Life is hard right for so many right now but there are pockets of joy that are waiting to be discovered - even during the pandemic. A recent podcast I heard a few weeks ago was about sympathetic joy which is defined as ‘finding joy in someone else’s good fortune’ - but that’s not always easy. Begrudgery is everywhere - you might know it as Schadenfreude, taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. In a recent interview Dan Harris spoke to Tuere Sala about borrowing joy from someone else’s good fortune. It’s already something we do with other emotions, we feel empathy when someone experiences suffering or loss so we can also do the opposite and experience someone else’s happiness too by ‘borrowing’ that feeling. There seems to be a bit of that when parents talk about their positive birth experiences - instead of joining that person in their joy, there’s replies of ‘you were so lucky’...and all of the preparation those parents did to stack the odds in their favor of having a positive birth is dismissed.

How to Borrow Joy

When you focus on positive birth stories and talking to friends/family who have had positive birth stories you get to borrow their joy. It’s a way to harness happiness during your pregnancy as your due date gets closer. If you imagine for a minute that there’s a limit on how much joy you get annually. Let’s say you have only a handful of really happy events this year (not too hard to imagine). What do you do when you’ve used up your allotted joy? You can still get to share in the joy of thousands of other people in your community or several million on Facebook (as long as you’re intentional with the content you curate). In pregnancy, it’s easy to get caught up in reading or listening to traumatic birth stories. If you’re currently living in Ireland and due your baby soon it’s also easy to get caught up in a negative spiral of thoughts about labour and whether your partner will be with you. If that’s you then make a point of borrowing joy on a regular basis. One of the reasons the GentleBirth approach discourages reading traumatic birth stories is because it changes your physiology negatively by causing a stress response - you’re literally embodying that experience - even though it’s not actually happening to you.

What Brings You Joy?

You know what floats your boat better than anyone. Keep it very simple. Maybe you love cats - how many millions of people love cats? Make it your intention to connect with cat people so you can talk about cats til the sun comes up. Love to knit? Join a knitting group and share your knitting joy! Borrowing joy is a practice that you cultivate - you have so seek it out and make it a habit especially these days as there’s so much bad news out there.

Tracy