I met Rachel at a wellness retreat in Ubud, the kind of place where everyone’s supposedly finding themselves. She had all the markers of a woman who had her life together—successful marketing career, yoga every morning, green smoothies, a gratitude journal filled with perfect handwriting.
But something was off. Not obviously. Just… subtly. Like looking at a painting where the colors are technically correct but somehow lifeless.
“I’m fine,” she kept saying. To others. To herself. With the kind of insistence that betrays its opposite.
Three days into the retreat, after too much kombucha and too little sleep, she finally cracked. “I don’t remember the last time I felt actual joy,” she whispered. “Not happiness. Not contentment. Joy. The kind that bubbles up from nowhere and makes you feel ridiculous and alive.”
That conversation haunted me. Because Rachel wasn’t depressed in any clinical sense. She was functioning—thriving, even, by conventional metrics. But she’d lost something essential, so gradually she hadn’t noticed it leaving.
Through my work with The Vessel, I’ve encountered hundreds of Rachels. Women who’ve quietly traded their joy for something that looked like success, or safety, or social approval. Women who’ve become ghosts in their own lives, going through motions so perfectly choreographed that nobody notices they’re not actually dancing.
Dr. Barbara Fredrickson’s research on positive emotions reveals something chilling: joy isn’t just a nice-to-have emotional decoration. It’s the psychological fuel for resilience, creativity, and connection. Without it, we don’t just feel worse—we literally become less capable of navigating life’s complexities.
But here’s what makes this particularly insidious for women: society has trained us to perform happiness rather than feel it. We’ve become so good at curating the appearance of a fulfilling life that we’ve forgotten to check if we’re actually fulfilled. We’ve mastered the art of looking joyful while hemorrhaging actual joy.
These habits aren’t dramatic. They’re subtle, reasonable, even praised. That’s what makes them so dangerous. They’re the psychological equivalent of carbon monoxide—odorless, invisible, and slowly suffocating.
1. She schedules everything except spontaneity
Lisa showed me her planner once. Every fifteen-minute block accounted for. Workout: 6 AM. Meditation: 6:45 AM. Gratitude practice: 7 AM. Even her “relaxation time” was penciled in—Sunday, 2-3 PM.
“When do you just… exist?” I asked.
She looked at me like I’d asked when she planned to levitate.
Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s research on flow states shows that joy often emerges in the unstructured spaces—the moments when we’re not optimizing, achieving, or improving. But women especially have been sold the myth that an unplanned moment is a wasted moment.
Lisa had scheduled herself into a prison of productivity. Every spontaneous impulse got suffocated by the next calendar notification. She’d become so efficient at living that she’d forgotten to be alive.
The heartbreak is that she thought this meant she was doing life right. Instagram agreed. Her boss agreed. But joy requires what psychologists call “behavioral flexibility”—the ability to respond to the moment rather than the plan. When everything’s scheduled, nothing can surprise you. And surprise, it turns out, is joy’s favorite doorway.
The practice she couldn’t do: Leave three hours unplanned each week. Not “free time” to fill with tasks. Actual void. The kind that makes type-A personalities break out in hives.
2. She says “I’m fine” when she’s drowning
There’s a particular way women say “I’m fine” that should be classified as a public health emergency. It comes with a specific smile—not too big (that would be fake) but not absent (that would invite questions). It’s perfectly calibrated to shut down inquiry while maintaining social harmony.
Sarah perfected this response. Her mother was dying. Her marriage was imploding. Her teenagers were in crisis. But when anyone asked how she was doing? “I’m fine! How are you?”
Dr. Brené Brown’s research on vulnerability shows that emotional suppression doesn’t just hide our struggles—it also blocks our capacity for joy. They’re on the same channel. Turn down one, you turn down both.
But women have been trained since childhood to be emotional thermostats for everyone else—keeping the temperature comfortable, never too hot, never too cold. We’ve learned that our authentic emotions are inconveniences to be managed rather than experiences to be felt.
Sarah thought she was being strong. Really, she was slowly suffocating under the weight of unexpressed truth. Joy can’t coexist with the constant effort of maintaining a facade. It requires what psychologists call “emotional congruence”—when your insides match your outsides.
