People negatively trying to enforce positivity?

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Do you like it when this happens? When people try and shame you into being happy, does it work because you realize that you HAVE to be happy so that's wonderful and there's no shame in being happy? Or do you feel even worse because they're adding even more negativity to your negativity? And the rut we are often in, where all people do is pass the negativity around like a hot potato, being negative themselves so they can't take others' negativity and so attack it in the only way they are able to-- with negativity... for me, it made me depressed because I was depressed, but now I can see a bit where they are coming from. I might even accept people's shaming of my negativity, as long as I know they are trying to make me happy!


When my mother yelled at me or got mad at me and told me to be happy in a negative tone when I was a little kid, the result was that I thought "happy" meant compliant, or negative like her, and for years I had an aversion to the word "happy", thinking it meant something negative, which f****d me up socially for a few years because I didn't have the same definitions as most of my peers, so didn't communicate well with them. I didn't understand why I had to be "happy", it sounded like something awful! I thought the people who acted or said they were happy were in pain like my depressed mother.

I know exactly how that is!
I hate how people will do that It's so annoying and hypocritical,
I mean the approach is very... ugh, some people need to be slapped...

I've suffered a lot from depression and anxiety, so I know I'm not always a bowl of fun to be around. As a female, I think we're particularly pressured to at least APPEAR "happy" - I can't tell you how many times as a kid, a teacher or female relative would tell me to SMILE - and how much I HATED that! They never said it to the boys, just the girls. Boys get to be angry, frustrated, physical. Girls can only be sad or frightened, and even then, you couldn't be sad in public, just in private.

I grew up thinking people who went around insisting they were so bloody "happy" were really in deep, deep denial and had tons of suppressed anger and self-hatred. I'm still fairly comfortable with that assessment, actually. Time and again, I find it to be true, once I get to know people long enough to see through their shiny fake veneers.

I love Robert Downey, Jr - and I always wonder if people around him always insist he "cheer up" and "shut up". He seems like an acting Aspie, to me, the way he spins off on all these tangential trains of thought, and is such a keen observer of things most people miss or ignore.

All I know is, I hate it when people try to tell me I shouldn't feel however I'm feeling. That never helps. It makes it WORSE. Before, I was just feeling bad. Now I'm feeling badly ABOUT feeling bad. Not a big help. Especially when I'm convinced most people who appear maniacally "HAPPY" are hypocrites and possibly even mentally ill.

NOTE: The Dalai Lama is an exception to this. He amazes me with his serenity in the face of all he's seen and knows.

Yes, it's all very "pollyana." Put on a happy face, don't bring me down is what they're saying, usually meaning "don't make me confront reality."

The problem is that many people accept happiness as the standard of value, instead of seeing it as the end result. That's the same problem with hedonism, "whatever makes you happy." Hitler was happy seeing millions of Jews exterminated. People in Soviet Russia were told that "it wasn't so bad." And don't be sad over Mussolini, he made the trains run on time.
Happiness doesn't mean something is good or right. Pleasure doesn't mean something is right. And if something is not right, you don't respond to it by smiles and happiness, that's why we have a variety of emotions.

It's annoying. If I'm in a lousy mood, there is probably a good reason and I'm entitled to my feelings. If the same people weren't feeling too great and I gave them a taste of their own medicine- they would react the same way, irritated.

I hate it when they tell me that loaded crap. One time I had an ulcer and had to work, and customers kept telling me to cheer up. Finally I'd had enough and said to one woman, "lady, I have an ulcer, what you're seeing on my face isn't a bad attitude, It's pain!" funny how I can only get my words together AFTER I've been pushed over the edge.

Or sometimes I'm not happy, and not sad or angry either. I just don't feel anything that day, because nothing is going on. If I say there's nothing to be happy about, it doesn't mean I'm depressed- it just means I see no reason to skip down the street with a huge smile singing showtunes.

In the 12 step world there is a sub group called the 'joys' which is short for the 'joys of recovery' they have this policy that you have to share positivity and abstain from talking about problems, they also have a dress code.......well...........i would'nt go anywhere near such places and if I did it would only be to go bollock naked and tell them how s**t awful I feel at times.

I'd say in my world negativity is almost a reinforced trait. It seems like every time I try to bring up something I find interesting, all I hear is negativity about it. For instance, I tried to introduce someone to Linux the other day, but before he even touched the mouse he said Linux looked ugly and that Windows is better despite him only using Linux for a few minutes and me telling him that you can customize Linux anyway you want. Those types of reactions are extremely common to me from people. That said though, I'm also weary of the "be happy" crowd. Rash positive or negative emotions from people I find difficult to deal with.

This thread is interesting, because it reminds me of my beliefs about happiness when I was a kid. I believed that happiness was strictly for adults. If you were a kid, you were allowed to be in a good mood for an hour or so, but happiness was something you had to wait for until you were an adult. (I'll use alcohol as an analogy; some parents might allow their kids to taste a small sip of wine, but only adults get to experience the joy of being drunk.) After all, the adulthood is when you get real freedom to do whatever you want; as a kid, you have to ask your parent's permission for everything, and they always have then final say. Look at it this way: parents have the power to deny or take away things that make their kids happy, being it dessert, staying up late, or video games. Having internalized that belief early on, I spent most of my childhood counting days as they passed, rather than enjoying them. And I dismissed the statement "your childhood will go by so fast, you won't even notice" as nothing more than a joke about me being a kid. 'Cause when you're a kid, time moves slower than highways in Los Angeles during rush hours.

You know, my former stepfather never really understood what went on in my head. In our house while he was around, there wasn't any positivity at all. It was all negative. My family realized that when he left. The house became quite and the negativity slowly began to vanish.

I'm scolded with "be positive, stop whining, be happy" by people whose smiles are so hypocritical, and whose happiness is based on others' misery. People who know I know they have stolen, cheated, abused to get the "happiness" they now display in those lying lips.

It doesn't work, for me.

Perhaps of some interest:
"A Positive Outlook Is Overrated"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=15505690

I think that if you try to force yourself to feel a certain way, you usually do succeed. For instance, if you try to act cheerful, you actions actually make you feel that way. But this doesn't last or change your personality permanently. If it doesn't work, I wouldn't bother since that would just be lying to yourself.