Fear of happiness
Fear of happiness is being wary of feeling happy. We may believe happiness is followed by sadness, makes us careless or selfish, or invites trouble when we show it. Researchers measure it as a set of beliefs, held more strongly in some cultures than others.
A woman gets the job she wanted. She tells no one for two weeks. When her sister asks why she didn't say, she says, "I didn't want to jinx it."
This page can't say whether anyone is depressed. Fear of happiness and depression were closely linked in the studies below. Low mood or loss of interest most days for weeks is worth taking to a doctor.
If you or someone you know is having a difficult time, free support is available.
In an emergency, call your local emergency number.
How it shows
At work
Not telling anyone about a promotion in case it jinxes it. Playing down a success the moment it arrives. Waiting for the catch after good feedback.
In close relationships
Holding back in a new relationship that is going well. Picking a small fight on a lovely evening. Answering “How are things?” with “Not bad” when things are very good.
In ourselves
A flicker of dread when things are calm. Thoughts such as “this won't last” or “I'll pay for this” arriving with the good feeling.
How it differs from similar ideas
Anhedonia
Anhedonia is a reduced ability to want or enjoy good things at all. Fear of happiness is being able to feel them and being wary of them. In a pooled analysis, still a preprint, the two went together, and a study of 128 Belgian teenagers found no link with the kind of anhedonia it measured, so a person can have either or both. The difference shows in whether the good feeling arrives and gets pushed away, or barely arrives.
Vulnerability to harm or illness schema
The vulnerability schema is a wider belief that disaster is always close, in calm times and bad ones. Fear of happiness is wariness about happiness in particular: the warning comes with the good feeling.
Self-handicapping
Self-handicapping sets up an excuse before a test, so a failure can be put down to the excuse. Fear of happiness can also lead to spoiling good times, and there the aim seems to be avoiding a fall that feels sure to follow.
What it doesn’t mean
It isn't a diagnosis. Cherophobia is a popular word, and no diagnostic manual lists it. Researchers measure fear of happiness as a set of beliefs that people hold more or less strongly, and that are held more strongly in some cultures than others.
It isn't the same as being unable to feel joy. People who fear happiness can feel it. What they fear is what comes with it or after it. The two can go together, though: in pooled studies, fear of happiness was linked with anhedonia, a reduced ability to enjoy.
An example: Ji-woo, a good month, and the thought that comes with it
Ji-woo is 34. In one month she moves into an apartment she loves, her mother's scan comes back clear, and the man she has been seeing for three months asks her to meet his family.
- Moving day She stands in the empty living room in the sun and feels light for about a minute. Then the thought comes: “Don't get used to this.” She texts a friend about the broken boiler and says nothing about the light.
- The scan result Her mother calls, laughing with relief. Ji-woo says, “Let's wait for the next one,” and changes the subject.
- Sunday dinner with his family It goes well. On the drive home she starts a small argument about the route. Later she can't say why.
- A call with her grandmother Her grandmother asks how things are. Ji-woo says, “Not bad.” Her grandmother says what she always said when Ji-woo was little: “Good. Don't laugh too much, or you'll cry later.”
Each good thing in Ji-woo's month comes with a warning attached, and each time she turns the feeling down: by saying nothing, by waiting for the next scan, by starting a fight. The last scene shows one place the warning may have come from.
The grandmother's line is close to an item in Mohsen Joshanloo's Fear of Happiness Scale: “I prefer not to be too joyful, because usually joy is followed by sadness.” In Joshanloo and Dan Weijers's review, the belief that happiness brings bad things after it is the first of four reasons people across cultures give for holding back from happiness. The others are that happiness makes people worse, that showing it harms the person or others, and that chasing it does harm. Ji-woo can feel the good things. What she does is keep them small.
A different story would point elsewhere. If the good news had brought little or no pleasure at all, the anhedonia page describes that. If the sense of coming disaster ran through everything, good times and bad, the vulnerability schema is closer. And if the dread came with low mood most days for weeks, the studies below found fear of happiness and depression often go together, and depression has its own page.
