It's easy to assume that if someone's doing all right materially - nice house, big car, exotic holidays and all the rest - then they must be doing all right psychologically as well. I mean, would they have got all that if they were mentally screwed-up? They must be well-adjusted, emotionally secure, productive individuals.Despite all the well-known examples of people who had a glittering lifestyle but were in inner turmoil - like Marilyn Monroe, Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain - we still imagine material success goes hand in hand with personal serenity. It's hard to picture these apparently privileged souls secretly struggling with feelings of anxiety, worthlessness, despair, grief or addiction.
We all know friends or relatives who wrestle with inner demons of one kind or another. We know those seemingly capable, confident people may be very different in private, when they put aside their well-rehearsed public persona and reveal what's underneath. Yet we still believe that worldly success is some sort of magic psychic cure-all.
Even if we know Ms Doing-Very-Nicely has the odd phobia or panic attack, we just see it as a curious quirk in a basically problem-free person. We don't want to think of her as a hopeless psychological wreck, barely staggering from one day to the next. We want her to be a role model, someone we can look up to, someone inspiring.
We like to believe there are people out there with pristine psyches, perfectly attuned to life, free of all the mundane mental hang-ups. Which is why all these charismatic gurus and preachers are so popular. But nobody is that angelic. Even these supposedly saintly figures are regularly unmasked as fallible mortals, prone to groping young women or defrauding their devotees.
Show me a hang-up free person, and I'll show you a corpse.
What are my inner demons, I hear you ask? Oh, surely you know by now. Anxiety, self-doubt, insecurity, fear of the dark. Need I go on?
