If you’ve been a high-achiever for most of your life, you’ve gotten used to chasing - and finding - success. It’s not an accident that you’ve exceeded in academics, your social life, and in your career. Sure, this drive often comes from a deep desire to be liked and to compensate for deficits (emotional or otherwise) from your childhood. But who wants to talk about that?
We do!
When you’re busy juggling a career, relationships, hobbies, and a social life, it’s easy to ignore emotional or mental health issues. You might not even notice there are issues to avoid in first place. Everything is fine as long as I keep saying it is, right? This is what we in the biz call super-avoidance. (No one calls it that.)
Self-described “alphas” often get that way by ruthlessly prioritizing. And therapy might not be the highest priority on your list. If everything is fine, why rock a steady boat?
While this isn’t always the case, sometimes that very success that we are so proud of, comes at the price of our mental health. What types of emotions and experiences have you given up in order to meet arbitrary milestones, to meet that long-fetishized muse named productivity, or to please someone in authority?
As long as you continue to ignore your mental well-being, it will soon affect other aspects of your life. As they say, if you don’t make time for your wellness, you’ll have to make time for your illness.
Who Are High-Achievers?
A high-achiever is someone who prioritizes success. Have you consistently gotten good grades throughout school while being involved in every extra-curricular possible? Have you excelled in your career, even from a young age? Did you have to throw the best parties, or have the most sought-after partners?
While you should be proud of your accomplishments, you may be wary of the stress that such success has put on you. Instead of taking breaks or going easy on yourself, you’ve pushed hard to get to where you are today. The problem is that the goal-posts keep moving, and you never get to enjoy what you’ve accomplished.
High-achievers often deal with perfectionism and impostor syndrome. (Two topics we have written a ton about.)These phenomena are the very thing that often cause people to downplay their problems, or avoid them altogether. Which is a perfect brew for making you think you can’t benefit from therapy.
Why Do High-Achievers Avoid Therapy?
As you’ve gotten older, have you put your mental health on the back-burner?
Because you’ve accomplished so much, you may not even consider that therapy could benefit you. If you’re exceeding in life, why would you need therapy?
In reality, high-achievers are often under a tremendous amount of stress. Unsurprisingly, it takes quite a bit of energy and effort to be successful. While you may be happy functioning at such high standards, you may not realize its toll on your mental health.
It’s also common for high-achievers to assume that others have it much worse, and the rough patch will end soon. We all have unique struggles and hardships, but just because others have it worse does not de-legitimize your issues.
Many people assume that highly successful people are naturally more put together and mentally healthy, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Your road to success has likely had many snags along the way; you have a right to address these hardships.
Successful people often have a deep fear that looking too closely at their progress will cause it all to fall apart. There is an anxiety that “if I go into therapy, everything I’ve built will unravel.” People are afraid that they will be overwhelmed and won’t be able to handle the fallout.
Remember that the same skills that got you where you are, will also help you when you turn inward. Therapy requires honesty, intuition, reason, and trust. These are qualities that you already possess if you’ve been successful professionally and in relationships.
When Mental Health Takes a Toll on Your Life
One of the biggest reasons why you may avoid therapy is because you don’t think you need it. If your career is going well, you’re financially stable and generally happy, you may question how therapy would help.
As a highly successful person, even if you cope with stress in healthy ways, it can still build up quickly and cause other issues. You might experience changes in appetite, difficulty sleeping, and trouble maintaining healthy relationships. As you become more overwhelmed, you may turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms such as drugs or alcohol.
As a high-achiever, you’ve placed an expectation on yourself to succeed — no matter what. Eventually, this pressure may catch up to you and affect your emotional, mental, and physical health.
Why You Should Stop Avoiding Therapy
When you’ve accomplished so much in your life, it’s easy to avoid seeking help. After all, you’ve done pretty well on your own, and maybe asking for help seems like uncharted territory to you. Seeking advice from a coach or a colleague feels more comfortable.
If this is the case for you, you aren’t alone. However, you don’t have to keep compartmentalizing your mental health issues — nor should you. It isn’t healthy, and the sooner you acknowledge and cope with these issues, the better off you’ll be in other aspects of your life.
Therapy, like many forms of self-care and improvement, aims to help you be the absolute best you can be. You’ve gotten this far in your life thanks to years of hard work; therapy doesn’t negate that.
If you want to continue leveling up, consider adding therapy to your self-improvement routine, just like you would with a mentor or coach, and don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Read more about therapy for anxiety here.
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Prospect Therapy is an LGBTQ+ affirming therapy practice based in Long Beach, CA. We focus on queer + trans mental health as well as mental health for first-generation, immigrant, and bicultural communities. We continue to provide online therapy to clients throughout the state of California. Learn more about how we support individuals, teens, couples, and families in our communities by requesting a consultation at www.prospecttherapy.com.