What the research shows
Fear of happiness is measured with questionnaires, two of them with the same name. The studies below cover where the belief appears across cultures, whether one scale holds across 14 countries, how the other relates to depression, and a pooled analysis of 26 samples.
The belief that happiness brings trouble appears across cultures, can be measured the same way in 14 countries, and seems to be held more strongly outside the West. In questionnaire studies it goes closely with depression. Over time the picture is mixed: a pooled analysis of 26 samples, still a preprint, found a smaller link with later depression, and a study of 128 teenagers found none two months later.
A review found four reasons people across cultures give for being wary of happiness
In 2014 Mohsen Joshanloo and Dan Weijers published the first review of aversion to happiness, drawing on psychology, philosophy, religion and culture. They found four reasons people give for holding back from it: being happy makes bad things more likely to happen, being happy makes a person worse, showing happiness is bad for the person and others, and chasing happiness is bad for the person and others.
They concluded that some aversion to some kind of happiness is probably found in every culture, and that the beliefs seem to be held more strongly outside the West. They suggested the differences may come from how much a culture values happiness, and how much it values personal happiness against the good of the group.
Doesn’t show A narrative review that gathers sayings, texts and earlier studies. It describes the beliefs and where they appear. It doesn't measure how common they are or test what they do to people.
A five-item scale measured the same belief across 14 countries
Joshanloo's Fear of Happiness Scale has five items about whether happiness, and extreme happiness, leads to bad things. One reads: “I prefer not to be too joyful, because usually joy is followed by sadness.”
In a study published in 2014, Joshanloo and colleagues tested it in 14 national groups, most of them outside the West, with New Zealand among them. Using statistical tests of whether a scale means the same thing in different groups, they found it held up for individuals and for countries. The beliefs were present, to different degrees, in every country studied.
Doesn’t show A test of the questionnaire itself. It shows the belief can be measured the same way across countries. It doesn't show what the belief does in people's lives, or whether agreeing with the items means avoiding happiness in practice.
In British students, fear of happiness was closely linked with depression
In 2012 Paul Gilbert and colleagues published a nine-item Fear of Happiness Scale built from things clients had said in therapy, with items such as “I am frightened to let myself become too happy.” They gave it to 185 students at the University of Derby, along with measures of fears of compassion, alexithymia (difficulty naming feelings), mindfulness, self-criticism, depression, anxiety and stress.
Fear of happiness was closely linked with many of them. Its correlation with depression was .70, which the authors called especially noteworthy, and with self-hatred .62. A 2014 follow-up with 52 people with moderate to severe depression found fear of happiness was the best predictor of depression, anxiety and stress among the fears it measured.
Doesn’t show Both samples were small and measured at one time, so the link can't show which comes first: fear of happiness may feed low mood, or low mood may make happiness feel risky. A correlation as high as .70 also leaves open whether the two questionnaires partly measure the same thing.
Pooling 26 samples, fear of happiness went with depression, anxiety and anhedonia, and with later depression
In 2025 Amanda Collins and Chloe Coster pooled 26 samples, 6,604 people in all, that had measured fear of happiness alongside depression, anxiety or anhedonia. Measured at the same time, fear of happiness went with all three, with large effects. Measured over time, it went with later depression, with a small to medium effect.
The links were stronger in samples from Eastern cultures than Western ones, and they varied with the version of the scale and how severe the symptoms were.
Doesn’t show A preprint, still awaiting peer review when this page was written. Most of its findings come from measures taken at one time. Only the part that followed people over time speaks to which comes first, and its effect was smaller. In a peer-reviewed study of 128 Belgian teenagers, fear of happiness went with depressive symptoms at the same time and didn't predict them two months later. Pooling also mixes two scales that share a name.
Try it: the thought after the good one
Think of the last time something good happened to you. Write three short notes.
