Running From Joy: Why We Avoid What We Crave Most
and how to reclaim it through creativity
A note up front: I like to be honest about my intentions for posts. This is a post in which I am sharing the opportunity to join Zenith, the new online creative co-working space I’m opening up. Although I’m making an offer at the end, and although you may or may not be interested, I hope you continue to read because I’m also teaching a very important point about joy and our collective fear of it.
In the last year and a half I’ve been studying healing and shamanic work, something I haven’t written much about yet but plan to soon. One of the most startling lessons I’ve learned during this time is that many, many people truly are afraid of joy.
The details of how they became afraid of joy are always different but the structure is the same:
Life as they know it is hard.
Then they go through a period of joy and happiness, which may last a day, a week, or longer—life is not so bad. It might even be good.
Then that joy dies when life abruptly changes for the worse, sometimes devastatingly worse.
Then they get the conscious or unconscious idea that it wouldn’t hurt so bad if they had never experienced the high of joy in the first place.
Erego, joy is bad. It is safer not to feel joy so one never has to feel the loss of it.
Here’s a personal example to illustrate the structure. I’m 25. Life has been hard. I’ve recently moved to Des Moines and taken a new job that pays more. I’m also closer to my [then] boyfriend. It is 7 at night and I am walking home from a yoga class in my neighborhood, and it is the first time in a long time I’ve felt at peace. The night is beautiful, and so is my majestic new neighborhood with mature trees and century-old homes. I’m really enjoying this walk.
My phone rings. I look down to see that it’s my mom calling. I’d like to talk to her but I want to savor the subtle joy I feel. I don’t want to interrupt this reverie with a phone call, so I send her to voicemail. I go home and make myself a good dinner and go to bed.
The next morning, my mother has a catastrophic stroke that leaves her forever changed in body, mind, and personality. I never speak to my mother as I knew her again.
Fits the pattern perfectly.
For more than a decade and a half, I didn’t realize I had made the presence of joy mean that the “other shoe would drop” at any moment, that things would inevitably go bad soon. I’d done it on a subtle, unconscious level. I very subtly kept myself from feeling “too much joy” because it felt overwhelming and scary for a reason I couldn’t name.
It wasn’t until I started seeing this pattern in clients, over and over again, that I noticed it in myself. And once I saw it in clients I saw it in friends and family, too.
It’s a sad pattern. It’s like everyone grew an internal damper that put the brakes on joyful life experiences from that point on. And it’s made even sadder by the fact that if you numb or suppress one emotion, you are likely numbing and suppressing all of them. But that’s a point for another post. Let’s stick with joy.
What does joy have to do with creativity?
Everything. That pattern shocked me when I saw it. But then it fit in other areas too, and it made sense of a few questions I’d had about creativity.
Why do we avoid it if we love the feeling when we get creative time—when we get to make or write the things we’ve dreamed about? Why on earth isn’t everyone running toward that feeling?
Well, that feeling is joy. And… because so many of us have had scary experiences around joy, we’re as afraid of it as much as we want it.
You can see the pattern play out in the subtle self-sabotage. After one coworking session years ago, one woman was glowing—GLOWING—because she was so happy to have spent time on her thing. I said something like “Congratulations! I’m so happy to see you happy!”
And do you know what she said? “Oh, it’s probably not that good.” The glow drained from her face and her shoulders slumped. Life hadn’t abruptly changed in that moment. SHE HAD POPPED HER BALLOON OF JOY HERSELF with her own judgment, as a preemptive move.
She dimmed her light because she had learned to guard herself against the joy of creative accomplishment. We fear that allowing ourselves to feel joy opens the door for disappointment, so we hold it at arm’s length, especially in our creative pursuits. We’ve come to believe that it’s too fleeting and it will inevitably leave.
Those last two points are true: no matter what the context, joy is fleeting and it will leave, just like every other emotion we experience. We’re not meant to feel one emotion perpetually, on and on, without interruption.
But the fact that it leaves is not the problem; the problem is when we fail to let it come. The problem is that we’ve become so afraid of it, we’ve forgotten how to embrace it when it shows up. Or even how to pursue it.
I’m here to tell you: the risk of joy is worth it.
Creativity is joy in action. And it’s time we stopped running from it.
Join Zenith and let’s run toward the joy. We’ll build the habits and the courage to not only embrace that joy but to nurture it, to work with it, and to let it flourish in our creative lives. You deserve to feel the thrill of making progress on your creative dreams, without fear of the other shoe dropping.
Learn more about Zenith here. If you’re interested in joining and ready to dive in, subscribe below. I’m offering readers a free trial, and you can use this link here to get a free month.1 We meet every Wednesday… see you soon?
Substack being what it is, you do have to use a credit card to check out. Your card won’t be charged until the 30-day trial is over. If you’d like to try Zenith without committing to a year, select the “monthly” option and fill out your CC information. You can always cancel within the next 30 days.