Most of us have known individuals who have moaned and griped about their troubles to anyone within hearing distance. This is in stark contrast to those who go through their days with a smile and gentle humor, regardless of what they’re enduring. In fact, many people don’t even know what they’re going through because they rarely divulge any personal details to anyone.
Those who hide their pain behind a smile aren’t necessarily just strong, stoic types: they’ve often just developed certain behaviors to protect themselves, which the people around them rarely clue into. Here are some of the most common, according to psychology:
1. Becoming “the helper.”
You might have noticed that some people do their best to become invaluable helpers to those around them. This is often because they learned at an early age that the closer they are to danger, the further they are from harm, so to speak. Quite simply, if they ingratiate themselves with those who could potentially damage them, their value to those people overrides their negative feelings towards them.
This is a psychological self-preservation measure that many take after they’ve been in terrible circumstances. As a result, even if they’re dealing with incredible pain — physical, mental, or emotional — they’ll overcompensate by trying to do as much as they can for others.
They’re so afraid of being abandoned, punished, or otherwise mistreated for their legitimate emotional, physical, or mental needs that they do everything they can to make themselves invaluable to those around them. Even to their own detriment.
2. Deflecting difficulty with humor.
Many of us who have been through some truly hellish experiences have developed a rather dark sense of humor. We crack jokes about the awful things we’ve been through, so that we don’t make others uncomfortable about these subjects, while simultaneously protecting ourselves from the pain of going through it again. Basically, if we can make fun of the pain, then it loses power over us.
The downside to this is that those around us won’t clue in when we’re going through something truly awful because they’re accustomed to us making terrible jokes about it all. We never learned how to let people know that we’re going through difficulty, so when and if we do drop hints about how not okay we are, they assume we’re just joking again.
3. Never showing vulnerability to protect themselves from harm.
When people take self-defense classes, they’re taught that seeming vulnerable makes them a target for those who take advantage of weakness. They’re told to maintain a strong posture, walk with confidence, and appear to be a “hard target” that potential attackers wouldn’t want to engage with. It’s a sad reality that similar things happen in abusive relationships: people are less likely to be abused by those close to them if they don’t give their abuser what they want, i.e., crying, pleading, and so on.
This is because most abusers enjoy having power over others: they’re bolstered when their victims show weakness. And when they don’t, the abusers don’t know how to respond and may back off in favor of easier targets.
This is the approach I needed to cultivate at a young age to survive my abusive family. It was an effective method, but it resulted in lifelong alexithymia. That is, an inability to identify and express my feelings. Those of us who have programmed ourselves not to show weakness are often admired by our peers for our strength and stoicism, but they rarely realize it developed because we essentially had to shut down parts of our souls in order to survive.
4. Displacement of their valid emotions onto everyday gripes.
Displacement is a psychological defense mechanism that many people use to redirect their emotions when they don’t feel it’s acceptable to express them genuinely. For example, you’ll often see this kind of behavior in people who grew up being admonished if they “moaned” about things that truly bothered them. Their struggles were often invalidated by those around them, so they learned to project and displace their emotions into more socially acceptable topics instead.
For example, instead of discussing the thing that’s actually upsetting them, they may complain about traffic delays, terrible neighbors, rising grocery costs, and so on. This allows them to vent their frustrations and pent-up anger without offending anyone or risking admonishment. But the downside is that they gain a reputation for being a surly complainer, rather than anyone realizing what’s really going on beneath the surface.
5. Avoiding personal conversations.
We all know people who either state confidently that they don’t discuss their private lives or will otherwise sidestep and dance around queries so they never divulge personal information to those around them. This behavior is generally seen as perfectly acceptable: after all, many individuals simply prefer to keep their private lives private.
In reality, a lot of those who keep their personal lives to themselves do so because they’re hiding an extraordinary amount of pain. Not only is it easier to keep these details quiet, but there’s less of a chance of traumatizing their peers by being honest about what they’ve been through.
Others may try to spare those close to them from the knowledge that they’re suffering, such as a parent who keeps up a cheerful demeanor in order to keep their children unaware of their difficulties, or someone who wants to prevent their spouse from feeling worried or burdened by their problems. They appear stoic when in reality, they may be struggling immensely and could really do with some help.
6. Creating cover-up stories and excuses.
A person who’s going through difficulty but hides their pain behind a smile will often have a wide range of cover-up stories to explain away their erratic behavior. For example, if a colleague walks in on them crying in their office, they may say that someone sent them a really sweet video on social media.
Similarly, if they’re behaving in a manner that’s out of the ordinary, i.e., not their usual chipper or optimistic self, they’ll write it off as a migraine, hormones, or some other easily explainable malaise that others can relate to and won’t draw any extra attention. That way, since just about everyone can understand what they’re describing, there are unlikely to be any awkward follow-up questions.
7. Minimizing issues with cheerful behavior.
Some of the most cheerful, effervescent people I’ve ever known have been those who were hiding immense pain behind their smiles. I worked with one who was the office ball of sunshine all the time. He was forever offering a helping hand or encouraging word, baking cakes for people’s birthdays, and so on.
Everyone was shocked when we were informed that he had ended his life one weekend, as none of us had a clue that he had been suffering from crippling clinical depression (which wasn’t responding to treatment) as well as chronic physical pain.
When people like this are asked whether they’re okay or not, they’ll usually brush off these inquiries by smiling, insisting that they’re fine, and whatever they’re going through is “no big deal”. They generally don’t want to be seen as a burden in anyone’s life, so they don’t trouble people with the details of what they’re going through. It’s so common that it’s been informally referred to as “smiling depression.”
Additionally, many have had their pain and suffering minimized by so many people in the past that they know they won’t get their needs met if they complain about anything. So they don’t. They simply smile and keep it all inside… until they can’t anymore.
Final thoughts…
Now that you know the behaviors that people in pain use as protective measures, you may find yourself in a position to help someone who’s hurting more than they’re willing to admit. Alternatively, if you’ve been displaying these behaviors and weren’t aware of it, this may provide you with the encouragement you’ve needed to talk to a mental health professional. Please do. You don’t have to pretend everything is okay, and you don’t have to carry all of this pain by yourself.
