Part III: The Path Forward
What We Can Do About Unhappiness in 2025?
By Carl Patterson
Opening: Before We Begin
If you are reading this with doubt in your chest and your arms folded tight, I understand. Many of my clients arrive in the same posture: worn down and cautious. They have tried habits that never lasted, downloaded apps they abandoned, recited mantras that unraveled by Tuesday. When I present new tools, they brace. Disappointment has trained them to be careful.
Hesitation carries its own wisdom. Pessimism often appears when effort and outcome stop recognizing each other. It is the scar tissue of longing. Skepticism can even signal intelligence. It is the mind’s way of saying, Show me something that matches the weight of my life.
This essay honors that stance. It offers no miracles, only movement. Change rarely arrives with fireworks. It filters in like light through blinds: incremental, repeatable, human-sized.
Three principles guide us.
- Begin where you stand. A real day, a restless phone, a tired body. Steps that require perfect conditions belong to fantasy, not practice.
- Aim for steadiness. The work is to grow one notch more grounded, one notch more connected. Modest gains accumulate into something durable.
- Measure progress by what returns. Sleep that restores, attention that steadies, meals that nourish, conversations that endure. These are the beams that hold life in place.
The storms outside; politics, pressure, headlines, will continue beyond this page. Yet it is possible to root deeply enough to remain steady in their midst. It is possible to inhabit your days with stability and presence, even when the world feels unstable.
Skepticism belongs here. So does renewal. We step into the next section with the steadiness that allows us to meet the storm and remain whole inside it.
The Search for Agency
If unhappiness is the storm, then healing is not only to endure the weather but to root deeper, to grow even as the rain falls. For years, clients have asked me some version of the same question: How do I live when the world feels unlivable? A young teacher asked it with damp lesson plans crumpled in her hands. A father masked it with a half-smile at the dinner table, his fork tapping the plate long after the meal was finished. A grandmother voiced it as though releasing a burden she had carried across decades of loss. Though the tones differed, the longing was shared.
They were not seeking perfection. They were not asking for an end to sorrow. They wanted something sturdier: steadiness beneath their feet, a way to keep living with dignity. Agency rarely arrives as a revelation. It builds slowly, like morning light slipping between blinds. It shows itself in gestures so small they are easy to overlook: the neighbor who sets an extra plate at her table, the worker who chooses rest instead of another late-night shift, the woman who places fresh flowers in her office and feels the air change.
Toni Morrison taught us that surrendering to the wind allows us to ride it (Morrison, 1977). Her characters never avoid storms. They endure them, bend within them, and sometimes even find flight in them. To surrender, in Morrison’s sense, is not defeat but rhythm. It means loosening the illusion of control and discovering a way to keep moving together through currents bigger than the self.
James Baldwin reminded us that rage, when faced squarely, can sharpen into vision (Baldwin, 1961/1998). In his essays, rage was never chaos. It was diagnostic. Today, when economic inequity and political fracture leave so many seething, Baldwin would urge us to listen for what anger reveals. At a protest where a cardboard sign shakes in the rain, or at a family table where a father mutters at headlines, rage is not proof of brokenness. It is evidence of life refusing to go numb.
Audre Lorde reframed care itself as resistance. “Caring for myself,” she wrote, “is not self- indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare” (Lorde, 1988, p. 130). Her insistence matters in a moment when exhaustion is treated as weakness. To rest, to eat, to breathe fully in a body the world wants to deplete is not trivial. These are refusals, small insurgencies against systems that profit from our depletion.
And bell hooks extended the map further, arguing that love must not be an ornament but an ethic. Love, in her sense, is a daily choice to will the good of self and other (hooks, 2000). To love is to repair the fractures that isolation deepens. It looks like mismatched chairs pulled around a block-party table, friends turning toward one another when it would be easier to turn away, communities choosing honesty over apathy. In a culture where disconnection has become epidemic, hooks reminds us that love is not sentiment but its layered.
The winds of 2025 may not calm soon. Economic pressure, digital noise, a deepening political divide, and fractured communities will not disappear overnight. But how we root, how we reach, and how we rise will decide whether we simply endure or whether we flourish. Healing is not a destination waiting at the end of history. It is a daily act of reclamation, the insistence that despair will not have the last word.
Section I: Naming and Normalizing
One of the most powerful antidotes to unhappiness is the act of naming it. Too often, people assume their unhappiness signals personal weakness. Yet unhappiness is not a private failure. It is a collective condition shaped by systems and amplified by isolation.
