Unhappy Achievers and Anger

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Anna, an ad executive, was just back from her annual meeting in Hawaii. When I asked how she was feeling, she laughed and said, "Well, it feels great to have the presentation behind me, and the board loved what I came up with!" I wasn’t surprised to hear she had done well. She always did. She smiled and shrugged, "So now, it’s on to the next!"

Out of context, it's easy to read the above description and imagine a woman who felt relieved about doing well, and optimistic—even light-hearted—about the future.

But that's not at all what it felt like sitting with her. In fact, Anna's laugh sounded hollow, and her smile and shrug seemed exasperated. Under the breezy surface of what she was saying, in other words, there was something else entirely: frustration and anger.

I wasn’t surprised about this, either. When it comes to Unhappy Achievers such as Anna—people who feel compelled to achieve again and again—one of the things I often notice is that their words do not always match their feelings. On the surface, Unhappy Achievers are often proud and excited about their accomplishments. On a deeper level, however, they often experience frustration and rage.

What is going on here?

As I’ve discussed in previous posts, Unhappy Achievers focus on attaining one accomplishment after the next for an understandable emotional reason: because they learned early on that their achievements were what made people treat them as valuable. As a result, whether or not it was objectively "true," Unhappy Achievers came to believe that their achievements are what made them lovable.

Now, you might imagine that such a situation simply drives such people to become successful, and what's so terrible about that? After all, then they get to be successful people and feel lovable, right? Well, unfortunately, even if you become adept at leaping from one achievement to the next—and lots of Unhappy Achievers do—there's still a serious problem: everyone wants to feel valued and loved, but no one wants to have to jump through hoops to feel that way. Like everyone else, Unhappy Achievers want to feel valued and loved for who they are, not for what they accomplish. This is especially clear when you consider the awful flip side of this message: If you are not achieving, people won't love you as much. On your own, in other words, you're not worth much at all.

This is where the underlying anger comes from.

If you're an Unhappy Achiever, or think you might be, one way to look for examples of this anger is to notice the hostility of your internal dialogue around achievements.

• If you're struggling to accomplish something, do you ever bully yourself with comments like, "Come on! What’s the matter with you?"
• When you're determined to achieve, do you ever have the passing thought, "I’ll show them" (with or without knowing who "them" is)?
• If you succeed, do you ever lord it over an imaginary critic? ("See? Take that! That's what I'm talking about!")
• If you procrastinate, do you spit out some variation of "f--- it" when you push the task aside?
• When you see other people’s accomplishments on social media, do you react with annoyance ("Are you kidding me?!"), disdain ("Ugh, it's disgusting when people show off like this"), or feigned apathy ("Whatever, I couldn't care less")?

If any of this sounds familiar, what can you do?

1. To start, try to do what a good therapist would do: listen not only to your words about achieving, but how you express them. Is there frustration underlying the satisfaction on the surface? Is the thought of accomplishing something and immediately needing to do the next thing aggravating, even enraging?
2. If there is anger under the surface, an incredibly important step is to allow yourself to feel those angry feelings, rather than pushing them away. The more comfortable you can start to become with your anger, the more you can begin to process and work through it.
3. Once you're sitting with the feeling, begin to ask yourself questions about why you might be angry about achieving. Did you learn somewhere along the way that you had to achieve, in order to get basic needs met? Does your self-worth depend upon it?
4. Consider that a person who learns to put these rigid, painful demands on themselves might be worthy not of being pushed harder, but of compassion. I never cease to be astonished at how unfamiliar and difficult it can feel for even the most compassionate people to offer themselves that same empathy.
5. The more you can increase your self-compassion, the more freedom you will have to start to discover and develop new measures of self-worth based not on what you achieve, but on who you are.

These steps are not quick or easy, but they can be essential in helping you if you are an Unhappy Achiever. In future posts, I will continue to expand on some of these steps, as well as looking at other issues that will help you to free yourself from the Unhappy Achiever trap.