The Happiness Trap
Draws on the principles Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to explain how mindfulness can overcome common emotional problems and help individuals escape self-defeating habits and rise above fears to create a richer, more meaningful life.
Stats for nerds
22recommend
40mentions
26people
2010–2026years
85% recommend13% neutral3% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I don't claim to have all the answers, I still feel that way sometimes, but I've mostly escaped it. What really helped was a lot of Dr. K (Healthy Gamer) videos and introspection. I think I can sum up in a few bullet points what really worked for me, although it was actually a years-long process to go through.
1. Recognizing just how many of my goals and beliefs were "unnatural," in the sense that they never really originated from within me. I never in my whole life cared about money or status, but I had internalized the message that I needed to stand out (which I actually hate to do), have some glorious career, etc etc. It was completely useless pressure because I was running as hard as I could in the completely wrong direction. When I actually pay attention to what I enjoy, it's a very short list: laughing with my wife, tackling small but meaningful challenges (I'm a physically awkward guy but I've felt proud learning some basic home repair skills), reading books, beer, and conversation. That's basically it. So now I make time for those things and tune out the noise of what I'm supposed to want.
2. I treat my job as a source of money and a place to potentially form relationships. I also consider it an opportunity to exercise craft and quality, but I recognize that's not the main reason I'm there—it's not why I was hired and it's not (solely) why I took the job. Giving work a smaller (but still meaningful!) place in my life solved a lot of emotional problems.
3. Recognizing that "permanent happiness" is not a very realistic goal for human beings, and it's easy to make yourself miserable trying to be happy. I referenced this in another HN comment, but I really like the book "The Happiness Trap." It essentially helps you stop trying to run so hard from feeling negative emotions, and being ok with having negative experiences and feelings reduces so much stress.
4. The last one was "productivity," which manifested in many insidious ways. The first was turning all of my free time into a resource for self-improvement. I actually enjoyed this earlier in life when I was building a skill that I found interesting, but it became my goal to just get "better," and that was more useless pressure. I also tried to fit in an impossible amount of tasks, and to come up with systems to manage it all. Accepting my own limitations and the fact that there will always be more than it is possible to do really helped take another big category of stress away. "Four Thousand Weeks" is a great book.
All of this is not to say it's easy, or that I'm 100% fine all the time now. I still get depressed, overwhelmed and so on at times. But overall my quality of life is way up, I enjoy my days a lot of the time, I can function, I feel my life moving in a good direction. Mostly it was a journey of subtraction rather than addition. For a long time I didn't realize how many things I could just put down.
- My favorite book about this is "The Happiness Trap," because it makes the simple point that we didn't evolve to be happy all of the time. It makes a really good case for learning to live with the range of emotions and suggests ways of creating a contented/good/whatever life with what you've got.
- Oh, absolutely. 99.999% of human history has been "just want to survive another year."
Russ Harris has a great book about this called The Happiness Trap [0], which is an introduction to ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)
[0]: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/76053/the-happiness...
- not an MD or shrink
Depression is interesting because it exists and a state, feeling depressed/down and a condition Major Depressive Disorder, this is pretty common knowledge.
The things you have tried all work in varying degrees for both, though I believe Were still not exactly sure how SSRIs work.
There's been some buzz about depression being a sub-optimal adaptation humans use to protect themselves, logic being that withdrawal and reflection prevents exposure to risk and allows time to process and reorient.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (ies) are a type of treatment based on varying levels of awareness of thoughts and behaviours, some encourage labelling and challenging, some acknowledgement and seperation, instead focusing on the valued action or habit.
CBT is generally considered the best for "mood disorders" like depression, there's probably a whole host of reasons why, but my personal take is that it deals with the root causes of the suffering as opposed to solely management of symptoms.
"my job, feeling trapped and bound to the golden handcuffs to try and survive this expensive world while being forced to work on things I have little care for"
That reads to me like grief, a loss of control and an unhappy dependence on something you clearly have no passion for, and, when you put it like that, it's not hard to feel shit.
