Roots of the Rise
Short episodes with grounded wisdom for healing, growth, and reconnecting to your true self.
Roots of the Rise is a soul-centered podcast hosted by Sarah Hope—Ayurvedic health practitioner, spiritual mentor, meditation teacher, biodynamic craniosacral therapist, and energy healer. Drawing from thousands of hours of client work, group facilitation, and her own journey through childhood trauma, grief, and the profound rediscovery of love and joy, Sarah offers a grounded, heart-led space for inner transformation.
Short episodes (10–20 minutes) released on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, offer bite-sized insights, ideas, and practices for inner growth and self-development. Whether you're seasoned on the path or just beginning to explore, this podcast gives you digestible nuggets to stay inspired—without overwhelm. It’s perfect for those who want to stay engaged in the work, curious newcomers feeling overloaded by long-form content, or anyone wanting to understand a loved one's journey from a broader, more accessible perspective.
Sarah’s intention is to expose you to a wide range of spiritual concepts, therapeutic tools, philosophies, and practices—all in service of helping you become the healthiest, happiest, most authentic version of yourself. The journey can be hard. It can feel lonely. But you’re not alone. Come walk this path with her—learning, healing, and rising, one grounded step at a time.
This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Sarah is not a licensed therapist, and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist, or any other qualified provider. That said, she hopes it inspires you to grow, heal and seek the support you need to thrive.
Roots of the Rise
Episode 77 - Feeling Anxious When Life Is Good? Understanding Foreboding Joy, Its Link to Gratitude, and Why We Brace for Pain
We explore the concept of foreboding joy—that anxiety-inducing feeling that creeps in during perfect moments when we should be happiest. This common psychological experience has us bracing for disaster precisely when everything is going well, stealing our ability to fully enjoy life's beautiful moments.
• Foreboding joy is the feeling of anxiety during perfect moments when we anticipate something bad happening
• Joy is our most vulnerable emotion because when we feel joy, we are wide open
• Our nervous systems developed to scan for danger, making it difficult to fully relax
• Foreboding joy often appears when we're tired, overworked, or neglecting basic self-care
• Anxiety during happy moments can signal that your nervous system needs attention
• Gratitude is the most powerful antidote to foreboding joy
• When feeling anxious during good moments, practice acknowledging it, breathing deeply, and focusing on gratitude
• You can't selectively numb emotions—if you dampen joy to avoid pain, you dull all emotions
• Regular gratitude practice can retrain your brain to stay present during joyful moments
Join me on Wednesday for a follow-up episode where we'll dive deeper into gratitude as a practice that can bring more joy, deeper connection, and better health into your life. I'll share why gratitude is more than a feel-good idea and offer a simple challenge to help rewire your brain for appreciation.
Resources
Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown
Related Episodes
Episode 13 - Self Care - What is it and where to begin
Episode 74 - Beyond "If Only": Finding Joy in the Present Moment
Episode 35 - Creating Your Digital Joy Arsenal: Why We All Need a "Smile Folder"
Welcome to Roots of the Rise with me, sarah Holt. Have you ever had a perfect moment, one where everything is exactly as you want it to be? Everything is perfect and yet you feel anxious, like your body is waiting for something bad to happen. This exact thing happened to me recently, and it has a name foreboding joy. In this episode, we're exploring what it is, why it happens and, most importantly, how to gently move through it without missing the moments that matter most. Hello everyone, it is so good to be back with you through it without missing the moments that matter most. Hello everyone, it is so good to be back with you.
Speaker 1:I have to admit, taking some time away was needed and, honestly, it was wonderful. But while I was on vacation, something happened that I wanted to talk about. It was one of those perfect mornings, the kind that feels like a postcard. I had the best cup of coffee in my hands. I was sitting at the end of the dock on my favorite lake. My awesome dog was curled up at my feet, my family was still asleep up the hill, it was quiet. It was beautiful, so peaceful. I was even watching a bald eagle fly over the lake. I mean, it was really everything anyone could hope for on the morning of a vacation day, and yet I felt anxious. There was a tightness in my chest, this underlying sense of unease. I really just I could not fully settle. Despite all the beauty, all the peace, having that moment be everything I could want, my nervous system was braced for something to go wrong.
