Have you ever got something new or had an amazing change to your life and find that after time passes it may not make you as happy as it once did? Welcome to the Hedonic Treadmill. In this article learn about how this impacts the happiness you feel in life, can endanger your recovery and ways in which you can lessen its effect.
What is the Hedonic Treadmill?
The Hedonic Treadmill also known as Hedonic Adaptation is a concept that has been discussed and looked at in the field of psychiatry for decades. Much of this concept relies on the fact that we as living organisms have to adapt to whatever environment that we find ourselves in. The idea is that we humans have a baseline of happiness that our lives revolve around. When something good happens to us and we feel an experience of elevated happiness our minds will have to adapt to this new situation which will cause our levels to drop back down to the baseline level as if nothing changed. It also relates to when bad things happen. When we go through bad events in life we will have a decrease in happiness but as we adapt to this new life we will slowly find us returning to the same level of happiness. This is the treadmill. We always want to chase happiness in life but no matter how much we run towards it we will constantly return to the same place.
Chasing Happiness
They work hard to fulfill this desire, in belief that fulfilling it, they will gain satisfaction. The problem though is once they fulfill a desire in life they adapt to its presence…
A Guide to the Good Life – William Irvine
It is so easy for us to see the things that we do not have in life. Especially in this modern world that thrives on selling you happiness and social media filled with images of all these things other people have. It is easy for us to think that if I bought that car I want or if I get that house I will be so much happier. We can be working a job that we do not enjoy and think that if I get this dream job that I want I will feel so much better. We can even find ourselves wanting to be in a relationship with a certain someone so badly that we think just if we could then all will be perfect.
But then we get that car or house and yes we might be happy at first but after awhile it just doesn’t make us as happy. Maybe I need that other car with all those features or maybe I need that bigger house that’s why I’m not happy as much. Or I land that dream job and this is what I have been waiting for. But then after awhile I find myself maybe not liking my boss, my co-workers, I’m over worked, not getting paid enough or they just don’t appreciate me. Maybe I do get in a relationship with that person and I am so in love this is all that I have been wanting. But after awhile I start to pick it apart, look for the flaws, see what might be missing…it has to be something because where did those butterflies I used to feel go?
This is how we are punished by the Hedonic Treadmill. What it tells us is that yes those things do not make you as happy any longer. You have adapted to having that car or house, the dream job, the person you are with. You adapted so much to the point that it has returned you from elevated happiness to your baseline level. So you are an addict that turns your attention to something else to get you back to that high. In fact this has led many of us to addiction. We can find ourselves getting everything we might have dreamed of but find that it is empty and no longer makes us happy so we turn to drinking and drugs to fill that emptiness and elevate ourselves. How many times have you heard in the rooms people talk about how they had everything they could want but it was not enough?
The Good and Bad for Recovery
One of the beautiful parts of Hedonic Adaptation is that it says when we go through bad things that we will adapt to our new life and our happiness will increase. When we reach the bottom of our addictions and see ourselves losing so much in our life and destroying so much around us, it is easy to find ourselves depressed about the situation we are in. Early in our recovery it can feel nice to be sober but hard to deal with the life situation our addictions pushed us to. Well you will adapt to this new life and you will start to feel better. Eventually, you should find that you are reaching that baseline of happiness that you may have not felt for some time.
That is the good.
The bad for recovery is that this return to our baseline can make us complacent in our recovery. We can start to feel that life is getting back to what it used to feel like and maybe we do not need to take our recovery as seriously. Maybe I do not have to go to meetings, work the steps, have a sponsor. Or even more maybe it is okay if I have just a little bit again. Yes, you will adapt and life will get better from that low but always remember your recovery because you can head back down again.
Some Stoic and Recovery Advice to Fight it
The ultimate thing that you need to do to avoid getting stuck on this treadmill is to make your life less about looking at the things you do not have as your goal to happiness and begin to look at the things you do have. The use of Gratitude Lists that they tell us to write in recovery programs is trying to get us to think of this. To begin to appreciate what we have each day rather than what we do not have. A technique that is similar to Gratitude Lists that is discussed throughout Stoic philosophy is the use of Negative Visualization. This technique says rather than looking at what you do not have why don’t you imagine losing the things you do. The things you own, the place you sleep, the job you have, the people in your life. Start imagining a life without any of these things. The negative is subtracting it from you life through picturing or visualizing it in your mind. If you can start picturing a life without what you have then over time you will think less about the things you do not have and appreciate what you do have. If you can achieve this you will find yourself not getting tired of what you got but happy each and every day that you get to live the life you have.
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Derek Castleman: The Sober Stoic 