Happiness has never been a choice; we must actively pursue it. But for some people, they fear and avoid feeling happy. This fear of happiness can rob us of joy and significantly impact our quality of life. Thus, I thought I’d put together a simple guide to help overcome this fear. Let me know what you think in the comments section.
What Is A Fear Of Happiness (Cherophobia)
Simply put, the irrational fear of happiness is the belief that joy will inevitably lead to something bad, also known as cherophobia in popular culture (Joshanloo, 2024).
Not simply put, according to Elmas and Çevik (2024), happiness is the epitome of positive emotions that allows us to feel pleasure and makes us feel good. As such, it’s seen and expressed as the highest state of well-being for any individual, and is therefore significant for our mental health. Such experiences of happiness help us develop a positive self-identity and have healthier relationships with the world around us.
However, for some, a belief can develop whereby a fear of happiness can form because they believe something bad will definitely follow.
Thus, the person experiencing a fear of happiness is unable to enjoy that feeling and will often experience feelings of anxiety, fear, guilt, discomfort, caution, hesitation, or other negative feelings (Joshanloo, 2024). At some point, happiness becomes paired with an expectation of negative consequences.
Overcoming A Fear Of Happiness (Cherophobia)
A fear of happiness can often stem from several causes, such as a self-protective mechanism, whereby we try to avoid pain by avoiding the joy that might precede it. Thus, in this example, the process involves gently dismantling those defence mechanisms.
The most common cause for a fear of happiness to develop is in response to our experiences starting during childhood. Over the course of our lives, a dysfunctional belief system can develop, whereby we acquire irrational beliefs in response to what we’ve experienced (Joshanloo, 2024). Growing up in a toxic and abusive household is often a cause of a fear of happiness developing, as are abusive relationships in adulthood.
Thus, to overcome a fear of happiness is to go on a journey of retraining our brain to accept that happiness is safe.
The “De-linking” phase (cognitive reframing)
The core of a fear of happiness is the link our brain has made: Happiness = impending doom. Therefore, we need to break this association. We can start by reflecting on our experiences of happiness to see if it’s always the case that if we feel happiness, then that has been followed by something bad. Often, we make such generalisations because it’s so easy to fall into a cognitive bias.
We can also try to identify the “If-then” trap. When we feel a moment of happiness or even a microjoy, pause and catch the automatic thought to see if it usually sounds like: “If I feel happy now, then something terrible will happen later”.
To help with this, keep a simple log in our journal. Write down the times we’ve felt happy. Then, write down what happened afterwards. Did a disaster actually occur? If something bad did happen, was it truly caused by our happiness, or was it just a coincidence? Over time, we will build visual evidence that happiness does not cause bad luck. This will help us fact-check our fear of happiness.
Defining what we fear
It’s worth remembering that a negative experience can follow another negative experience, as well as following an experience of happiness. But a moment of happiness can also follow another moment of happiness, and it can also follow a negative experience. We will always experience of mixture of these two experiences throughout our lives. Because any experience can follow any other experience, it can help us understand that cause and effect have nothing to do with it.
Furthermore, happiness fades as it’s something we have to work at. We’re also more likely to experience something that negatively affects our mood, such as stress at work, dropping our phone in the toilet, or missing the train. Do these things count as the negative consequence of being happy, or are we expecting something more extreme, such as a relationship ending? Having this definition in mind can help us understand the likelihood of an outcome happening and how bad that outcome really is.
Exposure therapy
Exposure therapy can be quite effective in tackling a fear of happiness because it is a form of anxiety (Elmas and Çevik, 2024). Just as someone might treat a fear of heights by slowly going up a ladder one step at a time over the course of weeks, we can treat a fear of happiness by slowly exposing ourselves to joy in manageable doses.
A great place to start with this form of exposure work is by micro-dosing with microjoys. Starting small, where the stakes are low, is always a great place to start with exposure therapy. So watch that one-minute funny animal video on Instagram. Sit with that discomfort, and don’t let that anxiety cause you to back down.
