Can a "naturally miserable" person ever be happy?

[anonymous98]

Have you, or anyone you know, been able to radically change your feelings about life? I am beginning to realise that I have a miserable and anxious personality, which has been fairly fixed since childhood and has only become more entrenched since I entered adulthood. Yes, I have the misfortune of having psychiatric diagnoses - but also, there seem to be a multitude of similar people who get better with treatment- and I'm not one of them. I am on antidepressants and have been for almost a decade, including changing medications when they started wearing off.

My family background is not optimistic - my parents are both unhappy, dysfunctional people, as were my maternal grandparents, although they endured significant hardship (WWII etc.). Additionally, I think my grandparents' generation had the mental buffer of religious faith, while I am much more sceptical and existentially anxious. I am very, very scared of dying or becoming seriously ill, much more so than most people in their 20s. I have diagnosed OCD and have developed agoraphobia.

I think my perpetual state of woe is repelling others and I don't know how to fix it.

For me, looking on the bright side of life is an active choice. At first it took effort but now it's effortless as I'm used to it. However, I have no diagnoses and it might not be that simple if someone did have diagnoses. I did a self compassion course a few years ago which was really transformational.

It doesn't sound as if you are miserable, so much as you have troubles with your mental health though?

I think of miserable people as those who inflict their misery on others, ie deliberately seek to bring others down with them. Are you doing this? Assume not or you wouldn't be posting on here worrying about it!

Can you tell us what your life is like? What's good and bad about it? Family/friends/work/living situation. Does your mental health go up and down depending on where you are with the things in your life?

I think a lot of your beliefs come from your family of origin, so if they were also had a negative outlook ‘life’s shit’ ‘life’s hard’ etc which you’ve said they do, then you’ll adopt them too.
I think you can challenge the beliefs as they crop up, or through therapy, but it’s very hard and easy to fall back into familiar patterns, but I’d like to think it’s possible.

I think your issue is a) how you are conceptualising the problem. You've conceptualised that you are naturally miserable. Are you? Or have you just had a lot of shitty experiences that have battered you? I'm not saying that the cumulative impact can't be a miserable state...but no child is born miserable and therefore everything isn't 100% environment. And nor is it 100% biological, if you imagined what around you could change that would make you happy, or a course of action that would, if you could do it, would make you happy...then you have a route forward.

I think it's the kind of thing coaching can help with, as it takes you out of the space of conceptualising yourself as a psychological problem, and into the space of, ok this is my brain, this is what I am working with, and works with a strengths based approach I.e. building on your strengths. Another part of it that I think is important is acceptance- learning to accept a difficult emotion and let it go. Another emotion will come along but you don't get consumed by them. And sometimes shit experiences can be transformed into humour, creative art and so on.

You have the benefit over your forebears though of self awareness, reason and a willingness to want to change so you are better placed to put in the effort to reframe your view on life?

my parents are both unhappy, dysfunctional people, as were my maternal grandparents

It would have been nigh on impossible to grow up as a happy-go-lucky, carefree child with that background, without wishing to blame parents or grandparents - they had their own burdens, but they are not yours to pick up and carry.

Whilst it's unlikely that you could change - or want to change - into a life and soul of the party persona, it is possible to detach from how you believed life 'is' when you were young to a more balanced and realistic outlook, especially with regard to your health. Understanding and then challenging the long held core beliefs is the first step, this article will help;

https://www.betterup.com/blog/core-beliefs

Absolutely yes it is possible.
Read the book growth mindset.
Change how you behave and eventually your thinking will change too.

I haven't required mental health support so I'm not sure this is comparable with your situation but I can definitely say I have altered my perspective by altering what I read, watch and who I interact with. I have a tendency to doom scroll and look for the negative things in life and I always have. However by cutting my social media input down and being selective about what I read online, who I interact with (radiators not drains), talking to myself with with an internal voice of compassion (instead of like dirt) and listening to podcasts which are supportive, I definitely have improved my outlook on life. It is not easy to change and I'm definitely a work in progress. When people try to change, they try to do too much at once and then give up when they inevitably fail. I've just been taking tiny steps and have noticed in the last couple of months, I have changed. I no longer expect the worse case scenario. I learn when things go wrong instead of catastrophizing and thinking it will always be so. When I can't do something, I realise that I can't do it yet. I've learned to appreciate what I do have. I've finally become a glass half full person and am much less anxious and happier as a result.
I used to mock the American approach of positivity and pep talks but I have to say, does it matter if it works? A lot of professional medical professionals who have studied the neural pathways in the brain say what fires together wires together. If you train yourself to alter your approach, it will become your natural default position. As support, I like all of the late Michael Mosley's podcasts and some of those of Mel Robbins, Mo Gawdat, James Clear and Rangan Chatterjee.

Just make sure you listen to or read material written by those backed by science and medicine rather than the z list celebrity drivel that seems prevalent The library is your friend, you can sift out the ghost written rubbish.
It sounds very difficult for you, especially with you saying you want to "fix" it. I hope you get the support you need from medical professionals and friends but perhaps a bit of diy will assist in the interim.