are perfectly in line with the flow of life... Maybe peace or reconciliation is the better term.
In my process I definitely noticed more happiness and that happiness actually came from within... But I also have to be careful to see if that happiness is really for sure or if I was jusf fooling myself.
You are a blessed individual! Love your videos
Yes, I love this, I have long told people that I don't think happiness is the meaning of life. I would often use the example of Ï was happier when I believed in Santa Klaus "
Eternally grateful to have discovered Daniel Mackler at only 24
Like the way a flower's goal should be to be a good flower, making the world better simply by being what it is, a human should try to be the best expression of a human's potential and their own uniqueness. A human isn't whole and can't really be a good human when shutting down all emotions and dissociating. That's more like a robot. Society is a macrocosm of dissociating toxic families, trying to push down anyone who tells the truth, and trying to make everyone else fake their own happiness, so those in power never have to face their own true selves.
Modern society expects everyone to be good little robots operating in a giant heartless machine that isa capitalist economy that worships only one thing: money.
I loved this so much. thanks.
Me too! yes and thanks
Wow, intense video. Just had a conversation about happiness a few nights ago. I was you Daniel. The other person did not understand. So wow, this video came at great timing. You are such an interesting speaker too, thanks for your 'wild truths', I resonate with a lot of them it seems.
Thank you, this give me great hope. It's a high-strung happiness that is forced. It's actually deeply exhausting for the soul to be like that. I feel I can shed this now, by going into my pure energetic experience -- not needing to control it by requiring happy emotives
Happy? I have thought at times that I deserve an award for just not going bonkers.
I can so relate to everything you are saying. Our world is sick. And those who are considered insane are probably mentally more healthy because at least they feel empathy and see injustice. I think jesus said something about us not being of this world - we must be in it but not accept it as it is. Keep doing your thing truth and justice warrior.
“Be in the world, and not of it.” - Book of John : 17:11, verses 14-15
Oh yeah and that was a good thing you helping that old man Daniel.
God bless anyone affected by these kind of psychos.
Instantly reminded me of Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl
If you don't know the meaning of life then you are so far from God that he wishes you never existed.
The two best lines in the book:
"It's not what I want out of life, it's what life wants out of me."
"The Statue of Liberty on the East Coast should be supplemented with a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast."
Blessings upon you Daniel, cause you are one of the more adult self conscious and honest soul we couod meet on our way..
Thank you, to be you.
People tgat are empathetic, not always looks happy and ues this brings others to dislike them. But even more self conscious empathetic are kept aside, because people do not want to dig insidetheir own discomfort, and an honest self conscious person pushes them to question themsekves. So it is a solitary road untill you dont find your pack.. And i think this is what you fid creating so many your followers that are very likely hobest and drspised by the systems that these disconnected people created, like you..
And this is freedom, a space in which, by our own and with our pack we can all grow and trive..
Thank you Daniel🤗💕
The goal of life is to achieve a happy life and not evade your unhappiness and just pretend that you are happy. You are confounding two different concepts.
your videos make me tear up sometimes, especially when i feel so alone and overwhelmed, having you say that it is indeed difficult is very validating
I agree. You articulated it much better then I’ve been able too.
People are dead inside, Daniel.
Traumatized people give a shit about other people. Your story about stopping the guy from beating up the old man struck a cord. I work in a hospital and I'm constantly told how caring and kind I am, which i feel should be the default for Healthcare workers!!! I am constantly angered by those who have been in Healthcare too long who seem to have deadened their natural empathy response as a survival tactic.
People don't care what happens to people unless it happens to them.
This is on point. I think a lot of this "happiness" is just wanting to not feel bad. Being comfortably numb, as lyrics in one of Pink Floyd's songs says.
Did you listen to the whole album?
Yeah. Totally agree. I remember when I was doing an internship at a job training program for "psychologically ill" juveniles and I was grieving that I had been locked in my house for like half a year. I had figuered out after like 2 seconds being there that the so called "psychologically ill" juveniles were way more present than the supposedly healthy tainers there. (Not saying the juveniles weren´t troubled...) And so after 4 days the manager kicked me out telling me that basically he doesnt want depressed people (and immature people, cus I´m 21) to do an internship there. Yes. Well.... Quite ironically that now I won´t become a therapist any time soon and the dissociated trainers there, half of them are doing the therapist´s training and will probably be done all the sooner.
Blessed are those who thirst for righteousness.matt :5
I have heard this sentiment -- that happiness is not the goal of life -- in a few different ways, but I found Viktor Frankl's view on it to be the most interesting. In his book "Man's Search for Meaning" he argues that the true goal of life, the key to satisfaction is to find and fulfill one's own meaning (whatever it may be), that meaning is the most important aspect of the human experience to find (hence the book's title)
It is peace .. eternal peace and satisfaction ..
Even in the most difficult days.. I cry peacefully .. like I'm doin while writing this comment nw 💛
So much truth in this video. I can totally relate! Thank you Daniel!
