Identity uncertainty, which I wrote about last time, is one of the forms in which we do not know how to be with ourselves. But there is another form of powerlessness towards our own person, more subtle and less often recognised: the inability to receive joy, to let good things exist without sabotaging them, without waiting for them to fall apart, without somehow feeling unworthy of them.
Today's subject is about the deep and direct connection between self-esteem and the capacity to receive joy, love, success, and any form of good in life.
What does the inability to receive joy mean? It is not clinical depression, though it can overlap with it. It is something more specific: a tendency to minimise, sabotage, or anticipate the loss of good things, precisely in the moments when we should be savouring them.
Things are going well at work and the first thought is: it probably will not last. You are genuinely loved and feel a diffuse anxiety that it will end. You receive a compliment and reject or minimise it. You have a moment of pure joy and instead of living it, you think about what could go wrong. You have a good relationship and unconsciously sabotage it precisely when things become genuinely good.
All of these are forms of the same difficulty: believing you deserve what you have.
Where does this difficulty come from? From several sources worth understanding.
The first is fragile or low self-esteem. When your personal worth is conditional or built on sand, joy and success produce a specific anxiety: the fear of losing what you do not truly believe you deserve. It is easier not to receive something good than to receive it and lose it.
The second is what Brené Brown calls foreboding joy, the anticipation of disaster in moments of joy. It is a protection mechanism: if I think about what can go wrong, I will not be surprised when it happens. But the price of this protection is that you are never genuinely present in joy.
The third is the unconscious belief that joy is conditional on merit. That you must earn it, that it is not a right, that you must do something to deserve it. And so any joy carries a subiacent anguish: have I done enough to deserve this?
How does this difficulty manifest in relationships? In ways that produce genuine suffering.
People who cannot receive joy tend to sabotage relationships precisely when they become good. Either through unconsciously provoked conflicts, or through emotional withdrawal, or through self-sabotage. Why? Because a good relationship is frightening for someone who does not believe they deserve it. Its loss, when it comes, will hurt more than if it had never existed.
And so, unconsciously, better to break it yourself before someone else or circumstances break it.
What helps you learn to receive joy? A few practices I consider genuine.
The first is the practice of acknowledgement. Brené Brown speaks of gratitude not as a response to joy, but as a practice that makes joy possible. Instead of thinking about what could go wrong, to name aloud or internally what is good right now. Not to deny risk, but to allow yourself to be with what exists.
The second is to observe and resist the reflex of minimisation. When you receive something good, a compliment, good news, a moment of genuine connection, to notice the automatic reflex to diminish it and choose not to follow it. You do not need to immediately believe you deserve it. It is enough not to actively oppose what comes.
The third is to work directly with self-esteem, not with its symptoms. The difficulty of receiving joy is a symptom. The source is the belief that you are not valuable enough to deserve it. And this is a belief, not a truth.
There is a paradox I mention: people who most sabotage joy are often those who most desire it. You do not sabotage what you do not care about. You sabotage precisely what you deeply desire and about which you feel most vulnerable.
And knowing this, sabotage takes on a different meaning. It is not a sign that you are defective. It is a sign that you need more inner safety to be able to stay with what you truly want.
Think about the last moment of genuine joy or goodness in your life. Did you allow yourself to fully feel it, or did you minimise it, anticipate its loss, or sabotage it? And if you were to live it again, what would you do differently?
