Why High-Achieving Men Feel Broken Inside: A Psychoanalytic View

I often work with men who look like they are doing everything right.

They are successful, articulate, high functioning, admired. Impressive. Accomplished. They build careers, manage teams, hit goals, and hold themselves together under pressure.

And yet, quietly, many of them feel broken inside.

When they sit down in therapy, something softer appears. Something private. Something frightening. Something deeply personal.

It often sounds like this:

“I have everything I thought I wanted, but I feel empty.”
“Nothing I do ever feels like enough.”
“I feel like I am performing my life instead of living it.”

On the outside, competence.
On the inside, a quiet sense of defectiveness they have learned to hide.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, this split is not mysterious. Many high achieving men carry a powerful internalized voice. It may originate in a parent, a coach, a teacher, or another early authority figure whose standards felt impossible to meet. Freud described this voice as the superego, the internal critic that demands perfection, punishes mistakes, and rarely offers mercy.

In more contemporary psychoanalytic language, this voice is less a thought and more an internal relationship. It is the residue of someone who offered love, approval, or attention only under certain conditions. Achievement became the route to connection. Vulnerability began to feel dangerous. Love slowly transformed into something that had to be earned.

Over time, this internal figure becomes the atmosphere of the psyche.

A painful loop often follows:

Work harder.
The critic responds, “Not enough.”
Shame and defectiveness emerge.
Work harder again.

The most destructive aspect of this process is how completely the critic comes to dominate the internal world. It crowds out other parts of the self. The tired part. The frightened part. The lonely part. The part that longs for comfort or reassurance. One internal figure grows loud and commanding, while the others are forced into silence.

Those softer parts were not eliminated by choice. They were exiled because, at some earlier moment in life, they were not welcomed.

A moment I frequently encounter in therapy is when a man says, “I don’t know how to let myself feel weak.”

And he is right. He does not know yet.

Because weakness was once met with judgment, pressure, or emotional withdrawal. It was not met with safety.

Therapy becomes a space where those exiled parts can begin to return.

One of the central aims of psychoanalytic work is the softening of the superego. Not through confrontation or suppression, but through the slow introduction of a new internal relationship. One that is steadier, more curious, and more humane than what came before.

These changes do not occur through insight alone.

Along the way, there are practical interventions that can help. Some resemble cognitive or behavioral techniques, even though the deeper process remains analytic. For example:

Learning to name the critic so it becomes an observable voice rather than an unquestioned authority.
Pausing after accomplishments long enough to register pride before the critic intrudes.
Allowing needs to exist, including the need for rest, support, comfort, and care.
Extending to oneself the same gentleness one would naturally offer a friend.

These tools matter. They work because something more fundamental is shifting within the therapeutic relationship itself. Being met with curiosity rather than judgment, with steadiness rather than pressure, gradually reshapes the internal world. The critic loosens its grip. Old structures soften.

When that happens, something new begins to emerge.

A more spacious self.
A self that can strive without collapsing.
A self that can connect without the constant fear of exposure.
A self that feels alive, not merely productive.

The work is not about becoming a different person.
It is about becoming a whole one.

Harrison Tract
Founder
Apex Minds Psychotherapy