How to Stop Blocking Joy and Embrace Happiness in Eating Disorder Recovery
Experiencing joy can be a challenge for people navigating eating disorders.
Joy, playfulness, and excitement are emotions that can feel overwhelming when your nervous system is compromised by trauma or disordered eating patterns. Eating disorders can act as "joy blockers" and at the core, they represent our relationship to joy, the narratives and wounding we hold around this expansive feeling.
Continue reading to explore why joy can feel threatening and offers insights into how to reconnect with this essential part of life during eating disorder recovery.
Why Joy Feels Threatening to the Nervous System
Eating disorders are often rooted in a fear of emotions rather than a fear of food itself. While much attention is given to fear, pain, and discomfort, less is said about the fear of joy, pleasure, or playfulness. Emotions with high energy — even positive ones like excitement — can register as danger for a dysregulated nervous system. The body struggles to differentiate between excitement and anxiety due to unresolved trauma.
If caregivers in childhood didn’t offer attuned co-regulation, the nervous system’s capacity to handle heightened emotions remains underdeveloped. Joy can feel unsafe because the body lacks the tools to self-regulate in response to increased energy.
Maybe when you were younger, your spontaneous expressions of joy through dancing, singing, creativity, or affection were met with shame or misunderstanding. You might have even been punished for it, or your joy was weaponized against you. As such, when you notice joy, fear, guilt or shame might quickly arise as a defensive shield is put up to block the feeling entirely. It is at this point where we see eating disorders manifesting.
Eating disorders can act as "joy blockers" and they represent our relationship to joy, the narratives and wounding we hold around this expansive energy.
The Science of Emotions and the Nervous System
Emotions are neither inherently good nor bad — they simply are. Yet, our tendency to label them as positive or negative often influences how we experience them.
Both joy and threat activate the sympathetic nervous system, which prepares the body to respond to high-energy states. To truly embrace joy, a well-functioning parasympathetic system — particularly the ventral vagal nerve — is essential. This nerve helps balance heightened energy with a sense of safety and calm, allowing us to feel energized without feeling overwhelmed.
If the ventral vagal nerve didn’t fully develop during childhood due to a lack of co-regulation from caregivers, experiencing positive emotions can feel challenging.
But this isn’t the end of the story. As adults, we have the power to strengthen our nervous system through practices that promote regulation and create a safe foundation for joy to flourish. By learning to nurture this connection, we open the door to a richer emotional life.
Disordered Eating as a Defense Against Joy
Disordered eating behaviors such as restriction, bingeing, purging, or over-exercising often serve as a shield against overwhelming emotions, including joy. These food and body strategies create a sense of safety by numbing the body’s capacity to feel.
Within the context of eating disorders, that it is sometimes hard to feel joy because the body is in some kind of physiological deficit; and there is only enough energy to keep basic biological process going. There isn’t enough “in the bank” other than to just keep the person alive.
However, by narrowing your range of emotions, consciosly or subconsciously, these behaviours block the full spectrum of life, cutting you off from connection, fulfillment, and joy.
When we use these strategies, we create a smaller world, one where risk is minimized but so is growth. The paradox is that the safety these behaviours offer is an illusion — it leaves us disconnected from the vitality and richness that joy brings. Recognizing this opens the path to healing and reclaiming the joy you deserve.
Steps to Reconnect with Joy
Reconnecting with joy is not about forcing yourself to “just be happy.” It’s a gradual, gentle process that honours where you are and helps you expand your capacity to feel.
Since joy is an emotion — and not a state we need to work towards or achieve — we can all access it and experience it no matter what we've been through.
This is an embodied process not a cognitive one. Here’s how to begin:
Notice the Spark of Joy
Pay close attention to the moments when a spark of joy arises, however small. What sensations come up in your body? Are there stories or judgements attached to this experience? You might notice the thought: "Will this feeling keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger?" Thoughts like these are clues. Bringing awareness to these patterns is the first step in reconnecting with joy. Start where you are, not where you aren’t.Drop the Storylines
Rather than focusing on the mental narratives that might surround joy — such as "I don’t deserve this" or "this won’t last" or “joy is a time waster; it’s indulgent and frivolous” — shift your attention to the raw sensations in your body (e.g. bubbling in the chest, rush of energy through the limbs, change in temperature etc). Allow yourself to experience these feelings without overanalyzing or resisting them.Practice Gratitude
Gratitude is a powerful way to gently expand your emotional capacity. Start small: notice the things you feel thankful for in your daily life. Keep it simple. Extend your gratitude outward by sending good wishes to others or to the Earth itself. Joy wants to spread and be shared with others. Over time, this practice helps you connect with the greater world and softens the barriers around joy.Expand Your Capacity Gradually
Let joy in slowly, step by step. The suggestion to “just smile” is just as useless as “just eat”. Give yourself time. Allow yourself to feel small doses of it and observe how your body responds. As you build trust in these experiences, your capacity to hold bigger feelings will grow naturally and safely. Over time, these small moments of joy will create a foundation for greater aliveness and connection.
Reconnecting with joy is an act of courage and self-love. As you gradually expand your capacity to feel joy, you’ll begin to experience life in a deeper, more fulfilling way. Joy awakens a sense of aliveness and embodied connection — not just to yourself, but to others and the world around you.
This journey also eases the reliance on food or body-focused behaviours as a way to suppress emotions. Instead, feelings are allowed to flow freely and safely through your body, creating space for holistic, inside-out, body-first healing.
Allow yourself to be fed and nourished by joy. You deserve to feel the full range of life’s beauty, including the warmth and vitality of joy. By embracing it, you open yourself to a world of possibilities and reclaim the wholeness that has always been your birthright.
Further reading:
Smiling Is The Key For Eating Disorder Recovery
Eating Disorder Recovery Is A Process Of Relaxing
Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash