The Burnout Paradox: Why Excellence Is Its Own Trap

WHY HIGH PERFORMERS FEEL BURNOUT MORE ACUTELY

We all recognize “high performers.” We have friends that work for corporations where they highly perform, often working long hours. We maybe married to someone who owns their own business and works relentlessly to see their business succeed, or we may be the person who is highly performing and burning both candles at the end.

The burnout is real, the feelings of intense pressure can be unrelenting while climbing to the top of any industry. Whether you work for an organization or you own your own business, chronic high performance becomes less of a strength and more of a survival strategy.

But, why are saying that Genie? That is a tad dramatic. Well, maybe it is, but the truth is I think high performers burn out way more easily than someone who sets limits on themselves.

High performers often build identify around competence, reliability, and emotional containment.

So stress is more than “I have too much to do and feel overwhelmed.” It is experienced as a threat to the self-image that keeps their world anchored and functioning.

The perfectionism of the person goes beyond wanting to do well, and it becomes the stabilizing strategy, a control strategy, or even an attachment strategy. And that is when therapy becomes valuable to “see” the dynamic with the self that is creating the burnout. To investigate why this narrative with yourself even began to begin with.

People who are high performers and perfectionist are prone to override their own bodies internal distress signals for far too long. Not only that, they normalize the chronic pressure that they feel and become externally successful while internally they are completely depleted.

When someone comes into my office and I suggest that they give themselves a “break” or that they choose to ignore that internal voice that is driving them to work beyond what would be considered reasonable, I get a blank stare. I get push back. Sometimes client’s don’t come back.

Often, the meanest voice is not coming from your critics, it’s not coming from external voices, it is the cruel, nasty internal voices that say we are not enough, that pushes us to perform beyond limits that are not humanly reasonable or good for the nervous-system. It’s the internal “voice inour head” that lives like a squatter that needs to be thrown out immediately.

Where Minds Bloom,

Genie