Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Unhappy is not the opposite of happy; it’s actually the dissatisfaction with the level of happiness one possesses. There are lots of things that affect one’s happiness: the death of a loved one, dire circumstances, rejection, and physical ailments; but these only subtract from one’s innate happiness. Except for someone in the depths of psychiatric depression, everyone has some amount of happiness if they’re self-aware enough to recognize it; something as basic as simply being alive, or the lack of things like despair, misery & anguish. Perversity, a person who is deeply satisfied at the discomfort of others out of sadism, spite or schadenfreude, also plays a part in unhappiness because unhappy people resent happy people and revel in their troubles. It’s the reason that perceptibly evil people are happy, because they obtain their happiness at the expense of others. Coping is another mechanism for unhappy people to alleviate their anxiety; for example, some people are pessimistic by nature because it reduces their anxiety due to lowering expectations. Masochism seems like it would make people unhappy but they cope by subconsciously redefining their discomfort into happiness. In this way, unhappiness explains a lot of antisocial behaviors.