Aversion to happiness

Aversion to happiness is reluctance to pursue or experience positive emotion, often because happiness is believed to invite misfortune, vulnerability, or later disappointment.

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Fear of happiness: A tendency to fear or distrust happiness because it is expected to cause harm or be followed by negative events. It describes the anticipated danger that can motivate avoiding happiness.
Happiness: A positive emotional state or broader sense of well-being and life satisfaction. Aversion is defined in relation to the positive state it resists.
Fear of happiness scale: A questionnaire measure of beliefs that happiness can have harmful consequences. It operationalizes attitudes central to aversion to happiness.
Hedonophobia: An aversion to pleasure or pleasurable experiences. It concerns pleasure broadly, while aversion to happiness focuses on positive emotional states.
Dampening: A strategy of reducing positive emotion by focusing on its limits, causes for concern, or likelihood of ending. It shows how people may suppress positive feelings once they arise.
Positive affect: The experience of pleasant emotions such as joy, interest, and enthusiasm. Reluctance to feel happy can extend to positive emotion more broadly.
Cognitive behavioral therapy: A psychotherapy that addresses patterns of thought and behavior contributing to psychological distress. It can examine and test beliefs that make positive emotion seem dangerous.
Cherophobia: A term used for reluctance to engage in activities thought to bring happiness, often from fear of negative consequences. It is a popular label for a closely related pattern, but is not a formal psychiatric diagnosis.
Superstitious thinking: Beliefs that events are causally connected through forces or patterns unsupported by reliable evidence. A perceived link between happiness and later bad luck can reflect this reasoning.
Belief: A mental acceptance that a proposition is true or likely to be true. Expectations about happiness and misfortune are beliefs that shape emotional choices.