
Fear is a powerful emotion and if you are experiencing the extreme fear of success, then there is probably nothing holding you back more in life. While the fear of success phobia (Achievemephobia) may seem weird to many; it is actually a very real social phobia. It can make things difficult for the phobic: from getting hired, messing up one’s relationships to making him/her a prisoner in this situation.
The fear of success phobia is very much like the fear of failure: both prevent the sufferer from dreaming and achieving his goals. It might seem weird to fear success; after all what can be more appealing in life than it? However, a little bit of digging in the phobic’s mind shows that fearing success is natural to him, simply because he is not looking for any change. He is so comfortable in his current situation that he wants to continue to live the life despite hating it. Often, the individual might be afraid of success owing to the fear of inability to handle fame or wealth it brings.
It might surprise you to note that Many CEOs and presidents of banks have been known to have Achievemephobia.
Causes of Achievemephobia
As stated above, several phobias can be linked with the fear of success phobia- it is closely related to fear of failure. One’s success is naturally bound to be displeasing to others around himr. Success has mixed results: it can bring fame and money but it comes at a cost such as envy, jealousy, hurt, notoriety, limelight etc. This knowledge can cause deep fear in the minds Achievemephobic. Other reasons include:
- Fearing getting what one wants and being unable to handle achieving this.
- The dread or deep fear of success is usually deep rooted. A person may be exceptionally talented yet s/he may have a long list of underachievement. This becomes a vicious circle in that; s/he refuses to set goals.
- Shy, introverted people or people who do not like limelight might suffer from Achievemephobia.
- Getting ahead of friends, colleagues, and close family members can be intimidating and threatening: one might fear breaking ties with these people.
- Parents unknowingly instill such fear in their children’s minds. Comments like: “Do not study so hard, you will tire yourself” or “Even if you do not get the first place, we will still love you” etc can also deter a child from setting goals. One fears feeling that losing the parents’ love and hence deliberately fails in order to get it.
- The fear of success phobia often stems from guilt or self doubt. Success comes with responsibilities which can lead to fear.
- A child who has always listened to comments like “You will not succeed” might carry the belief well into adulthood, undermining everything s/he does.
Symptoms of fear of success phobia
Fear of failure and fear of success phobia are often related and have the same anxiety symptoms. Achievemephobia is an unconscious phobia: often an individual is unaware that he has it.
- People suffering from Achievemephobia are not able to handle success: they might go on a spate of self destructive behavior: drinking, drugs, sex etc and end up losing all that they have achieved.
- Many refuse to set goals in the first place.
- Often after getting success in a business, one closes it down or does something that is incompatible with one’s character or against one’s good sense.
- The need to escape self awareness can lead the phobic to drug use or alcoholism or even drive one to suicide in extreme cases.
Overcoming Achievemephobic
Fear is natural. To overcome the fear of success phobia, one must first accept it; even consider the fear a gift. Writing down one’s thoughts and changing negative into positive ones can be a great self-help technique while dealing with this phobia. Positive visualizations, meditation and deep breathing upon facing an anxiety attack related to thoughts s associated with success are other self help remedies.
Hypnotherapy is another effective way of dealing with this phobia. It can help dig deeper into the mind of the phobic to pull out the imagination associated between success and failure.
Behavioral therapies and medications can also be taken to deal with anxiety and depression accompanying Achievemephobia.
Thanks for your splendid work on phobias. We have the opportunity to study achievemephobia at length and depth. Our research show this significant phobia is much more significant than your rankings suggest. The fear of success is invariably hidden behind a feigned fear of failure. When we remove the facade, there it is.
Well written article. Well done!
It’s more simple than the above explanation given. It’s about ghosts.
While it’s common to have to compete for apartments or jobs or school grades and advancements at work, there is no such competition for one’s own feelings.
Feelings are free and inexhaustible. Everybody is born with an abundance of them.
The problem arises when comparing feeling to external things of monetary or of perceived value.