Psychologist Kristin Neff calls self-compassion a radical practice because it interrupts the cycle of self blame. Her research shows that treating oneself with the same kindness offered to a friend reduces anxiety, depression, and shame (Neff, 2011). Brené Brown echoes this when she writes that vulnerability is not weakness but courage in action (Brown, 2012). Judith Herman reminds us that recovery begins with safety and recognition, that naming trauma allows people to see their wounds as responses to violation, not evidence of defectiveness (Herman, 1992/2015).
I recall a college student who arrived in my office convinced she was “defective” because she felt lonely. After we traced her story, she realized she had grown up in a fractured family and moved cities three times in four years. Loneliness was not evidence of her brokenness. It was a signal that her life had not provided stable ground. Naming that truth reduced her shame. For the first time, she said she felt “normal.”
I also think of a man in his fifties who came to therapy after being laid off from his job of twenty years. He carried enormous shame, convinced he had failed his family. Together we looked at the data: whole industries were cutting jobs, unemployment spikes were structural, not personal. Over time, he began to see that his worth was not tied to the pink slip. He told me one afternoon, “I’m not broken. The system is.” That shift freed him to imagine what came next, rather than bury himself in blame.
To normalize unhappiness is not to dismiss it. It is to understand it as part of being human in a time of fractured institutions and fragile connections. The first step toward happiness is to release the burden of believing it must always come from within.
Section II: Rebuilding Connection
Loneliness is one of the sharpest drivers of unhappiness. Yet its remedy often begins with the smallest gestures. The Gottmans’ research on couples reveals that relationships thrive not only on grand gestures but on micro-moments of connection (Gottman & Gottman, 2015). Turning toward a partner when they make a bid for attention, no matter how small, builds a foundation of trust.
This insight extends beyond marriage. Lydia Denworth (2020) shows that regular, even modest, interactions protect health and happiness. Weekly dinners, group texts, or standing coffee dates keep bonds alive. The Surgeon General’s 2023 framework on loneliness emphasizes the same: connection is medicine (Murthy, 2023). And bell hooks insisted that love, practiced as ethic, steadies communities against collapse (hooks, 2000).
One client told me about a neighbor who began hosting Sunday dinners in their apartment building. At first, only three families came. A year later, the dinners filled the courtyard, with tables strung together and children playing under the lights. The meal became more than food. It became community, protection, belonging.
I am also reminded of a widowed grandmother who reluctantly joined a weekly walking group after her daughter urged her to “just try it.” At first she walked silently, eyes on the ground, convinced no one wanted to hear her voice. But week after week, the rhythm of movement softened her resistance. One day she found herself laughing at a story, another week she shared one of her own. Months later, she told me, “It isn’t the walking that healed me. It’s that I was no longer walking alone.” Connection is not sentimental. It is necessity.
Section III: Protecting the Mind
Our minds are strained by perfectionism, distraction, and relentless comparison. Protecting the mind requires both boundaries and reorientation.
Cal Newport argues for “digital minimalism,” the practice of curating technology use to serve our values rather than erode them (Newport, 2019). Gloria Mark (2023) demonstrates that focus is not just about productivity but about well-being. Constant task-switching depletes our capacity for joy. Ellen Langer’s research on mindfulness shows that awareness of the present moment expands options and reduces stress (Langer, 2014). And Thomas Curran’s work on perfectionism reveals a generational rise in self criticism, often confused for failure but actually a cultural trend (Curran & Hill, 2019).
One of my clients, a graduate student, described how she quit using her phone during study hours. Instead, she kept a notebook for when her mind wandered. Each time she wanted to check social media, she wrote down the urge. Within weeks, she realized the cravings grew weaker. Journaling gave her a sense of agency. She said, “For the first time, I’m choosing my attention instead of selling it.”
Another story comes from a high-school student drowning in the comparisons of Instagram. Each scroll felt like proof she was never enough. With encouragement, she deleted her apps for one month and replaced that time with journaling. At first, her pages were filled with self- criticism. Slowly, they shifted to gratitude lists, sketches, fragments of poetry. She told me, “I still feel pressure, but now I know what’s mine and what isn’t.”
Protecting the mind is not only about reducing harm. It is about reclaiming dignity. In a culture where attention is harvested for profit, attention becomes the most valuable resource we can reclaim.
Section IV: Restoring the Body
The body is not separate from happiness. It is its soil. Without care, the roots wither.
