You’re successful - so why can’t you feel it?
Prefer to listen? You can hear me read this article above.
When nothing fully lands, something deeper is going on.
So it goes something like this - you receive praise for yet another incredible achievement and it doesn’t quite register.
You’re hearing the words but it’s not quite going in.
You intellectualise it but are unable to embody it.
You might minimise it ‘it was nothing’, ‘other people can do this easily too’.
You might deflect. You might rationalise it.
In the moment, you may not realise you’re doing this. It’s a lifelong automatic response.
A reflex - like blinking your eyes - you don’t think about it - you just do it.
You may experience a sense of shock when someone praises you.
Whether it be praise or achievements there’s a type of dissociation or numbness happening.
Why is this such a big deal?
It’s costing you - more than you might realise.
Where does this come from?
When you were a child your true self was prohibited. As the family scapegoat there was a certain narrative created about you - you’re the bad one, the mentally unstable one, the weird one, the one with their head in the clouds, you’re the one who hasn’t got an ounce of sense, you’re the one who hurts others.
The reason they needed to do this was because you were the truth teller. Truth tellers threaten the system. The system avoids change at all costs. Your intuition, talents, intelligence, perception and full personality were a problem to them and so they went about erasing it.
Later in life, after leaving the toxic harmful system you find that the very traits they despised in you are the ones that now get you noticed and celebrated. Other people value and appreciate what your own parents tried to stamp out.
You succeeded anyway
Through your grit and determination you created success and a new life for yourself.
You win awards and rise to the top of your profession. You’re in demand.
The problem
But you’re not fully liberated and it’s a bit foggy as to why.
You’ve never stopped to take in your achievements and accomplishments. It probably never occurred to you.
It feels frivolous. Why would I waste time doing that? You may ask.
And here’s the trap.
Your lack of ability to own your talent is causing you to overwork, overfunction, undercharge and thus exhaust yourself.
And currently your system would rather do this than sit with and metabolise all that you’ve done and achieved despite navigating repetitive familial relational abuse.
What’s going on under the surface?
Let’s play it out.
You pause. You write a list of all your achievements, wins, accolades, everything there is to celebrate about you.
You sit with it. You take it in.
You say to yourself ‘I did that’.
Not only did you do that, you did it under psychological attack.
There might be a sense of ‘wow, that’s impressive’ as if it was another person achieving it all.
You might then start to connect with the part of you who made it happen. The part of you who fought for your survival. The part of you who found a way through. The part of you who never gave up. You may connect with your courage, your strength and your power.
It may be emotional.
Now it requires feeling something.
Then your thoughts may go to - ‘look who I really was’.
Truth starts to arise.
You begin to see that you were never the person your family claimed you were.
The injustice stings.
And you have to come to terms with this.
Any HOPE that they may one day finally see you - see the real you - gets quenched.
For the family scapegoat - it can feel like you can’t have both - 1) a sense of belonging with your origin family and 2) being fully you and embrace your successful career because ‘ne’er the twain shall meet’.
You can ‘belong’ to your family of origin but you belong with conditions.
‘We accept you into our clique so long as you go along with who we say you are. And who we say you are is an inferior being whom we have the green light to disrespect in any way we desire. And you are powerless to stop us.’
If your subconscious is still trying to get something it never got in childhood i.e parental approval, which is oxygen to a child, then it might continue to have you overwork and over function to audition for a place at the dinner table of your family home.
The finale letting go has yet to happen.
Childhood is over.
That ship hath sailed.
Time travel is not an option.
There is no corrective experience coming.
A young part of your psyche has yet to come to terms with this.
Underneath the layers of your current pattern of overworking, overfunctioning, undercharging and being exhausted may be a very young part of you still seeking parental approval.
Parental approval that will NEVER come.
This is a completely valid trauma adaptation and if this resonates you’re probably very close to being ready to heal it.
No other work is more important than working at the level of identity when you’re a post No Contact family scapegoat survivor. This is the work that moves the needle.
If this is landing for you then you’re at a very specific point in your healing.
You’re no longer confused or in denial.
You can see the pattern.
And you can feel the cost of it.
At this stage - insight alone is no longer enough.
If you don’t consciously work with this pattern it will continue to run your life in the background.
Driving your overworking, your undercharging and your exhaustion.
All because part of you is still trying to get something it never received. And that part needs and deserves to be met properly.
This is the work I do with my 1:1 clients.
If you’re ready to stop performing for approval that was never coming and start building a life where your success fully lands, you can apply to work with me here.
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About the Author
Mary Toolan is the founder of Scapegoat Child Recovery Ltd and specialises in working with high functioning adults recovering from family scapegoating abuse.
She helps clients stabilise success after No Contact by resolving the attachment trauma and identity-level conditioning that limits expansion, restoring internal safety, coherence, and self-trust.
