Have you ever had something really great happen, and then instead of blissing out, you found yourself waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Have you ever damped down your own feelings of joy for fear that there would be negative consequences?
It turns out, the fear of happiness is a real thing, and it has a name: Cherophobia, the aversion to happiness.
It has four strong predictors: an unhappy childhood, perfectionism, belief in black magic or karma, and loneliness.
Did you even realize you had a fear of happiness? I did not, and the more I unpacked it, the more I came to understand that this is not an irrational belief; instead, it’s a self-protective mechanism that we can slowly entrain to a different, more useful view, of how to experience joy and well-being.
In this episode, I discuss:
Links discussed in this episode:
What Is Cherophobia? How to Overcome a Fear of Happiness
Aversion to happiness and the experience of happiness: The moderating roles of personality - ScienceDirect
Fear of Happiness Underlies Some Mental Illnesses - Scientific American
What Predicts Fear of Happiness? | SPSP
People with unhappy childhoods are more likely to exhibit a fear of happiness, multi-national study finds
Fear of happiness among college students: The role of gender, childhood psychological trauma, and dissociation - PMC
Shout-outs:
Neurogan
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