Loretta G. Breuning, founder of the Inner Mammal Institute, spent years researching the origin and theories that revolve around happiness. She recently told Bay Area Innovators’ Steve Ispas the reason for happiness from a biological perspective, as well as the history and popular ideas of how to pursue happiness.
“Humans are unhappy a lot, because our brain naturally creates a lot of unhappiness. It has an important function, it alerts us when there’s important information that we should be cautious about,” Breuning said. “So if we are trained to define this natural unhappiness as a disorder, then we need a lot of services.”
According to a Gallup poll from February, less than half, or 47 percent, of Americans say they are “very” satisfied with their personal lives. About 78 percent are somewhat satisfied, and satisfaction was highest for those who are married, are religious, or have a high income.
“Our brain is designed to seek happiness constantly. So we’re designed to be disappointed, really,” Breuning said. “So if you’re saddled with this expectation that other people are getting happiness effortlessly, then you think, ‘Oh, maybe I do have something wrong with me.’”
Breuning said it’s normal to be unhappy. But nowadays, when unhappiness is seen as a disorder, it implies there is a way to treat it, and people rely on that treatment to feel happy, she said. They also feel reinforced when professionals say that happiness is the natural state.
So where did this concept come from?
Breuning said that about 250 years ago, Jean-Jacques Rousseau introduced the idea that happiness is a natural state. An example of the idea, she said, is that if hunter-gatherers lived on a tropical island, they would be happy all the time, and that animals and children are always happy.
“The reality we can all see, obviously, is that animals have a lot of conflict and ill will, children have a lot of conflict and ill will, hunter-gatherers have a lot of conflict and ill will. But we just ignore that because it doesn’t fit what we’re told is the science,” she said.
On the biological level, Breuning says in her book, there are four chemicals that affect a person’s feelings of happiness: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. The body releases different chemicals depending on the stimulus. For example, serotonin is released when a person takes a hot bath, and dopamine is released to make a person feel physically excited.
“Our happy chemicals evolved to reward survival behavior,” Breuning said. “So dopamine motivates a step to meet your needs. So if you think there’s food on the other side of the mountain but you’re exhausted and hungry, dopamine is released because you’ve had [thoughts] like, ‘Oh, I’m so close, I’m so close.’ And that’s the feeling we all love.”
But once the goal is reached, the chemicals drop, which causes a person to feel unhappy.
“And that’s why unhappiness is part of life, because the happy chemicals are only meant to be released in short spurts. And they’re not going to just go on all the time,” she said. “So it’s not a disorder.”
Most people in the United States now have most of their survival needs met, so they rely on other chemicals, oxytocin and serotonin, to meet their social needs. One can create the feeling of wanting to be in a group, and the other can create the feeling of wanting to rise to not be at the bottom rank of a group, Breuning said.
“So oxytocin is the good feeling that I have the protection of a herd, and serotonin is the good feeling that I have the respect and the recognition and importance in the eyes of others,” Breuning said.
She also said that our brains are designed to habituate everything, which means if a person walks into a coffee shop that smells amazing, after a couple of times, it doesn’t smell like that anymore. The same can be said for medication, she said. People who are used to taking it would need more or higher doses to produce the same initial happiness to get out of the dissatisfied state. They would go to their doctors to ask for more, who can prescribe only the amount that’s legally allowed. But there are often side effects, and it is also hard to withdraw from medications, Breuning said.
One solution she proposes to help people feel more comfortable is for them to be more self-accepting and understand that nothing will be perfect instead of jumping to the conclusion that they have a disease.
“The bottom line is that you really can’t control someone else’s brain. So you have to commit to [the approach of considering], ‘How can I be happy, given the fact that the world is what it is?’” Breuning said. “This is [the small steps of] self-acceptance and getting it where you can, and then giving yourself a treat when you redirect your flow away from the negative toward the positive.”
