Confessions From a Recovering High Performer
Are you familiar with the experience of neglecting something crucial right up until the morning it explodes? Real 11th-hour stuff? In this episode, I pick up where I left off after the last episode, exploring the complicated dynamics of maintaining composure and the art of “pulling it together,” and shed light on the internal and external battles faced when trying to appear composed – and the honest revelations that come with letting it slip.
Listen in as I get real, sharing the hurdles I’ve faced since our last conversation. The struggle to alter ingrained patterns and habits is real and daunting. I give you an unfiltered glimpse into my relationship with my calendar, a glaring representation of the challenges I grapple with in my quest for change. Even as I navigate my path to recovery from being a high performer, I confront the enduring structures that stubbornly uphold the very patterns I’m striving to transform. Join me in this episode for a raw and sincere exploration of self, the complexities of self-change, and the ongoing journey towards recovery and reform.
And as with everything I share on the podcast, this is what I believe based on what I’ve read and researched. But please don’t take my word for it. Keep what sticks, discard the rest and for goodness sakes, go out and test drive it!
What You’ll Learn In Today’s Episode:
How to view overwhelming times as opportunities for pause and mindfulness.
Understand the struggle with reverting to old patterns of avoidance and lack of emotional honesty despite efforts to stay present.
How emotions are pathways to understanding and tackling resistance.
How to use journaling and a practice of exploring your current experience for introspective reflection.
How to observe the escalation of emotions as indicators of underlying issues.
The importance of environmental awareness as an indicator of mindfulness.
The importance of feeling grounded, enjoying the moment, and expanding awareness.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“When you’re trying to change a pattern that has deep roots, it’s super hard, and sometimes I unconsciously stack the deck against myself just to wake myself up.” – Christina Sestan
“Haven’t you ever had one of those times of great insight only to wake up days or weeks later scratching your head and wondering where all your momentum went?” – Christina Sestan
“But our brain as it turns out is super good at really upholding the status quo and rejecting the new.” – Christina Sestan
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Speaker 1 0:01
Hey, it's Christina. Thanks for joining us. And welcome to the Squeeze, but our brain, it turns out, is super good at like really upholding the status quo, the known, and rejecting the new and so it's been just over a couple of weeks since my last podcast, and if you listen to that, you might remember that I was talking about my upcoming schedule in terms of a tsunami, and recognizing that that was actually generating a lot of angst for me, and so in real time during the last podcast I did a reframe, and I called the time that was about to show up as a time with lots of opportunities for pushing pause and practicing some presence, so how am I doing? Well, isn't that an interesting question? Because it begs the question, who's asking? So, what I mean is, in full transparency, I have a very overdeveloped muscle of pulling it together, so if you ask me how well I'm pulling it together, I'd say yeah I'm actually doing really well, and you know a whole bunch about pulling it together is really in the rallying that I've done all kinds of organizational structures that I have in place, and actually it turns out I'm pretty calculating about what I let drop, or if I'm being really honest, what I appear to let drop. I wondered if you are familiar with the experience of like neglecting something that you should be doing right up until just before the moment it either explodes or expires, it's what I call that real 11th hour kind of stuff. After my last podcast, it seems that I've actually had the opportunity to see more deeply just how good I actually am at this. It's scary. I openly admit to being a recovering high performer, but then I see all these complex and hard to track patterns that actually maintain the very structure of what I'm trying to reform. I am, it turns out, and not for the first time, my own worst enemy. Big surprise. Not so, maybe this podcast is the only thing that's keeping me accountable, but in all seriousness, when you're trying to change a pattern that has deep roots, it's super hard, and sometimes I wonder if I unconsciously stack the deck against myself just to kind of wake myself up, like one day I'm going to look at my to-do list and be like, oh come on, you know, Young Carl Jung would probably definitely align with this, so a long, long time ago, someone very wise said these words to me. They said, 'don't waste the pain, but we do over and over again. I know I do until we don't, but I'm not going to lie. This particular pattern that I'm referring to, my relationship with my calendar, this is a sticky sucker, and when something has deep roots like this clearly does, we're not going to gain much ground just by recognizing we have a pattern that we want to change. Sure, that's useful in much the same way that using a flashlight might help us find the outhouse at night when we're outside camping, but what about when those batteries die? Because it seems to me that very often the next chapter, or what usually occurs after we see the pattern, in my case the pattern of pulling it all together as a high performer, the next chapter is often amnesia. No, I'm serious. Haven't you ever had one of those times of great insight, only to wake up like days or weeks later, scratching your head, wondering where all your momentum went. A super easy example is if you've ever attended some kind of session or seminar workshop or something, where you heard something that just connected, you know what I'm talking about, you just get it, you resonate, and maybe you feel this tremendous sort of relief because you can suddenly see something you were previously blind to before, but you know what happens, you leave the session, or whatever it was, and bam, you run smack into your life with all its structures and norms and expectations, and this new insight. It doesn't fit, and we all have different capacity for rallying around it.