Matthew Walker (2017) shows that sleep is one of the most powerful regulators of mood. Felice Jacka (2017) demonstrates that diets rich in whole foods reduce depression risk, while ultra- processed foods increase it. Kelly McGonigal (2019) reframes exercise as joy rather than punishment, emphasizing the “feel-good” hormones released in movement and the social bonds it creates. And Resmaa Menakem (2017) reminds us that the body is also where racialized trauma lives. Healing the body is therefore not only personal but cultural, restoring dignity where harm has been carried for generations.
I once worked with a nurse who had become so exhausted that she described her days as “sleepwalking.” She began with small changes: adjusting her bedtime, packing simple meals, and walking around the block after shifts. Within two months, her energy returned. She said, “I didn’t realize how much I had abandoned my body.”
And I remember a father of two who worked long hours in a warehouse and believed he had no time for exercise. When his doctor raised concerns about his blood pressure, he panicked. But instead of joining a gym, he started biking with his kids after dinner. At first, it was clumsy and tiring. Over time, it became joy. His kids laughed, he laughed, and suddenly exercise was no longer a duty. It was play, and it was life-giving.
To restore the body is to relearn that joy is not separate from flesh. It is to reclaim the body as a
site of resilience, culture, and hope.
Section V: Recovering Meaning
Even with connection, clarity, and health, unhappiness persists when life feels empty of meaning. Emily Esfahani Smith (2017) identifies four pillars of meaning: belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence. When any of these crumble, despair grows.
Smith’s framework reminds us that meaning is multi-dimensional.
- Belonging is not simply proximity to others but the felt sense of being seen and valued in our families, friendships, and communities.
- Purpose directs us outward, grounding our days in contribution, whether through work, caregiving, or service, that links our efforts to something larger than ourselves.
- Storytelling is how we weave coherence out of chaos, turning the fragments of experience into a narrative that helps us understand who we are and where we are going.
- And transcendence lifts us beyond the self, as when someone stands at the edge of the ocean or kneels in prayer and feels both small and infinite.
When these pillars hold, they anchor us against life’s uncertainty. When they falter, meaning erodes, leaving despair room to grow.
Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (1946/2006) remains a guide. Surviving Auschwitz, he argued that meaning does not come from pleasure but from purpose, service, and responsibility. Martha Nussbaum (2011) extends this insight through the capabilities approach: flourishing is the freedom to be and to do what we value.
I think of a widower who came to therapy convinced life had ended with his wife’s death. Over time, he began mentoring teenagers at a local dance class. He found new belonging, a new story, a new reason to wake in the morning. He told me, “I didn’t replace her. I grew into someone she would be proud of.”
I also remember a woman who, after a difficult divorce, rediscovered painting. At first she filled canvases with anger, splashes of red and black. But gradually, her colors softened. She began painting her garden, her children, her own hands. What began as therapy became purpose. She started sharing her work with friends and family and then at local art shows. Meaning returned not in one dramatic revelation but in each brushstroke.
Meaning is not abstract. It is cultivated daily in the stories we tell about our lives, the people we serve, and the practices we honor. Whether through faith, art, activism, or community, meaning provides ballast against despair.
Section VI: Collective Action and Hope
While individual practices matter, systemic despair requires collective response. Katharine Hayhoe (2021) argues that hope is not an emotion but a practice of engagement. Robert Putnam (2000) emphasizes that when people gather in community groups, their trust in one another grows. And Menakem (2017) adds that collective healing of racialized trauma requires embodied practices: breathing, grounding, and rituals that restore dignity to communities long denied it.
I think of a retired teacher who, after years of feeling adrift, began tutoring children at the local library. At first it was just an hour a week, helping with reading and homework. Soon, he found himself part of a small community of volunteers. Belonging returned in the friendships he built there, purpose in the steady work of helping a child sound out words, storytelling in the way he reframed his life not as “finished” but as “still contributing,” and transcendence in the quiet joy of seeing a young face light up with understanding.
Collective action reminds us that happiness is not merely private. It is public. Flourishing is possible when communities cultivate resilience together. If despair is contagious, so too is hope. The neighbor’s potluck, the retired teacher’s commitment to care, the church choir’s hymn, these ripple outward, carrying people who may never have met into a shared future.
Clinical Translation: The Work of Therapy
Therapy is often mistaken as a space only for crisis. In reality, it is a rehearsal ground for living differently. Inside the room, clients learn to re-author their stories, to practice skills that the outside world rarely teaches, and to cultivate resilience they can carry home.
