How to Be Happy When the World Makes You Depressed
Hold on to your handbasket! Every day, the headlines push our buttons of alarm, despair, and fury all at once. What’s a thinking, feeling human to do, besides invest in a Hunger Games-style bow and arrow? This week, Savvy Psychologist Dr. Ellen Hendriksen offers 4 tips to be happy in a world that can feel like a “Mad Max” chase through the headlines.
Listener Lynne wrote in and asked “how to find happiness—or at least comfort—in a world that is fundamentally broken in so many ways.” She writes, “I cannot help but be sad to think about things like plastics in the ocean, wildfires in the west, caravans of refugees about to be met with military force, and the extermination of the Rohinga. I have frequent reminders to be thankful for all I have…Nonetheless, I am often unhappy because of the many ways that humans are unkind to each other and to our planet.”
Lynne’s problem isn’t unique. When the headlines start to blend suspiciously with The Handmaid’s Tale or bring to mind visions of Wall-E sorting through post-apocalyptic garbage, it’s easy to feel sad and hopeless.
Now, much like the climate change episode from a few weeks ago, I can’t promise to fix the world in 15 minutes or less. But before you move off-grid and start brewing your own zombie repellent, let’s cover four ways to be happy when the world makes you depressed.
Tip #1: Feel what you feel, and let it spur you to action.
One of the few negative side effects of the happiness movement is the mistakenly sky-high expectation that we feel happy most, if not all of the time. But set those expectations against a backdrop where, according to a Gallup Poll, 87% of people worldwide don’t like their jobs, according to the CDC, around 40% of marriages end in divorce, and according to anyone not living under a rock, the headlines pummel us with bad news 24/7. The result? Major dissonance.
So instead of fake-smiling through the negativity, lean in to all your feelings. We’re wired for a wide range of emotions, from the peanut-butter-and-jelly of sadness, anger, and fear, to the more nuanced emotions like envy, contempt, or apprehension.
Rather than seeing emotions other than happiness as bad or wrong, mine them for their own unique powers.
Let’s take anger, for example. Anger spurs you to act. It’s like the classic bumper sticker: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. Anger drives people to call their representatives, head to the voting booth, and otherwise bridge the gap between doing nothing and Doing Something.
Sadness, too, has its uses. Sadness is the most clear-headed emotion. It doesn’t cloud judgment or create knee-jerk reactions like anger. Instead, it’s been found to confer generosity, reduce judgmental errors, and make us more polite, three humane things in a world that needs all the help it can get.
Tip #2: Search out good news.
Journalism faces a unique challenge. For news organizations to survive, they have to generate clicks and views they can use to attract advertisers. And in an attention economy, what makes us click more than conflict, divisiveness, and tragedy? Everybody loves a good train wreck.
But as cognitive psychologist Stephen Pinker points out in his TED talk, no newspaper ever reported, “137,000 people escaped from extreme poverty yesterday.” No news analyst ever reported live from city where there was no terrorist attack.
Pinker goes on to make the case that the world is getting better on metrics as diverse as violence, literacy, poverty, and even probability of being killed by a lightning strike.
Good news doesn’t give us the same cheap thrill as bad news, but in times like these, subscribe to a good news site or two—there are dozens—to restore your faith in humanity.
Tip #3: Take a break from social media.
Social media has become not only a way to see our high school classmates’ most recent vacation photos and videos of that raccoon in Minnesota, but also the best (or maybe we should say worst?) source of news, both real and fake.
A study out of the University of Copenhagen asked half of a group of over 1,000 participants to quit Facebook for a week, while the other half carried on as usual. Those on a Facebook fast reported better life satisfaction, and, notably, felt more positive emotion.
This makes sense: a reprieve from social media not only gives us a break from the envy of the highlight reel, but also the whipsawing that comes from news clickbait in our feeds. It more than makes up for possibly missing out on the Australian giant cow.
Tip #4: Look out for each other.
Listener Lynne is concerned about the world and its people, so when she asks about happiness, she doesn’t just mean Crazy Rich Asians bachelor party pleasures. She’s likely looking for meaning as well.
Luckily, there is a way to make two Pop Tarts with one toaster: strong social connections. A study out of Florida State University examined almost 400 participants and assessed which traits and activities were most related to happiness or meaning.
What went along with both? High-quality social relationships. There were nuances: hanging out with friends was linked more strongly to happiness than meaning, while spending time with family—like taking care of kids—was meaningful but not necessarily happy. Likewise, being a giver was meaningful, while takers were happier. But overall, connecting with others is the key to finding comfort and happiness in the shadow of today’s headlines. I guess company is actually the antidote for misery.
So to Lynne and the millions in the same boat: hang in there. Feel what you feel, let it compel you to action, search out good news as a counterweight, take a break when you need it, and most importantly, go hang out with your friends and loved ones. Even when the headlines read like a dystopian novel, remember there can still be a happy ending.
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About the Author
Dr. Ellen Hendriksen was the host of the Savvy Psychologist podcast from 2014 to 2019. She is a clinical psychologist at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD). She earned her Ph.D. at UCLA and completed her training at Harvard Medical School. Her scientifically-based, zero-judgment approach is regularly featured in Psychology Today, Scientific American, The Huffington Post, and many other media outlets. Her debut book, HOW TO BE YOURSELF: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety, was published in March 2018.
