Marie Kondo changed the landscape of cleaning and decluttering when she encouraged people to ask one simple question, “Does this bring me joy?”. Across the world, people were suddenly able to free themselves of their hoarding habits, and even find a more pleasing way of tidying their sock drawer. The freeing logic was that if something does not bring you joy, you eliminate it from you life, and for cleaning and de-cluttering, this magic works. But, does it work for other aspects of life?
I saw an inspirational quote recently which read, “Find the joy inside, and the joy will eventually burn out the pain”. This quote troubled me, and made me reflect on why we have joy, but also why we have pain, anger, love, fear, and every other emotion out there. According to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, all our emotions are founded in our primal instincts for survival, and it was necessary to have the pain, because it tells you something is wrong. It was why I was always told as a child, if you do not understand why you are feeling pain, for example with a sore tummy, then do not just take a tablet to block it out, instead seek to understand if there is something more sinister happening, or in fact, you just ate too much cake. The pain we feel is there for a reason, it is there as an alert, to tell us something is not right, to inform us that we may need to rest and recover, or even to seek help and treatment. It is also why when people are stressed, often physical signs show on their body before they ultimately realise, because if you hair starts falling out or you are suddenly rapidly changing weight, you are meant to stop and ask yourself, what is going on?
So if we look at the quote again, and we consider that joy is their to burn up the pain, I can in some ways see this as a very simplistic outcome. In short, when we have pain, of course, finding something joyful will of course make us feel better. I am a BIG believer in laughter being the best medicine. But I disagree that joy is a sustainable method of blocking out pain altogether, and ultimately I do not believe that eliminating all pain or negative emotion is the goal overall.
When dealing with depression, the general emotion one may feel is sadness. Sadness in an overwhelming, all encompassing way. In the short term, one in the midst of depression may believe the goal is just to seek joy, and find happiness. But actually the goal is instead to just be able to feel. When your emotions are so taken over with sadness, you are actually no longer feeling anything, because everything falls under that same label. So instead the focus should be on feeling your reality. Now, this can be hard. And at times more painful than the sadness, as the sadness may be there as a form of protection from allowing you to feel the true situation or emotions around you. But if you are able to start identifying the emotions away from sadness, and also recognising when you are actually feeling genuine sadness, for a sad reason, rather than another emotion, you are then able to start also feeling more positive emotions as well. And even more importantly, if you are able to identify a real emotion, and then ask the question of, is this a suitable emotional response to that situation or incident, you can then start to understand where your emotions are driven from and what events may result in what positive or negative emotions.
As someone who has suffered from depression, this logic blew my mind. For years, I had said “I just want to feel happy”, or “I just want to escape my feelings”. However, what I needed was not to avoid the feelings washing over me, but instead, seek to understand them, name them, and then treat them in an appropriate way, just as I did with my tummy aches when I was little.
So of course, continue to ask yourself, does this thing/person/activity bring me joy? but do not let that be the only question you ask yourself, instead continue the conversation and ask, “if this thing is not bringing me joy, what is it giving me?”, and then based on that outcome or emotion, act appropriately to you and your values.
Life is not just about feeling joy, it is about the joy of being able to feel life.
Sunflower Coaching 