Coping with the void that follows success

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.

I remember a friend telling me that she had thought she would be elated when she had finished writing her book. She said she felt happy and relieved but not to the degree she had anticipated. As a result, it led to a downward spiral, where she wondered if she had parked the idea of happiness in a future event.

The immersion that some life goals come with involves a certain degree of focused work and a fair bit of obsessiveness to achieve them. In this process, clients share how they miss the present moment and little joys, and everything else in their life takes a backseat.

As a result, when the goal is finally met, they begin to experience exhaustion but also recognise how the process has left them with little energy and motivation. It has come with a price where their health was compromised or relationships were not tended to. This can be very destabilising.

Also read: Make room for joy in life

We do seem to know that the anticipation of a reward activates our dopamine pathways and once the goal is achieved, that pauses, and this in turn impacts our mood and motivation levels.

Given this understanding, we need to learn to navigate how to deal with the “let down effect”. Personally, what has helped me immensely is being aware of the arrival fallacy, and that it is common.

While working on projects that are crucial and have high stakes, I focus on the process and enjoy it rather than put all my joy and happiness on a pedestal for when the goal is accomplished.

Research also points out how being mindful and rooting ourselves in the present contribute to our sense of well-being and creates conscious pockets of joy, the presence of which in day-to-day life is crucial.

Human beings are largely goal directed and strive for betterment, which means a completion of the goal leads to a feeling of emptiness and wondering what to do next. Our goals can serve as an anchor, so once they are met, we may feel a vacuum.

Learning to use our feelings and cognition as a compass in such moments of struggle can help us deal with arrival fallacy and a low-mood state.

Sonali Gupta is a Mumbai-based psychotherapist. She is the author of the book You Will be Alright: A Guide to Navigating Grief and has a YouTube channel, Mental Health with Sonali.

Also read: When relationships fuel professional growth