- What happened, and how good it felt at first
- The first thought that came after the good feeling, word for word
- What I did next: told people, kept it to myself, waited for the catch, spoiled it a little
If the second note is a warning, such as “this won't last” or “don't get used to it,” and the third note turns the feeling down, the pattern on this page may be at work. If the first note says the good thing barely registered, the anhedonia page may fit better. If the warning comes with every kind of moment, good and bad alike, the vulnerability schema is closer.
What is cherophobia?
A popular name for a fear of being happy. No diagnostic manual lists it. Researchers study the same ground as fear of happiness or aversion to happiness: beliefs that happiness brings bad things after it, makes people worse, or does harm when shown or chased. Two questionnaires measure it, both called the Fear of Happiness Scale.
Is cherophobia a real thing?
The beliefs are real and measurable. Mohsen Joshanloo's five-item scale held up across 14 countries, and the beliefs were present in all of them, to different degrees. As a phobia or a diagnosis, cherophobia has no standing: it isn't in the DSM-5, and the research treats fear of happiness as a set of beliefs that vary in strength.
What causes fear of happiness?
The research points to culture first. In Joshanloo and Weijers's review, the beliefs show up in religious teaching, philosophy and folk sayings that warn against too much joy, and are held more strongly outside the West. In Paul Gilbert's clinical work the scale was built from what clients said, and the fear went with self-criticism and difficulty naming feelings. A person's own history, such as good times that were often followed by trouble, may also play a part, and the studies on this page don't test it.
Is fear of happiness linked to depression?
Closely, in the studies so far. In 185 British students the correlation was .70. In 52 people with moderate to severe depression, it was the strongest predictor of depression, anxiety and stress among the fears measured. A 2025 preprint pooling 26 samples found large links with depression and anxiety measured at the same time, and a smaller link with depression measured later. A peer-reviewed study of 128 Belgian teenagers found the link at the same time and none two months later. Which comes first is still open.
What is the difference between fear of happiness and anhedonia?
Anhedonia is a reduced ability to want or enjoy good things. Fear of happiness is wariness of good feelings that do arrive. The two are often found together, and the 2025 pooled analysis found a large link between them. A person may have both. Telling them apart means asking whether the good feeling comes and gets pushed away, or barely comes.
Why do I feel scared when I'm happy?
The research describes beliefs that may sit behind it: that happiness is followed by sadness, that it tempts fate or makes others envious, that it makes a person careless or selfish. Joshanloo and Weijers found these across cultures, often in sayings people grow up hearing. In Gilbert's studies the fear went with self-criticism and low mood. This page can't say which of these, if any, applies to one person.
Where the idea comes from
The word cherophobia turns up in magazine articles and online lists of phobias. No diagnostic manual lists it. Researchers study the same ground under other names: fear of happiness, and aversion to happiness.
Two lines of research use the name fear of happiness. In 2013 Mohsen Joshanloo, a psychologist who studies ideas of happiness across cultures, published a five-item scale that asks how far people agree that happiness, and extreme happiness in particular, leads to bad things. With colleagues in 14 countries he tested whether it measures the same thing in each. In 2014 he and Dan Weijers reviewed where and why people are averse to happiness, drawing on religion, philosophy and folk sayings as well as surveys.
Separately, in 2012, the clinical psychologist Paul Gilbert and colleagues at the University of Derby built a nine-item Fear of Happiness Scale from things clients had said in therapy, as part of research on fears of compassion and other warm feelings. In that line of work the fear is studied for its links with depression and self-criticism.
The question it adds
When a good stretch comes with dread, this idea asks what the dread is guarding against.
What do I think will happen if I let this be as good as it is?
Mohsen Joshanloo, 2013 (the Fear of Happiness Scale). Mohsen Joshanloo and Dan Weijers, 2014 (aversion to happiness across cultures). Paul Gilbert and colleagues, 2012 (a second scale, from therapy). “Cherophobia” is a popular word with no clinical standing
Questions to carry
- What did I learn, growing up, about what happens after people are happy?
- When did I last let a good moment be good, without bracing for the next one?
Situations where it comes up
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How this page was made. Built with Conscious Living AI and led by Andrew Fayad. How the library is made · Report an issue · Last changed November 7, 2026.