I’m a therapist, and this is everything I know about what really makes people happy

Today is Blue Monday - officially the most depressing day of the year, but, after decades of working with clients who want to be happier, Lola Borg has found that what makes us happy isn’t always what we think it will be – and sometimes it’s not even what we should be aiming for...

Does Blue Monday really have to be that blue? (iStock)

When new clients tell me that their aim is to be happy, I allow myself an inward sigh. Then I ask them what they mean exactly. It’s a tricky notion. Pursued by the human race for millennia, and the subject of debate for philosophers from the Buddha onwards, it’s a big riddle to take on in a weekly 50-minute session. But I’m a therapist, and I want to inch people nearer to their idea of it, whatever that might be. With Blue Monday upon us, here are some thoughts on happiness from the treatment room.

January is the cruellest month

It’s when the gap between life as it is and life as we desire it can be at its most profound and unconquerable. Plus, if you’re in the UK, the chances are it’s cold, it’s raining, and there is no colour. But this too shall pass. Like all emotions, feeling low, unhappy, miserable, lost, or (often the hardest of all) stuck, will shift to a new phase eventually.

Clients mired in depression, for instance, tell me that they feel they could bear it if only they knew when it would be over. If only I could tell them. But what may seem intense and unbearable now will change at some point. As will whatever is pleasurable and joyful. It may be a cliche, but you can’t have the highs without the lows. January is often low for many. Lean into it and know that spring isn’t far away.

Beware big solutions

My clinical experience is that people often want one-stop solutions. Their belief is that one big thing will make them “happy” – a relationship, losing weight, money, a house, more status; it could be anything – but they are often unwilling to take the sometimes tiny steps that can make life more pleasant en route to these goals (which, let’s be fair, people may or may not achieve).

We live in a consumer society, which fosters the idea that we can buy ourselves out of a situation. Believe me, this is not the case (by that reckoning, Jeff Bezos would be the happiest man on the planet). So I have to gently disabuse many of my clients of this idea. But I am also struck by the fact that, when people do achieve the thing they crave, often they move immediately and breathlessly onto the next desire, without pause. As Buddhists say, there is no path to happiness: happiness is the path.

That said... small steps can help

Life can feel tilted in our favour when we do all the small things we know will help. I am constantly amazed at how resistant people are to this idea. Do you really need me to tell you what they are? Really? OK. Exercise, sleep, human contact, eating well – and steering away from drink, drugs, and social media sites that eat you up with envy or rage. (Compare and despair, as they say.) But especially human contact.

My unhappiest clients are often the loneliest and most isolated. Research bears out the corrosive effects of being alone. Whether it’s the uptick in working from home or an increase in automated systems, our post-Covid world has shifted on its axis to a less connected, far less sociable society. We are only just measuring how this affects us.

So, surround yourself as much as possible with people, as the writer James Baldwin said, whose eyes light up when you enter the room. Failing that, friends, family, co-workers, or the people at the coffee shop and in the supermarket queue. Connect, even in the smallest way. There is real power in what people call “weak social ties”. They make all the difference.

Contentment and satisfaction can be more fruitful than reaching for happiness (Alamy/PA)

Reach for contentment, not happiness

Pain and uncertainty come as part of the package in life. Privilege does not make you happy; some of the most ostensibly fortunate clients I have had were the most lost and confused.

I remember an addict telling me that he really wished his parents had encouraged him to be useful, rather than simply to “be happy”, and this has always stayed with me. Satisfaction, peace, contentment – these are more pertinent. A spiritual belief, a belief in something larger than oneself, can undoubtedly help. Of course, you can’t be content if you have a job that eats at your very soul, but the question is, what does happiness represent for you? It may not be the same as everyone else’s idea of it.

Viktor Frankl – Holocaust survivor, philosopher, and the “daddy” of the search for meaning in life – suggested that happiness will never come if pursued hard, and it’s better to aim for satisfaction or fulfilment. Joy for him was a by-product of finding meaning in life. My clients don’t want to hear this, but pursuing aims other than happiness can be more fruitful. Rather like the Hallmark card cliche, happiness only comes in moments anyway.

Happiness can be absorbed from those around us

Happiness, as the saying goes, is an inside job; a way of looking at the world. Often this is picked up very early in life from the people who surround us. Those with glass-half-full parents – or alternatively, parents who are wary of others or feel defeated by the world – can be unknowingly steeped in the same view, which is often hard to recognise in order to untangle themselves from it.

Ditto those with a background of trauma, profound loss or neglect – a simple “think yourself happy” solution absolutely does not work in these cases. That said, an inclination in a certain direction can be shifted with the self-understanding and examination that therapy can allow.

Sometimes the root cause of unhappiness can be difficult to identify (AP)

Unhappiness isn’t always easy to understand

Unhappiness is a different notion and easier to locate. But working out the precise, underlying cause of unhappiness can be tricky. It could be work, it could be an unhappy relationship, a feeling of being undervalued. Sometimes it can be the feeling that you haven’t achieved what your parents wanted you to, which is increasingly common.

I see younger clients who often have lovely lives, but these are not of their own choosing. One, for example, had parents who ignored her many achievements and were obsessed with the fact that she had never married. This caused her deep unhappiness.

Being trapped in a life that is not of one’s own making is a subtle and hard-to-acknowledge cause of sorrow. Untangling yourself from ideas that other people have for your life can be exasperating, and it absolutely involves letting others down.

Similarly, removing yourself from an unhappy situation can take time (sometimes years in the case of abusive relationships), but what makes a significant difference is that once the decision to change is made, however long it takes to implement, something lifts and lightens. Momentum is what gives you wings eventually, but it’s important to be aware that it can take a long time to get out of utterly miserable situations.

A dose of realism always helps

If you have gone through a loss – of a person, a job, a place you loved, or of status – or are having severe financial difficulties, it’s normal for your happiness levels to plummet. This is a natural part of life. Equally, depressed people are unable to find much joy in anything, and often need professional help or medical intervention. But for the rest of us, probably the easiest mantra to follow is that of writer Maya Angelou. It’s as good a definition of happiness as anything I’ve come across.

“Success,” she said – though she could easily have substituted “happiness” – “is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking the way you do it.” That will do nicely.

Lola Borg is a psychodynamic psychotherapist