By Wayne Senior, Content Team Co-ordinator
Last Thursday, it was the International Day of Happiness. That’s the sort of thing you want to know at the beginning of the day, but I only found out around tea time. That’s dinner time if you’re down south. We have our dinner when southerners have their lunch. Whether I have my dinner at lunch time or tea time, if it is the most splendid sausages with nice chips, I’m happy.
Anyway this isn’t a food blog; it’s an anxiety blog. When I found out it was the International Day of Happiness, I wondered what I would say if I wrote an article about happiness. I started thinking about what makes people who use our services happy.
I have spoken to many people on the No Panic Helpline and in Anxiety Support Chat, and the support I provide to other volunteers has allowed me to find out about their conversations. I haven’t done research in the proper way on this, but I have remembered several conversations.
People have told me, that they felt happy if they did something simple, despite all the pressure anxiety put on them to do nothing. If they overcame their anxiety, and did something simple anyway, that made them happy.
It has to be simple. The more complicated it is – the more doubt anxiety can put into your mind. Complicated things like trips abroad can make you happy, but only after you’ve overcome all the anticipation you have to withstand so you can go through with the trip. Complicated things can also take time to arrange. You may want to feel happy on a day when you’ve awoken to feelings of anxiety.
Somebody with anxiety may have gone for a walk, met up with a friend, or spent some time at a small café. It may only have been for an hour. When they come home, their anxiety is not cured. Still they feel happy, because they achieved a win over anxiety.
Their anxiety did not stop them doing something simple. It was nice doing something simple. Doing something simple made them feel happy. Beating anxiety made them feel happy. They plan to do more simple things, because they know that by doing simple things, not only can they reduce their anxiety, but they may feel happier.