What makes you feel good about yourself inside doesn’t mean somebody else has to feel worse about themselves or have to pay. There is no connection.
Couple this stingy outlook of life, this saving of something that needn’t be saved, with the false belief that “if you better yourself, then somebody else has to be made less”.
It’s like survivors guilt except nobody dies. It’s a ghost, most likely of one’s parents. It’s as if you have to kill to become a complete person.
Nobody want’s to have the burden of feeling like they killed somebody, even if that person is just a ghost.
Usually the envy comes into being because of one’s inability to see themselves clearly.
Perhaps you don’t get all the attention you want, but take note of the things you do have that are yours and then feel good about them.
It takes some getting used to because it’s scary and unfamiliar. You likely feel safe in failure and secretly reward yourself by being right about your predictions of defeat.
It’s comfortable. You know the outcome. You can be correct in proving yourself right by failing. Being wrong is a horrible blow to the ego, but must be overcome to grow.
Nobody can take success from you by being envious of you. That’s their problem and only their problem now.
It’s also possible to be unaware of self defeating patterns or tangles of belief systems that also need to be overcome and sometimes a therapist can help there.
But, once your free to feel wonderful about yourself and feel all you can, then you can then go onto accomplish new great things and feel good about that too.
Getting past the fears, ghosts and the miserly view of feelings must be challenged and overcome as part of maturity.
I can not believe you opened your response with its about ghosts has nothing to do with life and someones brain chemistry plus environment none or that its ghosts and not even a real ghost its a ghost of someone that doesnt exist. come on really have you experienced achievmephobia because if i reach my full potential in life i would have to give up so many wonderful people who have enriched my life. also it is very small mined to say there is no direct connection to if i succeed so and so will feel a certain kinda way sure their feelings are not my responsibility how are they not connected they are if one effects the other and what if i am not a selfish person and other people actually matter i know strange right i really think that you should have someone proof read anything you way in on in the future if you want to succeed at contributing to someones self improvement Just so we are clear i understand your ghost comparison however its not all about ghosts.
I think you over reacted. As far as ghosts, I read it as phantoms, figments of the imagination that appear real. Not real dead people. I got a lot out of the article, and the ghost response.
Hopefully I will conquer my ghosts.
Eric, I also can see where you are coming from.
I heard a piece of music where the composer says in a very quitting voice as the end is approaching:
“My shadow follows me”
Ever since then, I tend to to speak about (to myself, that is) my fears/phobias as being ‘my shadows’. A shadow is a real thing yet we cannot ‘catch it’ and ‘contain it’. I am challenging myself to become more comfortable with those changing shadows of (in this case; fear of being successful).
I feel that it is necessary for me to do this since it seems to me that there really isn’t such a thing or a state of success/being successful. My reasoning behind this thought is that once a person achieves what they refer to as success they no sooner feel uncontent and as such go about working on another (whatever action) to obtain ‘more success’. Well, if they already had ‘success’ why do they need to go after it again and again and again?
I was adopted, and in that situation being ‘chosen’ was the systems evidence of a ‘successful’ case. To me, as the child, there was nothing successful about it: despite the fact that the adoptive parents were relatively well off and they were well respected in their community nonetheless they where alcoholics.
I never ever wanted to hear the words, ‘that (whatever the action) was successful’.
What others thought to be ‘success’ to me it was an extension of my terror of ever being referred to as the adoptive parent’s child. I did not want to be like them even though they were deemed to be successful. To me, ‘success’ equates itself to the feelings of shame, to images of ugly wantonness, and an ever on-going struggle to get somewhere which I just never could see where it was.
