Scenic Route, Social Change and Mental Health Conversations for Perfectionists
You’ve outgrown perfection, but not your desire to grow.
This is the place where high-functioners, deep feelers, and quiet rebels come home to themselves.
We explore:
- Mental health wisdom (minus toxic positivity)
- Social change (that starts from within)
- System critiques (with actionable solutions)
- Inner wisdom (over external validation)
- Mindfulness for minimalists (no crystals required)
Join Jennifer Walter, sociologist (MASoc UCC) and recovering perfectionist, for weekly conversations that blend critical thinking with oh-so-much compassion.
If you’re questioning everything – or just trying to stay grounded in a chaotic world – this space is for you. We make room for your inner critic and collective action. Because personal healing and social change go hand in hand (with a side of potty humour).
New episodes drop every Tuesday.
The longest way round is the shortest way home – and that's exactly why we're taking the Scenic Route.
Ready to walk the scenic route?
The view here is *chef's kiss.*
Scenic Route, Social Change and Mental Health Conversations for Perfectionists
Who Were You Supposed to Be? The Ache of Doing Everything Right
You did everything right.
So why does it feel so wrong?
In this episode of The Scenic Route, we dive into the quiet ache so many of us feel after building the life they thought they were supposed to want, only to realise it doesn’t feel like theirs anymore.
We explore:
- Why “success” often leaves women feeling hollow instead of whole
- How Symbolic Interactionism explains the silent shaping of your identity
- Erving Goffman’s Front Stage vs. Backstage selves—and when the performance becomes unbearable
- What happens when applause stops feeling like affirmation and starts sounding like a trap
- How to begin untangling the scripts you inherited—and start writing your own
If you’ve ever thought, I don’t remember choosing this life,
If you feel the weight of doing everything “right” but still feel wrong inside –
This conversation is for you.
✨ To go deeper, sign up for my monthly letter, Soft and access the bonus self-reconnection exercise: https://jenniferwalter.myflodesk.com/ta75zo6jqm
🎧 Follow The Scenic Route for more slow, soul-centred reflections on identity, midlife, social change and finding your way back to yourself.
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Visit jenniferwalter.me – your cosy corner where recovering perfectionists, misfits, and those done pretending to be fine find space to breathe, dream, and create real change."
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You wake up, check your phone, scan the news calendar, just a quick email check, and then there's this voice in your head that reminds you about that project that is due next week, about the birthday gift you forgot to buy because your kiddo is invited to a birthday. And then you're like, oh, now I feel bad and shitty because I've missed that Pilates class yet again. And another day begins, groundhog Day, and before you even realize it, you're already performing. But here's a question most of us rarely stop to ask how did this idea of life, this particular version of life that you're chasing, form in your head? This is what we're diving into this week's episode, which is also episode 100 of the cinegram podcast. I'm excited. So let's walk this path together.
Jennifer Walter:There's a different way to think about mental health, and it starts with slowing down. Sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home, and that's exactly where we're taking the scenic route. Hi, I'm Jennifer Walter, host of the Scenic Route podcast. Think of me as your sociologist, sister in arms and rebel with many causes. Together. We're blending critical thinking with compassion, mental health with a dash of rebellion, and personal healing with collective change. We're treating perfectionism for possibility and toxic positivity for messy growth. Each week, we're exploring the path to better mental health and social transformation. And yes, by the way, pretty crystals are totally optional. You ready to take the scenic route? Let's walk this path together.
Jennifer Walter:There's a specific kind of adult ache, or adulthood ache, that no one warns you about, or anyway, no one warned me about. But then again, my parents are my parents, but you know it's. It's not the sharp pain of failure or heartbreak, and it's not the chaos of breakdown or the adrenaline of starting over. It's much, much quieter and it's nagging and it's really hard to shake off. It's this dull, hollow ache of success that doesn't feel like yours. It's a dull dissonance, a low-level grief, the kind that whispers. I did everything I was supposed to do, so why does it feel like I'm disappearing? I'm disappearing. Why does it feel like I'm no longer me? Why does it feel like all of this doesn't make me happy?
Jennifer Walter:And the tale of this starts started long, long ago, right it? It started with you waking up every, every day, in a life that you've built meticulously. You're chasing the degrees, the promotions, the milestones. You've checked the boxes, you follow the steps, the blueprint, the, whatever you name it, and, of course, you've always smiled when you're fucking supposed to. And then for a lot of us between 35 and 47 or something I'm sure for me it was with around 35, 36 it fucking hits you.
Jennifer Walter:I don't remember choosing this, this, and it becomes clear as day. I did not choose this, not fully, not consciously, and surely not from desire, but from avoidance from going after what I don't want instead of choosing what I do want. I moved from fear and from what you were taught not to be Right, the job you pursued, the metrics of success. You accepted the relationships you stayed in for way too long. They weren't random. They were responses to expectation, to approval, to the roles you were trained to play. You didn't invent your roles. You didn't invent your roles. You didn't invent your identity. You absorbed it. You were shaped by culture, by family, by systems that reward performance and punish pause.