I love your expression , it’s beautiful
Thank you so much for addressing this.. for years decades I have been trying to figure out my unhappiness as people often called it. I mean people would tell me I am as happy as I make my mind to be., or that I need to believe in goodness and kindness of others when the predominant experiences in my life from my biological parents have been abuse, violence, brutality, neglect and abandonment. I don’t want to even begin telling you how my other relationships have been after I ran away from the abuse and neglect from my parents., you can deduct they were far from loving and caring. And for years I must have been suppressing the rage, anger and resentment towards those who abused me.! And now I am here listening to you tell me suppressing my most natural emotions and feelings is perhaps causing all that build up rage and misery ..!
Maybe the goal of life should be to not have goals. For almost, every other species on this earth, their life's work is pretty basic: find enough to food to survive and find a mate to pass on their genes. They never once have to justify their existence and seek out a raison d'etre.
I opine the goal is to do the best you can and leave things better off for your having been here. We'll all be dead soon and enough, so fight the good fight while you can.😊
I think our purpose is to learn
I remember the Wilford Brimley Diabeetus commercials lol.
I love this guy. Bravo!
Oh you hit this out of the park... The existential angst and confusion I feel being named Happy??!!
Repress, deny, disown, drug, isolate- my life everytime I am at odds with my name. Which is a lot.
This video was ripped from the recesses of my mind .
Hi Daniel, thanks so much for this video. I really like the idea that happiness is a possible by-product or side-effect, rather than a goal. I like to think about success in the same way.
Loved it! Stay you please! And since you are becoming such a whole and wonderful human being in the process, i would feel it is a shame that you wouldn't want any children. You are the exact person who is needed to have children so the good and sane can continue in the world and doesn't die with you!! :) Your heart is so pure.
People don't owe the world or anyone to have children. Even if they're healthy and healed enough, it's still their decision entirely about what to do with/in their lives. If it wasn't their willful decision, children would still suffer. There are a lot of ways people like that can shine in the world and that doesn't necessarily involve procreating.
Thanks for the video! I feel the same all the time.
Thank you Daniel 🙏🏼 in the times of war, genocide and crimes against humanity around the world and in our city of NYC this message helps very much. All love to you Daniel 💚 hope to see you out in the streets fighting for a free Palestine, Sudan, Congo and everyone else 🤍
Love this one, Daniel! Beautiful!
People will always turn things back on the other person when they don’t want to do the inner work themselves. I’ve noticed that to.
Great talk Daniel. Another really good one that I connect with strongly. I get the rage. My hatred of bullies is wild and incredibly intense.
I appreciate you so much. It seems you have retained such empathy despite the suffering you must have experienced to get to this point in life. That plus your unending self reflection: maybe that's the goal of life! Suffering, self reflection, retain empathy, repeat. Thank you for sharing. I'm out here listening.
Thank you Danial it’s so inspiring ❤️
Equanimity is the goal
Well said Daniel! This was really really perfect for me to hear for where I am right now
Thank you Daniel! I'm glad that I listened all the way through...I am in complete agreement with you. What a great observation.
Brilliant. Thank you.
You're on the form of your life here sir. God bless you for the magnificent work you do.
slowly going through all of your videos, your experience really resonates with me. thank you for sharing your journey.
Why do I suffer? On the other side of that question is a freedom I am starting to catch brilliant glimpses of. Simply “letting go” things is a spiritual platitude and I agree that Buddhists seemed to be in a trance. It’s not my position to say that is wrong for them. I meditate but I don’t aim to be at peace and ease 24/7. The world is amazing yet we are, as humans, very lost and headed in very bizarre directions. To be truly human is to be thoroughly curious as to how and why I think, feel, and operate. That is my goal thus far on my journey.....that could change. “God” or “the spirit of the universe” (the name does not matter) has a sense of humor and is beyond our comprehension. This is only a blip in the life of my soul.
What sensational words, my friend. Thank you so much for sharing so much knowledge with honesty.
superficial happiness vs meaningful potential and joy, positive qualities of gratitude and contentment
Thank you so much for your wisdom❤
OMG, so much to learn from you, sir
i love how you gesture when talking
You are amazing
great vid dani and love ya! but you got it wrong on meditation. Meditation is just one practice of the eightfold path set forth by the buddah and its purpose is wisdom, not hapiness. in fact, the whole idea is to not be happy, since happines is a form of agitation and change. The goal is equanimity, through proper wisdom, not dis asociation, which would be imposible for the wise
Amazing video Daniel. It’s very true that being more empathetic and feeling more opens you up to feeling more pain.
This is so, so true.
Daniel, I used to be an extremely hard thinker - I schemed and plotted in social interactions - not to “get my way” or “win”, but just to be safe. Even when I tried to “help people” I was heavily relying on my intellect to problem solve, or imitate empathy by saying the words that mean “your feelings make sense”.