My Shadow Follows Me
I have a deep fear of success; anytime I get any positive attention I immediately cower. This may change after this confession, but let me talk about it in present tense. It’s like, I feel, “Oh, yea!!! Thanks!!!” I am really grateful for the kindness. I like it, I want it; it’s healthy it feeds my soul. But then a part of me says, “You don’t deserve it. You’re addicted. Look at you. Vane. You want good things. It’s just distracting you from what got you there in the first place.” Then I enter into this weird cycle of “support is good” and “support is bad”; telling myself things like, “To get it you must not want it. To be authentic it must not be expected.” Then I beat myself thinking, “I should expect it. If I don’t it won’t happen. But if I expect it, it’s not authentic and it won’t happen.” I have many conflicting beliefs. Really I just want the love and support. But then the negative cycle immediately begins attracting bad attention, and the magic isn’t even there. I don’t think this is how reality is supposed to be.
I was normally completing my own phobia’s circle when I suddenly caught it.. i thought maybe there was a phobia of success that i hadn’t heard about before.
And I googled it to discover that yes there is and it’s happening to me..
I am a medical graduate who suffered from success fear for the past ten years even if it happened to me by luck! Ok, I myself know that i have a talent.. I am smart and no shame that the person knows his own strength points and abilities, nevertheless I can’t use it at all.. it makes me feel bad all the time.
I feel guilty all the time.. it keeps taking me back and i can’t go over it..
I know I have this. Mine stems from the fact that most positive moves has been met with a realistic downside that sends me back and it makes me feel like I don’t deserve anything more than what I have and I am being punished for trying to get more.
Hi
Thanks a lot for the article. One thing is not clear for me though. What is the difference between the fear of failure and the fear of success? It seems to me that these two point to the same direction.
Thanks a lot in advance for your answer.
I think both are different, but they hold each other in balance for a person. (I do not mean balance neccessarily only! as in balance of not achieving, it certainly does, but also in balance to heal the emotional & physical wound) (with physical wound I mean the mental wound by experience implanted fear by social settings) If you succeed you fear failure in other (mostly social) things, so you fear succes for the sake of not failing after the success. Additionally, you fear failure, because of social and personal opinions, but you feel fear for not achieving you ideas if you go for them and thus fear failure again.
For me it’s all because fear has crept into my life at a young age probably due to my mom’s fears and me being bullied, but, and this I feel is important, it is also possibly a part of who I am due to nature/family-dna, something physical in addition to experience.
Time and thinking it over and talking are ways to cure this partially/mostly. Remember that it might be a mental wound, and wounds take time to heal.
I keep adding and correcting while writing this. Words are difficult to come by. I hope this helps a bit. Kind regards Bas.
The article really helped me on my report! i cant believe people would do those things i fear death and other stuff.
Scarex, cannot breathe normally… putting off studying all week. Hate this cycle. Going to pray and meditate now, something I do not regularly do as a solution…
I never feared success until I achieved it and then through no fault of my own – watched it dissipate slowly but surely. Now I do believe that I fear it and think I am not worthy of it. Let me explain… I am in the Network Marketing Profession. I joined a new company and grew a team quite rapidly and was 3 levels from the highest level within a year. I had over 900 people in my team and was making great money per month. Then my ‘Rock Star’ distributor who was sometimes difficult within her own team and to others in our company did the wrong thing and to cover herself and her neurotic behaviour told lies and became nasty. It didn’t matter that I, head office and others had proof that she was doing the wrong thing and lying, it changed my business and my desire to succeed. I was heartbroken that this girl could do what she did and for the last 3 years I have sat back and watched things go downhill. She had to leave the company and what she did affected me deeply and in our business people come and go as most of the time success does not happen so quickly! I was already vulnerable to depression since the suicide of my father and then the death of my mother 2.5 yrs later.
I have now lost my drive and know that I could be successful again but am scared of it…. I am still with the company as I value their ethics, integrity and love their products… I have been told to let go and know that I must do that but what happened still affects me deeply…. All the dynamics have changed and I know that my depression isn’t helping but neither is my fear of having success again. It seems like a vicious cycle and one that I can eventually stop if I apply the brakes and press down hard…..
I’m so afraid of success that it is scary to try think of why I’m afraid of it.
