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"Andrea" said after reading the article on Euthymophobia:
"Dear Dr. Burkham,
Hello. Today I came across your article on Euthymophobia and finally I have a term to put to how I feel and a recognition that I am not crazy and also not alone in feeling this way. I recently turned 45. Fourteen months ago I left my husband of twenty-one years. He was extremely manipulative, emotionally and psychologically abusive and we were self-employed for the most part of those twenty-one years often quite unsuccessfully. All of these factors led to me being depressed, anxious, and scared for long stretches of time over the last 21 years until a little over a year ago. I have been able to extricate myself from my marriage, finding a new place to live, getting a car and successively better jobs until now I have a very good job. I have worked on myself emotionally to the point that I am no longer in love with my ex-husband and I now see our relationship for what it was -- the abuser and the abused. I have times (sometimes a whole day and night) where I am actually, fully, consciously happy ... which terrifies me to no end. I have tried to talk to others about this feeling of complete fear of being happy, but no one understands why I feel this way. The way you explained it in your article makes perfect sense to me. Thank you for writing about euthymophobia and posting it for others to read. It has gone a long way in helping me understand what's happening to me and how to work to make it better."
I wanted to share with you an idea I have been working on for probably 20 years. I think I’ve discovered a new phobia—what I call euthymophobia (pronounced you-thigh-mo-PHOBia), literally, the fear of feeling good.
In doing therapy with thousands of people struggling to find more fulfilling ways to think, feel, and relate to others, I’ve noticed that a fair number of my clients are actually afraid of being happy. A strange paradox perhaps, but to me it makes sense. Here’s how I think this works:
Many people have lived much of their lives being unhappy, anxious, depressed, or just not able to fully enjoy their lives. Often they have grown up in difficult families where they felt put down, hurt, or frightened much of the time. When these people begin to make positive changes in their lives because they get into a healthy relationship or they succeed in work or school or they benefit from some truly helpful therapy, they begin to feel better about themselves.
Often, this is the first time in their lives they have felt happy or content for any length of time. These good feelings are strange to them and they often become afraid of feeling good. Although they very much want to be happy, they actually resist the positive feelings that are coming their way.
They know how to live their lives feeling down and anxious—it’s not fun but at least it’s predictable. They have a sense that life cannot hurt them too much because they don’t expect much from it. They are “prepared” for the disappointments in life because they expect them. If they feel happy, then they fear they will be too vulnerable to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”.
Often, they have grown up in families where they did have some good times but those times were followed quickly by chaotic, hurtful, or even abusive times. They learned that good times and the happiness which went along with those times were signals that things were about to go really bad. So being happy actually became a signal of bad things to come. Thus they learned to fear happiness.
The good news is that many people get over their fear of happiness by a process psychologists call “systematic desensitization”. They feel a little bit happy and realize that the sky does not fall when the feel good. They then go back to their more familiar state of unhappiness. Then they work towards feeling a little bit more happy and retreat again into their more familiar unhappy state. They repeat this two-steps-forward-one-step-back process over and over, gradually learning to tolerate more and more happiness. Essentially, they are “practicing” being happy and getting used to it.
In this way, they get over their fear of being happy, and they get comfortable feeling confident in themselves and enjoying their lives. Oddly enough, it takes practice to be comfortable feeling good. I’ve seen many clients over the years learn to feel comfortable feeling good and to live more fulfilling lives as a result. They’ve gotten over their euthymophobia!
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