Speaker 1:And this experience what I'm describing, this perfect moment that you're not really fully allowed to enjoy because you're bracing for some sort of disaster that's called foreboding joy and honestly, it's awful. I mean, there I was surrounded by all this beauty, having this perfect moment, and all I could think is why can't I just enjoy this? Why am I sitting here having this quote unquote perfect moment, and all I can feel is this sense of dread and doom. How often does that happen to you? How often do you have a moment, a moment that is supposed to be full of ease, pleasure, hope, even celebration, and instead you're sitting there waiting for the other shoe to drop? And I know I'm not alone in that experience. I am not the only one. This is such a common thing and that's really too bad, because foreboding joy is a thief of happiness and most people don't even know that it has a name, don't even know that it's a thing, don't know that they are not alone in experiencing it.
Speaker 1:Brene Brown describes it beautifully in her book Atlas of the Heart. She writes that joy is the most vulnerable of all human emotions, which seems surprising, right, but it makes sense, because when we feel joy, we are wide open. There is so much to lose, she says, if you're afraid to lean into good news, wonderful moments and joy, if you find yourself waiting for the other shoe to drop, you are not alone. You are not alone. For instance, her research shows that 95% of parents, for example, experience foreboding joy in relation to their kids. That's staggering and it speaks to how deeply this fear runs through us. Any parents out there you relate to this. I mean I know I do.
Speaker 1:Watching my kid walk into day camp this summer so cool, so calm, so confident, so at ease with going into a new experience and I found myself having both an incredible sense of pride and joy and also this tightness in my chest. What if something happens to him? What if he gets scared? What if other kids are mean or the counselors are mean? What if? What if, what if and what am I going to do if that happens?
Speaker 1:The joy I felt in watching him so proudly go by himself into this new experience, it was deadened, it was tampered with by this sense of unease. And it's not the same thing as being worried that something is going to happen, because I mean, I think any parent watching their child go off and be by themselves when they're young gives you that little bit of kind of worry. It is this moment that should be joyful and celebratory that then gets turned into this hamster wheel of all the horrible things that could happen, just on repeat in your head, and not just the first day, where it's kind of understandable, but for days on end. And I mean I think about this, like with clients of mine who experienced something great in their life and are happily telling me about it, and then they pause and say, but I know this isn't going to last. Or they immediately, you know, kind of poo-poo the good news Sure, they just got a promotion at work, but they know they're probably not going to do that great a job with it. Or they finally started dating someone who actually takes them seriously and treats them well, but it probably won't work out. I mean all the excitement for the important, big steps they are taking in their lives, but instead of just enjoying it, just being in that joy, they're already preparing for doom.
Speaker 1:So what's going on? Why do we do this? Why, in moments that should feel light or joyful, does anxiety come crashing in? Well, part of it is just how we're wired. If you've lived through trauma or long periods of stress, your nervous system learns to scan for danger. So even when things are good, it's like your body is whispering. Don't relax too much. Something bad could be coming.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's a false sense of control. We think if I imagine the worst, maybe I won't be hurt when it happens. We try to beat vulnerability to the punch, and for some of us, joy itself can feel unfamiliar, and therefore we don't quite trust it. Or maybe we don't fully feel worthy of it. We've been taught that joy is fleeting, or that it needs to be earned, or that if we get too happy, we'll somehow jinx it. And then there's grief. Joy can bring up grief, especially if it reminds us of someone who's no longer here, or a version of ourselves we've outgrown, or a chapter we didn't get to fully live. Joy and sorrow they are so intertwined, so foreboding.
Speaker 1:Joy isn't just about fear. It's also about memory, about longing and about protection. I mean, from an evolutionary standpoint, it actually makes a lot of sense. For much of human history. We had to be on high alert. There wasn't a lot of stability or safety, so we developed survival mechanisms to help us anticipate danger. We needed to be ready for the worst. But now, well, most of us aren't worrying about bear attacks while we're walking through a fully stocked grocery store. And yet our nervous systems haven't entirely caught up. Some of us still get hijacked by our amygdala, our brain's fear center, even in places that should feel safe.
