But What If I Actually Succeed?
 |
| A few of the self-help books I read to address my fear of success. |
Over time I started to see how often I downplayed what I did well and focused on what I did poorly. It dawned on me that I had somehow begun to fear success. At first I dismissed this as silly. Who fears success? I didn't even think that was a thing, which is strange since I studied psychology.
How the hell could someone whose whole life had been about achieving goals and being successful fear the success she craved?
As I began to analyze it, a few things started to surface.
I had a fear of being seen that dated back to my college years. When I married, I took my husband's name - something I'd always sworn I'd never do - for two reasons 1) the INS might have used it as evidence my marriage wasn't real if I didn't and 2) it gave me a way to hide, or so I thought. I could become someone else, and make it harder for the person who'd told me he'd always find me to actually find me.
As an author being seen is part of the job, but I'd somehow deluded myself into thinking I could be an author without publicizing myself alongside my work. Hhmmm! Yeah, that doesn't happen.
I also started to notice that I'd release a book and then sabotage my promotion efforts. I couldn't figure out what that was about until I realized that when I dreamed about having a successful writing career, I only got as far as releasing my books. I could see the books out there, but my visualizations were oddly detached from me as the author. I struggled to see beyond that point. If people bought my books in large numbers, my life might change. I couldn't imagine how it would look beyond that point.
Once I was seen, I couldn't be unseen.
As I looked back at how my fear of success grew, I started to see little seeds planted here and there. I don't share these to point blame but to encourage us to not do this to little girls. I remembered when I'd play games with my male cousins being admonished to not play my best - to play small, or as Madonna sang in What It Feels Like for a Girl "Strong inside but you don't show it/Good little girls/They never show it/When you open up your mouth to speak could you be a little weak."
I remembered being told by someone other than my husband that the reason my husband and I were struggling when we first got married was that I had a job that paid more than his. I left that job within six months, and I never took a job that would pay more than my husband again. I started to play small. From childhood through adulthood, I was warned to not own my success - brag about it- because my success might make someone else feel bad or might make me seem uppity. All of these messages and others like them landed somewhere in my mind and stayed there. I thought I ignored them. I thought I dismissed them. I thought they didn't matter. Yet... They influenced my decisions.
My fear of success grew slowly alongside my fear of failure. I needed to be perfect but I also needed to play small. I needed to do a great job but to not own my work. I needed to present my work to the world but not be seen. It became a whirlwind of fear that often left my thoughts and emotions swirling.
Once I'd recognized the problem and accepted its reality, what did I do? After beating myself up for a while, I started looking for solutions.
First I did a ton of research. I read and read and read book after book after book to fix the "broken" bits of me. Sighs! In the end, while I learned a lot, I still had to do the work and to recognize I wasn't "broken" but I was scarred. I was human.
I started to reframe my own self-talk. I started to hear the voices telling me to play small or downplay my success. I mean really hear them, and I started to talk back to them, even the ones who sounded like authority figures from my childhood. I stood up to them. I stood up to me. I stood up for me.
I'm still struggling to get it right. There are days when the idea of being truly successful terrifies me, but there are other days when it doesn't.
I started to redefine success for me. I started to set smaller goals that I could enjoy as successes along the journey without triggering some of the fears my fear of success elicited. As I got more used to being seen in smaller environments, I felt better about being seen on a larger scale. I played scenarios in my mind. The same scenarios that before made me sabotage my efforts, but this time I put myself in control. I imagined myself handling the situation if the person I mentioned before followed through and found me. As I imagined myself handling it well, handling it poorly, and handling it neutrally, the fear began to subside to a degree. I survived all those scenarios as I played them. I imagined facing down those who couldn't be happy for my happiness because they somehow saw it a as a negative reflection on their lives. I imagined offering them compassion. I imagined being defensive. I imagined being neutral. Again, I played the scenarios. I survived.
While the voices in my head about not being "uppity" or "bragging" or whatever else also played their game, they were easier for me to address than my fear of being seen, my fear of putting myself out there, my fear of making it easier to be found.
I've since learned developing a fear of success isn't uncommon for people who have experienced trauma, such as sexual assault, because the excitement of success can feel similar to anxiety. Combine my history as a survivor with these voices from my childhood and I was living in a perfect storm of wanting to be hidden while at the same time wanting to write work that would be highly visible and influential.
I'm not one to tell anyone that they'll magically overcome a fear of success or a fear of failure because that's just not realistic. It took me years to recognize my fears, understand where they originated, and begin to address them in a realistic, productive way. But, I did it. And, while I still struggle, it's getting easier... And if I can do it, so can others!
Comments
Post a Comment