Cherophobia: The Fear of Being Happy

I’ve known for a while that people self-sabotage their ability to enjoy life. Indeed, it’s one of the most common and perplexing human ailments in existence.

On one hand, we all feel like we’re trying to be happy; we have a vague sense that our basic programming is aimed at increasing our quality of life.

On the other hand, nearly every hour of the day most of us engage in decisions that we know will have a negative long-term consequence for our lives, like spending too much money, drinking alcohol, eating junk food, bingeing on social media, procrastinating on important tasks, wasting time dating someone with lots of red flags, skipping the gym yet again, not getting back to our friend’s text… the list goes on and on.

If we really wanted to be “happy”, we wouldn’t be doing so many things that cost us quality of life. Most of these things don’t even feel good in the short term when we do them!

This Problem is Common

I recently discovered that his phenomenon has a name: “cherophobia”; the aversion to being happy, or perhaps the fear of enjoying your life. 

It’s driven primarily by a paranoid suspicion that if you enjoy something too much you’ll only end up devastated when it’s inevitably taken away from you. So you avoid enjoyment to ensure you don’t provoke Fate into punishing you for doing well and having a good time.

I see this happen with everyone, but surprisingly it happens most prominently with high achievers.

If there was anyone who you’d think is trying their best to be happy, it would be the ambitious and brave high achievers who boldly accomplish many grand things and often win at life.

I have the privilege of working with such people as coaching clients, so I get to see behind the mask. They are many things, but happy they are not!

It’s hard to see it with high achievers because their daily feats of success look amazing when compared with others. It’s only when you investigate the individual person’s capabilities, potential, and true values that you see how much they’re actually failing.

Sure, they make a lot of money and do well socially and look fit. They achieve their goals at a rate that makes other people look like they’re sitting around doing nothing. It’s hard to believe they might be actively sabotaging their ability to enjoy life.

Secret Suffering

You’re actually only seeing a fraction of what they could do.

That guy making a million dollars per year could easily be making 10x that if he didn’t regularly procrastinate on making decisions. That dude you see who seduced women as if he sees the Matrix could find the love of his life but his relationships never seem to work out for some reason. That buff chad at the gym might have abs but he also has an alcohol dependency that meets the criteria for rehab.

Even those who achieve highly and are meeting their potential suffer on the inside. They are plagued with daily stress, guilt, and anxiety. They often go through intermittent periods of dark depression. One of the main drivers for their success is the gnawing doubt that they are simply not good enough.

Ambition is a symptom of low self worth, not confidence – a confident person is content with what they have.

Justice For All

Cherophobic people believe in a kind of cosmic justice; a balancing act they cannot avoid.

If you’re happy, it will be balanced out with sadness. If you win, you will have to lose. It you gain something, it must be taken away. And so on.

It’s frustrating for them because they are also highly driven, talented, and have a zest for life. It’s a hard balance to want to do a lot with your life but simultaneously not want to provoke a backlash from the universe.

So the high achiever discovers a compromise: achieve a lot but don’t enjoy it too much! This way you satisfy the gods of justice by accomplishing a lot without really have a sense of success. The gods will leave you alone (and let you keep what you’ve earned) so long as it makes you miserable. That’s the deal.

Paranoid Bullshit

Except the problem, of course, is that there are no such gods. The universe doesn’t specifically target successful people for punishment. Indeed, the opposite is clearly true. As the saying goes, the rich get richer. People who make effective decisions generally cause outcomes that make effective decision making even easier, so therefore keep making even better decisions.

For example, if you choose to invest in education, you learn a lot, which leads to smarter career choices and better jobs. This leads to better connections, more opportunities, even better jobs, and so on. Before long, it becomes nearly impossible to fail in your career, as you have a great support network, highly valuable skills and experience, and a secure financial foundation to allow calm decision making.

If you choose to respect yourself and be brave and honest, you’ll attract higher quality people, and create better connections. They will introduce you to others who are also of quality. You will develop a reputation as a great guy. People will flock to you. You get lots of experience socializing and quickly master it. You are now capable of creating a social circle from nothing effortlessly.

The idea that the universe will somehow intervene to achieve a net balance of zero is ludicrous. I mean sure, it will kill you eventually and all debts are squared then, but prior to that your potential to improve your life is exponential – it can just keep getting better if you want to make good decisions. 

The universe clearly rewards patterns of smart decision making WAY more than it does patterns of poor decision making. I should know; I’ve worked with repeat criminal offenders.

If you continually eat well and exercise and get plenty of sleep, you get healthier, not unhealthier. If you spend less than you earn and invest your profits, you get richer, not poorer. If you’re kind and respectful and assertive and honest with people, you generate deeper relationships, you don’t end up alone.

Why Are We Like This?

I believe the root cause of cherophobia is childhood trauma and conditioning. People with this problem were raised to not get attached to things or people they like, because those things got taken away or ruined. 

They had it drilled into them that modesty and humility are admirable traits, and successful people are somehow unethical or evil. They learned that the winners were actually the bad guys, and the losers were the true heroes. That victims are noble, and that people who take responsibility to improve their lives are arrogant.

If you’re one of these people, you cannot hope that achieving even more will somehow lead eventually to happiness. Quite the opposite: you’re only feeding the old system. You’ll never feel “good enough” if you always raise the bar. By definition good enough is impossible when better is always the goal.

How to Change This

It starts with permission: you must make a commitment to allowing yourself to enjoy life.

Enjoying life means reflecting on what you did well, what you’re proud of, the actions you know were good according to your own principles. It means being forgiving and compassionate about your shortcomings, reminding yourself that you always try your best and every “mistake” or “failure” is just you learning stuff you don’t yet know.

Enjoying life also means being ruthless with yourself about playing the victim. Calling yourself out when you make yourself stressed, when you guilt-trip yourself unfairly, and when you discourage yourself with cruel feedback.

Enjoyment is here and now. You don’t need to feel the emotion of happiness per se; you can enjoy life even when sad, angry or confused. Enjoyment is about accepting what is and playing with it, exploring each moment instead of trying to control the outcomes, and gently encouraging yourself to stay in the game.

Start doing what you know your future self would regret if you didn’t. Prioritise this over impressing people, winning, getting to the “next level”, and trying to prove yourself to others.