The reason those interventions likely failed is because the stressor, likey your job, or your current relationship to it remains, kind like treating a splinter with antiseptic cream and a band-aid, even though that's the correct treatment, first the splinter has to come out.
Maybe have a look for someone in your area that does Acceptance and Commitment Therapy alternatively you could check out The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris it's a book but I believe there is also an online course.
Alternatively you could look at some eCBT like ThisWayUp, or go down your own rabbit hole on CBT and maybe look at David Burns stuff (I think that's his name)
Either way you need to address the root cause of your distress which is your job and/or the way you feel about it.
Good luck my dude, you've got this and will be better off for it once you come out the other side of it.
Please excuse my shit spelling and punctuation I'm on mobile and half asleep.
- For me, some of the best books I read this year, are:
- Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, I have seen many narratives on the fault at the core of current values and goals of human civilization, but never saw a laid out alternative. Whatever it might be, I like the book for attempting at presenting one.
- Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, I like this book for extremely original thoughts. This books was so thin (~200 pages), yet it was grand. I also wrote a review [0].
- The Happiness Trap by Russ Hariss, was very helpful to me in sorting through some things. Very practical book.
- Anathem by Neal Stephenson, one of the most original book, and probably the best one by Stephenson. Very original ideas, mind expanding.
- Permutation City by Greg Egan, this book raised the standard for possibly all SciFi book that I will read in the future. Extremely original and grand ideas.
- The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, another book that lays out alternatives to what is now considered mainstream.
- Sotyi Rupkatha by Parimal Bhattacharya (Bengali), a book without any ideological or emotional baggage explaining the plight and pain of a tribal community for Aluminium mining. The way colonialism lives in mining was eye-opening. Aluminium mining, separating, etc. are done in lesser fortunate countries where huge amounts of water is wasted and the environment polluted. The West still imports that refined raw material in cheap and produces final products with lesser environmental impact and peofits by selling the finished products to the same countries in large profits. It was refreshing to see that this book did not have a Communist undertone.
- Krishna Basudev by Bani Basu (Bengali), life of God Krishna in form of a novel in crisp prose, written maintaining authenticity of core books like Bhagavat Purana and Harivansha.
[0]: https://ritogh.substack.com/p/not-merely-a-story-of-a-man-fa...
- For me, some of the best books I read this year, are:
- Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, I have seen many narratives on the fault at the core of current values and goals of human civilization, but never saw a laid out alternative. Whatever it might be, I like the book for attempting at presenting one.
- Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, I like this book for extremely original thoughts. This books was so thin (~200 pages), yet it was grand. I also wrote a review [0].
- The Happiness Trap by Russ Hariss, was very helpful to me in sorting through some things. Very practical book.
- Anathem by Neal Stephenson, one of the most original book, and probably the best one by Stephenson. Very original ideas, mind expanding.
- Permutation City by Greg Egan, this book raised the standard for possibly all SciFi book that I will read in the future. Extremely original and grand ideas.
- The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, another book that lays out alternatives to what is now considered mainstream.
- Sotyi Rupkatha by Parimal Bhattacharya (Bengali), a book without any ideological or emotional baggage explaining the plight and pain of a tribal community for Aluminium mining. The way colonialism lives in mining was eye-opening. Aluminium mining, separating, etc. are done in lesser fortunate countries where huge amounts of water is wasted and the environment polluted. The West still imports that refined raw material in cheap and produces final products with lesser environmental impact and peofits by selling the finished products to the same countries in large profits. It was refreshing to see that this book did not have a Communist undertone.
- Krishna Basudev by Bani Basu (Bengali), life of God Krishna in form of a novel in crisp prose, written maintaining authenticity of core books like Bhagavat Purana and Harivansha.
- I am currently listening to "The Hobbit" audiobook narrated by Andy Serkis. This is peak audiobook for me.
[0]: https://ritogh.substack.com/p/not-merely-a-story-of-a-man-fa...