Speaker 1 4:59
But our brain, it turns out, is super good at like really upholding the status quo, the known, and rejecting the new, and Who really takes the time to build the so-called supportive scaffolding that these new emergent insights and new ways of seeing really kind of need in order to take root. Sometimes we might naturally form a kind of accountability partnership. Maybe we met someone in the meeting, or workshop, or session, or whatever, and we sort of cling to one another in this new insight, like sort of survivors of a sinking ship. But all I'm saying is that changing ourselves is bloody hard. I've been working and practicing in the realm of development for eons, and I know I've changed numerous patterns over the years. I mean, it'd be kind of crazy to keep trying after all this time and not seeing any outcomes. So, I definitely have. I only need to look at my capacity for joy and fun to see that, because you know, I am much more grounded in that as an adult than I ever was, but ever the personal growth bungee jumper that I am, and I am there, are just some super resistant blocks, and you know, I've had these in my sights for a while, mostly because they have and continue to exact a shitload of energy and peace of mind, they're the so-called big kahunas, if you will. So, full circle back to this notion of high performance, and the apparent dexterity. It turns out that I will to not let things drop, even while telling myself that they will, and all you high performers out there, say it with me, not on my watch, because isn't that truly what we feel inside? I hope what I've established so far is the real challenge of changing some of these dance steps that we've been doing for decades, because personally I've encountered a ton of resources over my lifetime that may not explicitly say it, but they sure do imply it. One and done, you see it, you change it, and no, that's not even close, not by a long shot. So, do you want to know the linchpin, the thing that I think is holding the whole pattern together? I think our fear of telling ourselves the truth, our immense resistance to quote unquote getting real. I touched on that a couple of weeks ago, but I want to go deeper. And here's a warning: I have spent heaps of time spelunking into the caverns of my own psychology, a lot more than what I've discovered is actually average. And while it's clearly not for the faint of heart, it, it definitely has afforded me a depth of understanding that's added a lot to my tool belt, both personally and professionally, in a pretty profound way. So, let's explore the experience of resistance and what lies beyond, and I'm stressing the word experience because I'm not going to be layering in any supportive neuropsychology, you know, research or models or methods or anything like that. I don't have time, but I am going to talk about what I've noticed, because I think there is some value to exploring the experience of resistance without necessarily tacking on the back end of the sort of the structure of what's going on in our brain, our psychology, and all that sort of thing. I'll definitely, like I said last podcast, I do want to go back to that in the not too distant future, but my hands are a bit tied. That strikes me as funny. Anyway, so here's what I've noticed. So I've noticed that for me the doorway into getting real with myself is generally through my feelings, and you know, I don't know if that's a common experience for you as you're listening or or not, but what I found is, and I think I've referenced this before, is that I have some pretty tried and true structures in place, and those are just, you know, things like taking your car in for regular maintenance. It's sort of like, okay, good, it's a catch-all. One of those is journaling, and in the process of journaling, I generally do something that is kind of just a reflection on my current experience, and I use, I would say, probably most commonly something called the Experience Cube, that is a tool you can download from my site.
