No Amount of Success Will Calm You Down

A therapist explains how to wean yourself from needing praise

Kathleen Smith
Forge
Published in
2 min readJul 30, 2021

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Photo: Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images

Are successful people less anxious? It all depends on how you define success.

It’s impossible to look at a person and tell how much chronic anxiety they carry. This is because humans are masters at using anything and everything to appear high-functioning. For many…

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Kathleen Smith
Forge
Writer for

Kathleen Smith is a therapist and author of the book Everything Isn’t Terrible: Conquer Your Insecurities, Interrupt Your Anxiety, and Finally Calm Down.