Why do we deny ourselves happiness?

Question

I don’t
By not deciding to be happy
Considerations about other people – feelings of being happy at someone else’s expense
We live for others at the backseat of our own car – you come first
Instinctive fear
Because we think
Poor sense of self-worth entailing upon feelings of guilt about pleasure and happiness
Because we are idiots
Because we do not understand it
We need to define what happiness is
I don’t I am happy all the time
We do not deny, this all is just part of life
We have shared responsibilities in the world, we have to sacrifice things, and so we must not seek pleasure that is hedonism
I do not know
We deny happiness until we feel that we have earned it
We think we do not deserve happiness and we try to punish ourselves
We deny happiness in this life for the sake of life hereafter, is there any life after this
We need courage to be happy, or we will be pulled down by the unhappy around us.
Desire ruins our chances to become happy
Fear, may be
We are stupid

Because of ignorance

Answer 1

Because the majority of us, actually no, the minority of us choose to live our lives pleasing other people and doing nothing but chasing our tails in our own life. For some of us that is what brings us happiness, for others, such as myself, it does nothing but continually push me into the backseat of my own car!
Look after yourself, you come first, and as long as that is the case you will be fine.

Answer 2

Because to live in a civilised society we have to consider other people and we all have pressures to hold down jobs and support our friends and family.
This means that we have to make a lot of personal sacrifices for the benefit of others and to help build our future.
The pursuit of pleasure at the cost of everything else is called hedonism all this does is create self centred people.

Answer 3

Because if you allow yourself to be happy the rest of this miserable world will do everything in their power to bring you down. It's easier to just blend right in.

Allowing yourself to be happy requires courage.

Answer 4

Because most people don;t believe that they deserve happiness. We often believe that we are not good enough for happiness to happen to us so we deny ourselves happiness in an attempt to punish ourselves

Answer 5

We feel that we have to have reasons to be happy, that we need to earn the right to feel good. So if a person feels like they have not done enough, been successful enough or look good enough they don't feel like they have the right to be happy.

Answer 6

Usually for psychotic religious reasons along the lines of, "If I deny myself happiness in this life, then I will get eternal happiness in the next life."

Yeah, if this is the only life you've got then you've been chumped!

Answer 7

Most people do because of their poor sense of self-worth. People will often feel guilty about pleasure and happiness either because of abuse in the past, or bullying, or whatever.

Answer 8

By not making a decision to be happy denies happiness from us. Everyone has reasons to be unhappy, some just decide to be happy no matter what. ... www.christiankeys.ca

Answer 9

Sometimes I wonder this, but I think instincts within actually tell us that we will not actually be happy or we probably would not be denying it. In some cases though, "Fear" will keep us from anything that is good for us.

Answer 10

Because of ignorance; we don't know what will give us true happiness. We long for short-term happiness which gives us long term sufferring.