Feeling like you can’t be happy is a common struggle that many people face. There are various reasons why someone might feel this way, and the causes are often complex. In this article, we’ll explore some of the most common root causes of an inability to find happiness, look at the psychology behind it, and provide tips on how to start overcoming it.
Common Reasons You May Feel Like You Can’t Be Happy
Here are some of the most typical reasons people find it difficult to feel genuinely happy:
- Your expectations are too high – If your standards for happiness are unrealistic, you’ll always be let down.
- You compare yourself to others – Comparing your life to your perceptions of others will make you feel worse.
- You focus on negative experiences – Dwelling on bad things reinforces unhappiness.
- You have an underlying mental health issue – Conditions like depression directly affect your ability to feel happy.
- You have suffered trauma – Past traumatic events can make it harder to feel positive emotions.
- Your needs aren’t being met – Unfulfilled core needs like connection and purpose prevent happiness.
- You don’t make time for joy – If you don’t prioritize enjoyable activities, you won’t experience happiness.
- You have a pessimistic outlook – A pessimistic attitude acts like a filter for happiness.
The reasons above give an overview of some of the most prevalent causes of an inability to feel happy. The next sections explore a few of the leading causes in more detail.
Unrealistic Expectations
One major reason people struggle to feel happy is that their expectations are set too high. They have an idealized vision of what their life should look like in order to be happy. When reality doesn’t match up to this perfectionistic ideal, they feel disappointed, frustrated, and unhappy.
This unrealistic standard applies to all areas of life. For example, in relationships someone may believe their partner must love them unconditionally, never be angry, and meet all their needs perfectly at all times. When their human partner inevitably makes a mistake or loses their temper, they feel crushed and unhappy in the relationship.
In their career, someone may believe they can’t feel good about themselves or their life unless they achieve huge success like becoming CEO, earning a million dollars, or having a high-status job title. When they have to work an average job to pay the bills, they feel unsuccessful and unhappy.
This form of unrealistic expectation also applies to physical appearance, social life, accomplishments, and possessions. People think that only if they can obtain some idealized goal or image, then they’ll finally be able to feel happy and good enough.
How To Avoid Unrealistic Expectations
The key is to challenge your perfectionistic standards. Look at each area of your life and ask yourself:
- Are my expectations realistic and obtainable?
- Do I absolutely need to meet this standard to feel happy?
- Am I being too rigid and inflexible with my requirements?
- Could I adjust my standards to be more reasonable?
Striving for high achievement isn’t necessarily bad, but the standards have to be grounded in reality. Extreme perfectionism inevitably leads to disappointment. Adjusting expectations to more moderate and flexible levels can prevent this unhappiness.
Comparing Yourself to Others
Another major obstacle to happiness is the tendency to constantly compare yourself to other people. In the age of social media, there are endless opportunities to compare your real life to the carefully curated highlights of others.
When you observe others who seem to have better lives, better jobs, happier relationships, or more excitement, it’s easy to start feeling down about your own life. You may question why you don’t have those things and feel unsatisfied with what you do have.
But this comparison is founded on an illusion. The reality is you’re only seeing a tiny sliver of that person’s actual life. You don’t see their struggles, their demons, their boredom, or their envy of others. Their real lived experience is much more complex than the snapshot portrayed.
Comparing also feeds into the problem of unrealistic expectations. You assume in order to be happy, your life must look just like this other person’s outwardly perfect life. In reality, happiness comes from within, not from checking boxes dictated by your perceptions of others.
How To Avoid Comparing Yourself
Here are some tips to stop the comparison habit:
- When you catch yourself comparing, stop and force yourself to refocus on your own goals and values.
- Limit time on social media if it triggers comparing thoughts.
- Build more genuine connections with others so you see their real struggles and depths.
- Focus on gratitude for the blessings you do have rather than what you lack.
Comparing less leads to appreciating your own life more. Feel confident in the path you’re on rather than measuring against others.
Focusing on the Negative
People who struggle to feel happy tend to have a negativity bias. They dwell extensively on bad experiences, disappointments, mistakes, problems, and threats.
For example, someone may have nine positive social interactions in a day but then have one negative experience of being ignored at a party. They then ruminate for hours on that one bad experience, allowing it to deflate their mood and undermine the positive experiences.
