But I had a happy childhood

Parents often want their children to be happy. When kids feel good and get to do fun things, that means they will become happy adults, right? This is how happy kids become unhappy adults.

May 05, 2023

It’s something I hear often.

“But I had a happy childhood. There is no reason why I should be struggling now as an adult.” In truth, many adults have supportive parents, a simple upbringing, and a calm lifestyle and still develop bouts of unhappiness, general malaise, and even mental health issues as adults.

There’s a big emphasis in our culture around attachment styles and trauma histories as predictors of mental health in later life. These two things undoubtedly impact how we experience adulthood. And there is a segment of the population that still faces challenges in adulthood despite having secure attachment parenting (most of the time) and have escaped their childhood without an extensive trauma history.

This is an article about happy kids who become unhappy adults. First, I should mention that life happens. Kids who have had a stable upbringing still experience the throws of life; they get concussions and brain injuries, they experience grief and loss, and they face financial burdens. Second, we know that our genetics also play a large role in this conversation simply because they shape our inner experience as kids and adults. As a therapist, I’m not just interested in how big life events or genetics shape our wellbeing. We know life happens. We know biology does its thing. I am also interested in how kids who “have it all”— a good family, supportive parents, access to learning resources, and get to do fun things— can still experience uncomfortable, unsatisfying, or unhappy adulthoods.

Here are some of the ways this can happen:

We’re all human

When you’ve had a stable, calm, and happy upbringing and are experiencing challenges as an adult, one of the first things I think about is how difficult it is to be human. Brené Brown reminds us that we are wired for connection and we are also wired for struggle. It is human to struggle. It is human to face challenges and setbacks. And it is normal to feel big and uncomfortable feelings.

Unfortunately we are also part of a culture that reinforces our avoidance of feelings and trains us away from feeling uncomfortable. That sets the expectation that life is supposed to be excellent, peachy, calm, and care-free the majority of the time. That’s not how life works and that’s not how our feelings work. As humans, we are built to overcome obstacles and we have the inner machinery to prove it. The role of the nervous system is to turn on or turn off our stress response as a way of helping us face and survive what comes our way.

Being calm is not our default mode

Cultural norms and expectations about what it means to live a good life can get in the way of our wellbeing. There is often this expectation that life is supposed to be neat, tidy, perfect, and without problems. When we notice the untidyness, imperfection, or, quite frankly, the problems of life it is easy to personalize the issue. Why is this my life? Why is this happening to me? Why do I feel this way? These questions and this approach to problem solving makes it seem like we are supposed to be calm and happy all the time. Being calm is not our default mode and neither is a state happiness.

Simply put, as humans we have the luxury of feeling good, feeling content, feeling calm, and feeling happy. These are luxury feelings that happen when fun, exciting, or relaxing moments occur. This is not our baseline. Our baseline is being in a constant state of emotional flux. That is our default mode. The only thing that is guaranteed is that feelings do not last. This is not just true of our favourite feelings but the ones that cause discomfort and unease also.

Feelings do not make good goals

We set ourselves up for failure when we make it our goal to feel a certain way. Feelings are unpredictable. Feelings come and go and can change on a dime. When we attach ourselves (whether that be our life goals, our identity, our personality, or even how we expect to feel) to a favourite feeling of ours, we reinforce a set of fictional rules that our brain has to follow. Feel this. Don’t feel this. Think this. Don’t think this. Be this. Don’t be this. This is confusing to a mind and body system that prefer to be in flux rather than to be controlled, monitored, and performance-tested.

There is no stability in creating a life for yourself where you can only expect to feel one way. Many kids grow up thinking that the goal of being an adult is to be happy, calm, care-free, and rich. This is a major failure on our part because it means we’re setting kids up to be disappointed, resentful, and quite frankly, depressed adults. Making a certain feeling or state of mind your goal is not a productive pursuit. This is not just because it is unrealistic for every person to achieve, but because there is no scientific or historical basis that would suggest this is how humans have lived. Of course we all want to feel more grounded, connected, happy, calm, and relaxed more often. But these things are not fixed nor are they guaranteed.

Happiness is not the goal of childhood

The primary developmental task in childhood is to learn how to be in relationships. In our youngest years, we learn this through a process called serve and return. We learn about relationships by being in a family. In middle and high school, we learn about relationships through social connection with peers, friends, and other adults. When clients say to me, “but I had a happy childhood,” the first thing I say is, “…and how were your relationships?”

Practicing how to be in relationships yields the skills necessary for independence: emotion regulation, distress tolerance, perspective taking, critical thinking, social awareness, and more. We do not learn these skills by being happy all the time. We also do not deepen our relationships by being happy all the time. The goal of childhood is to build our individual toolbox by being in relationships that allow us to feel good, navigate hardship, embrace teachings, and build love and respect. Note that struggle and hardship are built into that experience; we face obstacles and we overcome them. When we do not experience obstacles, challenges, and go through hard things, our brain learns that this is how life is supposed to be. The reality of adulthood is a shock to the kid who had it all.

The goal of childhood is not to be happy simply for the fact that being happy does not teach us the essential skills needed for life. Being happy all the time does not teach us how to bounce back. A happy childhood is not a reliable predictor of lifelong wellbeing. Our relationships are the best predictor of wellbeing, not our individual experience of being in a happy mood. As humans, we are a social species. I would even go as far as saying we are an ultrasocial species, meaning that we don’t just need others to be healthy and well, we actually need other people around us to survive.

Instead of chasing the calm and care-free life as a way to feel happier, we should focus on deepening your relationships and supporting young people to do the same. We grow in relationships and we need one another to be healthy humans.

Happiness is the byproduct of living a connected life. The thing we need most is each other.

Take care,

Jake