The Price of Success and Why Nobody talks about it

I'm going to be straight with you.

You've probably come across posts like this before. Therapist. Transformation. Change your life. Book a free consultation. I know, because I've read them too — and I understand why they all sound the same. So I want to try something different, and just tell you who I actually am and what I've actually experienced. Because if you're the kind of person this post is written for, you'll spot hollow marketing from a mile away. You always could.

Thirty years of holding it together

I spent thirty years in Science and Engineering. I worked my way up through organisations, through restructures, through acquisitions, through the particular pressure cooker that is VC-backed business, where personnel change at the top is as predictable as the seasons. I reached board level. I sat in rooms where the decisions were serious and the stakes were real.

From the outside, it probably looked like confidence and competence all the way up.

It wasn't.

Anxiety was a near-constant companion. So was imposter syndrome — that quiet, persistent voice suggesting that sooner or later, someone was going to notice that you didn't quite belong in the room. And then there was the poor self-care. The drinking that crept up gradually, the way it does, until it was verging on something I didn't want to name.

They have a term for all of this. They call it the price of success.

You know the logic. You can't earn the salary without absorbing the stress. You can't sit at the table without paying the entry fee. At a certain level, there is an unspoken but very clear expectation that you'll be OK with it — and that anything less than OK is a weakness to be filed away and, when the time comes, exploited.

And then on top of all of that, you'll almost inevitably find yourself managing people who are sharper than you. More technically gifted. Faster. And the voice gets a little louder.

Of course, it's all bullshit.

But knowing that doesn't make the voice stop.

Why nobody talks about it

I never talked about it. That's not what engineers do. It's certainly not what you do at board level, and it is absolutely not what you do when VC ownership is involved and you are acutely aware that the wrong conversation with the wrong person at the wrong moment can define your next performance review.

So you carry it. Quietly and professionally, the way you were taught to carry everything else. You perform. You deliver. You sit in the meetings and you make the decisions and you go home and you pour yourself a drink, because that's the one thing that reliably turns the volume down.

And the years go by.

What I wish I'd known

What I wish someone had told me — clearly, early, and without the therapeutic language that tends to make engineers switch off — is this:

This is not a character flaw. It is a pattern.

The anxiety, the self-doubt, the drinking — these are not evidence that you're not cut out for the role. They are learned responses. Adaptations your mind made to an environment that demanded a great deal and offered little room for honesty about the cost.

And patterns can be changed.

The subconscious mind that learned to generate that voice, that learned to reach for the drink when the pressure peaked, that learned to perform composure it didn't feel — that same mind can learn something different. Not through willpower. Not through positive thinking. Not through being told to practise self-care and download a meditation app.

Through something that works at the level where the pattern actually lives.

That's what clinical hypnotherapy does. It's not mysticism. It's not stage performance. It's a well-evidenced approach to working directly with the subconscious processes that drive behaviour — the same processes that no amount of rational thinking can reliably override, because rational thinking operates one floor above where the problem actually is.

I know this both professionally and personally. I retrained as a clinical hypnotherapist after leaving the corporate world. I hold registrations with the NCH, CNHC, NSPsy and IHA. I work with an evidence-based toolkit that includes clinical hypnotherapy, CBT, NLP and EMDR. And I also know what it feels like to sit in those rooms, carry that weight, and tell everyone you're fine.

Who this is actually for

If you're reading this and none of it resonates, that's fine. This post isn't for everyone.

But if you're performing well on the outside while quietly carrying elevated anxiety, persistent self-doubt, or a relationship with alcohol that you'd rather nobody looked at too closely — if you've tried to think your way out of it and found that thinking isn't quite enough — then it might be worth a conversation.

Not a sales call. Not a consultation designed to funnel you towards booking six sessions before you've had time to think. A genuine conversation about your situation, what's driving it, and what the right way forward might look like. Which may or may not involve working with me. I'd rather you found the right support than the nearest support.

If that sounds like the kind of honest conversation you've been looking for, I'm easy to reach.

Get in touch at sussexhypnotherapyclinics.com

Patrick Collins is a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Transformative Coach based in Horsham, West Sussex. He holds a PhD in Astrophysics and spent three decades in Science and Engineering before retraining with the Surrey College of Clinical Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy. He is registered with the NCH, CNHC, NSPsy and IHA.

Help

Reach out anytime for support.

Contact

Sussex Hypnotherapy Clinics Ltd

38 Church Close

Lower Beeding

West Sussex RH13 6NS

England

patrick@sussexhypnotherapyclinics.com

+44 7951024063

© 2025. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy