Are You a Chronic Achiever? (The Monster We Made)
A chronic achiever isn’t just someone who likes goals or ambition.
It’s someone whose sense of worth is deeply tied to output — to showing up, pushing through, and proving they can handle whatever it takes to be successful.
For a long time, that was me.
Chronic achievers are often praised. We’re usually reliable. Responsible. Capable. We’re the ones who don’t complain, who adapt, who “make it work”. We leaned early that being strong, productive, and helpful earns safety and approval.
Until it doesn’t.
When chronic illness enters the picture, the rules change — but the achiever mindset is still there. Your body may have been forced to slow down, but your brain didn’t get the memo. We proceed the same way we always have because it’s the only way we’ve ever known. We keep trying to apply old standards to a body that no longer operates that way.
We push past exhaustion.
We ignore warning signs.
We tell ourselves rest is laziness.
And we believe limits are excuses.
And when we inevitably can’t keep up, we don’t just feel a little discouraged.
We realize we may never come back from this — and we feel ashamed.
Being a chronic achiever with chronic illness is especially cruel — and dangerous — because the very traits that once helped us succeed can very much harm us.
Perseverance turns into self-abandonment.
Discipline turns into rigidity.
Grit becomes frustration.
“Trying harder” becomes torture.
We don’t struggle because we don’t care enough — we struggle because we care too much.
Many of us don’t slow down by choice. Our bodies retaliated and forced the pause. It can feel like the most painful form of failure when your identity has always been built on momentum.
To a chronic achiever, the pause can feel like punishment.
Becoming Type C is the uncomfortable work of untangling achievement from worth.
It’s realizing that your value doesn’t disappear if your productivity does.
It’s learning that taking care of your health is not a detour from life — it is your life now and it takes serious stamina.
This doesn’t mean ambition disappears.
But it does have to change shape.
It means success might look like making it to one appointment instead of five.
Or resting before you crash instead of after.
Or choosing presence over performance.
If you’re a chronic achiever, you probably will and still do have days where you feel angry with yourself for needing rest. Days where you grieve the version of you who could do more. Days where you feel like you’re not just letting yourself down, but letting the world down. And that’s a heavy feeling to carry.
The mental and emotional turmoil doesn’t mean you’re doing this wrong.
It means you’re unlearning something deeply ingrained — something that took a lifetime to create.
Sometimes, I picture these traits like Frankenstein’s monster;
At first, Victor Frankenstein admired his work. But he abandoned the monster for his grotesque appearance. After being rejected by society, the intelligent but lonely creature sought revenge on his creator.
We shaped and sculped our perfectionist monster. For a time, it served us well. Once we realized the very thing that made us unique and powerful may have contributed to the collapse of our health, the monster is still there. but instead of being the asset it once was, the perfectionist will continue to wreak havoc on our body and mind unless we contain it by showing it kindness and compassion.
If we don’t, what once was our “superpower” will become our downfall.
You are not weak for needing limits and you are not lazy for honouring them.
And you certainly are not failing just because your life no longer looks impressive from the outside.
It’s not about giving up. You know this — because we’re not the type of people who give up.
Becoming Type C is about redefining what achievement looks like when your health finally matters.
So are you a chronic achiever? (see the follow-up post for the questionnaire).
If you resonated with this, you likely already know the answer — but you’re not alone here.
