Anticipatory Happiness?

[KwanYingirl]

I am watching a psychologist on TV talking about happiness. He made the statement that the anticipation of happiness is more rewarding than the happy event.

So, I see posts, and I comment, on anticipatory anxiety. Given what the psychologist said about anticipation and happiness, then do you agree that the opposite emotion-sadness-is not as painful as the anticipation of it?

Is knowing and believing this is true, then can we calm our hyper vigilance by knowing that the anticipation of fear will always be more powerful than the event?

I'm on the fence here. We know the pain of rape, assault, verbal abuse, combat. Surely our anticipation of the event repeating itself is less painful than experiencing another trauma. But is it serving our greater good to get sucked into the anticipation vortex?

Back to happiness. The psychologist also stated that the increased happiness of the anticipation of a new love only lasts for 6-12 months. What does that say about people who move from relationship to relationship, seemingly addicted to that anticipatory happiness?

 

[Ladyghosthunter]

First of all, and this is my opinion of course, TV psychologists remind me of the Farting Preacher on You Tube. Anticipation anxiety is fleeting more than what he said and it's a "minute thrill" more or less. It has nothing to do with negativity but we PTSD patients have been "programmed" in our heads that we're scared, we're worried, we're frightened, we're "staring off into space", we're...you know what I'm trying to say. Sometimes it can be very very hard to see the good in any situation due to what we've been through because we expect the worst (at least in my perspective) or worse yet, everything as I said is fleeting and not worth the effort. Happiness, for us right now, is different for each person. For me, as far as happiness, right now I'm going through so much with work and all of the other CRAP (excuse my capitalization) I have to deal with.
My wish for you is to not feel any anxiety over any happiness but just coast on through not expecting anything but that's easier said than done. Because of my faith, I had to come to peace over the situation by handing it all to God because, in many ways, my issues right at this moment have gone to "ludicrous speed".

 

[Tinyflame]

No, I don't agree with their statement.

 

[Leigh925]

For me the fear of the pain I think I will experience in dealing with my past has almost always been worse than the pain actually is when I deal with it. I remember when I finally felt like I had told my therapist all of my secrets. I thought it was going to be horrible and it was really hard but the anxiety I had about it beforehand was ten times worse.

It is a lesson I learn over and over again. I wish I could keep it at the front of my mind because I would have a lot less anxiety.

The things I am most afraid of have actually already happened to me and I survived it so I should feel stronger about it than I do. I let the anxiety overwhelm me until I can remind myself the worst is over.

 

[Tinyflame]

I feel that it is true as regards anxiety but not pain or happiness. Just my experience though.

 

[Hope4Now]

I think I agree on the happiness thing, but I'm not sure. I rarely get really excited or anticipatory about things because either something happens that screws everything up, or whatever it is ends up kind of disappointing. I think I learned to temper my expectations from a very young age because so many things went wrong when they were supposed to go right. My happiest moments are usually the really unexpected ones--the ones where there is no anticipation because I didn't know it was going to happen...like an old friend turning up out of the blue, or one night recently going to what was going to be a really boring dinner party and instead it turned out to be an amazing evening of musicians and singing around a campfire (long story), or when one of my kids stuns me with some profound insight that makes me so excited to see what great people they are turning into. It even extends to books and movies and concerts...I often like best the ones I have no pre-conceptions about.

Same thing on the anxiety/nervousness. There are many things I get anxious about and worry about (obsess about) and then the reality of them isn't nearly as bad as all the worrying. Like driving to unfamiliar places (I get lost ALL the time), or making certain phone calls, or making decisions about biggish life issues, or even going to parties where there will be lots of people I don't know. I get so mad at myself for all the energy I put into the worry and procrastination that feeds the worry, that after it's over--no matter how it turned out--I regret the expended energy. I am working on this issue. Working on trying to be present and just "go" with whatever happens. Some things will end up pretty badly...that's just the nature of life, but worrying and being anxious about things you can do nothing about only hurts us--especially when it prevents us from living fully.

