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Unemployed Hartz IV makes people unhappy
They evaluated the feelings of fear, sadness, anger and happiness separately. The result: unemployment leads first to fear, then to sadness and those affected lose their joy.
Unemployment makes people unhappy! Picture: peshkova - fotolia fear
Fear is a reaction to the shock of losing a job. Familiar ties and everyday rituals are broken, and the entire system in which those affected have made their living does not exist overnight.
New situations are per se also filled with fear, but depending on the personality of the people they overcome the fear by curiosity. Unemployment, however, means, provided that the laid-off did not previously work in a slave job, to which a (temporary) unemployment would be the better alternative, that the new situation is worse than the old one.
The fear in the first phase of unemployment was evident in all respondents.
Permanent misfortune
We know from anxiety research that the fear of a new situation comes when they find their way around it. Even among the surveyed unemployed, the fear was especially in the first moment.
Although they had the fear of long joblessness under control, but their life satisfaction sank sustainable. Even though they got used to the condition, they were much more sad and joyless than non-unemployed.
The study found that life satisfaction, or rather, a lasting sense of happiness, has nothing to do with the emotional state, but with the cognitive perception of one's own life situation. Unemployment therefore shapes the thinking and actions of those affected.
Long-term unemployed, after years of getting used to their situation, are never as happy with their lives as they were before.
What does happiness research say??
Lucky research can explain why that is. On the one hand, psychiatrist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi coined the term flow for a work in which a person is completely absorbed. Flow arises in the field of tension of over-demand and under-demand.
Anyone who gets into this condition does something as much as it can in a specific field. He must challenge himself, the goal must not be easy to achieve, but at the same time not set so high that he can not achieve it.
In other words: Flow is coming into being. Now it could be argued that unemployment does not necessarily mean not to work. Those affected could theoretically pursue their interests and feel "flow experiences" when they paint a picture, renovate a flat or paint a car. Theoretically!
In practice, they probably feel that they are doing occupational therapy as long as they do not receive recognition, so this work is recognized as work, and that means in capitalism getting money for work.
Poverty and misfortune
At the latest, if those affected slip into the mills of the Hartz IV system after one year, they also suffer from a threatened existence. Luck research is also clear here: Surveys show that money only raises well-being to a certain limit.
However, people who suffer material hardships, do not know how to pay their rent or feed their children, feel considerably better when they enjoy sufficient wealth to stop having these problems.
Psychological pressure
Add to this the psychological terror, and the threat of the Jobcenter, the livelihoods withdraw. Hartz IV addicts lose their human rights such as their dignity, the choice of place of residence and workplace, the postal or banking secrecy. They are like children of authoritarian parents or prisoners under constant supervision of the job centers.
This chronic state of mental emergency leads to chronic stress, as evidenced by studies of victims of totalitarian systems, even when the situation eases.
In addition, those affected are constantly suggested that they are worth nothing, and also on the strongest psychic something will hang if it is permanently thrown with dirt.
Lost luck
Lucky research knows factors for feeling happy in life.
1) Activity and employment
The possibilities are extremely limited for Hartz IV addicts. They have no money to participate in cultural activities, and when they are busy with things they enjoy, the job center pulls the "lazybones" thumbscrews.
2) Deepen social relationships with other people
Jobless people lose many social relationships that they had in the workplace. The stigma of unemployment clings to them, and often their social relationships are reduced to those affected by the same hardships.
3) system in everyday life and planned action
Both require freedom of action. Hartz IV addicts have limited this freedom but very limited. They can barely plan their actions because the job center has what they do and what they leave. To systematically plan everyday life also requires having the freedom to do so. For unemployed but determines the job center, how to set up their everyday lives.
4) Worrying about things that could happen.
For Hartz IV addicts, the worries about what can happen are not fantasies, but bitter reality. To fly out of the apartment, because this "ten square meters is too big" to slip below the subsistence level, because the Job Center arbitrarily imposed sanctions or freezing in the winter, because they can not pay the electricity bill, are only legitimate concerns.
5) At the same time screwing back the claims and expectations
Hartz IV addicts can not screw down the claims and expectations of a beautiful life, unless they find themselves laying down on the street and dying.
6) Orient yourself to the present, not to events that could only happen as a possibility and not to what can not be changed.
Even for those affected, it helps to explore their scope of action at any moment. However, their options for action are limited in the present. Even those who always look for a way out and only gets the next slap in the face, longs sometime for times that were real or supposedly better.
7) accept yourself
This is permanently prohibited Hartz IV sufferers. The neo-liberal propaganda suggests that they themselves are responsible for their situation and would have to qualify with one-euro jobs or training soap bubbles more to get out of their situation. This manipulation is subliminal. Anyone who accepts it nevertheless still has the existential need.
9) Establish close relationships, few close relationships are better than many acquaintances
Especially for Hartz IV sufferers, close relationships are a life insurance, and this is even true, because many dependents play with the idea of suicide. Tight social relationships based on respect and love are the only protection they have for the unemployed over the job center.
To summarize: All the factors that provide the basis for being permanently happy do not apply to the unemployed, or only to a very limited extent. Unhappiness is not a subjective feeling for people caught in the clutches of the Jobcenter, but an objective reality. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)