The question she couldn’t answer: “What would happen if people knew you weren’t fine?”
3. She curates her life for an audience that isn’t watching
Emma spent forty minutes arranging her breakfast for the perfect photo. The acai bowl got three different angles. The coffee foam art required multiple takes. By the time she actually ate, everything was cold.
“Who’s this for?” I asked once, watching her stage a “casual” reading scene that took twelve attempts.
She couldn’t answer. Not really. It was for everyone and no one—this imaginary audience she performed for constantly.
Dr. Tim Kasser’s studies on extrinsic motivation show that when we orient our lives around external validation, our internal compass breaks. We lose touch with what actually brings us joy versus what gets us likes.
Emma had become the curator of her own life museum, forgetting she was supposed to be living in it, not just documenting it. Every experience got filtered through its potential as content. Every moment became a performance.
The cruel irony? The audience she was performing for was mostly doing the same thing—everyone too busy curating their own lives to actually witness hers. It’s a collective delusion where we’re all performing happiness for each other while nobody’s actually feeling it.
The experiment she wouldn’t try: Live one full day without documenting anything. No photos. No stories. No evidence it happened except her own memory.
4. She mistakes numbness for peace
“I’ve found my equilibrium,” Monica told me. She’d been through a brutal divorce, rebuilt her life, found stability. But when she talked about her days, everything was beige. Not bad. Not good. Just… level.
She’d confused the absence of pain with the presence of joy. They’re not the same thing.
Dr. Kristin Neff’s research on emotional regulation shows that many women, exhausted from life’s turbulence, settle into what feels like peace but is actually emotional flatlining. They’ve turned down their entire emotional volume to avoid the lows, not realizing they’ve also eliminated the highs.
Monica had built such thick walls against disappointment that joy couldn’t find a way in either. She’d become emotionally weatherproofed—nothing could hurt her, but nothing could delight her either.
She called it maturity. Growth. Being “past all that drama.” But joy is inherently dramatic. It’s excessive, unreasonable, disproportionate. It requires the kind of openness that also lets in the possibility of hurt.
The realization she was avoiding: Sometimes feeling nothing is worse than feeling pain.
5. She performs self-care without actual care
Jessica had all the self-care rituals. Sunday face masks. Monthly massages. Meditation apps. Bath bombs that cost more than dinner. But it was all performance—self-care as another item on the achievement list rather than actual nurturing.
She was going through the motions of caring for herself without actually asking what she needed. It’s like eating when you’re not hungry because it’s lunchtime—mechanical, disconnected, ultimately unsatisfying.
Dr. Suniya Luthar’s studies on “pseudo-self-care” reveal that many high-achieving women engage in self-care as another form of productivity rather than genuine restoration. They’re optimizing their recovery like they optimize everything else, missing the point entirely.
Real self-care might have meant saying no to the networking event. Might have meant admitting she hated yoga. Might have meant stopping the face masks and starting therapy. But that would require actually listening to herself rather than following the prescribed wellness script.
The question that made her uncomfortable: “When did self-care become another job?”
6. She’s forgotten what she loved before she became responsible
I asked Diana what she did for fun. She listed her kids’ activities. I asked again—what did she do for fun? She talked about family vacations. The third time I asked, she went quiet.
“I honestly can’t remember,” she finally said. “I used to paint. I think. That feels like a different person.”
Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky’s research on hedonic adaptation shows that when we stop engaging in activities that bring us intrinsic joy, we don’t just lose the activity—we lose access to that part of ourselves. It atrophies like an unused muscle.
Diana had slowly traded every personal passion for practical responsibility. Painting became meal planning. Dancing became driving to soccer practice. Reading became reviewing homework. All necessary trades, she thought. All reversible, she assumed.
But joy needs channels, and she’d systematically closed all of hers in service of being needed. She’d become so essential to everyone else’s life that she’d become optional in her own.
The assignment she couldn’t complete: Name five things you loved doing at age 20. Do one this week.