Speaker 1:You could be feeling joy one moment. Maybe you're excited, walking through the store, planning a weekend party, and then you pass the canned goods aisle and all of a sudden you're hit with a wave of anxiety. You start having this sense that things are going too well, and you might not even know what triggered it. You might just start worrying about the economy or thinking to yourself oh, I hope my paycheck hits on time. Or then you find yourself calculating how many canned goods you'd need if there's another supply chain hiccup. This is a perfect example of how foreboding joy gets triggered, often by subtle reminders of past stress or instability, like those grocery stores, might subconsciously be reminding you of all the supply chain issues we had during COVID.
Speaker 1:New beginnings can also be powerful triggers. Even when something is exciting, beautiful, exactly what we've been longing for, it still carries with it vulnerability. I remember having a full-blown panic attack the morning I married my husband. I was sitting there crack of dawn in bed with one of my best friends who would stay with me the night before, and what should have been like the happiest moment right. Waking up knowing that it was my wedding day to this man, I was completely undone, absolutely sobbing, panicking over the weight of it all. Could I do this? Should I? Would I be a better wife this time? Was I capable of being the kind of partner he deserved? That was my biggest fear. I was so happy to be marrying him and at the same time, I was terrified. Terrified that I was going to mess it up, terrified that I was going to hurt him. That's foreboding joy joy sitting shoulder to shoulder with fear, brene Brown says.
Speaker 1:Foreboding joy happens when we lose our tolerance for vulnerability. There's this unconscious belief that recognizing and celebrating what's good is basically putting a target on your back, like if you get too happy, too hopeful, too content, you'll jinx it. Instead of basking in joy, we start bracing for pain. But before we talk more about how foreboding joy shows up, I want to pause and talk about joy itself, because it's worth remembering what we're fighting to reclaim.
Speaker 1:It's easily identifiable when we look at children. You can see it just pouring out of them. But you know, us adults, we feel it too. Maybe it's the sudden warmth in your chest when you see someone you love, or the way your breath catches during a beautiful song or watching the sunset over the ocean. It's belly laughter, it's awe, it's a smile, a smell, a memory, even something silly, like watching the antics of a squirrel. You know, in Atlas of the Heart, brene Brown defines it as an intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure and appreciation.
Speaker 1:Most of us even have a hard time articulating experiences of pure joy. We just don't seem to have words for it. But it's so important. You know, joy nourishes us, it reminds us of our aliveness and you know what's so common. Even identifying the things that bring us joy can be hard. One of the questions I typically ask during consults with clients is tell me three major stresses in your life, and it's rare they aren't able to rattle off at least three, usually pretty easily. But I follow it up by asking them to tell me three joys in their life and way too often that's the moment the client cries for the first time in my office because they can't tell me one, or one is easy, like all my kids, but then crickets.
Speaker 1:When we let ourselves feel joy, really feel it, we're connecting to something essential, something that grounds us and gives life meaning, which is exactly why joy feels so vulnerable and why foreboding joy shows up to try to protect us. It might show up like this you mentally rehearse what you'll do if the worst happens. You picture something bad happening to the people you love. You feel tense or restless, even when everything is actually okay. You might even hesitate to share things you are happy about with others because you don't want to jinx it. And then you feel isolated because you can't celebrate fully. Do you do this? Does any of this ring a bell? The cost is real, because when we shrink away from joy, we also dim our connection to gratitude, to meaning, to awe.
Speaker 1:Joy is what lifts us in dark times. It fuels resilience. It helps us remember who we are. The hard truth is, you can't selectively numb emotions. You can't turn joy up to a 10 and keep grief or sadness at a two. If you've lived through a lot of pain or trauma and most of us have then feeling anything fully can feel unsafe. So we dull it all, we keep everything at a five, stay neutral, stay in control. But that leaves us disconnected from joy, from love, from life itself. So what do we do about it? Gratitude, it really is that simple and that powerful.
Speaker 1:When you notice yourself spiraling, catastrophizing or feeling that subtle anxiety creeping in, even in the good moments, pause First, acknowledge it. Okay, I'm feeling anxious. This is that foreboding joy thing. I see you. Then check in with your body. Notice do you have a tightness in your chest, a clenching in your gut, your shoulders up around your ears, whatever is there. Just observe it with as little judgment as possible. No need to fix or change it, just notice. Now pause and take three deep breaths. Now pause and take three deep breaths. Let the sensations and emotions be present, like waves moving through you or clouds passing overhead. Then place a hand over your heart and gently say right now I am safe, right now I am okay. This is just something I'm feeling and it will pass.
