Beware The Anti-Climax

How to handle the unexpected downside of achieving your goals

- Victoria Stokes

Picture the scene: you've spent years working towards a very specific goal. You've put in countless hours of work and made many sacrifices along the way, but now that you've got there it doesn't feel quite like you imagined. Instead of celebration, elation, and pride, you feel emptiness, confusion, and doubt.

Welcome to the anti-climax. The often experienced but seldom-discussed downside of achieving life's biggest milestones. Many of us work tirelessly towards our goals. We may spend our lives dreaming of the day we get married, publish our first book or purchase our first home. However, oftentimes, when we achieve these things it doesn't feel quite as expected. In fact, the achievement of these goals feel anti-climatic, or a bit of a letdown.

So why do we often experience an anti-climax with big goals, even though we're happy to achieve them?

"An anti-climax can be an unexpected by-product of a milestone achievement. Usually, the more significant the milestone, the greater the anti-climax may be," says Rachel Vora, psychotherapist and founder of CYP Wellbeing.

WE FALSELY BELIEVE WE'LL FEEL DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT AFTER AN ACHIEVEMENT, OR THAT FEELING OF LOW SELF-WORTH WILL DISAPPEAR

"The journey to achieving a milestone can be exciting and all consuming in addition to giving us a robust sense of purpose and focus. Therefore, when this disappears overnight, we can often feel lost and confused, despite feeling proud of our achievement."

When this happens it can prompt a cocktail of complicated emotions. “Clients often present ſto me) with an overwhelming sense of 'is this it?' and 'what now?'," says Vora. “These feelings of confusion and disappointment, if left unacknowledged, have the potential to cause clients to develop symptoms of depression and low mood.”