What Is the Upper Limit Problem?

Have you ever noticed that just as life begins moving in the direction you’ve always wanted, something seems to pull you backward? One step forward but two steps backward? Perhaps you procrastinate after receiving an exciting opportunity, pick arguments in healthy relationships, overwork yourself into exhaustion, minimize your accomplishments, or abandon goals just as momentum begins to build.

Psychologist Gay Hendricks introduced this idea in The Big Leap, referring to it as the upper limit problem. The concept suggests that people often unconsciously create obstacles when they begin moving beyond what feels familiar, comfortable, or safe.

One of the brain’s primary responsibilities is to keep us alive, not necessarily to help us grow, organically. Often the brain needs a push. Predictability feels safe. Comfort zones are comfortable. Even positive change can activate the nervous system because change introduces uncertainty.

If someone has spent years adapting to stress, chaos, criticism, scarcity, or instability, peace and happiness can feel surprisingly unfamiliar. The nervous system may interpret growth as danger, even when the change itself is positive. Cue the unconscious actions that come into place after you start to feel like you’ve hit your limit. 

What Does Science Say?

Although the term upper limit problem comes from popular psychology rather than academic psychology, several well-established scientific concepts help explain why people sometimes pull away from the very things they want most.

These include:

• Self-handicapping

• Fear of success

• The impostor phenomenon

• Cognitive dissonance

• Avoidance learning

• Self-efficacy theory

• Attachment theory

• Nervous system regulation

Together, these theories suggest that human beings are motivated not only by achievement and pleasure but also by safety, familiarity, predictability, and identity preservation.

Self-Handicapping

Researchers Steven Berglas and Edward Jones first introduced the concept of self-handicapping in the late 1970s. Their research demonstrated that people sometimes create barriers to success before a performance takes place, particularly when they feel uncertain about their abilities.

If we fail, the obstacle becomes the explanation. If we succeed despite the obstacle, the achievement feels even more impressive. In either case, our self-image remains protected. The irony is that the very strategies that protect us from short-term disappointment often prevent long-term growth. 

Most of us don’t wake up and announce that we’re planning to a big bowl of self sabotage cereal*** ***for breakfast. These patterns tend to operate quietly beneath our conscious awareness.

Fear of Success

Most people understand the fear of failure. Fear of success is more complicated because the perceived threat isn’t failure itself. Instead, the fear often centers on everything that success might bring along with it:

• Greater visibility

• Increased responsibility

• Higher expectations

• Changes in relationships

• Pressure to maintain performance

• Shifts in identity

Imagine spending years seeing yourself as someone who struggles financially, stays in the background, or never quite succeeds. Then imagine your circumstances suddenly changing.

Your external world has changed, but your internal world hasn’t yet caught up. Maybe a part of you wants to move forward. Another part wants to protect the identity you’ve always known because that feels more safe. 

The Impostor Phenomenon

Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes introduced the concept of the impostor phenomenon in 1978 after observing that many high-achieving individuals consistently attributed their accomplishments to luck, timing, connections, or circumstances rather than to their own abilities or skillsets.

Researchers have since discovered strong relationships among impostor feelings, guilt surrounding success, fear of success, and self-sabotaging behaviors. When our achievements conflict with our beliefs about ourselves, the resulting tension can become difficult to tolerate. Psychologists refer to this experience as cognitive dissonance, the discomfort that arises when our beliefs and experiences no longer align.

Researchers have found that this also exists outside the workplace and with many new mothers experience a collision between their previous identity and their emerging identity as a parent. This transition can create a form of cognitive dissonance, particularly when deeply held beliefs about motherhood, work, independence, achievement, or self-worth come into conflict with lived experience. Some psychologists also describe this as matrescence, the profound physical, psychological, emotional, social, and spiritual transition into motherhood.