Speaker 1:And finally, and this is the most important part, invite in gratitude, not in a performative or forced or fake kind of way, but with sincerity. Ask yourself what in this moment can I feel grateful for? Ask yourself, what in this moment can I feel grateful for? This one small act of both acknowledgement and gratitude can interrupt the spiral. It gently shifts your focus without denying your experience. You don't have to push the anxiety away, you just don't let it take the wheel. The more often you do this, the more you strengthen your ability to stay present with what's real, to name it, allow it and then consciously choose to invite in gratitude. Well, the easier it will become, and over time that practice builds emotional tolerance and with that, the power of foreboding joy begins to fade.
Speaker 1:This is exactly what I did when I found myself feeling foreboding joy sitting on the dock during vacation. I acknowledged it. I'll admit I got frustrated for a moment with the fact that I was experiencing it at all, and then I stopped and I started giving gratitude, and I made a conscious effort, not just in that moment but over the course of the rest of the day, to continuously look for things that I could be grateful about and there were plenty, because I was on vacation with my favorite people in my favorite place, doing my favorite things. But just to go back for one moment, that frustration that I had over even feeling foreboding joy in the first place, that's because this is an old, unfortunately familiar pattern of mine, just like maybe it is for you. What I've learned to do is see it as a signal is for you. What I've learned to do is see it as a signal. See, I don't get that sense of gloom and doom and dread when my central nervous system is regulated. It's only when I'm out of balance in some way, when I start having a dysregulated central nervous system, that I start to lean more back into the old patterns of anxiety and foreboding joy. So anytime that I start feeling this way, it's a signal to me that in some way, shape or form, I'm not taking care of myself. So that could look like not getting enough sleep, which is actually not really the norm for me, because I prioritize sleep over just about anything else. So more likely it's that I've been hyper focused on work and not giving myself enough breaks. This is definitely what was going on for me during those first days of vacation I was coming off of the rush of trying to get way too much done in way too little time before we left. It's when I skip movement or exercise on a regular basis when I've fallen into doom, scrolling at night instead of actually relaxing and getting some quality time with my husband, and if I've been doing like two or three of these things at once, then it's almost guaranteed that foreboding joy is just around the corner, along with all sorts of other varieties of anxiety. Conversely, if I'm in a good way, joy is really easy to step into, step into.
Speaker 1:I went on a beach vacation with family a couple months back and I have this incredibly strong memory of catching a crab with my brother, his wife, their daughter, my husband and my son. It was a total team effort. We were all laughing like loons as we tried to catch this thing, and then I coached my brother through actually grabbing it, something I learned on the coast of Maine. You know how to do that without getting pinched. And even as it was happening, I was kind of having an out of body experience watching this time between my brother's family and mine, and I had this thought oh, like I'm creating a core memory right now. There was something about that moment about being fully in it with this brother. Oh, like I'm creating a core memory right now. There was something about that moment about being fully in it with this brother of mine. I've only known half my life due to, you know, being adopted and only reuniting with him about 20 years ago and our family. It was just pure joy on so many levels and I actually let myself feel it and it was wonderful and I'm just so incredibly thankful that I can do that now, because the opposite the foreboding joy that was much more common for so long.
Speaker 1:But what about you? How does foreboding joy show up in your life? If you want to explore this with journaling or simply pondering for the rest of your drive or walk after this episode finishes, start with this when was the last time you felt joy and immediately tried to protect yourself from it? What was going on, what were you struggling with, and can you pinpoint what form of self-care you might've been delinquent with at the time that made you more susceptible to this feeling of unease? That's all for today. Thank you so much for spending time with me. It's really nice to be back with you and as you explore the tricky feeling of foreboding joy, remember it's okay to feel vulnerable and it is possible to open up to joy without fear.
Speaker 1:If this episode resonated with you, I invite you to join me again on Wednesday for a follow-up where we're going to dive into gratitude, the simple yet powerful practice that can bring more joy, deeper connection and even better health into your life. I'll share why gratitude is more than just a feel-good idea, some basics about it and a simple challenge to help you begin to rewire your brain for appreciation. If you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, things you want me to cover, remember you can always email me at rootsoftherise at gmailcom. And until you listen again, remember, know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be. Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal and seek the support you need to thrive.
