THE SUCCESS TRAP

Behind Every High Achiever Lies a Silent Struggle

By Anupama Mohla

In today’s fast-paced world, young adults are living under constant pressure to perform well academically, secure jobs early, and make bold career decisions to climb up the ladder of the so-called ‘success’. Their outward success appears flawless as they are high achievers and are hyper-focused. The system rewards the very behaviour that might be functionally breaking the adolescent down. But behind that calm surface, most of them may be battling racing thoughts, sleepless nights, and an endless need to outperform. Because they continue to perform well, their struggle often goes unnoticed by parents, teachers and even by themselves.

One reason this condition may be overlooked is that success acts like a mask. If the adolescent is getting excellent grades, earning adequate money, and meeting work targets, others may assume everything is fine. But being functional outside is not the same as being peaceful inside. Many young adults learn to normalize constant worry and stress and wear it as a badge of diligence, as anxiety starts slowly creeping in disguise.

Initially, it seems that the adolescents are effortlessly floating through their lives, but in reality, they may be struggling to survive the pressures of a competitive environment while presenting themselves as relaxed individuals, like a calm duck gliding across a stream.

This phenomenon is known as the floating duck syndrome. This term was originally coined at Stanford University to compare a student’s career with the effortless glide of a duck on the surface of the water while paddling furiously underwater, desperately getting by (Stanford University Student Affairs, 2022). It attempts to capture the double pressure to succeed while making it seem easy on the outside. It is not a clinical diagnosis, but is usually used to describe the struggles of students who appear successful while living in constant worry, anxiety, self-doubt and fear of failing.

Mental health professionals assert that they are witnessing more of this pattern, particularly among college students and early-career professionals, and that access to this issue can be difficult to spot early. Many parents do not even know how to address the distress of the adolescent. In many households across the country, especially in smaller cities, mental health is still considered a stigma that makes accepting anxiety feel like admitting to weakness. The young adults start internalising the struggle and externalising the performance.

The youth are confronted with an aggressive job market that demands constant upskilling, competitive exams, moving to bigger cities for opportunities, and the persistent comparison trap of social media. Add to this the silent expectation that one should be grateful to access opportunities their parents didn’t have, and asking for help starts to feel like indulgence.

The first step in this direction is to recognize that there is a problem. Parents and teachers should pay more attention to the progress and not only focus on the performance of the adolescent. What really needs to change is how parents address this issue. Their focus should be on adolescents’ holistic well-being and creating a fearless environment for them to talk.

Institutions and colleges must strike off the hyper-competitive infrastructure that rewards burnout and stress, and remove performance segregation. Mandatory non-academic windows should be enforced in the curriculum, which would include sports activities, creative arts, storytelling, singing and dance performance. Concerted and effective effort and restructuring can make the environment safe enough for young adults to drop the mask of diligence.

The writer is a Practising Parenting & Behavioural Coach, Psychologist, Hypnotherapist, NLP Master Practitioner and Author.