Much like adolescence, matrescence is not simply an event. It is a complete reorganization of identity. Similar patterns can emerge whenever someone undergoes a major life transition, including marriage, divorce, career changes, retirement, illness, or entrepreneurship. In each case, people are often asked to become someone new while simultaneously trying to remain who they have always been. In that sense, self-sabotage is not always resistance to success. Sometimes it is resistance to becoming unfamiliar to ourselves.

These periods of transition can also bring previously unrecognized emotions to the surface. Grief, fear, guilt, anger, uncertainty, loneliness, excitement, and even joy may emerge simultaneously, creating an experience that can feel both confusing and overwhelming. In many cases, people discover that they are not simply learning new skills or adapting to new circumstances; they are learning how to relate to an entirely new version of themselves.

Working with a coach during these transitions can be helpful because it provides a dedicated space for reflection, self-exploration, and intentional growth. A coach cannot eliminate uncertainty, but they can help people identify recurring patterns, reconnect with their values, develop greater self-awareness, and move through periods of change. 

Nervous System Regulation

Many people assume that the nervous system responds only to danger, conflict, or stress.

In reality, the nervous system responds to intensity, novelty, uncertainty, and change, regardless of whether those experiences are positive or negative.

This helps explain why some people feel anxious when wonderful things begin happening in their lives.

Somatic practitioners frequently observe that people possess varying capacities for experiencing and sustaining emotions such as:

• Joy

• Pride

• Excitement

• Connection

• Intimacy

• Peace

• Visibility

• Success

From this perspective, growth is not simply about acquiring knowledge, building skills, or changing our thoughts. It is also about gradually increasing our capacity to remain present with uncertainty, vulnerability, joy, excitement, and expansion.

Common Signs of the Upper Limit Phenomenon

Although self-handicapping, fear of success, impostor feelings, and nervous system dysregulation are distinct concepts, they often produce remarkably similar patterns.

Thought patterns

• “I’m not ready yet.”

• “I just got lucky.”

• “Someone is going to find out I don’t belong here.”

• “I don’t deserve this.”

• “What if I fail?”

• “What if I succeed and everything changes?”

• “Things are going too well. Something bad must be coming.”

Emotional experiences

• Anxiety

• Guilt

• Shame

• Self-doubt

• Irritability

• Restlessness

• Overwhelm

• Difficulty experiencing joy and pride

Behavioral patterns

• Procrastination

• Perfectionism

• Overworking

• Avoiding visibility

• Minimizing accomplishments

• Abandoning goals prematurely

• Creating unnecessary conflict

• Constantly moving the goalposts

Physical experiences

• Muscle tension

• Racing thoughts

• Difficulty sleeping

• Difficulty concentrating

• Fatigue

• Hypervigilance

• Feeling uncomfortable with peace, stillness, or calm

Final Thoughts

Perhaps the upper limit problem isn’t really a fear of success at all but instead fear of becoming unfamiliar to a new version of  ourselves.

From a behavioral science perspective, these patterns can be explained they are adaptations. Your mind and body learned how to survive one environment, and now they are learning how to exist in a different environment that might not have the same threats 

The good news is that awareness creates choice. Once we begin recognizing these patterns, we can gradually learn to respond differently. We can become curious instead of critical. We can choose expansion instead of avoidance. We can learn to tolerate the uncertainty that accompanies growth while allowing our identities to evolve alongside our changing lives.

Growth rarely feels graceful while it is happening. More often, it feels unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and sometimes even frightening. Yet that discomfort does not necessarily mean that something is wrong. Sometimes it simply means that we are standing at the edge of who we have been, preparing to become who we are capable of being.

Research and Further Reading

Berglas, S., & Jones, E. E. (1978). Drug choice as a self-handicapping strategy in response to noncontingent success.

Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The impostor phenomenon in high-achieving women.

Fimiani, R., Mannocchi, C., Gorman, B. S., & Gazzillo, F. (2024). Guilt over success, impostor phenomenon, and self-sabotaging behaviors.

Hendricks, G. (2009). The Big Leap.