Here, a graduate student learns that her panic attacks are not proof of weakness but responses to perfectionism woven into her childhood. Here, a father discovers that his irritability is not a fixed flaw but the residue of unprocessed grief. Here, a young woman admits, “I don’t know if I belong anywhere,” and for the first time her doubt is met not with dismissal but with curiosity.
Thomas Curran’s curves on perfectionism (Curran & Hill, 2019), Matthew Walker’s data on sleep (Walker, 2017), and Smith’s pillars of meaning (Smith, 2017) do not remain theories. They appear in trembling hands, tired faces, and hesitant voices. Therapy gives those ideas flesh and then offers flesh a chance at freedom.
In every session, there is a sorting: What belongs to me, and what belongs to the world I live in? Clients discover that vigilance, self-criticism, or withdrawal are not moral failings but survival strategies. But survival is not the same as flourishing. Therapy becomes the space where survival can soften into life again, where joy is rehearsed until it becomes muscle memory, where meaning is practiced until it feels like breath.
I often tell my clients: therapy is not the removal of storms. It is learning to build shelter, to notice the small patches of light, to trust that the possibility of sun is real.
Closing: Toward a Culture of Flourishing
Audre Lorde once declared, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare” (Lorde, 1988, p. 130). Her words carry new urgency today. To care for ourselves, to connect with others, to restore meaning and health, is to resist the forces that profit from despair.
Happiness in 2025 is not a simple mood. It is a discipline, a daily practice, a shared act of defiance. It emerges when individuals nurture belonging, when communities protect the mind and restore the body, when movements recover meaning and demand justice. It grows not in isolation but in the collective cadence of people choosing life against the gravity of despair.
Baldwin taught us that rage, when faced honestly, is not chaos but clarity, a force that can sharpen despair into vision (Baldwin, 1961/1998). Morrison urged us to surrender to the wind not as defeat but as cadence, discovering how to bend without breaking and sometimes even to rise in flight (Morrison, 1977). hooks reminded us that love is not an ornament to be added after the struggle but an ethic, a discipline of care woven daily into relationship and community (hooks, 2000). And Lorde showed us that tending to the self is inseparable from tending to the world we hope to repair (Lorde, 1988).
To close, I return to an image. A church choir sings in a small brick building at dusk. Their voices spill through open windows into the street, where a boy on a bike pauses to listen. Inside, the choir is practicing for Sunday, but outside, something larger is happening. The boy straightens his back, steadies his hands on the handlebars, and begins to hum along as he rides away. The storm is real. So is the song that carries beyond the walls; proof we are not powerless, proof we can rise.
References
- Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Gotham Books.
- Curran, T., & Hill, A. P. (2019). Perfectionism is increasing over time: A meta-analysis of birth cohort differences from 1989 to 2016. Psychological Bulletin, 145(4), 410–429.
- Denworth, L. (2020). Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond. W. W. Norton.
- Frankl, V. (2006). Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press. (Original work published 1946)
- Gottman, J., & Gottman, J. (2015). 10 Principles for Doing Effective Couples Therapy. W. W. Norton.
- Hayhoe, K. (2021). Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. Atria/One Signal Publishers.
- Jacka, F. N., O’Neil, A., Opie, R., Itsiopoulos, C., Cotton, S., Mohebbi, M., … Berk, M. (2017). A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression. BMC Medicine, 15(23).
- Langer, E. (2014). Mindfulness. Da Capo Press.
- Lorde, A. (1988). A Burst of Light: and Other Essays. Firebrand Books.
- Mark, G. (2023). Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity. Hanover Square Press.
- McGonigal, K. (2019). The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage. Avery.
- Menakem, R. (2017). My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Central Recovery Press.
- Morrison, T. (1977). Song of Solomon. Alfred A. Knopf.
- Murthy, V. (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
- Neff, K. (2011). Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. William Morrow.
- Newport, C. (2019). Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Portfolio.
- Nussbaum, M. C. (2011). Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Harvard University Press.
- Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster.
- Smith, E. E. (2017). The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness. Crown.
- Walker, M. (2017). Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Scribner.
- WHO. (2022). Global Status Report on Physical Activity 2022. World Health Organization.
Suggested Reading (General Audience)
- Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion (2011) — how kindness toward self heals.
- Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning (2017) — practical guide to purpose.
- Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism (2019) — reclaiming attention.
- Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement (2019) — finding joy in motion.
- Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946/2006) — purpose as survival.