Speaker 1 9:21
I think it's on there. If not, just let me know, I'll send it to you. But it's really simple, it's just prompting me to ask several questions, such as what am I feeling, what am I thinking, what am I observing, what do I want, and so back to this question of resistance. What I've noticed is for me the doorway to actually unlocking the resistance is usually through feeling. So, here's how it looked this morning. So, I utilize a tool called the Feeling Wheel, and again, if you are interested in that, you can send me a note, and I'll send you a copy of that. That's not my property, not my domain - I didn't create it, but. A really useful tool, and as I was reflecting using the tool, I was kind of astounded at how many feelings I had that were landing in the so-called scared, mad, and sad quadrants, like lots of them, like overwhelm and anxiety and bewilderment and confusion, and like just layering, layering, layering, and it was almost like I needed the raw data to arrest me. It was like I needed to see the words on paper to go, "Oh, seems like something's up with me. So that was my doorway in that I had probably been bottlenecking my feelings, because I don't normally experience that many feelings. I mean, you know, feelings, they come and go, right? Sometimes you can get a big clump and they're gone in five minutes. Other times you get one feeling and it's here for three weeks. So, I'm not making hard and fast rules about feelings, but having a regular practice, I kind of know what is my so-called norm, and this was not my norm, so that was my doorway in, and I recognized, hey, something is clearly up for me, and it was that was the moment that was when I realized that I haven't been telling myself the truth the last couple weeks, and it's just, it's not like an instant thing, right, it's not like one day I'm telling myself the truth and the next day I'm not, that's not how it works, and I think you probably would resonate. It's more a case of a half truth one day with a three quarter truth the next day, or a one quarter truth, whichever direction you're going, and then it just becomes easier and easier to kind of abandon the present clarity, honesty for just getting shit done. There it is again, getting shit done. And so, what I recognized this morning was that while I did get through, and even just noticed my language, get through the last two weeks, that's very telling in itself. It could be another doorway, right? Thinking, how am I thinking about things? What is my narrative? I realized that there was definitely a place where I ended up going more with the side of myself that was really just about executing on the things that I needed to do, like mobilizing what resources I had, and you know, calling on all of those incredibly dexterous organizational tools to get things done. I've referenced this in previous podcasts, that you know, the the variety of things that I have on my plate is is actually quite high, it's higher than normal, and so here I am this morning, recognizing that, uh, oh, I've, I've not been telling myself the truth, I've been telling myself what I've needed to in order to achieve the deeper belief structure, the deeper pattern of getting shit done, of pulling it together, and so let's talk about this whole notion of getting real and being honest with ourselves, because it is an incredibly difficult thing to do. First, we, we really have to catch ourselves, and I know that sounds like an interesting description, but when you consider, as I have done, that when you know when I asked that question at the beginning, Who's who's asking the question, that we have these different parts of ourselves, and you know you can use whatever frame you want, you can call it your ego, your inner critic, you can call it your, you know, big mind and all your different voices. It doesn't really matter. The point is that I personally am not always coalescing around one particular perspective and one particular motivation.