Here's two related examples. I have a 17 year old son. When he was 11, he was really into cycling and begged to be allowed to ride his bike to his grandparents' house (a 10 mile ride mostly along a pretty busy road with no shoulder). He was a great cyclist, responsible, etc... I realized that in spite of my terrible worry that he would be hurt (I have a problem with disaster thinking), I had to let him have some freedom. He did the ride dozens of times and was just fine. Once, though, he crashed, and needed a ride home (just shaken) and another time he was hit by a car, but not injured (though the bike was). Both of these things sent me through the roof with anxiety. I didn't want him to ride afterward...yet, you can't stop living life just because bad things happen sometimes. Now he drives. Way more parental anxiety. Last fall, he begged to drive himself to a singing gig that was a good long ways away. I didn't want to let him, but again--you have to let go at some point. I let go. On the way home, he had a terrible accident from which he was extremely lucky to emerge unscathed. The phone call from a state trooper is not a call any parent ever wants to receive. The whole experience was a traumatic one for him, and for us even though nobody was injured. I guess the point of this long rambling example is that I worry all the time about worst-case scenarios, but they rarely happen. And when they do, you just deal with them. You realize you can't change things with worry and anxiety--all it does is decrease life quality.

So, I have to teach myself these lessons every day. I'm terrified of pain and suffering and death. I've experienced and witnessed a lot of awful stuff in my own life, so that's probably why I have a lot of fear and disaster thinking. But when I can step out of the emotional muck I exist in, I see clearly that the worst pain really is living in constant anticipatory fear that terrible things will happen.

Argh...this was a way longer post than I intended. Sorry. Your comments struck me because I've been thinking about this stuff a lot lately.

 

[KwanYingirl]

I agree @Hope4Now. I don't let myself look forward to happiness. But I worry excessively. And yes, raising children is hair raising at times. I'm glad your son was never seriously hurt.

 

[Friday]

Putting on my "Dabbling in Neuro" hat (it's pinky, it's pinky and the brain brain brain brain... And I'm pinky in this equarion).

What they're talking about with new love is a very specific neurotransmitter which is present, without you having to do a single durn thing, in new love. (PEA or phenethylamine). It's present in whoomph! quantities for 6-12mo, but still hugely present for 2-3 years.

So... Here're just some of my problem(s) with pop-psych & PEA

- It's more than possible to rekindle the presence of PEA in the brain with your current love/partner on a regular basis via certain kinds of stress or surprise. In fact, most people do this on purpose to greater or lesser extent. Vacations are something healthy people do (seeing your loved one outside of normal environs counts as surprise not as much as seeing them unexpectedly, but the brain tends to send out the same chemicals). And then there are a whole lot of other options that span the healthy/unhealthy scale (domestic violence is a great source of PEA, but not a great source).

- We are in our absolute infancy in neuroscience. So, yes, PEA is the butterflies in the belly feeling with new love, but just because we haven't identified the neurotransmitters present in mature love (because it really does sink to a fuller richer deeper feeling), doesn't mean that they don't exist. Nor NT present in other kinds of love (Eros, Amos, Fillios... But we're mostly looking at Eros). Yet a lot of pop-psych sources out there treat PEA like the be all end all of love. Nope! Theres a lot out there that we know exists but haven't identified, yet, and there is a lot out there that we expect to be surprised by (from past experience). A lot like Europeans thinking that "this is it". When actually there are several other continents. Or, more accurately, Europeans thinking "this is is" in the 1890s when even their countrymen are vacationing in Egypt, ranching Downunder, gold rushing in Alaska, trading in Japan, etc.

((PopPsych drives me crazy, because people are smart. If they presented this stuff as just a piece of the puzzle, people would get that. But they don't. They present this stuff as stand alone or holy grail info. :banghead: ))

The above 2 problems aren't even in current studies (that I know of), because they're old old old knowledge. Not quite hipbone connected to the leg bone old... But old enough to be in several different editions of anatomy & physiology as well as neurology, physiological psychology textbooks. And yet, pop psych treats PEA as this grail. Um. No. It's not. It's just a fairly well understood neurotransmitter in a sea of NTs, pathways, and other chemical & structural elements that we don't understand so well.