Why Joy Scared Me

Why Joy Scared Me More Than Pain

I came across Brené Brown talking with Adam Grant recently, and one thing she said stopped me in my tracks.

In recovery, people are more likely to relapse after a joyful event than a painful one. Yes, you read that correctly.

I had to sit with that. It explained something I'd felt for years and could never make sense of. I'd been sure I was the only one who felt this way, that I must be truly broken to be so freaked out by joy after I quit alcohol.

We assume relapse comes from pain. I know I did. The bad day. The argument. The loss. The stress that sends you reaching for the wine or the snacks. That part makes sense to everyone. It's what we see in the movies.

Joy, though? Why would joy be dangerous? Even Adam looked a little taken aback when she said it out loud.

Here's what I've learned, in my own body, over many years.

When something good happens, when I'm genuinely happy, a quiet dread shows up right behind it. The "this is too good" feeling. The waiting for the other shoe to drop. The sense that I'd better not get comfortable, because something is surely coming to take it away.

Brené Brown calls this foreboding joy. A moment of happiness shadowed instantly by the fear of losing it. This one I know very well.

For years, I couldn't lean into the good moments for long. I braced against them. And bracing is exhausting, so I'd numb it. Something to take the edge off the joy, the same way I used it to take the edge off pain.

Here's the part that took me longest to understand. You can't selectively numb. When you numb the hard feelings, you numb the good ones too. The wine that dulled my dread also dulled my joy. I was flattening everything, all the time, mostly to avoid the quiver that comes with happiness. I didn't realize I was doing it until I looked back, years later.

This is why a celebration can be as dangerous as a crisis for someone like me. The wedding. The promotion. The vacation. The perfect family dinner. The moment is so good that the fear of losing it becomes unbearable, and the old tool is right there, promising relief.

If you've ever wondered why you sabotaged something good, why the best moments sometimes sent you reaching when you weren't even hungry, this is why. It wasn't weakness. It was a nervous system that never learned to trust joy.

So what's the way through? Not bracing. Not numbing. The opposite.

When the joy shows up and the dread follows, that quiver is a cue. Not to brace. To be grateful. To say, out loud or in your head, thank you for this. To let yourself actually have the moment instead of guarding against its end.

Gratitude is how you stay in the joy long enough to feel it. It's how you teach a nervous system that's been braced for decades that the good thing is allowed to be good.

I'm still learning this. The dread still shows up. This has been a heavy season, and the good moments inside it can feel almost suspicious, like I shouldn't be allowed to enjoy a spring morning when so much is hard.

I'm still practicing. When the quiver comes, I try to meet it with thank you instead of brace yourself.

The next time something good happens and you feel that flicker of fear right behind it, try it. Don't numb it. Don't brace against it. Just say thank you, and stay one more second in the good.