Understanding and Overcoming the Fear of Success

“How did I ever let myself end up in this position?”

Ken sat heavily on the couch in my consulting room across from me, looking thoroughly weighed down by his life. He was overcome by sadness, regret, frustration, and a feeling of helplessness. His friends had encouraged Ken to get treatment for depression, but he didn’t find that way of understanding his situation meaningful.

What weighed on Ken were all the choices in his life made and not made. He felt burdened by a potential that he had never risked, never developed. He felt that he had a lot of energy, joy, creativity, and passion that was trapped behind a brick wall that he had never been able to break through.

“I don’t think I’ve been afraid to fail as much as I have been afraid that I’ll succeed,” said Ken. “But that doesn’t make any sense, does it? What am I afraid of? How could I have a fear of success?”

Is There Really a Fear of Success?

The fear of success is a particular form of the “refusal of the call” and one of the roots of the unlived life. But for many of the people that I work with, the possibility that they might feel a fear of success is confusing to them. What could possibly be so scary about getting what you want?

These days we are awash in inspirational messages that assures us that with “the power of positive thinking” we can have anything we want. We believe firmly in the idea that “where there is a will, there is a way.”

Of course, these beliefs assume that the idea of getting what we want is a simple, uncomplicated matter. 

One of the insights of Jungian Psychology, however, is that there is no such thing as a simple, uncomplicated matter. Everything has a shadow side.

Steven Pressfield, in his book The War of Art, asserts that there is such a thing as the fear of success and describes it this way:

“We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents / children / teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous.

We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to. 

Of course this is exactly what happens.”

These are powerful images — becoming monstrous, losing friends and family, winding up alone “in the cold void of starry space.” Could it possibly true that the pursuit of our goals touches us at such a primal level as this?

The Pain of Independence

As it turns out there is some scientific evidence to support Pressfield’s assertions.

In her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain reports on the work of Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist working out of Emory University.  What Berns discovered was that people unconsciously conformed to the viewpoint of whatever group they were a part of. That is, being a part of a group appears to have the power of changing our very perceptions:

“Peer pressure, in other words, is not only unpleasant, but can actually change your view of a problem…Groups are like mind altering substances.” 

Furthermore, individuals who did not conform to the influence of the group showed “heightened activation in the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with upsetting emotions such as the fear of rejection,” a reaction that Berns calls “the pain of independence.” As Cain concludes:

“To stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection.”

Not Following The Herd

Berns research on the pain of independence lends supporting evidence to insights offered by C.G. Jung in an essay titled, The Development of Personality.

In that paper, Jung links the development of one’s personality with the expression and fulfillment of one’s vocation. There are costs to following your calling, however. It is something that is most likely to be misunderstood and even resisted by the others in our life because it is, in Jung’s words, “a deviation that is highly uncongenial to the herd.”

“Its first fruit is the conscious and unavoidable segregation of the single individual from the undifferentiated and unconscious herd. This means isolation, and there is no more comforting word for it.”

Getting Support to Overcome the Fear of Success

So, is there nothing positive we can find in this situation at all? Is there nothing to help us manage this fear?

The symptoms that Ken brought into his sessions with me — the sadness, the regret, the frustration — are often symptoms that we identify as depression. I believe, however, that we are in danger these days of using the concept of depression to account for too broad a cross-section of human experience, including such things as grief, spiritual emptiness, and the common, everyday blues.

Too often we fail to discern in those symptoms that we label depression the frustrated voice of our own calling. Together with the part of us that fears separation from the group, there is another part that fears separation from ourselves. Jung refers to this as “fidelity to the law of one’s being”:

“The development of the personality means more than just the fear of hatching forth monsters, or of isolation. It also means fidelity to the law of one’s own being.”

There is solid ground on the far side of the abyss that is the fear of success. One of the great benefits of psychotherapy is that a person can find a companion to help them manage their passage across this abyss. The presence of an empathic other can reduce the sense of isolation and can help keep the voice of one’s calling heard above the voice of fear.

Together with the experience of companionship, it is essential to have an image of the goal. A vision of the far shore is necessary if we are to have the courage to attempt the difficult voyage in the first place. One such vision is articulated by Ralph Waldo Emerson in this way:

“For you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong.”

Steven Pressfield offers a vision that echoes Emerson’s almost perfectly. At the end of his examination of the fear of success, Pressfield declares:

“But here’s the trick. We wind up in space, but not alone. Instead, we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they’re better friends, truer friends. And we’re better and truer to them. 

Do you believe me?”

Do you experience fear of success? What are the ways you stand in your own way? Share your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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