This phenomenon occurs because the brain is wired to prioritize potential threats. Back in ancient hunter-gatherer times, focusing on the negative was critical to notice threats and avoid danger. But in the modern world, this instinct just leads to excessive negative thinking.
Constant negative focus trains the brain to view the world as a dangerous, unhappy place. You condition yourself to keep seeing disappointments and anxieties, blocking your ability to feel contentment.
How To Reduce Negative Focus
Strategies to overcome negativity bias include:
- Practicing mindfulness to let go of rumination and live in the present moment.
- Starting a gratitude journal to reorient focus to the positive.
- Talking to a friend who can give a more balanced perspective.
- Making time each day to savor positive moments and little pleasures.
It takes conscious effort to recognize and shift negative patterns. But disciplining yourself to focus less on problems and threats will open you up to greater happiness.
Underlying Mental Health Issues
For some people, the inability to feel happiness points to an underlying mental health condition. Unresolved issues like depression, anxiety, PTSD, or other conditions can act as major roadblocks to happiness.
Mental health problems directly affect brain chemistry and neurotransmitters. When your brain’s ability to regulate mood is thrown off, you can end up feeling trapped in unhappiness without the ability to simply “think positive.”
The most common disorder is depression, which affects more than 264 million people globally. Depression inflicts symptoms like:
- Persistent sad, anxious, or “empty” feelings.
- Loss of interest in previously pleasurable activities.
- Fatigue and low energy.
- Difficulty concentrating or making decisions.
- Physical aches, pains, headaches, or digestive issues.
These symptoms can make it extremely difficult for someone with untreated depression to feel genuine happiness until the condition is addressed.
Getting Treatment For Mental Health Issues
If a mental health issue seems to be the root cause of your inability to feel happy, it’s important to seek professional help. Treatments that can help include:
- Medication – Antidepressants or other prescriptions can rebalance brain chemistry.
- Psychotherapy – Talk therapy helps develop tools to overcome thought patterns contributing to depression or anxiety.
- Lifestyle changes – Steps like more exercise, better sleep habits, stress reduction, and improved diet support mental health treatment.
- Support groups – Connecting with others facing similar struggles reduces feelings of isolation.
While medication and formal therapy are recommended for moderate to severe mental health conditions, those with milder issues may benefit from self-help strategies and community support. The key is being honest with yourself about the severity of your situation and seeking the appropriate level of assistance.
History of Trauma
Past traumatic experiences can also deeply inhibit someone’s ability to feel happiness. Trauma from events like abuse, violence, loss of loved ones, disasters, accidents, or other very stressful situations alter brain structure and function.
Long after the traumatic event occurred, the brain may continue to be stuck in fight-or-flight mode. This leads to being constantly on alert for potential threats, making it very difficult to relax into positive emotions.
Sufferers of trauma often feel emotionally numb or disconnected from their feelings. If emotions do arise, it’s disproportionately negative emotions like irritability, anxiety, grief, or despair.
Additionally, unresolved trauma is linked to mental health conditions like PTSD, depression, addiction, and personality disorders. These secondary effects exacerbate traumatic stress’ toll on well-being.
Healing From Past Trauma
Overcoming trauma’s aftereffects requires processing and resolving what happened. Strategies that can help include:
- Trauma-focused therapy – Working with a therapist trained in treating PTSD and trauma.
- EMDR – Moving the eyes back and forth while recalling trauma can help reprocess memories.
- Medication – Antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds can reduce traumatic stress symptoms.
- Mind-body practices – Yoga, mindfulness, deep breathing, and meditation help heal the nervous system.
- Expressive arts – Creative outlets like art, writing, dance, or music support trauma recovery.
While difficult, facing trauma with professional guidance can help free someone from the paralyzing aftereffects. Happiness becomes possible again as the trauma’s grip on the brain and body loosens.
Unfulfilled Core Needs
Humans have a set of core psychological needs that must be fulfilled to experience well-being. When theseneeds go unmet for prolonged periods, it becomes very difficult to feel happy.
Self-determination theory research identified three key fundamental needs:
- Autonomy – Feeling in control over your choices and able to live according to your values.