Speaker 1 13:56
There's many, and they're dueling, and there's different functions and different purposes, and in this case, I would like to argue that the inner critic and the more fear-based part of me was taking control and really gently easing out that sort of inner wisdom, that part of me that knows that I'm actually thriving more when I'm grounded and when I'm not doing all this sort of dexterous gymnastics to not let anything drop, and so that is actually who I've been in conversation with more, certainly the last part of the last two weeks, not the entire time, because, like I said, it's a gradual process of shifting the focus from that sort of wise, grounded part of myself to that other part that is just like, you know, business as usual. Let's pick up the old patterns, and this is where we've been, this is what we know, this is familiar, and that's kind of disheartening to see that, but I do. Think that just even the notion of recognizing different voices and dueling parts of ourselves is really helpful in confronting the reality of what's going on, and therefore telling myself the truth, and there is a little bit of what I'm going to call ego death in there, and you could call that just like you know, your inner critic just takes a whacking, and and there is a definite response that we feel from that. In fact, I used to say to my clients years ago when I was working with them around the concept of inner critic, I would say that, you know, while you're here on this coaching call with me, and you are learning about your inner critic. Your inner critic has also hired their own coach to help them learn how to double down and build up the walls even higher and create even more traps for you to keep you stuck, and so while I'm sitting here reflecting as I'm speaking, recognizing that I was in conversation more frequently with my sort of inner critic part, I get kind of tired of labels, but let's just say that the part of me that is more automatic than the part that wants to be grounded, and as a result of letting that part move more into the driver's seat. I noticed some other things, along with this sort of big boatload of feelings that came up this morning. I noticed that there was a decrease in the amount that I was observing in my environment. What I mean by that is I'm typically someone who's very honed in to my visual environment, so I'm, you know, just a hugely susceptible to nature and my love of all things in the natural world, and not even that, but just appreciation for the nuance and the subtleties in human behavior, and you know, the body language and the tones and all that sort of thing, and so I think I've noticed a real decrease in the sensitivity to that, that's another cue that I've noticed that has really sort of come to light now, and it certainly wasn't during the time, so what I'm pointing to is that the way of staying same, of status quo, of stuck, that the sort of structure, psychologically or otherwise, is very, very practiced. It has very deep roots, and therefore it requires a certain level of humility to confront it, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that this is risky for me to share this with you, because there's a part of me, of course, that wants to continue to be seen as professional, and you know, I've got my shit sorted, and I've got it going on, of course, you know the reality is far from that, but I would be lying if I said that the inner critic didn't exert a tremendous amount of pressure on me. It does, it does. Hey, you're listening to the Squeeze, and if you like what you're hearing, there's a whole world of citrus couching to discover. We've got an online leadership program, it's called Citrus You, and it features those three key tools you need to be a better leader, well, to be a better human. We also have a number of mini learning bundles that you can get into, and there's plenty more. If you're interested, you can follow us on Instagram, or check out our website@www.citruscoaching.com and the show resumes now.
Speaker 1 18:47
There's one other thing that I notice upon reflection over the last couple of weeks, and again, it wasn't a one and done, right? It wasn't just happen suddenly like a light switch, it happened gradually. I noticed that my capacity for enjoying myself has just about disappeared by today, and it's interesting, because objectively, if you looked at my calendar and my schedule and what I was actually up to, you'd probably say, "Whoa, that's pretty cool, like I had an opportunity to go and see Coldplay on Friday night, and that's, you know, one of my longtime favorite bands, and it wasn't easy to get tickets, and I don't know if you are someone that likes live shows or not. I don't have a judgment about that either way, but what I do know is that for the set of just shy of two hours I was actually waiting, driving, like walking, you know, for about six hours, for that, you know, slightly less than two hours of actual music time. So, anyway, all this to say, I'm digressing, it was a lot of effort for the gains that I got. So, objectively, you might look upon my life and say, "Wow, she's, you know, really enjoying herself, but. I know myself. I've studied myself for many, many years, and I know that the level of enjoyment, self-enjoyment, that I'm talking about, like, I love that word, enjoy, because it speaks of joy from within, and that's just something that you know I know when I feel it, and I know when I don't, and it's not again like a cumulative thing, it can happen in the spark of a moment. So, for instance, recording