I’m afraid of the journey of discovering why I’m afraid of success because of what it might unveil. And I’m afraid of what that success will do to myself. I’m not afraid of what it will do to others. I’m afraid of the scary unknown place that success will take me and how my ego will handle it. I’m afraid of my ego. The amount of success I can imagine myself achieving is limitless like the dark expansive universe where my feet and hands can’t touch and grasp. And when I say something like that I feel like that is egotistical because I’m not that special. I can’t actually achieve literally everything. But what saddens and frustrates me is that I can actually visualize so much. Really though, I might be scared for a truly good reason. Keeping my ego and sanity in check is perhaps the best thing. Just wish I could do that and achieve at least a little bit more of my dreams.
I’m going to stop procrastinating by googling why I procrastinate so much and actually do something.
This post and my comment has served its purpose. Thanks.
This exactly how i feel. I tend to google “why do I procrastinate so much” once a month or so. Then I go on these sprees where I start writing down my goals, getting in contact with potential clients, exercise, eat right, pray, up early, stop smoking etc. Then I just stop. I go back to smoking, being lazy, half doing jobs, no follow ups, basically just all the bad things. It’s so weird.
I know I can be successful, I am very capable, not to be pompous I’m just saying. Why can’t I accept that I’m great and I deserve the wealth that is out there for me. I’m comfortable with being uncomfortable….
Thank you for sharing.
The best way to try and achieve is to not think about how terrified you are to continue. I know it could be hard, but don’t think about how it could turn out and just go. Don’t worry about the turn on your ego. Just wake up every morning and think ‘I am a good person’ and have a good attitude. Bad days will happen, that is just life. Remember to not be afraid of things you can’t control and go as far as you can in life. Remember you are good.
This is really weird, but my whole life has been a constant struggle. I used to get bullied at home, at school and even teachers were horrible. I had no friends and I dated horrible people. As I have gotten older life has gotten a lot easier and I’m outshining some of my peers who fell into traps. I, however, am shooting higher and higher.
I have found some law of attraction techniques that have worked and I’m trying things. Every time something works I get frightened. My core belief seems to be something like “If you won the lottery you’d die” or “If you reached the top you’d have nothing more to learn and it’s game over” or “If you had a lot of money you’d become complacent and damage the environment more”. What the fluff?
So I feel like my fear is kinda different. Because when I read other comments, I can’t believe people speak so freely about being able to achieve a lot while fearing it. I immediately feel anxious when thinking that I could even try to be successful. I feel sick when I consider something in my life as an achievement, in my mind there is just no way I could achieve things, I feel like a liar after doing something right. I can’t deal with people expecting me to be a good friend, I always avoided calling people friends, because it sets their expectations high. The good thing is my therapist saw my phobia a long time ago, considers it as my main problem and she really helps me fight it. I laugh when I think how absurd it is to fear success. But honestly, I always get depressed for days after something works out for me, I never understood it, what else can it be?
An angry and bitter opposite-sex parent regularly reminded me that if I experienced early success as a child, I would be abandoned and/or scorned by the one-parent society and culture that told me I should love unconditionally.
Why should I spend any time or attention on anyone (mother or not) who wishes and actively seeks to infantilize me?
Thanks for your splendid work on phobias. I’ve been struggling for two years due to this phobia. I am really introverted. I only talk to my parents and small kids sometimes. I have shut down every possibility of talking to other than those people. I think when I try to do anything, like studying for exams in which I know that I can perform very well and get good grades, I don’t start studying and feel excited about it. Instead of that I start thinking about sad faces of people in my class saying that “I don’t have good grades”. Then if I get good grades it will cause them harm or they will feel that I am a bad person. I don’t try to be smart around people and stay active around people and talking to them, even though I want to do that. I sweat when talking to girls. My only fear while talking to girls is that I think I am not able of having them in my life while someone else is. I have never talked about it to my parents. Can someone help?
Finally, thank you.