- Competence – Feeling capable and effective in your abilities to achieve goals.
- Relatedness – Having meaningful connections and belonging with others.
When you have high autonomy, competence, and relatedness in your life circumstances, your well-being thrives. But when these core needs are routinely deprived, you flounder. For example:
- A controlling relationship blocks autonomy.
- A demeaning job inhibits feelings of competence.
- Social isolation deprives relatedness.
Other key universal needs include security, mastery, purpose, creativity, and self-esteem. Going too long without these needs fulfilled damages psychological health.
Getting Core Needs Met
Strategies to meet core needs include:
- Assess which needs are most deprived and make a plan to get them met.
- Make life changes to increase autonomy, mastery, purpose, and connection.
- Communicate needs assertively to relationship partners.
- Seek out community groups, classes, or volunteering opportunities to fill needs.
- Consider a career change to one that better aligns with your values.
Meeting core needs may require making big life changes. But taking steps to get your psychological needs fulfilled will enable you to keep progressing towards happiness.
Not Making Time for Joy
To experience happiness, you must actually schedule activities that bring you joy. If your days are dominated by obligations and responsibilities with no room for play, enjoyment will be sparse.
People who struggle to feel happy often have difficulty prioritizing time for pleasure. They buy into cultural messaging that productivity and duty come first, while play and leisure are secondary. So they overwork themselves and collapse exhausted in their few hours of free time per week.
But human beings need recreation, laughter, awe, and stimulation that takes them out of worrisome thoughts. Without positive experiences to counterbalance stress, the nervous system gets trapped in fight-or-flight mode.
Additionally, fun novel activities cause the brain to release dopamine and other feel-good neurotransmitters. If your brain never gets exposed to these chemicals, your baseline happiness level stays low.
Scheduling More Fun and Play
To give yourself opportunities for joy, be intentional about planning fun activities. Steps to take include:
- Keep a running list of inexpensive things you find enjoyable: hiking, trying new restaurants, exploring a new neighborhood, listening to podcasts, getting coffee with a friend, going dancing, playing a sport, etc.
- Mark planned fun activities on your calendar so they don’t get bumped by other priorities.
- Counterbalance demanding projects and responsibilities with playful events.
- Try new forms of recreation that spark your curiosity.
- Share favorite activities with supportive people whose company you enjoy.
Treating leisure as indispensable rather than a luxury will vastly boost your happiness. Enjoyment, after all, is what life is all about.
Pessimistic Attitude
Your general attitude and outlook on life have a big influence on happiness. Someone with a pessimistic attitude tends to view their experiences through a negative lens that blocks them from feeling joy.
Pessimists focus their attention on what could go wrong. They dwell on downsides and obstacles rather than upsides and opportunities. When something good does happen, they question it or downplay it.
Looking at the world in this way essentially trains your brain to not register positive experiences. Your filters are set up to screen out evidence that contradicts your negative assumptions.
Additionally, pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you expect failure or disappointment, you’re less likely to take risks and prime yourself for fulfillment. You construct your own negative reality.
Cultivating an Optimistic Outlook
Shifting out of pessimism requires retraining how you think by:
- Noticing negative automatic thoughts and reframing them.
- Purposely looking for evidence that contradicts the pessimistic viewpoint.
- Visualizing positive outcomes rather than imagining how things could go wrong.
- Questioning exaggerated negative predictions.
- Practicing positive affirmations to internalize a more optimistic attitude.
While pessimism feels comfortable because it prepares you for disappointment, overcoming it is necessary to experience happiness. Focusing on positives opens up space for joy to enter.
Conclusion
A feeling of inability to be happy usually stems from some combination of the factors discussed here. The most important first step is self-awareness – noticing your own thought patterns and behaviors preventing happiness.
From there, you can start addressing the relevant issues that apply to you through tailored strategies. This may involve adjusting perfectionist standards, reducing negative thinking, scheduling enjoyable activities, or seeking therapy for traumatic stress.
Though deeply ingrained thinking habits take time to change, doing the work provides huge rewards. Letting go of beliefs and behaviors that block joy allows your natural state of happiness to gradually emerge. You may find contentment was available all along once inner obstacles are removed.