233 - Friday Fix: Are You Afraid to Be Happy?

The Verywell Mind Podcast

Dotdash Media Inc.

Health & Fitness, Self-improvement, Mental Health, Education

5 • 703 Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At first glance, you might wonder why on earth anyone would be afraid to be happy. But if you think about it a little longer, you might recognize a few times in your life when you experienced an aversion to happiness. Perhaps you won an award, and then you felt so much pressure to live up to the achievement that you were afraid to let yourself really enjoy your success. Or maybe something really good happened, and you were so afraid that those happy feelings weren’t going to last that you didn’t let yourself feel happy for even a minute because you were afraid that things would come crashing down. You might have also found yourself in a tough spot in life — like, maybe you were grieving the loss of a loved one or you were facing some hard economic times — and you felt guilty laughing or having fun. It’s common to think you can allow yourself to be happy during sad times. Those are just a few of the reasons why it’s hard to allow ourselves to be happy sometimes. But just as it’s harmful to avoid an uncomfortable emotion like anxiety, an aversion to happiness can take a toll on your well-being and your life too. On this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast, I share what the research says about why people are afraid of being happy, the consequences it can have on your life, and what you can do about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Very Well Mind podcast. We've interviewed over 100 authors, experts, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, and others to help you learn strategies to care for your mental health.
0:22.9	This episode is hosted by psychotherapist and bestselling author Amy Morin. Now let's get into the episode.
0:51.8	Okay. You're listening to the Friday fix. Every Friday, I share a quick mental strength strategy that can help fix the thoughts, feelings, and actions that can hold you back.
0:55.3	When something good happens, do you feel a sense of doom that something bad is about to happen? When you feel happy, do you feel a little bit selfish
1:00.4	or unworthy? Are you afraid to celebrate good things because you know the good times won't last?
1:06.9	If you answered yes to any of those questions, today's episode is for you.
1:12.0	Today we're talking about why we're sometimes afraid to let ourselves be happy and what you can do about it.
1:17.7	Now, I know some of you might be thinking, why on earth would anyone be afraid to be happy?
1:22.7	Isn't that what most people want, a happy life?
1:25.4	But for many people, feelings of happiness are often replaced by
1:30.0	other feelings pretty quickly, like anxiety or sadness. There's research behind this fear.
1:35.9	I'll explain that in a minute. But studies aside, it's something I often see in my therapy office.
1:42.7	Like I worked with one woman who would always predict that something
1:45.6	horrible were about to happen if something good just happened to her. Like even one day she was
1:50.6	walking into my therapy office and somebody held the door to the building open to her as she
1:55.4	walked into the waiting room. And she immediately said, thanks, I'll enter first just in case the ceiling caves in.
2:02.2	Like that was her mentality.
2:03.6	She would sort of laugh when she said things like that, but she really meant it.
2:08.4	If somebody was kind to her, she expected something horrible we're about to happen.
2:12.7	And that's just one example, but that played out through all of her life in lots of different ways.
2:18.3	Whenever something good happened, she felt like it were almost like a trap, that the good
2:22.7	thing was really bad luck in disguise.
	...

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