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Joy

Psychology

9 October 2024

5 min read

Dopamine-ing ourselves dilutes the real power of joy

Ditch being happy all the time.

Natalie Garrett

Natalie produces and narrates The Seen & Unseen Aloud podcast. She's an Anglican minister and a trained actor.

Cartoon character Joy looks up with arms held open.

Inside Out's Joy.

Disney.

As I write this, I’m looking out of my window at endless grey. It has been raining almost constantly for several days. The garden is waterlogged, the apples are going mouldy on the tree and my dog, who has just come in, is sitting next to me and smelling of, well, wet dog. And it all looks pretty gloomy.

One of my most climbed upon soap boxes is the oppressive myth of our age/western culture that we are all supposed to be happy all the time. If we’re not living our best life and posting photos of our happiness on social media, then shame on us. There seems to be a socially acceptable dopamine addiction running rampant – each swipe, like and tweet feeding our habit.

As someone who lives with the albatross of depression weighing constantly around my neck, I find this compulsory pursuit of very public happiness somewhat trying. And call me Eeyore if you will, but I’d like to point out that sometimes it rains and there isn’t a rainbow. Just puddles.

There is a place for sorrow and disappointment and frustration in real life, and dopamine-ing ourselves out of those experiences dilutes the real power of joy.

I haven’t watched the new Inside Out film yet (See Henna Cundill’s great article on it) but the first one is a firm family favourite. It’s so deeply insightful and brilliantly unDisney. For anyone who hasn’t watched it yet, it’s a Disney animation of the adventures of the five core emotions (Fear, Anger, Joy, Disgust and Sadness) belonging to a young girl coping with moving with her parents to live in a new city.

Happiness is candy floss and joy is a strong cup of tea.

The main character is Joy. And she’s all about the happy. She refuses to allow Riley (the girl whose emotions they are) to be anything but happy. And that’s the set-up of the film. Joy fighting against the odds to keep Riley happy, even when she’s going through some really tough life stuff. And by the end of the film, it’s Joy who has grown because she recognises that Sadness has an important role in Riley’s life and that when Sadness takes the lead, Joy can join in, honestly, unsentimentally and sincerely.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed seeing Joy’s bouncy, oppressive positivity being acknowledged as really annoying.

The real strength of the film is that Joy grows from a character that I would call Happy into real Joy. Because, based on no good reasons at all, I have always thought of Joy as a more mature relative to happiness. To me, happiness is lighter, frothier and joy has greater depth and robustness. Happiness is candy floss and joy is a strong cup of tea. Happiness is still naïve while joy has been around the block a few times yet still hangs in there. Happiness is a powerful feeling that eclipses all else. Joy is mature enough to be in the same room as Sadness.

You see, I also think of joy as a choice, not just a happy feeling. Like thousands of other people, I have benefited hugely from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) which says that while you can’t choose your feelings, you can choose your thoughts. And it turns out that our feelings are reactions to our thoughts, not the other way around.

For instance, if you are woken up in the middle of the night by a loud crash, how would you feel? If you feel scared, it’s probably because your first thought is that a burglar has broken into your home. If you turn over and go back to sleep, it’s probably because you know that the cat has knocked something off the kitchen table, again. Our feelings come after our thoughts, not the other way around. Which changes everything.

We can’t tell ourselves to be happy, to be excited, to not be afraid. But we can choose our thoughts, what we allow to dwell in our minds. The pursuit of happiness then becomes about training the mind rather than mindlessly reaching for the next “feel good” dopamine hit.

Joy grows up. She starts out bubblegum-happy-at-all-costs-annoying. And she matures into someone who’s patient and compassionate and strong.

CBT rose to fame, as it were, during the latter years of the twentieth century and more recently, a lot of research has gone into the correlation of CBT within diverse religious frameworks, including Judaism, Taoism and predominantly, Christianity. The evidence suggests that religious belief has considerable positive impact on mental well-being and psychology. It seems that there is real joy to be found in the Unseen.

And I don’t think that’s a surprise. The Bible is full of CBT once you start looking for it. For example, St Paul wrote a letter to a church in Philippi, while he was chained up in a prison cell. I think it’s fair to say he wasn’t Insta-ready yet he says (italicised translation my own) "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of living my best life in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” Isn’t that a secret we’d all like to learn? How to have real joy that is completely independent from our circumstances?

St Paul is not saying don’t worry, be happy. He isn’t saying pretend everything is ok, put your head in the sand and act as if you haven’t a care in the world. He is far more realistic than that. He knows better than most people that real life is very complicated and often very painful. He’s saying that whatever our circumstances, we have a choice. A choice to let ourselves drown in anxiety and sorrow or to fill our minds with, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” He is of course talking about the goodness and faithfulness of God and what pours out as a result of God’s lovingkindness. When I fill my mind, when I choose to think about such things, it means there is less room for despair and Joy has the space to dance.

And this is why I think Inside Out is so good. Joy grows up. She starts out bubblegum-happy-at-all-costs-annoying. And she matures into someone who’s patient and compassionate and strong. Joy can hold you while you give airtime to Sadness, Disgust, Fear and even Anger. And she’s there to celebrate and commiserate with you when that’s done. This may not meet the need for a party-popper-emoji-style happiness, but I for one say, Yes, please, can I have some of that?