Through meditation to bring my attention back to my root emotions and the present emotions and sensations in my body, and two months of trauma work (somatic therapy), I’ve become sooooo much more like what you described at the end of the video. I like to be there for my friends when they are sad, but that takes me a lot of energy because I’m introverted and now my empathy results in me mirroring their emotions in myself. The bigger their emotions, the more tiring this is.
But what you neglected to focus on in the video I think is the fact that my joy from the smallest moments is also immense. Im fully in the moment in my walks to class, feeling the autumn breeze in my hair and sun on my skin. I literally feel like im melting into the sky.
I think the answer to happiness is structuring your life so you can empathize with the difficulties of people who mean a lot to you, and maximize your environment so that there are more joyful things around you. Living location, hobbies, friends, etc.
The meaning of life is life itself.
Thanks
I wish I knew how to push my depression down to be happy, even though it’s fake. My kids grew up watching me being miserable. Never drunk or do drug.
These videos are tremendously helpful. Its good to know that real help comes from what is outside of the accepted convention. Truth stands alone and needs nothing to prop it up . Honestly look for truth, be sincere in quest to be healed and prioritize the well being of others...and the truth with her companions, healing and peace, will find you.
What if you are so scared to be happy that you sabotogize every chance you get to be happy? Idk how to stop that I really want to be happy. I can’t even feel it anymore.
I agree with everything you say here, anxiety is in large part a product of developmental trauma. Another factor is that our primitive brain systems are precautionary, that's what kept us alive). But... (and)... when we are active in defining and looking after our needs, then the "positive" emotions tend to increase. Its the difference between being anxious and content, between disappointed and joy, between fear and trust.
Imagine if you ran into Alec Baldwin on the street. I think he lives in New York, doesn't he? I know people have seen him there before, anyway. It disgust me that he continues to have a career after the way he treated his daughter, became publicly known. I guess people don't care about child abuse unless it leaves physical marks that would allow for legal action.
How do you know you didn't run into ten people today who are even more abusive?
Wow... thank you
You are amazing, amazing amazing
Dont forget the distraction of carbohydrates that seems so normal now
You are a strange and interesting person. Thank you for your helpful suggestions
I'd gladly settle for contentment.
You say that happiness isn’t the goal, then you explain that peoples’s happiness isn’t real, and then you acknowledge that you are “happier” after working through your trauma and connecting with your genuine self. Your story is insightful and very helpful, and your observations ring true. But people using ‘happy’ as a euphemism for dissociation and outward appearance does not mean happiness is the problem, it means those people are actually unhappy. If we approach happiness as an actual goal and are honest with ourselves in understanding our experience of wellbeing, then certainly happiness can be a suitable and honorable aim.
I will add that some people dismiss the persuit of happiness as trivial and selfish only to later complain of various unhappinesses in their lived experience. It seems to me that understanding wellbeing and taking some authority over our own happiness will serve us well, and benefit our loved ones. If happiness is explicity not the goal, is then unhappiness explicity the goal? Of course not. The real conversation is about the methods we use to acheive wellbeing, and the way we think about ourselves and our context.
I have seen parents abuse their children and I pray for them because you really can't get involved. Sometimes I think back to these memories and continue to lift them up. This life is so painful. I think the goal is to "know God". Jesus was a "man of sorrows" and "aquainted with grief". I try to help others. And praise God. It gives me joy. I guess I look at all the pain-I'm not in denial - then "let it go"- not carrying all the pain arround- and choose to look for good and be grateful!
okay.. I mean, joy is a state of being tho, I know that I might have some things that are not solved like to 100% that tho is not an excuse for me to hold back on being happy, being empathic and understanding people dose not mean that if someone is going show a difficult time then I'm not allowed to be happy because someone else is not, that is something I have believed for a long time, I was actually put down for being happy and people would tell me "how can you, after all that is happening around the world and don't you see how terrible that is and this is.." and I started believing it, I started believing that I was a terrible person because I was not suffering, even if I have gone throw certain unpleasant thing in my life, I was happily open about being emotional and I have had the opportunity to speak with people about certain things that happend in my life and that helped me a lot, dose not mean I was done with it, I still went throw a very heavy deep depression, was suicidal actually but now, yeah my God I'M happy big time, I enjoy so many things that I love doing because I'm just be, I get to be joyous FOR NO REASON AT ALL, just because I get to, this is what I want to me and what I want to give to the world and I love it, not like faking never being sed or angry or anything like that but I do laugh much more then I cry and I have not numbness anymore, thank GOD
I totally relate to this video
I think deep, true happiness involves dealing and processing trauma. And is a good goal. Maybe it’s more accurate to call it ‘at peace’.
Phony happiness is most definitely not a goal - but many people don’t understand the difference, and think if they fake being happy on the surface, then they’ve mastered the goal of life, and that other people will see them as having achieved something. Mostly I think we aren’t taught the difference between content and at peace and happiness, and aren’t given the tools to accept and process. So it’s at no fault of our own that we shortcut to appearances rather than doing the inner work.
Eres lo máximo!!