A smile can hide so much pain

There is a widespread belief that positivity attracts positivity, even though I believe this is true to a degree, there isn’t necessarily a direct correlation. This belief has led people to be more inclined to socialize with positive persons and to resent negative persons.

When was the last time you enjoyed the company of a pessimistic person? What can epitomize positivity more than a smile? This has made it in such a way that people have to keep a positive demeanor in order to socialize with others, even when this isn’t how they feel or who they are. Nobody is trying to hear your problems or deal with whatever is going wrong in your life, they might tolerate it to a certain degree, but eventually they run out of empathy.

A simple test you can do to see this happen in real time is to share a happy and a sad story with your friends and see their level of investment. This phenomenon can be peeled back several layers, from our persistent quest for happiness, through our fear of sadness we endlessly strive for what can make us happy so we dislike what could bring us any sadness even by association.

The understanding of this has led us to hide our feelings behind a smile, in order to avoid rejection, judgement or affecting others. A person who tends to always be negative is certainly going to feel rejected by his peers and unable to perform a basic instinct of every human, which is socialization. You can imagine if you didn’t have anyone to speak to and nobody cared about you because they knew you would always be negative, your life would be pretty lonely and one of perpetual sadness. That's why we find it compelling to always be happy even when we aren’t, to smile even when we rather want to cry, to pretend even when all we want is to be honest. This is all rooted in the fear of rejection and judgement.

Behind a smile

Before looking at what is behind a smile we can clearly see what a smile reflects, happiness, positivity and all the positive feelings you can think of.

Now behind a smile we can hide a lot of pain, depression, sadness, worry and many other emotions which in other circumstances are represented by different expressions. When you are in sadness you have a reversed smile, when worried an expression of concern can be seen on your face and when you are in pain your whole demeanor changes. It's difficult to pretend to be sad when you are happy, but it's easy to pretend to be happy when you are sad. I guess this is a good thing when you think about it because if we weren't able to hide our sadness then we’ll end up being very isolated.

Should you hide your feelings?

You shouldn’t hide your feelings, you should feel free to open up to your family and friends about how you honestly feel and how you are doing inside. Repressing emotions, especially the negative ones can only culminate in an implosion, when they are bottled up for too long they start transforming into something much worse. You should learn to let them out always.

The problem comes in because of the way you let them out and also the danger of narcissism. It's not because you are angry that you should latch out on everybody, or because you are jealous that you should hurt others. Some people just have a hard time knowing how to let out their emotions in the right way, and this is what causes trouble. When angry you try to take it out on everybody, when sad you try to make it everybody’s problem, when frustrated you try to transfer it to others. The right way would be to let out your aggression in a control way which doesn’t hurt others. To allow people to assist you in your sorrow and not make them sad too. To seek advice for your frustration and not transfer it.

Finally! Don’t become a narcissist who only cares about how they feel and who wants everybody else to only care about them while they care about nobody else. In the same way you want to share your feelings, let others share theirs with you as well.

Conclusion

Let your emotions out, a smile is only meant to show happiness and positivity. Get rid of the negative emotions which are corrupting your beautiful smile.