this podcast right now, I'm feeling it, you know, just roughing an outline before I started recording it. I was feeling it. It's like I can feel my toes, not quite literally. I mean, I literally can feel my toes, but I mean it's more of a sort of holistic sense of myself, and I do feel grounded, and as a result I feel stronger. So, those are all sort of the things that I notice when I look in my rear view mirror that have been missing for me gradually over the last couple of weeks, and so then back to this moment of resistance that is the grit that requires if we really want change that requires us to confront that part of us that wants to be safe and certain and secure and in control. Is that not the heart and soul of a high performer? It has us confront that and realize the not futility quite, but more the cost to us of hanging on to that, which you know, I think you could really go far deeper into the well of the so-called existential kind of angst, the notion that if we really, really look, we don't have very much control at all, and we're all just sort of bumbling around in this life in varying personas, trying to get by. I mean, that's an incredibly pessimistic view, and I don't hold that. That's not that's just a tiny flavor in this moment, but I think that the reality is that we can be motivated to a great length in that sort of direction of feeling safe and feeling certain and feeling in control, and so by saying whoops I did it again, in other words, the pattern crept up, the pattern was super stealthy, like for someone like myself. I've worked at this kind of thing for a long time, and I'm not saying that in any kind of arrogance. I mean, in fact, it's kind of like a bit masochistic on some level. What I am saying is that I can continually be tricked, and I think I continually will be, because that is the complexity of some of these deeper rooted patterns in staying alive. Because if you look at the underbelly of these patterns, I once had somebody say to me, you know, we everything we do, we do with purpose.
Speaker 1 22:59
It's just that sometimes the purpose isn't logical, and I think that's such a key insight when it comes to patterns like this, like so, why, why do I hyper perform, why do I have this dexterity in my organizational system that is so sophisticated that I will appear to be okay letting things drop, but when you get your magnifying glass, you actually see that they're not dropping. It just appears that way, that that is the degree of commitment that some part of my psychology has made with appearing to be someone who can hold their shit together, so the underbelly news flash is fear. It's fear, and I am not saying anything new, novel. Nothing, nothing about this is, but I'm saying it, and I think that's novel, and I'm feeling that as I'm saying it, because at some point I think we all stand at a crossroads and get to call bullshit on ourselves, and I think that's actually what matters, because that is kind of confronting the fear, you know, when we face the barbed wire fence and it says no trespassing, and like upon pain of death or whatever, that's generally how I view these deep level fears, right, you just don't go there, don't mess with it, and I know enough about this from working with so many clients over the years that this is sort of a universal experience that fears are designed to keep us away, it's like a snarling, you know, snarling dog behind the barbed wire, like that's an even bigger fear, like no, I'm no, I'm okay, no, I'll go the other way, easy peas. But what is interesting, and this is the part that I really want to underscore, because this is what happened for me this morning, that the barbed wire fence and the snarling German Shepherd are actually an illusion, and that the very thing we want to do, which is run, is the thing that is just going to maintain the pattern and not just maintain it, but reinforce it, strengthen it, and that the only thing to do, and here, okay, here's the itch, this is the thing I think is the pivotal moment from which probably most of us turn back, and that is that the answer actually lies across the bar bar fence towards the snarling dog. I mean, how many books have been written on fear? So many, so many quotes. We know so much about fear cognitively, but what about experientially? And I'm not talking about running from it, because we all know about that. I'm talking about standing and confronting it, and for me this morning, that was the fear of really how I would appear, how others would see me, and I realized, as I'm speaking, that I'm gaining some strength and grounding, because what I know is this is a universal fear, and that it is by staying silent that I am able to sort of nurture this false belief that this is just unique to me. Christina has this issue, and everybody else, sure, they've got issues. I know enough to say that, but this one, this is me, this is my unique underbelly here that I'm showing, and I know absolutely without a doubt it's not. I know that I know that when we're faced with the barbed wire fence and the snarling dog, and that could look.. I don't know what it looks like for you, but for me it's that, you know, honest to goodness, what the hell am I doing? Why am I trying so hard here, and it's that moment of just like, you know enough, like enough, that's a limit, right? And that's really the moment when I think something magical happens, and I'm not like a magical person, like I don't have little figurines of dragons and stuff like that, and if you do, that's fine. It's just not my jam.
