When Career Success Feels Like Failure: A Hybrid Professional’s Guide to Identity, Belonging & Why AI-Era Careers Demand a New Lens

In a time when professionals hold multiple identities, wear many hats, and navigate non-linear paths, the experience of “career success but feeling like failure” is more common than we admit.

A recent article on “career dysmorphia” captures what I see daily in my research and coaching, people who are objectively thriving, yet privately asking, “Why don’t I feel like enough?” (Article: Career Dysmorphia: When Career Success Feels Like Failure). As someone living with hybrid professional identity (working at the intersection of multiple roles, disciplines and affiliations), the terrain is even more complicated.

In this post, I’ll explore the issue of career dysmorphia through the lens of hybrid professional identity and career belonging: what the pros are, what the cons, and how to move toward greater alignment and freedom.

What Is Career Dysmorphia?

The article defines career dysmorphia as a distorted perception of achievement: a high performer who “objectively by every measurable standard” has succeeded, yet emotionally feels like they’re falling behind. It uses the metaphor of a “carnival of distorted mirrors” to describe how our reflections of success can look warped by comparison, social visibility, and internal expectation.

Key triggers include:

• Intense benchmarking of careers against curated social-media-friendly trajectories.

• Generation-specific pressures (Millennials feeling they should have done better, Gen Z expecting rapid promotion, Gen X questioning relevance).

• A shift from valuing effort, growth and purpose toward valuing visibility, acceleration and comparison.

• The phenomenon of “career stillness” (pausing or reflection feels like failure).

Hybrid Professional Identity & Career Belonging: Why They Matter

My work on hybrid professional identity and career belonging helps us understand how one can feel misaligned even while visibly succeeding.

Hybrid professional identity: The idea that many of us are not just experts or generalists, but live at the intersection of multiple professional identities— bridging domains, combining disparate skills, and crafting a unique role. For example, someone who is simultaneously a researcher + designer + educator doesn’t neatly fit the “just researcher” box.

Career belonging: The internal sense that you’re accepted for who you are, in your work, and that you have freedom, flexibility and autonomy. It’s not about fitting someone else’s path—it’s about owning your own.

When you bring together these two frameworks—hybrid identity + career belonging—together, you get a powerful lens:

• Are you seeing, naming, and leveraging the full range of what you bring?

• Do you feel you belong in your hybridity, or are you chasing someone else’s script?

The Pros of Being a Hybrid Professional in the Era of Career Dysmorphia

1. Unique value-creation
   Because hybrids work at intersections, they can generate new ideas, break silos, and offer differentiated contributions. This is a competitive advantage.

2. Adaptability in a changing world
   The linear ladder is gone. As a hybrid professional you’re better suited for dynamic roles, career pivots, lateral moves, and evolving industries.

3. Greater authenticity / career belonging
   When you name your hybridity and live into it, you are more likely to feel seen and known—which helps mitigate the distortion of feeling “behind.”

4. Flexibility of pace and path
   Hybrids often design their own trajectory rather than following a prescribed ladder. This can reduce the pressure of “I must hit promotion by X.”

The Cons (and the dark side) of Being a Hybrid Professional

1. Identity ambiguity
   Knowing who you are and what you do can become muddy when you sit between roles. Without clarity, the mirror gets fuzzy: “If I’m doing this AND that, am I really advancing?”

2. External mis-recognition
   Traditional organizations may still reward clearly defined roles. If the world doesn’t map your hybridity into its boxes, you may feel undervalued or invisible—even when objectively succeeding.

3. Self-imposed comparison syndrome
   Since hybrids often resist the “one clear track”, it can feel like you’re falling behind peers who seem to have “arrived” in one domain—even though your track is different. This is career dysmorphia’s playground.

4. Acceleration and visibility pressure
   The article notes a shift from focusing on effort to obsession with results and visibility. Hybrids may feel extra pressure to prove their value because their role is less conventional — which may increase burnout risk.

Real-Life Example: Navigating Career Dysmorphia as a Hybrid Professional

Meet “Aisha” (name anonymised), a hybrid professional who illustrates this journey from dysmorphia toward big-C Career belonging.

• Background: Aisha started as a communications specialist in a large tech firm, then developed skills in data analytics, later moved into user-experience design and finally adopted a leadership role around product strategy. Her professional identities included “communicator”, “data interpreter”, “designer” and “strategist”.

