Happiness anxiety: what is it, why we struggle with it and what can we do?

Owning It: The Anxiety Podcast

Caroline Foran

Overwhelm, Education, Health & Fitness, Panic Attack, Caroline Foran, Stress, Anxiety

4.4 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2021

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Happiness anxiety sounds oxymoronic but it's a real thing: it's known as Cherophobia which sounds sinister but really it's just the anxiety that can arise intermittently (or it can also be quite all consuming) when you fear that if things are going well, something has to go wrong. For me it manifests as feeling so grateful for what I do have in life that I think it will be taken away from me or that I don't deserve it. For others it can be an actual aversion to joyful experiences which require an element of letting go and being comfortable with being vulnerable and the idea that things are transient and not everything works out. For this episode I am joined by clinical psychologist Dr Malie Coyne to unpack Cherophobia, what it is, why we might struggle with it and crucially what we can do about it.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for listening to owning it.
0:01.7	If you would like to support the series, the best thing you can do is just tell a friend or better yet share it on social media.
0:08.0	If you really, really want to support, you can subscribe to me on Substack where I write a weekly column.
0:13.0	Listeners of the pod get a 20% discount forever at carolinephorun.substack.com.
0:18.7	Thank you.
0:23.9	Hello, dear listener and welcome back to owning it the anxiety podcast with me, Caroline
0:28.3	Foran. For this episode, we are delving into a topic that you might not have heard before.
0:33.0	Might sound a little bit bizarre or jarring. And it's happiness anxiety. I think it's something, well,
0:39.2	I've definitely felt it. I've known a lot of people who felt it too. And it's the fear that when
0:45.1	things are going good and when you're happy and when everything is coming up roses, the fear
0:49.8	that something will go wrong or that you don't deserve it or that something terrible is going to
0:53.8	happen.
1:00.3	For this episode, I am joined again by Dr. Mali Coyne, who is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, who I've had on numerous times, I think now. She also was a very big part of my first book
1:05.4	owning it, so you'll know her name from that. And she provides the expert insight here for me.
1:10.5	So we kind of unpack what is happiness anxiety
1:12.5	it actually has a name cherophobia sounds like something a fear of cherries it's not that at all and we talk
1:18.9	about yeah how to maybe address that and especially when it comes to relationships where people might
1:24.3	have a self-destruct button and a fear of things not working out so they
1:28.3	protect themselves by making that happen before it can happen to them. So if any of this sounds
1:33.1	relative to you or familiar, I think you'll find this episode interesting and certainly food for
1:38.2	thought. Thank you as always for tuning in and for your reviews and your feedback and your
1:42.6	DMs on Instagram. My books are available widely. They're owning it, the confidence kit and naked.
	...

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