Have you got the life you always wanted? Are you positively full of glee and as happy as anyone could ever be?

Or is that just what other people see when they look at you?

Perhaps you don’t really know what’s going on with your emotions, so you just put on a brave face and hope that you can fake it until you make it.

But are you actually deeply unhappy? And are your attempts to either deny those feelings or even cover them up entirely actually adding to the problem?

Psychologists are used to working with people who don’t express their true feelings either because they’re not adequately in touch with their emotions or because they want to conceal them for a multitude of reasons.

So here are six signs you’re unhappy in life but hiding it well, according to psychology. If you recognize them, it’s time to take a deep look at yourself and be honest with your feelings.

1) You’re exhausted

Even if others feel that you seem happy all the time, or at least pretty well-adjusted, it might not be so under the surface.

You might actually be feeling quite unhappy in life, but you might also feel the need to hide it. You might want to keep up appearances of happy success for work or social reasons, maintain positive expression for the sake of your partner or kids, or just be trying to fool yourself.

Interestingly, a psychological study by researchers from Berkley and Stanford found an important clue that would reveal this behavior even if you’re hiding it from yourself.

In this study, researchers instructed participants to watch short films, but half were instructed to conceal their emotions while doing so. The participants were filmed and had their vitals taken.

As you might expect, the people who tried to hide their emotions showed fewer facial and behavioral signs of amusement or sadness when they watched comedic and tragic films. But they couldn’t hide their internal responses.

In fact, the team found that “the most striking feature of emotional suppression common to all emotions we have studied thus far is the enhanced sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular system.

This suggests that suppression of both positive and negative emotions exacts a palpable physiological cost…”

Their findings suggest that if a person chronically suppresses their feelings, it uses a lot of energy and can take a very obvious toll on their body. 

So, if you’re deeply unhappy but hiding it, people might still notice that you’re way more tired than makes sense for your lifestyle. They might chalk it up to a bunch of exacting activities they simply don’t know about. 

Only you will know if you’re actually wiped out from hiding your emotions.

2) You’re not thinking straight

That same Berkley and Stanford study came to another interesting conclusion.

They suggest that focusing on hiding your emotions can also take a toll on your mental acuity.

“Emotional inhibition leads to widespread increases in sympathetic activation. Such heightened physiological activation has been shown to lead to impaired sensory intake and sensorimotor integration (Lacey & Lacey, 1979). This suggests that emotional inhibition might diminish cognitive performance.”

You might think that you’re doing a good job hiding your unhappiness, and you may be right.

However, while people will think that you’re happy, they might notice other symptoms like you’re not able to think straight, your memory isn’t great, and you’re easily confused.

Someone who has known you for a long time, like a parent, partner, or close friend, will be able to notice that something is wrong even if most people in your life seem to be buying the line that everything in your life is A-OK.

3) Your body shows symptoms

If you think that you’re able to hide your emotions away from other people, you’re probably right.

If you believe you can fool yourself into feeling alright, or at least maintain your behavior as long as you don’t think about being unhappy, that could also be true.

However, according to psychological research, you simply can’t hide unhappiness from your own body.

We already saw how hiding your emotions can be exhausting.

Another study found that people who constantly suppress their unhappiness experienced distinct physical symptoms.

General signs of hiding unhappiness were feelings of physical weakness and oversensitivity to environmental stimuli.

Other results were highly gendered.

Men seem to express physical symptoms a lot more than women. They focus on things that relate to the heart, like high blood pressure and chest pain.

Women generally focus on the stomach, talking about general discomfort, cramping, and outright pain.

In these cases, the people studied were either unaware that they were depressed or actively denied it, even though all evidence pointed in that direction. So, these expressions of physical discomfort may be largely psychosomatic responses to the suppression of their feelings.

But whether real or not, they’re experienced as real by the sufferers.

4) You’re managing to live up to other’s expectations

We all know that unhappiness, sadness, and even temporary bouts of depression are a part of life.

If your heart is broken, you lose your job, or a loved one passes away, society expects you to be appropriately sad.

But only for a while.

While there’s no set period of time per se, people will start to talk if you seem to be unhappy for what they see as too long. And if your unhappiness has no apparent cause, as is the case with clinical depression, it confuses and astounds people.

For evidence of this, just look at what people say when they find out a celebrity has depression or even commits suicide.

“He had everything.”

“Can you imagine being that rich and famous and still not being happy?”

The societal pressure to hide unhappiness is strong, and it may be even stronger for men.

According to one study, men feel extra pressure to hide their feelings because of masculine norms still prevalent in society.

“…having depression is described as being ‘incompatible’ with traditional masculinity due to the fact that emotional experiences in depression are linked to femininity; depression is often accompanied by feelings of powerlessness and lack of control…”

But while it may be more intense for men, this pressure exists for everyone.

So if you’re feeling a lot of pressure to continue life as normal even though deep down you know it’s not, this can be a sign that you’re hiding your unhappiness just to keep up appearances.

5) You’re not taking great care of yourself

When you feel you have to hide your emotional state for whatever reason, you might think that you’re doing a pretty darned good job of it.

However, when you’re truly and deeply unhappy, but you force yourself not to express it, chinks can start to appear in your armor.

One of the first to show can be a decrease in your level of self-care.

And this makes a lot of sense because I think we can all notice things about a person by the way they present and hold themself.

Self-care involves taking proper care of both your body and your mind. It can include things like dressing well, keeping yourself clean and neat, eating well, getting enough sleep, maintaining a healthy weight and fitness level, and more.

When these things start to slip, others will notice, especially the people close to you.

And according to research, self-care decreases when people are depressed. 

They don’t eat poorly, exercise less regularly, smoke and drink more, and generally take less care of their health. Poor sleep is also a consistent sign of depression.

But in contrast, the study also found that focusing on self-care can help to alleviate symptoms of depression, so it makes for a good intervention for most people.

6) You’re struggling to control your emotions

If you’re really unhappy in life but you think you’re covering it up well, you might be in for one more surprise.

It seems that depression can cause people to have poor emotional regulation. That means that negative emotions like sadness or anger may show up in sudden outbursts and may be a lot stronger than the situation calls for.

You may get stressed more easily or have breakdowns when you otherwise wouldn’t.

However, research shows that positive interventions can improve emotional regulation and even help alleviate depressive symptoms somewhat.

Mindfulness, reappraisal, and full emotional regulation therapy can all help to reduce overall unhappiness and improve both mood and cognition.

Last words

If you recognize more than a couple of these six signs, you’re unhappy in life but hiding it well, according to psychology, you’re in deep. But there are ways to improve things.

You can focus on expressing your true emotions in safe spaces to help you deal with them. You can also emphasize self-care and emotional regulation to help make changes.

There is help for you. Above all, stop thinking you have to hide away how you really feel.