Since my childhood, I have been able to hone in on what is not immediately visible, and with a spiritual mother and an engineer father, I was given various training in balancing the unconventional with the conventional. This helped me create a career in the commercial world, until my next step of development appeared.
My career was fast-growing. With my specialisation in talent, I worked with the elite and received national as well as international acclaim.
I was offered several positions, and I accepted one with a company with headquarters in Silicon Valley. +30 talented employees in Kyiv and plenty of travel activity in Asia. A culturally new learning curve, but a few days before my first workday, my dad told me that he had cancer.
I lost my mum in upper secondary school, and every day since then, I had feared the day where my dad would be gone.
He was British, and with most of his family in London, my dad's illness required my full presence. Therefore, I decided to switch to a job with less travel activity.
I started my job search while filling a new position with many employees, being a mother to a teenager, moving into a new home etc.
My energy was fading, and I was offered happy pills. I was told that they could give me more energy. I thought about this, as it was tempting to have more energy during a demanding time, but I ended up saying no thank you.
Instead, I found support in skilled professionals working in an unconventional way. I was given exercises to strengthen my energies, received healing, and used techniques to strengthen myself mentally.
In the short term, it would have been easiest to accept the chemical quick fix and not have to feel or see. Close my eyes and one day be able to open them, and hey presto, all problems would magically have disappeared.
Choose the quick route to all learning, out of all sorrow and towards supreme personal coping – but that is not how it works.
I chose to wander through the darkness and feel every step until my father passed away.
Because, life has taught me that there is no quick route. Life runs along various routes, but they are not necessarily quick.
These days, I therefore become disillusioned when meeting resourceful people who share that they, just like me, have been offered or recommended getting energy from happy pills in order to ‘go that extra mile’ in times where they do not feel as energetic.
A common factor for these people is that they have faced or are facing challenging life situations and are therefore offered medicine to cope.
But, is there a pill for happiness, and is it always the right solution, if your life is causing you pain?
In some cases, the happy pill might keep us in a difficult place, if processing of grief and the ability to act are reduced. People may in these cases not feel enough to be able to change what is increasing their failure to thrive.
For example, I talked to two women who had ended up in dysfunctional relationships. One ended up on sick leave due to stress, but her primary stressor was not her job. They were both offered happy pills. One said no thank you, while the other accepted.
The consequence was that she could no longer feel what was causing her problems at home. So, she continued her life with her husband without change.
At work, she had become more passive, which means that was used to give her energy as an active woman was now draining energy because of her opposite behavioural pattern as passive. She had ended up in a vicious chemical circle.
In this new era, where conscious leadership of ourselves and others is the North Star, it is absolutely fundamental to be able to sense clearly, enabling us to act in accordance with our inner compass.
When we place a lid on our emotional universe, it reduces the degree of consciousness and thus our ability to lead an intuitive life.
At the moment, many people are challenged by fluctuating energy and lack of energy caused by worries about the present and the future. Many are looking for another way, which is quite natural, considering the times.
Therefore, it can have great consequences if we put a chemical stopper to our growth towards more consciousness in a paradigm where consciousness is the guiding principle for those looking for another way.
For me, in the life I lead now, this would correspond to driving blindfolded in traffic.
With an educational background as a psychologist – and perhaps most importantly with a lot of life experience at an early age – I am therefore encouraging you to consider the following:
Has the pill for happiness become the rule rather than the exception?
Is there any evidence that resourceful people in crisis gain more energy from happy pills?
What is the consequence of the reduced emotional universe caused by the happy pill, once the medicine is phased out? Are the medicated helped forward with methods of non-chemical coping?
If you are offered a pill for happiness, because you lack energy, there are other options.
And, once you find out that the quick route is not necessarily the quickest way forward, time is your friend, your strength. And perhaps, like me, you will find that:
‘The darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn’, The Alchemist.
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