Key Takeaways
- Talk to a mental health professional if you’re feeling unhappy and it’s not improving.
- Exercise regularly to boost your mood and feel better.
- Connect with friends and family to overcome loneliness and feel happier.
The feeling that nothing makes you happy can be temporary or it can be associated with a serious mental health condition like major depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). If you’re feeling this way, it’s important to acknowledge and address your feelings so you can start to feel better.
If you have these feelings along with thoughts of suicide or self-harm, see a mental health professional right away. If your feelings of unhappiness are less severe or began recently, there are things you can do at home to help improve your state of mind and feelings of well-being.
Learn more about why you might be feeling like nothing makes you happy, and some of the things you can do to feel happier.
Why Do I Feel Like Nothing Makes Me Happy?
There are a lot of different reasons why you might feel like nothing makes you happy. Certain mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and PTSD can cause severe feelings of unhappiness, lack of motivation, and disinterest in activities that used to bring joy. These conditions can make you feel numb or like you feel nothing at all.
Serious mental health conditions are best treated by a mental health care professional, who may decide that you need to take antidepressant medications to help relieve your symptoms.
Certain life situations and circumstances can also make you feel like nothing makes you happy. Sleeping poorly or eating unhealthy foods can affect your emotions just as it affects your body. Work-related stress and burnout can also contribute to feelings of unhappiness. Some studies have found that working long hours and/or having little control over your schedule can have a negative impact on your well-being.
Your social relationships can also contribute to feelings of happiness or unhappiness. Research has found that loneliness is a major risk factor for depression. Problems or conflicts in existing social relationships may also contribute to periods of unhappiness.
Change Your Mindset
If you’re experiencing transient or temporary feelings of lack of enjoyment, you may be able to find happiness again by making simple changes to your mindset.
If you feel that you are putting off feeling happy for some time in the future, it’s important to stop using this as an excuse to avoid living your life now. While bad things may have happened to you in the past, or you may not have everything that you want in your life right now, everyone has a story of some sort that weighs heavy on their heart.
Ask yourself what happiness really means to you. If you believe you can’t be happy unless you’ve achieved all of your major life goals, you should re-evaluate those expectations. Try to find happiness in smaller things, like hobbies and activities, friendships, or travel.
How you think about your story and how you go out into the world and live with it is what will set you apart.
End Rumination and Engage in Problem Solving
Next, if you find that you are ready to change your mindset about how you are feeling, what are the concrete steps you can take to actually get there?
One of the things that people who are feeling down tend to do is to ruminate about how they are feeling. Is that you? Do you think a lot about how you don’t enjoy things anymore?
Rumination is a habit that can worsen low mood or feelings of lack of enjoyment. Try to be aware of your thoughts and watch for times that you spiral into negative thinking.
Ask yourself, why am I upset? What do I need to acknowledge, evaluate, or change? While complaining about your situation or ruminating might feel like you are doing something, in reality, you are only making yourself feel worse.
Identify problems that you can solve, and take action on them. In taking action, you will start to feel better.
Connect With Others
If your feelings of unhappiness are driven by loneliness or a lack of meaningful social connections, it can help to reach out to a trusted friend or family member. Having lunch or coffee with someone even once or twice a week may help relieve feelings of loneliness and give you something to look forward to.
If you feel like you don’t have any strong social ties, consider joining a social club or taking a class that will connect you with people who share your interests.
Get Some Exercise
Try to engage in exercise at least a few times a week, ideally for 30 minutes each time. Exercise causes your brain to release endorphins, which will naturally make you feel more upbeat and happier.
Develop Healthy Habits
Similar to getting regular exercise, make sure that you are engaging in other healthy habits in your life.
Are you drinking enough water each day? Do you eat healthy food each day and take vitamins regularly? Junk food, alcohol, etc. will serve to worsen a bad mood, make you feel sluggish, and keep you in a state of low mood.
On the other hand, healthy habits will give you a solid foundation on which to build back your joy in life. Give yourself a chance to feel better by making sure you are doing basic things to maintain your health and mental health.
Get Plenty of Sleep
Poor sleep habits can be hard on your body as well as your mind. If you’re not consistently getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night, try setting a sleep schedule and sticking to it, even on the weekends. It can also help to make sure you have a comfortable, dark sleeping environment. Don’t leave lights or the television on and make sure it doesn’t get too warm in your bedroom.
Practice Meditation and Yoga
If you still find that you can’t reconnect with joyful things in your life, try adding in a regular meditation and/or yoga practice along with breathing exercises.
Research has found that meditation can help produce changes in the parts of your brain responsible for emotional regulation. Having a regular practice will help you to release negative emotions and stress, leading you to feel more peaceful, joyful, and ready for clarity in your life.
Reconnect With Joy
At this point, you might be ready to start adding back joyful activities into your life. What did you used to enjoy doing? Whether it was art projects, working in your garden, reading, watching movies, or other activities, make a point of dedicating a bit of time each day or week to the things that bring you joy.
While you may not immediately feel like doing these things, taking action to add them back into your life will eventually help to boost your mood and bring back the joy you once felt.
And, if there are barriers to you doing the things you used to enjoy, see if there are new activities that can take their place or other ways to go about doing what you used to do.
For example, if you used to enjoy lunch dates with friends, but no longer have the ability to meet with them, see if there’s another social activity that you can take up and find enjoyable.
Consider Professional Help
Finally, what do you do if you’ve tried all of the above and you still find that nothing makes you happy? At that point, you may wish to consider enlisting the help of your doctor or a mental health professional.
Loss of pleasure and motivation can be a sign of clinical depression, which can sometimes have a biological cause.
Depression can be treated with therapy and/or medication so that your mind has a chance to feel positive again (through the release of positive chemicals in your brain).
Get Help Now
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Keep in Mind
If you find that nothing makes you happy anymore, start with your mindset, address your physical and mental health, restart activities that you previously found enjoyable, and then take stock of your situation.
If you still feel a lack of enjoyment or motivation, you may be living with clinical depression, which is not a problem you can solve on your own.
Remember that there is no shame in reaching out for help if you need it. Especially if you have tried all of the previous suggestions without any improvement, it’s important to reach out to your doctor or a mental health professional for help.