7. She fills silence like it’s dangerous
Amanda couldn’t handle quiet. Podcasts during her commute. Netflix while cooking. Audiobooks while walking. Even meditation involved guided voices. She’d created a life where she never had to be alone with her own thoughts.
“What are you afraid you’ll hear?” I asked.
She laughed, but it was hollow. “Nothing good.”
Dr. Ethan Kross’s research on self-talk shows that many people, women especially, have such harsh internal dialogues that they’ll do anything to avoid them. But in drowning out our inner voice, we also lose access to our inner wisdom—including the part that knows what brings us joy.
Amanda’s constant input was a form of psychological white noise, preventing her from hearing her own desires, her own knowing, her own truth. She’d become a consumer of other people’s thoughts to avoid producing her own.
Joy often whispers. It doesn’t shout over podcasts or compete with Netflix. It emerges in the quiet spaces, the boring moments, the walks without audio input where your mind can actually wander toward what it wants.
The challenge that terrified her: Sit in complete silence for 30 minutes. No meditation app. No guidance. Just her and her thoughts.
8. She’s optimized the wonder out of everything
Karen knew the most efficient route to everywhere. The best time to shop (Tuesday, 2 PM). The optimal morning routine (down to the second). She’d life-hacked her entire existence into maximum efficiency.
But efficiency and joy are often at odds. Joy is inefficient by nature—it makes you stop to pet dogs, take the long way home because the trees are pretty, spend an hour watching clouds.
Dr. Alia Crum’s studies on mindset show that when we approach life as a series of problems to optimize, we train our brains to see inefficiency as failure. But joy lives in the inefficient spaces—the lingering conversations, the aimless walks, the “wasteful” moments of just being.
Karen had become so good at doing life right that she’d forgotten why she was doing it at all. Every optimized minute was a moment joy couldn’t penetrate because she was already onto the next task.
The inefficiency she couldn’t tolerate: Take the longest route home once a week. No podcasts. No phone calls. Just the scenic route for the sake of scenery.
9. She waits for permission to feel joy
This one’s the killer. The silent belief that joy is something you earn, not something you allow. That you need to deserve it first. Achieve enough, sacrifice enough, perfect enough.
Maria had this down to an art. She’d be joyful when she lost the weight. When she got the promotion. When the kids were settled. When the house was paid off. When, when, when.
Dr. Russ Harris’s work on psychological flexibility reveals that postponing joy until conditions are perfect is a guarantee you’ll never feel it. Because conditions are never perfect. And even when they are, you’ve trained yourself to look for the next imperfection to fix before allowing yourself to feel.
Maria was living in what I call “joy debt”—always borrowing against future happiness to pay for present striving. But joy isn’t a reward for good behavior. It’s not a prize for optimization. It’s a choice, available in every moment, requiring nothing but permission.
The permission she couldn’t give herself: Feel joy now, incomplete and imperfect as everything is.
The quiet return
Here’s what I learned from Rachel, the woman from the retreat: Joy doesn’t leave dramatically. It doesn’t storm out slamming doors. It just… stops showing up. Like a friend who stopped calling and you’re not sure exactly when.
But here’s what else I learned: It can come back just as quietly.
Not through grand gestures or life overhauls. But through small rebellions against the habits that exiled it. Through choosing inefficiency. Through admitting you’re not fine. Through sitting in silence even when it’s uncomfortable. Through doing something pointless and wonderful just because.
The women who’ve quietly lost their joy haven’t failed. They’ve succeeded at everything they were told would make them happy. They’ve optimized, achieved, scheduled, and performed their way into lives that look perfect and feel empty.
But joy doesn’t care about your achievements. It cares about your aliveness. It wants you messy and authentic and occasionally irrational. It wants you to stop performing life and start experiencing it.
Rachel started painting again. Badly. Joyfully. She missed three yoga classes to finish a painting of her cat that looked nothing like her cat. She posted no pictures of it. She told no one about it. It was magnificently pointless and entirely hers.
That’s how joy returns—not as fireworks, but as a quiet recognition that you’re allowed to feel it. Not later. Not when you’ve earned it. Now, in your imperfect, unoptimized, beautifully inefficient life.
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