Coping with the void that follows success

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A40-year-old client recently said: “For the last three years I worked hard to launch this creative enterprise and now when it’s finally out there, I feel empty. While everyone around me is full of joy, I feel the opposite.

The product is received well, but it’s hard for me to shake this feeling off." After clients have achieved their goals, completed creative projects that sustained for a while or achieved what seemed like a lifelong dream, they often talk about how, contrary to their expectations, they don’t feel euphoric. Clients mention a feeling of numbness, purposelessness, restlessness and even sadness that’s hard to decipher. People across professions can find themselves experiencing this, but it is heightened for those in creative professions, artists, writers, athletes and those who consistently find themselves in the spotlight.

The same client told me that this “post-success hangover" lingered for weeks after the launch and that’s when he brought it up in therapy. This feeling is more common than you can imagine. I have experienced it too and learnt how to not fall for it.

This feeling of sadness or restlessness after completion of a goal is linked to the concept of “arrival fallacy", a term coined by positive psychology researcher and expert Tal Ben-Shahar. In his work he points out how we carry the illusory idea that once we have accomplished a goal or a dream, we will attain long-lasting happiness and this feeling will stay. This belief is a false one and leads to us feeling more unhappy and sometimes even dissatisfied.