Speaker 1 27:43
What I mean by it, I like the word in this case because it's sort of a good way of describing almost a transformation or a transmutation of fear into something else, and I used this word last time, but I don't think I went as deeply into it, and that is surrender, and that's what I feel like I'm doing right now, and there's something in me that's like, and I think it's the inner critic that's like, what in the actual hell are you doing surrendering on a podcast, because I have, like, I have a lot of negative critique for podcasters that do that, because it looks to me like a little bit of like emotional kind of commodification, I don't like that, but this is why I'm doing it, because I want to put light on it in this moment for myself, and maybe for you listening, that the barbed wire fence is bullshit, the fear is bullshit, the idea that you have some kind of right to being the only person with this kind of pattern is bullshit. We all have it, everybody has it, and the more we hold up, or the more we support, or, you know, sort of bolster up those false beliefs, then we, the more we live in a culture that is just complete reflection of that, where the norms and the cultural sort of belief structures reflect that. That's why perfection is so common, it's reflected in our popular culture every which way, so I know what I'm doing is not popular, and I bet you any money many of you would not trade places with me, and that's okay. And you know what the other possibility is, I'll go back and listen to this and think, oh my god, what have I done? That's highly possible, probable, in fact. But then I will ask the same question I asked at the beginning, which is according to whom is it, according to that part of myself that wants to be safe and sure and in control. Well, yeah, then of course this is an incredibly risky thing to do, but that other part of me, that part that you know, when I know when I'm enjoying myself, when I feel grounded, when I can, so call. Called, feel my toes. Then this is a moment that is right for me, and it's a moment where I feel actually quite a lot bigger and quite a lot more aware. So I want to, I want to finish this now by just reminding you why I did this podcast because first of all I don't have the time I want to do for my usual podcast, which you know, just a little bit of transparency here. I think that there's definitely a performative element because I get the chance to polish, to research, to have the nice sort of backing of those verified voices and science behind me, I'm still going to do those, because I think it's absolutely essential that I layer my own experience with knowledge and experience of people who have gone before me and who have, you know, who are currently spending a lot of time in the various fields that I'm interested in, primarily in sort of the psychology and neuropsychology of the self. I think that the reason that I'm doing this podcast, and the reason I did the one a couple of weeks ago, is because the very fact of the practical time constraints that I have forced me to either, you know, cut the podcast loose or do it differently, and so I'm doing it differently, and I'm using my own experience of the pattern I have of high performance to hopefully share some insights with you that are useful, and this is the part of the podcast where it would be really nice to tie it up with a little bow, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to leave it messy. The reason I'm going to do that is because I don't know about you, but life is friggin messy, and so I do a lot of podcasting, a lot of writing, a lot of videos, a lot of content creation, and it's, it's pretty neat and tidy. And so I'm going to leave this here like this, because in this moment it appears to me that Messi is more realistic.
Speaker 1 32:13
I think it is always, but I also allow the space and time for another part of myself to step in later, and, and actually be okay, and want polish as well in this moment. I don't, so I'm going to leave it here. If you feel like responding, or this, this podcast impacted you positively or negatively, I'm just going to encourage you to reach out. So, I think that part of the problem in our communities is that we are not honest about these things, and we hold these patterns kind of hidden, because they sort of feel like us, and and I think that by talking about it we actually get to kind of hold it a little bit more lightly, we can actually maybe examine it a bit, so maybe, maybe this conversation will spark a little bit more risk tolerance on your part. I don't know, but I do know that people sink a lot of energy into appearing to be a certain way, and you know, based on all those patterns and the fears that I've already talked about, so I really hope this conversation was useful to you, and yeah, thanks for joining me, and until next time, so you've been listening to The Squeeze. Thanks for joining us today. If you want to continue tuning in, don't forget to click subscribe, and as always, we want to hear your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, and challenges. If there's anything you don't agree with, thanks for joining us, and see you next time.
Unknown Speaker 33:59
Bye.