A Memoir from a Recovering Achievement Junkie

2010 - full expression of my achievement junkie

The present

When I was younger, I was taught to be a performer. I remember being 7 years old, and a dance instructor telling me to smile at the audience even when my legs and my feet were in pain. I was told to play a song on the piano at family gatherings even when all I wanted to do was hide in my room. I felt this pressure to use my humor, my creativity, and my talent to hide my true vulnerable and oftentimes painful feelings. I got good at showing interest and being a form of entertainment for others. I'd nod or look at teachers in the eyes and feign interest. Or, I'd always be the one telling some fantastical silly story to my family and friends. If I made people giggle or smile, everything was going to be okay.

In school, it was the extracurricular activities, the grades or the clothes. Somehow owning a pink reversible Members Only jacket with matching pink Reebok hightops would protect me.  In my career, I used achievement as an excuse - to work late, to raise more money or raise the buzz on the latest project, or to competitively outsmart a colleague. Somehow I found masks to hide behind. If I just smiled, if I rocked out another project, if I outdid my success every time, I'd be happy. I started becoming secretly addicted to finishing things - finishing another triathlon, earning another finisher's medal from another half marathon on the wall, or knowing that another client was pleased with my latest project.

I honed my competitiveness by learning from some pretty unhealthy and unhappy female supervisors and mentors. When I thought I did a great job on something, I'd oftentimes have a boss who would try to rob me of my joy and diminish my accomplishments. They'd state something irrelevant like "oh you forgot to use doilies in the place settings" or "your linens were not the right color." A young and naive overachiever, took those criticisms personally never realizing how good my work truly was. I was addicted to achievement and perfection in my career just like the achievement and perfection I would acquire when I played a piece of difficult music correctly as a teenager. Perfection was my safe place. If it wasn't perfect, I refused to acknowledge it. I also started exhibiting really masculine qualities (aggressiveness, assertiveness, and pretty bitchy) and in a lot of ways my muscles started making me look more masculine, too.

One morning in 2010, the anxiety and the bullying and the stress I was facing at work came to a stop. I didn't want to go to my job. I wanted to just disappear and die. I remember someone close to me telling me to ignore it and just go to work. I was so frustrated because I never felt like anyone was listening to me. Thankfully a relative recognized that something wasn't right and took me to see a doctor.

I remember telling my doctor that there wasn't anything seriously wrong with me. I remember refusing to take the anti-depressant medication and choosing not to participate in the therapy that was recommended. I convinced myself that I was fine and I listened to my pride and ego. I was so delusional in my confidence I honestly didn't believe that my diagnosis of depression, anxiety, and PTSD were possible. I believed the mask that I created was truly me. Slowly... when I no longer had work projects, emails, or any athletic competitions to participate in.... I began to unravel. It really began to fully unravel when a close relative of mine confessed to me that more than ten people in my family had mental illness. You can't fight genetics and how you are made. My mother hoped that it wouldn't hit me or that I learned enough coping mechanisms that I'd be the one strong family member who didn't have it.

I began to face a life that became messy, complicated, and at the time I believed my mental illness was a source of embarrassment and shame and evidence of not being disciplined.

When asked to relax and take a break and discover what truly made me happy. I had no clue what my therapist was talking about. I believed that happiness existed in accomplishments, external activities, and things the world saw. My happiness was in the next achievement, the next boyfriend, the next work project, the next bullet point on a resume or the next race I competed in. By pleasing others, I was going to please myself.

I slowly learned that happiness was much simpler than that. Happiness was walking around my neighborhood on a quiet morning. Happiness was reading a book in a coffee shop. Being happy was surrounding myself with people who truly loved and supported me - the people who didn't walk away or shut me out when I became vulnerable and honest about my problems. You'd be surprised by the reactions of people closest to you when you tell them you have been diagnosed with depression. I recall a close friend of mine saying, "Oh. Well I prefer the old you. Why don't you just act happy again?" W.T.F.....

Through time away from work, from friends, and from family... I had to re-wire my brain and re-discover happiness. Happiness IS the belief that everything was okay the way it was right this very moment. Happiness IS choosing to have faith in my talents and no longer believing the abuse and lies others tried to tell me. And happiness was in just simply being myself instead of doing so many complicated and challenging things.

Around the time my doctor told me to stop training for races, she told me to stick with doing yoga and walking. She told me that my body needed to slow down.  My heart and my mind became still. They began to work in unison and were able to relax my muscles and relax the judgements and lies and verbal abuse I collected for so many years. I began to sleep better and stopped using my to-do list as a barometer for happiness.

The therapy and the yoga saved me from a very dark place in my life. There are times when it's easy to re-ignite my achievement junkie mindset. And when you are diagnosed with depression and anxiety, you can't run away from it. I will always have the tendency to get frustrated, to get easily annoyed, or to react with self-depreciation. And, I have a choice to make when I feel that way. I can let it pull me under or I can face it and choose to accept that life is challenging and difficult and it's my choice to rise above the hard, frustrating events that come my way.

You accept it and deal with it. I know that I have the tendency to take things personally or approach life with a little more intensity. I know that my body's chemistry has the proclivity to make my heart feel disappointment or make my mind feel failure. Despite those things, I have the power to recognize that about myself and still choose happiness, faith, and life.

And, I no longer have to behave like an entertainer, performer, or be a person who feels obligated to please everyone. The more I sit still and accept who I am, the more I begin to be comfortable with just being me.