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7d • Communities
Feeling Bad for Feeling Happy 😀🙃😶😒
For many of us with trauma histories, happiness isn’t simple.
Moments of joy can be quickly followed by guilt, fear, or a strange sense of unease — as if feeling good is somehow unsafe or undeserved.
This often isn’t about self-sabotage. It’s about what our nervous systems learned.
If you grew up in environments where:
good moments were short-lived
happiness was followed by punishment, loss, or withdrawal
staying alert mattered more than feeling relaxed
your joy was minimised, envied, or taken away
…then happiness can register as a threat, not a reward.
Some common trauma responses:
Feeling guilty for being happy when others are suffering
Waiting for “something bad” to happen after a good moment
Dimming your joy so you don’t stand out
Feeling disloyal to past pain, lost loved ones, or former versions of yourself
None of this means we’re ungrateful or broken.
It means our systems learned that safety mattered more than pleasure.
Healing doesn’t mean forcing ourselves to be happy.
It means slowly teaching our body that joy doesn’t equal danger.
Sometimes the work is simply this:
noticing a good moment
letting it stay for a few seconds longer
reminding ourselves we don’t have to earn joy or justify it
We are allowed to feel happy and honour our pain.
Both can exist at the same time.
💬 If this resonates, we would love to welcome you into our very supportive community: Virtual Trauma Therapy
With love,
Chris ❤️
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Feeling Bad for Feeling Happy 😀🙃😶😒
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