Why Do We Choose Suffering Over Joy?
Why Do We Choose Suffering Over Joy?
Ready to step out of suffering and fully embody your joy?
I guide women in releasing old patterns, reclaiming their energy, and awakening their power. If you’re ready to stop dimming your own light and start living fully alive, let’s work together and create a path that feels soulful, liberating, and truly yours.
…And why do we suffer with others instead of helping them rise?
Life hands us both pain and beauty. Sadness and Joy. Yet if you look around, it often seems that humans cling more tightly to pain and sadness than we do beauty and joy. It doesn’t seem to matter where the pain comes from, physical or emotional, we tend to stay in patterns that hurt us. We carry burdens that aren’t ours. We even chose to suffer with others — as if dimming our own light somehow helps them find theirs.
The truth is, it doesn’t. It actually perpetuates the problem, telling the universe I would like more suffering and my friend would also like more suffering, inviting more pain and suffering in for both people.
But why? Why is the human condition so bound to suffering?
Suffering is the default — not because we’re broken, but because we’re wired to survive.
Suffering is the default…
Since birth, our nervous system has had one job: To keep us alive at all costs. Joy is optional. Safety is not! So even when suffering feels awful, it can still feel… familiar. Predictable. Even comfortable, a known feeling.
If you grew up with chaos, calm can feel suspicious, like somethings wrong.
If love always came with pain, or consequences you may equate sacrifice with virtue.
If joy feels fleeting, or unattainable you may not let yourself have it at all. Better to brace for loss than risk heartbreak.
This isn’t weakness — it’s conditioning. It’s your body’s ancient survival codes playing on repeat.
Why do we suffer with others?
When someone we love is in pain, empathy is natural. We can literally feel the pain other people are in, and sometimes we may even feel it stronger than they do. When someone is conditioned to suffer, it can feel so comfortable they don’t even realize they’re suffering, for them it’s normal.
Too often, we confuse compassion with self-sacrifice. We take on others heaviness. We dim our light. We whisper to ourselves:
If you’re hurting, I’ll hurt too. That way you’ll know you’re not alone.
Or
Let me hurt for you, I’m strong, I’m used to hurting, I can deal with it, I would rather hurt for you than see you hurt.
It can be too painful for us to see someone in pain, especially if we know we can hold it for them.
But this doesn’t heal them. And it certainly doesn’t heal us.
True compassion says:
I see your pain. I won’t abandon you. But I will stay rooted in my own light — so you can see the way out.
We were taught that love means martyrdom and that joy is selfish. But what if your joy is medicine? What if your thriving is the very thing that shows others what’s possible? What if love and joy are the guide?
The way through: Choosing joy on purpose.
Joy rarely happens by accident — not at first. Joy is not just given, It’s a practice, a discipline, a rewiring of what “safe” feels like in the body. When you actively and purposely cultivate joy — even in small, defiant moments — you send a new signal to your nervous system:
It’s safe to feel good. It’s safe to shine. It’s safe to live fully alive.
And the more you embody this truth, the more you embody this practice, the more others feel permission to do the same.
Your light doesn’t abandon anyone. It invites them home.
You weren’t born to carry the weight of anyones suffering. You were born to transmute it. You were born to live fully — and by living fully, you give others a living example of freedom and permission to do the same.
The human condition may include suffering, but it’s not our baseline and it doesn’t have to define your story. You can choose anything you want! Something wilder, softer, more beautiful, freer. You can choose joy — not just for you, but for the world watching you rise.
Ready to step out of suffering and fully embody your joy?
I guide women in releasing old patterns, reclaiming their energy, and awakening their power. If you’re ready to stop dimming your own light and start living fully alive, let’s work together and create a path that feels soulful, liberating, and truly yours.