It can also help to notice the anxiety, if it appears, and remind ourselves that our brain thinks we’re in danger because we’re happy, when we’re actually safe. This helps create a level of distance between what we’re doing and what we’re thinking, without it feeling like we’re fighting our own brains. The anxiety will always go away; we just have to ride out that wave of anxiety.
The more we do this, the more evidence we build that being happy is nothing to be feared. As we get better at handling these happy experiences, we can increase the level of happiness by doing more fun things. We can go from watching a one-minute funny animal video a couple of times a day, to going to a gig or going kakeroke with friends.
Mindfulness and “Anchoring”
Another way to look at a fear of happiness is as a fear of the future. Worrying that might come next is a classic symptom of anxiety, which is an area that mindfulness can help with. By keeping ourselves in the present, where the happiness is actually happening, we can cut off the fear at the knees. This is why grounding techniques are so useful for anxiety disorders.
When we feel a flash of happiness, we anchor ourselves in the physical sensation. We do this by asking ourselves questions like, “What does the laughter feel like in our chest?” or “What does the relaxation feel like in our shoulders?”.
Focusing on the physical sensation of joy prevents our mind from jumping to the intellectual worry of “paying for it later.”
Practice gratitude (with a twist)
If focusing on the positives is too much at the moment, then we can try looking for the neutral observation instead. Whereas gratitude might be about saying how we’re grateful for having an amazing day (which might trigger fear), we could say, “Today I had a good lunch with my colleagues, and nothing bad happened.
Address the root causes
Our brains are hardwired to experience our full range of emotions, and our brains can be hijacked because of this. A fear of happiness rarely appears out of nowhere. It is often a symptom of some sort of trauma. Maybe one of our parents would put us down if something good happened to us, or maybe we lost people important to us after several good things happened to us when growing up.
Our brains are designed to find patterns in things, which is fine, most of the time. But it can also create patterns where there are none, such as a link between something bad happening if we experience something that makes us happy.
Sometimes this can come from superstitious beliefs, such as karma. Having a cosmic order where the good and the bad balance out seems like it would make for a good system. However, the universe is indifferent to us, and nature is brutal. Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, and everything in between.
If we can identify where the fear of happiness comes from, it becomes easier to see it as a memory rather than a present reality. We can take that cause and put it before our mental well-being jury.
Challenge magical thinking
If we find ourselves being overwhelmed by negative intrusive thoughts when we’re feeling happy, remind ourselves that one doesn’t cause the other. It’s not some sort of magic trick, where if you take something from the good pile, then the universe will give you something from the bad pile. If the world really worked like that, no one would want to do things that made them feel good. It can often be useful to take it to the less obvious extremes like that, as it can help undermine the original belief.
Professional support
If self-help isn’t enough, then seeking professional support is a good resource to help us overcome our fear of happiness. According to Elmas and Çevik (2024), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is good for this kind of work, as is exposure therapy. Other therapies can also be effective, such as eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) if the issue is rooted in trauma.
Summary
When all is said and done, a fear of happiness and overcoming it comes down to learning to tolerate the guilt or anxiety without stopping the activity, and challenging maladaptive beliefs. Like most things in life, we get there one stepping stone at a time. So be patient with overcoming this fear.
As always, leave your feedback in the comments section below. Also, please share your experiences with a fear of happiness (cherophobia) in the comments section below as well. Don’t forget, if you want to stay up-to-date with my blog, you can sign up for my newsletter below. Alternatively, click the red bell icon in the bottom right corner to get push notifications for new articles.
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References
Elmas, İ., & Çevik, Ö. (2024). Fear of happiness: Description, causes and prevention. Psikiyatride Güncel Yaklaşımlar, 16(3), 485-493. Retrieved from https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/3358271.
Joshanloo, M. (2024). What have we learned about fear of happiness? A review of a decade of empirical research. Current Psychology, 43(43), 33420-33434. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mohsen-Joshanloo/publication/385422962_What_have_we_learned_about_fear_of_happiness_A_review_of_a_decade_of_empirical_research/links/67249f5c5852dd723ca2a719/What-have-we-learned-about-fear-of-happiness-A-review-of-a-decade-of-empirical-research.pdf.
Good post as aways. I don’t think I ever heard of having a fear of happiness before.