Being Unhappy About Being Unhappy

When I was in high school and in my early years of college, I felt bad about being unhappy. I felt like I was supposed to be happy all the time, and something was wrong when I wasn’t. My parents could have just gotten into a huge fight. I could have gotten a bad grade. I could have felt left out of a social circle in some way by not being invited to a party. This could have led to a huge fear of missing out (FOMO).

I’m sure all those times, I told myself something like “why are you so unhappy? You shouldn’t be feeling unhappy and need to turn things around. Look at how fortunate you are!”

Now, things have changed a bit. I learned that life is not picturesque and not a Hallmark movie. My parents did not get along. I suffered a lot of failures. My brother struggled with his mental health throughout my life. I wanted to be everyone’s friend, but inevitably, not everyone wanted to be my friend. Throughout that time period, I was largely unsuccessful with dating. I had very lofty academic and athletic expectations, and I often struggled to meet them. In college, I rarely just “got it” when the professor lectured on the topic for the first time and had to keep working and keep trying again.

All of that means to say I had plenty of reasons to be unhappy, plenty of ups and downs and roller coasters of emotions. In fact, I would probably say I felt emotions a bit more deeply than most people because I internalized them. There was certainly a time when I did not show a lot of emotion outwardly, and everyone assumed I was a super chill, easygoing person. But I was a person just like anyone else, and I thought too much for my own good.

Plus, I realize I’m a pretty intense person. I have, at this point, channeled a lot of that intensity into becoming successful in my career and as a runner, but if I sit around too long, not doing anything, and languish in self-hatred or self-pity, there will come a point when I’m just unhappy all the time. I think there is some value in never being satisfied and always striving for more, because it helps me channel much of those racing thoughts in a more productive manner.

As much as I would like to blame Asian culture and my upbringing for it, I am increasingly coming to see this is just who I am and that I am programmed this way, even in areas my parents never cared about, like my athletics. As a cross country and track runner who ran distance events, I think there were a lot of times after bad races that I should have let myself be unhappy for a bit instead of agonizing for so long about what was wrong with me.

There were seriously times I thought that there was something seriously wrong with me because I had just run a subpar race, like a 5:03 mile when I was trying to break 5 minutes, like a 10:20 2 mile when I was trying to break 10 minutes, like a 10k where I dropped out when I was trying to run 33 minutes. I thought I had a disease because I couldn’t run the times I wanted. Perhaps I had mono or Lyme’s Disease. Perhaps I was genetically capped as an Asian person because I couldn’t athletically reach my accomplishments. It all sounds so stupid looking back on, but I legitimately thought this way sometimes.

I couldn’t see that failure and struggle are a part of the human experience, that there are good days, but there are also a lot of bad days. I couldn’t see that there were mistakes I made in my training that interfered with my ability to optimize my performance. I ran too hard on my easy runs. I treated every workout as a race when I should have left something in the tank. I raced my teammates too often on these workouts and engaged in one too many runs where we were trying to break and drop each other by the end of the run.

Now, at 29, I rarely do that stuff anymore. I am uplifting and encouraging of other runners, and am genuinely excited for friends when they make huge improvements. When they have bad days, I console them and try to get them to seek perspective — it is just running after all. If they have a bad race, who cares? I know that it’s okay to feel sad from failure, but it’s unhealthy to be devastated by it for days on end.

This is what I always preach to friends, especially when they are feeling down. The conundrum is always why I couldn’t do that for myself at these points in my life.

. . .

Today, I have largely gotten rid of the feeling of being unhappy for being unhappy. In psychology, a meta-emotion is a feeling about a feeling. If I were having a terrible day and unhappy, the meta-emotion of being unhappy about it amplified the unhappiness, and made it always feel like a crisis rather than a normal human experience.

That meta-emotion has gone away, and that has mitigated the lows of suffering and unhappiness. There was one epiphany I had that gradually helped them go away.

I don’t remember where I saw it, but I remember when I was first introduced to a ministry group and Christianity. I read a book by a pastor, and a woman who lost her child. She told her pastor something like:

“Thank you for teaching me it’s okay to suffer.”

That was a huge breakthrough to me. Suffering? Who wants to suffer? Who seeks out suffering? But suffering is incidental when unfortunate things and setbacks happen. On a daily basis, there were many forms of minor suffering, like not sleeping enough and having a very busy day, having a really bad workout, or feeling lonely.

. . .

As much as I project being chill all the time, I have suffered in life, and quite a lot that I don’t always disclose. Is it more than those who are less fortunate? No. Is it normal? I have no clue. But I know sometimes, I need to just go through it rather than feel bad about suffering.

That was my epiphany to me because I had internalized a message earlier in life that I always needed to be happy, and that if I wasn’t always happy, something was wrong. And I wasn’t always happy — life could be pretty messed up and dysfunctional.

It wasn’t emotional regulation as much as it was emotional awareness that turned each moment of unhappiness and suffering from a crisis to something I just went through. It didn’t mean bad days were suddenly easy, but they became a bit easier and easier to deal with, knowing they were normal and knowing everyone goes through something like this.

I think we all of us have some kind of meta-emotion, and while not everyone has felt unhappy about being unhappy, there are other manifestations of it. I also felt guilt whenever I felt anger, as I endeavored to never be angry before. I think I was largely too in my head about it, that I could have externalized rather than internalized this emotion at points. I probably could have talked to people a bit sooner.

Chasing and overemphasizing happiness did not make me happier and more emotionally self-sufficient. Having metaemotions and feelings about my feelings did not snap me out of unhappiness. Acceptance of emotional ebbs and flows did.

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This post was previously published on The Partnered Pen.

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