Brené Brown

And this goes back to, I talked about this in the TED Talk on vulnerability in 2010, how when we use alcohol, drugs, gambling, social media, whatever your drug of choice is, when we use substances or processes to numb the darkness, we by default numb the light.

And it's not like we can choose to, hey, I'm going to get rid of all the hard emotions but stay completely open and receptive to the positive emotions.

It doesn't work that way.

And one way that plays out in recovery that I think is really interesting that no one talks about, which is terrible, is if someone –

that you know is in recovery loses their job.

Immediately, people form a tight circle around that person, reach out, go to meetings.

But we know from the research that if someone gets promoted or engaged or something really exciting happens, they're as or more likely to relapse.

Really?

Yes.

Because they're so overwhelmed by the positive emotion that

that they've also been numbing.

And the community doesn't surround that person in that moment because there's not a hard time.

So they're alone in these incredibly excruciatingly vulnerable feelings of joy, optimism, and gratitude, which they also don't have experience feeling.

And so it can lead to relapse.

I mean, to me, the hardest thing I've had to learn how to do was not grief or shame,

But joy, that's the hardest for me.

Why?

Because I want to just rehearse tragedy when it happens.

In our research, we call it foreboding joy.

So when something good happens, I immediately feel this quiver of danger.