Why We Have to Feel Pain to Feel Joy
By Athara Adventures
There is a quiet promise woven into much of modern life.
That if we work hard enough, think positively enough, or manage ourselves carefully enough, we can avoid pain and still arrive at joy.
Many of us have tried this. And many of us have discovered, often through experience rather than theory, that it does not work. In fact, it makes life harder.
At Athara, we work with women who are thoughtful, capable, and deeply committed to living well. And yet, again and again, we hear versions of the same question.
Why does joy feel so fragile?
Why does it feel scary to feel joy?
Why does it disappear when life gets hard?
Why does it feel harder to access now than it once did?
ACT and neuroscience offer a simple but challenging truth. Joy cannot be separated from pain. The very things that allow us to feel deeply also expose us to hurt. The goal is not to feel better, it is to get better at feeling.
This is not a flaw. It is the richness of being alive.
The myth of a painless life
We live in a culture that treats pain as a problem to be solved.
Discomfort is framed as something to fix. Sadness as something to overcome. Fear as something to manage away. Even grief is often rushed through, tidied up, and made more palatable.
Underneath this is a powerful belief, that a good life should feel good most of the time.
ACT gently challenges this belief. A meaningful life, not a comfortable one, is the aim. And meaning requires vulnerability.
When we try to avoid pain at all costs, we do not just increase suffering. We also narrow our lives.
What we lose when we numb
Avoidance rarely looks dramatic. More often, it looks sensible.
We stay busy
We distract ourselves
We lower our expectations
We stop wanting certain things because wanting makes us vulnerable
Over time, this quiet numbing can flatten our emotional world. We may feel less pain, but we also feel less joy, less aliveness, less connection.
ACT speaks of psychological flexibility, our ability to stay present with the full range of human experience while still moving toward what matters.
When we lose that flexibility, our lives may seem safer, but they are just smaller.
Pain as the price of meaning
Pain is not evidence that something has gone wrong. Often, it is evidence that something matters.
Grief tells us we have loved
Anxiety tells us we care about the outcome
Heartbreak tells us we opened ourselves
When we understand pain this way, it no longer signals failure. It signals connection. It tells us we are still engaged with life, still open to what matters.
ACT does not ask us to like pain. It asks us to recognize its role.
When we allow ourselves to feel pain without being consumed by it, we remain open to the experiences that bring joy. When we shut down pain entirely, joy disappears with it.
Why midlife brings this question into sharper focus
For many women, midlife is when the cost of avoidance becomes clearer.
Roles shift. Certainties fall away. Bodies change. Relationships evolve. The strategies that once worked to keep discomfort at bay may no longer hold.
At this stage of life, joy cannot be chased in the same way it once was. It must be allowed.
This often requires a different relationship with pain. Less fighting. More willingness. More honesty about what we are feeling and why.
Midlife is not a failure of resilience. It is often the moment when deeper truths can no longer be ignored.
Five reflections when pain and joy feel intertwined
When pain feels close to the surface, many of us instinctively try to push it away. Before doing that, it can be helpful to pause and gently reflect. These are not questions to answer perfectly, or even immediately. They are simply places to rest your attention.
What does this pain tell me about what I care about?
Pain often points directly to values. It highlights what matters, even when that realization feels uncomfortable.Where have I been trying to protect myself by feeling less?
Noticing where numbness has crept in can reveal how we have been coping, rather than judging ourselves for it.What happens if I allow this feeling to be here, without fixing it?
Staying present, even briefly, can soften the struggle and create space for something new.What would it look like to meet this moment with willingness rather than resistance?
Willingness is not giving up. It is choosing to engage honestly with what is already here.How might I move toward what matters, even while this pain exists?
Values-led living does not require pain to disappear first. It asks only that we do not wait for perfect conditions to live meaningfully.
These reflections are not a process to complete. They are companions you may return to, noticing how your relationship with pain and joy shifts over time.
Willingness, not endurance
ACT uses the word willingness intentionally.
Willingness is not about pushing through pain or tolerating it stoically. It is about opening to experience as it is, without unnecessary struggle.
There is a profound difference between pain and suffering. Pain is unavoidable. Suffering is what happens when we expend energy trying not to feel what is already here.
This idea sits closely alongside what many ACT practitioners describe as wise effort. Not forcing change. Not withdrawing from life. But choosing where to place our energy in ways that align with our values and preserve our humanity.
When we practice willingness in this way, pain does not disappear. But it often becomes more workable, less overwhelming, less defining.
And in that openness, joy has room to return.
The kind of joy that lasts
The joy that emerges alongside pain is not always loud or dramatic.
It is often quieter. Steadier. More rooted.
It may show up as a sense of meaning rather than happiness. As connection rather than excitement. As gratitude rather than euphoria.
This kind of joy does not depend on life being easy. It coexists with grief, fear, and uncertainty.
It is the joy that comes from living in alignment, rather than in avoidance.
How we hold this work at Athara
At Athara, we create spaces where this openness is possible.
Whether through retreat or through moving together in landscape, we invite women to reconnect with the full range of their experience. There is no pressure to resolve pain or manufacture joy.
We work with women from the UK, Europe, the United States, and Canada who are navigating complex lives and transitions, and who are ready for something deeper than surface-level change.
Nature plays a powerful role in this work. Mountains, movement, and shared experience create conditions where pain can be felt safely and joy can emerge organically.
Not because anything is forced. But because nothing is avoided.
An honest invitation
If joy feels distant, it may not be because you are broken or failing.
It may be because something in you is asking to be felt.
At Athara, we believe that when women are supported to meet their inner world with honesty and care, joy finds its way back. Not as a reward for endurance, but as a companion to a life lived fully.
Pain and joy are not opposites.
They are partners.
