When Joy Feels Scary: 6 Resilience-Building Practices
For: Psychcentral: Mental Health Library
After we’ve been given a “clean bill of health,” finished settling the estate, come home from war, or otherwise gathered up the pieces — it takes time for the dust to settle, time to trust the stillness. In these in-between spaces, when the word “survivor” feels both amazing and scary, foreboding joy (Brown, 2012) can eat our lunch.
In her book, Daring Greatly, Dr. Brené Brown (2012) describes some of the ways that we try to shield ourselves from vulnerability. Along with strategies like perfectionism and numbing, foreboding joy is a common way that we try to fend off our human-ness, our susceptibility.
