Why We May Reach for Pleasure When Joy Is Scarce
By Ryan Snodgrass, LMFT, LPCC
There are seasons when joy feels harder to find; when life may be full but not necessarily fulfilling. We might be working, caring for others, managing responsibilities, or getting through our days. Even when nothing is necessarily wrong, we can find ourselves feeling like a bystander in our own lives.
I often say that life is meant to be lived, not endured. Joy is an important part of that. It connects us to moments of meaning, belonging, delight, and deep presence- to the experience of being here rather than simply getting through. To life. And when we go too long without those, we naturally begin to look for ways to feel something again.
When joy is scarce, we may ask pleasure to fill the space it leaves behind.
We Need Pleasure
We need experiences that feel good, bring comfort, offer excitement, or give us relief from the weight of everyday life. The first sip of coffee in the morning. Buying something we love. Getting the promotion. Laughing with a friend. These are important, andwe are allowed to have moments that simply feel good.
And sometimes, pleasure can help carry us through seasons when there isn’t much room for anything else. The difficulty comes when we begin asking pleasure to meet a deeper need it can’t always reach.
When Pleasure Starts Doing the Work of Joy
Pleasure and joy can coexist but are not the same experience. Pleasure often gives us something immediate- comfort, excitement, stimulation, satisfaction, or relief. Joy reaches much deeper. It connects us to ourselves, others, and a sense that our lives have meaning.
Joy doesn’t have to mean happiness. We can experience joy while grieving, struggling, or living through something incredibly difficult. It can be loud and expansive, or it can be quiet. A moment of feeling completely known by someone. Watching someone we love become more of themselves. Being moved by music. Playing. Laughing. The moments when, even briefly, we aren’t thinking about our lives- we are fully inside of them.
When we haven’t felt those things in a while, it makes sense that we reach for what is more readily available. We can order something, open an app, pour a drink, plan a trip, have sex, work harder, eat something, or find another goal to chase. Sometimes these things give us exactly what we need. But when pleasure has become responsible for filling the space left by joy, the feeling often doesn’t last.
Not because the pleasure wasn’t real, but because the need underneath it is still there. And this can be confusing. Especially when, from the outside, our lives look full of things we wanted. We got the job. We built the family. We took the trip. We bought the thing. We created a life that may even look remarkably similar to the one we once imagined.
And still, something feels absent.
When It Still Doesn’t Feel Like Enough
We can have many things in our lives that feel good and still wonder why we don’t feel fulfilled. We scroll and find stimulation. We buy something and enjoy the anticipation of waiting for it to arrive. We accomplish something we worked incredibly hard for, only to find ourselves quickly looking toward what comes next. The pleasure is real. It just may not be reaching what we are actually longing for.
Pleasure can offer relief without restoration . It can give us excitement without meaning, attention without connection, or accomplishment without fulfillment. And when the feeling fades, it can leave us searching for the next thing that might bring it back. Over time, we may wonder why having more, doing more, or experiencing more isn’t making us feel any more connected to our lives.
This cycle can even be difficult to recognize while we’re in it. We feel disconnected, reach for something to offer us a shift, and after a moment of reprieve, feel that same sense that something is missing. So we reach again. And we keep reaching for the same thing hoping it yields something different. Or, we find ourselves outsourcing our joy to different activities or people without getting much closer to truly feeling it.
If we find ourselves reaching, perhaps we begin to ask what we’re actually hungry for.
Sometimes, we are seeking comfort or relief. Sometimes it’s connection, intimacy, or belonging. We may be longing for play, novelty, creativity, meaning, rest, or a sense of purpose. Sometimes it’s simply to feel seen, wanted, excited, or like ourselves again.
The things we reach for may feed something within us without fully satiating us. Attention may briefly soothe our desire to feel seen. Achievement can temporarily satisfy a need to feel worthy. There is nothing wrong with seeking attention or achievement, but they may still leave us searching or reaching for more. And often, what looks like wanting more is actually a longing to feel more.
Joy Can Be Harder to Access
One of the complicated things about joy is that we can’t always create it on demand. Pleasure is often easier to find. We know what to buy, eat, watch, plan, or do to create a shift in how we feel. Joy asks something different of us and we have to be present enough to experience it.
We may also look at our lives and tell ourselves we should feel more joy, contentment, or ease, or we shouldn’t feel as disconnected as we do. But fulfillment isn’t measured by how many good things exist in our lives. Having things to be grateful for doesn’t automatically give us access to joy.
If we’ve spent a long time moving quickly, protecting ourselves, or simply getting through, that can be difficult. Our bodies may be accustomed to staying alert, productive, distracted, or disconnected. Even meaningful moments or opportunities for joy can pass without fully landing.
We know we had fun. We know we love the people around us. We know it mattered. But knowing something is good and being able to experience its goodness are not the same thing. Often it’s not that we need more opportunities to feel good, it’s that we need the capacity to be present for what is already here.
There is often a point in therapy where I tell clients their work isn’t to change anything, it’s to witness. If we become a witness to ourselves and our lives, we might notice more opportunities for joy that we were previously blind to. Joy isn’t something we can force but we can create more room to experience it.
Making Room for Joy Again
Finding our way back toward joy doesn’t require giving up pleasure. Both belong in our lives. Instead, we can begin paying attention to the places where we still experience connection, presence, meaning, or aliveness. Joy often lives in ordinary places. In relationships we have neglected, creativity we stopped making time for, play we decided wasn’t productive enough, being outside, moving our bodies, making something, or sitting across from someone who knows us well.
There are also seasons when we genuinely don’t know what brings us joy anymore. And we don’t need to force gratitude or convince ourselves that we should be happier with the lives we have. We can acknowledge that something feels absent and become curious about what we have been reaching toward in its place.
We need the moments that simply feel good, and we need the ones that connect us more deeply to ourselves, to one another, and to the lives we are actually living. There will be seasons when joy is harder to access, and pleasure may help carry us through. But when we find ourselves continually reaching for the next thing and wondering why we still don’t feel fulfilled, it may be worth asking what we’re actually hungry for.
If life is meant to be lived, not endured, then part of living it is allowing ourselves to want more than relief.
About the Author
Ryan Snodgrass, LMFT, LPCC, is the founder of EMBER Therapy & Wellness in Carlsbad, California. She specializes in experiential, relational, and somatic approaches to therapy, integrating Somatic Experiencing®, psychodrama, psychodramatic bodywork, EMDR, and other experiential practices in her work with individuals, couples, and families.
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