Guilt About Success

Are you successful but unhappy? Survivor Guilt may be at play.

Although many of us find ourselves driven to try to get the things we’ve always wanted, at times the quest and the pursuit can blind us to the lack of pleasure we actually feel when our desires seem to be met.  

Deep down you may wonder, who gets left behind when I manage to get ahead??

Perhaps your parents were poor and you made up your mind that one day you’d have more; that once emancipated into the adult world, you would master deprivation once and for all.

For others, it may have been a sense of shame over immigrant parents who couldn’t fit in, get ahead, or speak and behave like everyone else. You made up your mind that you would prove yourself to the world and break the chain of feeling less than, different, behind. You would never talk with an accent like they did.

The wish to get ahead might mean more education, different ideals, philosophical or religious passions foreign to those who raised you.

The sense that something was missing in one’s childhood gives rise to a wish to surpass those who came before; to prove one’s worth; to avoid the anguish of lack and pain. And when these wishes are fueled by things like hard work, perseverance, and single-minded focus, the coveted success starts to seem like it’s in reach.

So then you get there; you arrive at your destination. You have the money that you’ve always wanted, the dream house. You’re in a doctoral program when no one in your family has ever been to college at all. Everything is supposed to feel great, yet all you feel is anxiety and guilt. You obsess over details that really don’t matter, find yourself a prisoner to your overactive mind which you wish you could turn off but somehow cannot.

Deep down, there’s a feeling of being a fraud. You state your fees out loud in the business world, but in your heart, you feel unworthy. You come home to beautiful surroundings but somehow they don’t feel like the right place for you. You may find yourself paralyzed, unable to complete your schoolwork, your ability to matriculate suddenly at risk.

It’s not necessarily the messages you received growing up that make it so hard to embrace your success. Some parents truly want more and better for their children. But deep down, there’s this guilt when people you love are left behind. You wonder if you’re doing something wrong, surpassing your elders and your loved ones; competing in an arena where winning just feels bad.

The signs and symptoms that mark your guilt may be hidden; you may not even know the guilt is there. Anxiety about decisions, preoccupation with irrelevant details that don’t seem to matter but that make everything just feel miserable, the fear of being exposed as a fraud, and the belief that the whole thing is going to come crashing down if you let yourself enjoy the successes you have, are just some examples of the kinds of clues that may point to guilt being at play.

So instead of trying to find the perfect answer to your anxiety; or pursuing even more success in a desperate frenzy to run those nebulous feelings of discomfort away, it might be time to go a little deeper instead.

Could it be that what you’re really afraid of is enjoying what you have?

Read more from Mirel Goldstein at goldsteintherapy.com