Each of us has had, is having, or will have a time of life during which we feel a pervasive sense of – for now let’s call it – dissatisfaction. This catch-all term can be experienced as unhappiness, sadness, tension, stress, an anxiety felt as fragility or a background of dread, a simmering kind of rage, resentment, directionlessness, purposelessness, or boredom. There are certainly many other ways it manifests, too. One can perhaps notice it in oneself or others as irritability, loss of interest or disengagement, distraction, decrease in ability to plan or get things done, or befuddlement. 

This broad range of dissatisfactions can come and go, but even when gone, can nonetheless feel nearby, ready to descend at any time. These experiences, like pain, can feel sharp or dull, intense or mild. They may not be debilitating as far as getting one’s life requirements done, but they take a toll. 

One reason, perhaps the main one, that these dissatisfactions are chronic and pervasive is that their sources remain indistinct and their solutions either elusive or untenable. 

A common response to these dissatisfactions is wanting to escape, to drop everything – all commitments – and just run away. Where to? The ‘where to’ is less important than the gnawing desire to extricate oneself from one’s current life. 

Because the solutions are either elusive or untenable – after all, most of us will not quit our jobs and leave our families behind – a common coping strategy is distraction, ranging from taking on new hobbies, falling into an affair, buying new and expensive things, taking expensive vacations to remote and beautiful places, or remodeling that which is not in great need of remodeling. Some of these ‘projects’ are not bad; they just may be irrelevant to addressing the true ailment.

In my writing here, I don’t mean to convey a tone of superiority or of belittlement. We all face these hard-to-resolve dissatisfactions. I’m right there with everyone in experiencing them and trying to find my way out of them. 

I venture to categorize these dissatisfactions as lifestyle-based and existentially based. Lifestyle ones relate to specifics in one’s current way of navigating and engaging with the world, a way that does not align with one’s temperamental traits. A current lifestyle may feel too hectic, too full of commitments and expectations, too loud, or, perhaps instead, too quiet, too routine, and too unchallenging. I’ve written about these temperament-lifestyle misalignments before. 

Our temperaments, the most biologically based aspects of our personalities, give us a comfort zone that, when we stray outside of it too often or dwell outside it too long, leads to stress and dissatisfaction. A common example is health care professionals seeing too many patients for appointments that are too short. For many providers, their work pace is experienced as too fast and too unrelenting for comfort, and leads to burnout. 

The existentially based dissatisfactions may reach deeper. These grow when a person loses a sense of meaning and purpose. Work may come to seem like just another bullshit job that’s not doing much good. And, of course, many times a person’s dissatisfaction has both lifestyle and existential aspects, and each serves to worsen the other. 

With that said, let me return to the reason the solutions to these dissatisfactions are either elusive or untenable (unless one is willing to detonate one’s entire life). 

The answer is that getting to their source takes a lot of effort. Often, it isn’t the case that a person is unwilling to put in the effort. Instead, it’s that the idea to pursue these dissatisfactions to their ultimate sources simply doesn’t cross one’s mind. We often aren’t either taught or encouraged to reflect on our lives in such ways. 

I want to share my often-repeated caveat: although I’m a psychiatrist, I think certain types of self-reflection are counter-productive, solipsistic, and self-indulgent navel-gazing. For some people, a lesser focus on self would be a step in the right direction. Often, a focus on the natural and interpersonal world and how one can contribute is what should be done. Nevertheless, when a person is hurting, becoming increasingly unhappy and ineffective, a certain type of self-reflection is indicated to diagnose and treat the problem. This is a self-reflection that focuses on how one is in the world and whether one’s current how in the world is the best way of being. If you are misaligned or if you don’t yet know how best to get aligned to lead a flourishing life that you can bequeath upon yourself and upon the people around you who could benefit from your unique way of ‘howing,’ then it’s worth finding out. 

Here, I’ll remind you of the 5 Whys Approach. One train of questions starts with “Why am I unhappy?” and is followed by asking “Why?” to each response several times. Five is a suggestion and an average. Another question to start off the train is “What do I want?” and again followed by asking “Why?” to each response. 

My motivations here: I believe many of us work too hard to be the kind of person we are not meant to be. I believe that this misalignment leads to reduced flourishing for self and all the others that can benefit from a more flourishing you. I believe a better alignment is possible, even though full satisfaction and alignment are never achieved. Excellence is a habit. 

Another caveat: I know all this may seem like a champagne or first-world problem. Perhaps. But no matter one’s individual circumstances, I believe everyone can find a way to fit oneself a bit better into the world’s opportunities and to fit the world a bit better into one’s way of wanting (needing) to live. 

Last point: the experience of dissatisfaction is both the trouble and the way out of the trouble. The dissatisfaction can be what sets a person off on their quest for a better way, and that provides a direction to the destination (one’s destiny). Holding oneself in the problem and the elusiveness of the solution is to already be on one’s way. 

Thanks, and let me know what you think. Questions and solutions are welcome. 

Dr. Jack

Quotes of the Week

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” – Carl Rogers

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” – Rainer Maria Rilke