Happiness vs truth

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Why do NT's place so much value on appearing happy all the time? Doctors write prescriptions all the time for drugs to make us happy. But why? Frankly, I can be happy, I've been happy several times in my life. The thing is that I need a reason to be happy. I can't fake it and I've found people are put off by my demeanor and they constantly pester me "Gee, you sure seem happy!" "Wow, who pissed in your cheerios?" And my favorite "what's wrong?" Nothings wrong! I'm not broken, and I'm not mentally defective. I just refuse to act happy when I'm not. Anyone else have this experience?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

Its just another tool to control the masses.

Indeed. When I was younger, I already knew that your success in life is a combination of hard work and luck, and not just wishy washy "positive thinking" which sounds fluffy and warm but doesn't translate anywhere near as effectively.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Being happy is a CHOICE.

How you choose to look at your situation = how you feel about it.

Being poor is not a reason to be happy compared to being rich, but rich people are rarely "happy." Likewise, many people in poverty learn to be happy in spite of their situation.

If you knew you had a terminal condition with only 12 months left to live, you'd not be "happy" about it, but as you come to terms with it, you can reach a place of acceptance and peace and be "happy" because you adjust to the circumstances.

Good video.

I think that everything in moderation, I find that smiling at people and trying to be genuinely nice usually has people trying to be nicer to me and each other. I think of positive thinking as something that can assist in trying to better ones life when it's present along with actual hard work. When positive thinking is presented as the only thing a person needs to do, it's highly damaging (as I have seen from one help group*) but when someone is honestly positive it can really help beat those negative inner monologues which can be truly debilitating for some.
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*I was at a bad group counseling group where to go you have to pay a fairly large chunk of money (unless you're on disability or it's your first time going). At the group (during the breaks) they tried to sell us various counseling packages. This one woman I talked to was heavily in debt to them (this was her big issue) and I observed them selling her a package deal (at a reduced rate) indicating that if she went to the next one all her problems would be solved.

They tried to same with me and I said 'how would getting into debt help me?' they said to ask my Mother (who had paid a fee for me to attend) and I asked again 'how would this help me or her?'. They looked puzzled and left me alone.

Experiments have shown that acting happy can actually make you happier. It turns out that attitude matters and effects brain chemistry.

This is not the same as denial in the face of negative events.

One thing that held me back from happiness the most in the past was living without a girlfriend. I missed kids too. I figured I was not mature in some respects enough for these, so I was ok alone nevertheless. Some people around me think I live an easy life and thus they seem to envy me a little because of it. I feel sometimes I have to pay attention to show I'm happy, i.e. smile, unless I want to appear sad or troubled, which I'm usually not in those circumstances.

I can find happiness both in little things and big ones. My special interests usually calm me down and make me feel relaxed, but when I reach a desired milestone in my life or do something that makes me feel valuable, or achieve something I consider a development in my personality in a positive sense, when I manage to be friendly or helpful with people, I'm happy.

Do you have the links to the studies? I'm curious about this.

I think in the case of ASD individuals it may be different. If acting happy can make you happier, then there wouldn't be so many ASD individuals with depression who in the past tried very hard to "fake their act" to fit in with NTs, and they wouldn't be attached to their special interests as strongly because they could just act happy without engaging in it.

I think it's healthier to be grateful (not "happy happy") for the things that you do have and aim for a state of "general well being" (Eudaimonia I think) so you can try to have less issues to work on, as opposed to "acting happy" because that term sounds more dishonest.

This is a very well known thing, there have been tons of experiments where people had to hold a pen in their mouth wich activated similair muscles to when people are laughing and it increased their mood.

http://myloveforyou.typepad.com/my_love ... -more.html

Can you or anybody please offer links to Peer-Reviewed medical papers (eg on Pubmed listings) regarding this matter?

I remember in primary school when a teacher told me to "smile" and stop looking sad even though I was feeling perfectly fine and it was my neutral expression, my usual flat effect. She claimed that just faking a smile releases endorphins which make you feel good, but when I fake a smile, that doesn't occur at all. Instead, it made my facial muscles tired. I'll have to do further investigations on this as I believe there was a study that discredited this.

Certainly neurologically there's a difference between a "Duchenne's smile" (real, auto-smile) and a "Fake Smile", as the "Duchenne's smile" also involves contraction of other facial muscles which contributed to the look associated with genuine happiness.

Not many of us live 1200 months. So it is really not so big difference compared to 12 months. I am 44 years old, and likely to have lived over half of my life already. Still, I am happy.

It irritates me when people act happy when they're not. I can always tell for some reason, I don't know how.

because it feels good; its an addiction, just like any other.

Wouldn't they be forcing themselves to feel good then?

I have had people tell me to smile, or lighten up. Why on earth does my apparent mood have anything to do with them? I say apparent, because most of the time I have no expression on my face, or a slight frown whether or not I am happy. It seems horribly intrusive! I once told someone that when I wanted to hire a life skills coach, I would let them know.

No. It was interesting but not important enough for me to preserve any references. I believe they were using several techniques including functional MRI. It's a different study, but maybe this link could get you started if you really wanted to dig into it.

http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/3/242.abstract