Happiness is an important component to lead a healthy and successful life. We all struggle for our whole lives just to be happy at the end of the day. The lives lived happily are known to be fulfilled and satisfied. Happiness is just as meditation to some people and they strive for it.
Even to enhance the importance of happiness, United Nations has declared March 20th as World Happiness Day. The people who tend to follow a happy approach in life are more successful and lead stress-free life. It does not mean that they do not have an issue in life but they learn how to be happy even after being surrounded by a lot of troubles.
One thing that would astonish you is that even after being familiar with numerous benefits of happiness, some people still have Cherophobia, the fear of happiness. Yes, there exists such a phobia that makes people afraid of being happy. Let’s know some more about this.
The meaning of Cherophobia in Psychology
The name has evolved from the Greek term “chairo” which means ‘to rejoice’. So, the term Cherophobia means to evolve the fear of happiness. It has not established its name in the list of clinical disorders but scientists have proved the existence of this term in people.
Before exploring Cherophobia, let’s throw some light on what happiness is and how people develop its fear.
Definition of Happiness
Happiness is a state of mind that involves feelings of joy, fulfillment, and contentment. Every individual has their own definition of happiness and we cannot compare our happiness to somebody else’s. But one thing which is common is that it is composites of positive emotions and satisfaction.
When we ask someone if they are happy or not, they would probably be talking about the present moment or the happiness generally in their life as it is a broad term. Psychologists relate the term happiness to ‘subjective well-being’ as it is an emotion interconnected with many other things.
The people’s phobia of happiness can be due to many reasons because both are broad terms. People have different reasons to be happy and their phobias are also varied accordingly.
What is a phobia?
Phobia is something related scientifically to anxiety disorders. It can be defined clearly as fear or anxiety from an object, emotion, place, or situation. The reason for the development of phobia is the perception of threat or danger from the thing that makes us anxious.
The 3 basic types of phobias are:
Specific phobia
The excess of fear or anxiety from a particular thing or situation is described as a specific phobia. For instance, phobia from height, water, or animals. It also includes some bodily phobias like phobia of injections.
Social phobia
It is the fear of being in social places and getting embarrassed. It increases the anxiety in people when they think of being rejected by people in social gatherings, humiliated, or looked down upon. People with social phobia tend to avoid social gatherings as it increases their anxiety.
However, these phobias can be overcome easily if you take help from the neuro-linguistic programming trainer and follow their approach.
Agoraphobia
It is the type of phobia that evokes the fear of being in a situation where you are left untreated or helpless with the fear of your life. For instance, people are afraid to be left inside in closed areas, open areas. When people think about being outside the home, they feel dangerous and helpless, it is a type of agoraphobia.
Why do people resent happiness?
There could be many reasons that people start disliking the state of happiness. Some of the reasons are mentioned below:
Something wrong will happen if I will be happy
There are thoughts on the statement like ‘after happiness comes fall’. People believe that if they will be happy, then negative things will happen to them. They think that happiness is a sign that something bad is about to happen and this thought makes them scared. there are beliefs that happiness is correlated to negativity as something bad will happen because you did not pay attention to your surroundings as you were busy being happy.
People resent happiness as they are too afraid of losing that feeling that they are ready to sacrifice what happiness feels like in the first place.
Happiness makes you morally bad
There are views in many cultures that being happy would let you ignore the sufferings of others. So, it is considered as something selfish. The societal views on happiness in many cultures reflect the happy person as worse or bad in many ways. People who are happy for their emotional and mental well-being are considered to be worse people. They believe that a happy person is ready to avoid the people who are suffering.
Negative impacts on others
Another view on happiness is that it has bad impacts on people who are happy and those who are around them. Therefore, people should avoid being too happy as it can put others in grief or have negative impacts on their well-being.
The thought of “evil-eye” is also very common in some cultures. And when it is aggregated it becomes Cherophobia making people too afraid to feel happiness.