Essay

Attention

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Feminism

15 March 2024

5 min read

Sarah Everard: she was 'exactly like us'

An anniversary of anguish deserves the miracle of our attention.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

Sarah Everard.

BBC/Everard Family.

This week, three years ago, we’d been shut in our homes for nearly a year and things were anything but normal. I don’t know about you, but when I think back to those locked-down days, it’s all a bit of a haze, those weird weeks tend to blur into one.

Except this week, that is. This week, three years ago, was a wholly different story.

We, the public, had just learnt that Sarah Everard, a thirty-three-year-old woman in South London, had been abducted, raped and murdered by Wayne Couzens, a serving police officer in the Metropolitan Police. And the news of this heinous crime took our breath away. Do you remember it? How you felt when you learned what had happened to Sarah? I can remember the anguish of hundreds of people ringing out from Clapham Common, reaching every corner of the country. I can remember that, legal or not, nothing seemed to quell the outrage that was drawing people to the vigil being held there. All that grief, it had to go somewhere.

The anger that night was so visceral, it feels like it’s still in the soil of the Common. The fear, so palpable, it still lingers in the air. And at that point, we didn’t even know the half of it. ‘She was just walking home’ - That’s the sentence, isn’t it? The one that haunted those days, weeks, and months.

Three years on and we’re no closer to coming to terms with what happened. Not really. In the wake of the recent Angioloni Inquiry, which concluded that Wayne Couzens should never have been allowed to become, let alone remain, a police officer, the BBC released a documentary that follows DCI Katherine Goodwin’s story as she led the investigation. From first seeing the bulletin of a missing young woman, to hearing the ‘whole life’ sentence come down on Couzens – viewers are walked through the whole thing, step by step. What led up to Sarah’s death, and what followed it. It’s something that we should all see, even though we’ll immediately wish that we hadn’t.

Because it would be hard to unsee the grainy footage of Wayne Couzens standing next to a handcuffed Sarah on the side of a busy road, abducting her while his hazard lights flash, all of it so sickeningly hidden in plain sight. It would be harder still to unhear the victim statement from Sarah’s mum, who admitted that every night, right at the time of the abduction, she silently screams ‘don’t get in the car, Sarah. Don’t believe him. Run!’.

All of it, it’s just so hard to know.

The details are hard to think about, and harder still not to think about. But that’s the point, I suppose. I remember what philosopher Simone Weil wrote,

that ‘capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle… it is a miracle’.

I’m just not used to a ‘miracle’ making me feel so nauseous. In theory, Weil’s words are beautiful, in reality though – they ache.

I don’t tend to acquaint a feeling of utter helplessness with the miraculous. Where my understanding runs dry, my answers falter, and my tears flow – those aren’t the places I expect to see anything of any use, spiritual or otherwise.

But Weil goes on:

‘…it is recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specific from the social category labelled ‘unfortunate’, but as a man (or woman), exactly like us, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction.’

Sarah Everard – her memory, as well as the people within whom her memory is most vivid, and her loss most keenly felt – deserve the miracle of our attention. Then, now, and for many years to come. We continue to grieve her, the woman who never made it home, as if we each knew more of her than her name. And that’s a beautiful thing, a human thing, a sacred thing. Because Sarah was more than her name, and she was more than her death. And so, she must be grieved as such, with our eyes fixed on the beauty of who she was, and the tragedy of who she will never be.

And it’s tricky, because you can’t tidy up lament, can you? There’s no silver-lining, nothing to polish. You can’t put a neat bow on despair or grief.

And then there’s Weil’s ‘exactly like us’ line to grapple with. And grapple with it, we do. The knowledge that it could have been any of us is ever-present. As a woman, I feel it every single day. If male violence against women is a spectrum - 1 being a wolf-whistle as we walk down the street, and 10 being death – the truth is that most of us will only ever face experiences that sit on the lower end of that scale. And yet, we are ever aware that 10 exists and that we could encounter it at any point. So, we are on the lookout for it. We are alert, always.

Sarah walked home a specific way that night; not the quickest route, but the best lit.

That’s what we all do. ‘Exactly like us’, indeed.

Lament; I suppose that’s what this feeling in my stomach is. And maybe yours too. It’s a feeling that goes beyond the rage I feel toward the monstrous perpetrator, and the institutions that failed to stop him, and so many others. It’s a kind of wordless grief that things are the way they are, agony that we live in a world that hurts this much, despair at how things could have been so different. I felt all this three years ago, when I heard about Sarah’s death. And I felt it last night, when my sister walked home from my house in the dark with her hood up so that she was less distinguishable as a woman walking alone.

And it’s tricky, because you can’t tidy up lament, can you? There’s no silver-lining, nothing to polish. You can’t put a neat bow on despair or grief, and you can’t pull yourself out of it by your own bootstraps. And that’s not to be defeatist, or to relinquish our responsibility to enact justice and fight for change. On the contrary, lament is rooted in the knowledge that things can be, and should be, better. But to try and find a way to solve the outrage we feel when it comes to the death of Sarah Everard is to completely misunderstand it, and ourselves, and reality.

Bad things hurt.

So, although writing this piece has been hard, I’m at least comforted in the knowledge that it was supposed to be a hard piece to write. And that the queasiness I feel and the tears that are threatening my professional resolve are the evidence of some kind of miracle that I don’t fully understand.