Why do happy people make me mad

But when it came to unpleasant emotions, this study assessed only anger and hatred, which Dr Alexandrova said is a limitation. Prof Tamir said the research does not apply to those with clinical depression: "People who are clinically depressed want to be more sad and less happy than other people.

That only exacerbates the problem. She said the study sheds light on the downsides of expecting to always feel happy.

Even if they feel good most of the time, they may still think that they should feel even better, which might make them less happy overall. Time, not materials, 'raises happiness'. Irritability is a sign of depression. Chronic illness is a well-known contributor to depression. You lost years of your life to illness; it's no wonder you feel a bit bitter about people who are healthy and happy.

Some things that may help - Realize that you can't tell what's under anyone else's skin. Stephen Fry is successful, well-reviewed, loved, and suicidal. Catherine Zeta-Jones is beautiful, talented, successful and bipolar. Some of those happy graduates are facing crippling debt. Some are uncertain about their future, have eating issues, are terrified, etc. You can't tell. That's a perfectly reasonable way to feel, but it's eating you up. Therapy can be a path to acceptance of misfortune.

I have been through a rough patch with health and personal crises, and feel better when I look at how much better off I am than somebody who doesn't have good health insurance or who has lots of debt, or whatever.

I try not to focus on the lack of family support because they're all so far away, or the people in my life who have been mean or bullying, etc. I think about being lucky to have an affectionate dog, access to nature, good friends, etc.

There are support groups online, on facebook, or in real life. You need to commiserate with people who can understand what you've experienced, who will know that even though you look fine, you may be in pain, or who understand how it feels to lose a chunk of your life to illness.

Watch some funny movies and tv shows, and listen to upbeat music, show tunes, etc. Read jokes. I don't know I think it's perfectly normal when you are having a bad and stressful time yourself to want to strangle everyone you meet, especially those damned cheerful people, who do they think they are anyway!

And don't remind me about those effing idealists, first ones against the wall. To the point where when I find myself being strangely vindictive and contemptuous of strangers in the subway I start checking in on myself: How am I really doing? How bad do I feel? What can I do against it? That said, you may well have a depression and obviously your chronic illness and feelings of neglect are a league above my garden variety annoyance.

So definitely listen to the advice given above. All I'm saying is, just because you feel assholish towards happy people right now doesn't mean you actually are turning into an asshole, it just means you're having a really hard time right now. I don't think you should give yourself too much trouble about this, especially if you live in the US.

Americans set greater store on acting happy in public than any other culture I know. It's completely normal to feel angry and bitter at times, especially given what you've been going through.

But in our culture, these aren't feelings you're allowed to show in public. This has the effect that, when you're unhappy and surrounded by seemingly happy people, you feel lonely and hence even more unhappy. If you lived in, say, Britain which I'm assuming you don't , where there's a general tacit agreement that life isn't always a glorious cycle of song, this might be less of a problem.

So, although I agree with previous commenters that it can't hurt to look into therapy to work on the deeper issues behind your discontentment, not necessarily on the "bitterness towards happy-seeming people problem" , and although in the long term I would strongly recommend mindfulness meditation, which is the best cure for bitterness I know, at the moment it might help to watch some bitter British comedians.

You could start with Frankie Boyle. If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

Montesquieu posted by bukvich at PM on June 11, [ 3 favorites ]. I struggle with this too, although I have not had a chronic illness. My boyfriend wakes up feeling generally happy and in a positive disposition whereas I can always find something to worry about right off the bat. My feeling is that there is a spectrum of people's average "baseline" happiness states and that that is a meaningful part of what makes us human.

Your general emotional state is a viable and important representation of the human spectrum of emotional baseline state. I guess this is just a nice way of saying I stopped giving a crap about other people and their life journeys or whatever, and letting it affect me. I gotta admit it was ultimately motivated by laziness because it turned about to be a lot less work to just not care, than to put all this energy into giving a crap and feeling crappy about not feeling some specific way about life.

I still care about people, I just let their emotions roll off me a little better now. I hope you feel better more peaceful, more at ease, whatever soon. I'm going to leave you with this piece by Max Ehrmann , it might not be for you but it's always calmed me in moments where this discontent is especially intense.

I've been waylaid by chronic illness for the past two years and often find myself hating everyone and their goddamned perfect lives, too. It means we're both terrible people. Nah, just kidding. Therapy is never a bad idea, in my opinion. Depression can sometimes manifest in exactly the way you are describing, and chronic illness is a risk factor for depression. In the mean time, stop looking at Facebook. But you can be kind. And the first principle of being kind is to not take their negative energy, wad it into a ball, and throw it back in their face to teach them a lesson.

If the person is harming you or others, you may have to intervene, but most unhappy people hurt themselves more than others. If you can manage not to participate in the drama, you can defuse it. You de-escalate. You make it possible for the other person to make a shift.

And once you understand that their behavior comes from unhappiness, it will make you less frustrated and crazy, which means your happiness will increase. Benefits all around. Bonus tip 1: If alcohol is adding to your unhappiness, a powerful book is This Naked Mind. Bonus tip 2: If you want a surefire way to increase your happiness, get an electric bike.

Try it. Menu Resilience Building a world of resilient communities. Get Resilience delivered daily. Different situations call for context-appropriate emotions, and responding appropriately to them is better for us than always responding happily.

Become a subscribing member today. But it also comes to those who let themselves feel angry. Take our emotional intelligence quiz!