• The Dysmorphia: She had been promoted steadily, had a strong salary, and public recognition—but internally felt like she kept moving sideways rather than upward. When discussing her work with peers, she felt they “got” her fewer than those doing one defined craft. She questioned: “Why do I feel I’m not succeeding even though the numbers say I am?”

• The Hybridity Strain: Because she was integrating multiple identities, she didn’t have a clear job title that matched her reality. In meetings she heard “you’re the designer?” or “you’re data-analytics lead?”—but none fit. That made her question: If I don’t have a clear box, is my role real? Am I moving ahead or just floating?

• The Pivot to Career Belonging:

  1. She began by naming her hybridity: she chose the title “Strategic Experience Integrator” (blending her identities of communication + data + design + strategy) and updated her LinkedIn, email signature, and internal bio.

  2. She shifted her personal definition of success: rather than “next promotion by Q4”, she set metrics like “I applied at least two of my core identities to deliver one new solution this quarter” and “I ensured one internal team recognised my value beyond my old role.”

  3. She told her story: She crafted an internal presentation and external blog about how her hybrid background allowed her to “translate data stories into emotional narratives and design solutions that drive business strategy”. She made her hybridity visible.

  4. She found an environment that valued hybridity: She moved into a smaller, high-growth division where her boundary-spanning role was explicitly needed and appreciated. Within 18 months she was tapped to lead a cross-discipline initiative, and finally felt known for her full range of identities.

• The Outcome: Rather than feeling like “behind”, Aisha shifted to feeling “apart”. She measured belonging not by “have I achieved X” but by “am I using who I am in full, and am I recognized for it?” She now speaks on panels about hybrid professionals and has co-created a mentoring circle for others like her. She achieved big-C career belonging: her work aligns with her identity, she feels required and valued, and her internal sense of success is alive.

Her journey underscores that career dysmorphia is not about lack of achievement. It’s about lack of alignment between identity, contribution and belonging.

Bridging the Gap: From Dysmorphia to Belonging

Here are strategies tailored for hybrid professionals to shift from feeling “behind” or mis-aligned to belonging and thriving in their careers:

• Name your hybrid identity explicitly
  Ask: What are my core professional identities? Where do they intersect? What new role or value emerges at the intersection? This helps reduce ambiguity.

• Establish metrics of success aligned to you
  Instead of only external markers (title, salary, promotion), define what success feels like in your hybridity (e.g., “I used two disciplines to solve a client’s problem”, or “I launched a new capability bridging X and Y”).

• Re-orient toward contribution rather than comparison
  As the article suggests: focus on what you add, not where you stand in the queue.

• Embrace career stillness as growth time
  Periods of reflection, iteration, integration—and not visible acceleration—are legitimate, especially for hybrids figuring out how their identities converge.

• Communicate your story internally & externally
  Tell the narrative of your hybridity: this is why you do what you do, across the domains, and the value it creates. Clarity in story mitigates invisibility.

• Seek environments that reward hybridity
  If the organisation only rewards singular identities (e.g., “just the expert”), you may feel mis-fitting. Look for teams that prize boundary-spanning, integrators, bridge-builders.

Final Thoughts

Success in a hybrid career does not guarantee a sense of career belonging. In fact, it can amplify the disconnect between external achievement and internal alignment, what the article calls career dysmorphia. But when you lean into your hybrid professional identity and cultivate career belonging, you reclaim control of your narrative.

The pivot is from: “I should be where I’m told I should be” to “I am where I choose to be based on who I am.” As professionals—especially hybrids—our work may not always match the visible benchmarks of success, but it can absolutely match the internal truth of meaningful contribution and belonging.

If you’re reading this and feel that tension—“I should be further / I should feel happy / I should see more progress”, you’re not alone.

Your hybridity may be the very source of your value. The task is to name it, integrate it, and feel the belonging of whichever path you’re crafting.

References

• “A Framework of Career Belonging” by Dr Sarabeth Berk Bickerton. More Than My Title

• “What is a Hybrid Professional? The Definitive Guide” by Dr Sarabeth Berk. More Than My Title

• “Belonging versus fitting in in your career” – Hybridity & career belonging. More Than My Title