Jennifer Walter:But what happens when the mask of performance just gets too heavy? What happens when the applause stops feeling like affirmation and it starts sounding like a trap? Or what happens when performance Stops? Your KPI becomes unbearable? If this sounds familiar to you, either you're nodding your head like a bobblehead or you're seeing yourself in bits and pieces. You're not alone and most certainly you're not broken. This ache, this dull ache, this dis ache, this destination, it has a social logic, that's, there's a name for what you're feeling and it begins with the way meaning is made.
Jennifer Walter:So, to understand what's happening when your life no longer feels like your own, we need to talk about something called symbolic interactionism. Don't worry, this ain't a lecture, although if you're like an old school diehard around here, I tend to give lectures, but hey, stick with me. I tend to give lectures, but hey, stick with me, right? This is kind of like the key to decoding the quiet discontent that has been building for years. There wasn't, if you're looking back now, there probably wasn't a singular moment that stands out to you, but there were. Upon reflection, you'll see loads of loads of different small moments that now, after reflection and after time, you're like there.
Jennifer Walter:So symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that basically and Enoch says we do not react to the world directly. We react to the meanings we have assigned to it, meanings shaped by our interactions with others. So let's unpack this because it's a lot. So let's unpack this because it's a lot. Coined by sociologist Herbert Blumer and rooted in the work of George Herbert Mead, this theory, symbolic interactionism, rests on three powerful insights. One meaning is not inherent. It's socially created. That's also why meaning is different from culture to culture. It has shaped meaning over time, right?
Jennifer Walter:So your ideas about success, womanhood, ambition, manhood, you name it they didn't begin with you. Two we learn meaning through interaction, through language, feedback and observation. So every raised eyebrow from your mother, every gold star from your teacher, every fiver for, like a good grade, or every silence that you got taught you something, right for me, every time I got a raised eyebrow from my grandma, it was her silent way of saying do you really want to eat that? So, number three, we're constantly interpreting and reinterpreting those meanings. We're doing interpretation after interpretation after interpretation after interpretation. It's the ongoing flow of daily life, right, we cannot not assign, or it's really really hard not to assign, meaning to things. Okay?
Jennifer Walter:So if you're now like thanks, jen, love the wee TED Talks, like hold on, let's look at what does that mean for you? Right, like, sociology, theory is one thing, but how can we fucking apply it? So it means that, basically, all the words you use success, woman, good, bad, worthy enough, successful blah, blah, blah, blah these aren't neutral words, they're symbols, they stand for something, and those symbols have been loaded with meaning long before you ever got to define them. Right, the job you took, the body shaped, the way you apologized before speaking, it's not really random, it's a sort of social choreography, and like any choreography, it was taught. So you're not just living, you're negotiating who you are every day with the world around you.
Jennifer Walter:Right, because we said we don't react to the world directly. Right, we react to the meanings we have assigned to it. Those meanings are shaped by our interactions with others. So your identity isn't something fixed inside you. There, you have certain traits that you're born with, but how they develop, if they're nurtured or denied, has a massive influence. So your identity now, in your 30ss, it's something performed, perceived, reflected and adapted.
Jennifer Walter:This is why so many, so many women, especially those high achieving, deeply introspective women, right, um, I wake up one day and whisper who am I when I'm not being seen? Who am I when I stop performing for the audience and start living for myself? No one captured this better than sociologist ervin golfman, who described everyday life as a kind of performance. He said we're all actors on the stage presenting ourselves to, to an audience that we hope is benevolent of our performance. He coined from front stage and backstage too, where the front is the curated self, the one you bring to work, to Instagram, to dinners with your parents. It's the one you want to be seen. There's the backstage, the private self, the one you hide, the one you deem unworthy, the one who takes the mask off, the one who sometimes whispers I don't want to do this.
Jennifer Walter:I mean, don't get me wrong. We have decades of experience now on how to perform, because we learned how to perform very, very early. I mean, it was basically how we survived, for good or for bad, right, like we survived, we adapted. When we were shown love to get more love, we adapted. When we were shown negligence, indifference, we adapted too. We changed our behavior too. So along the way, we learned that being easy to love meant being agreeable, right, and that being worthy meant achieving and being desirable meant self-managing your tone and your ties and your emotions, and so the whole burl wind performance began, and it goes on and on, and another act of another act. And it's not because you're fake, right, I want you to get it. This is not because you're fake, but because you're adaptive, because you know how to survive because you're smart and capable. So you became fluent in what was rewarded.
Jennifer Walter:But fluency in performance costs fluency in self. You start forgetting where the performance ends and you begin, and when the lights go out and the audience goes home, what's left? Extensionalists like Jean-Paul Sartre or Simone de Beauvoir push it even further. Sartre had this very famous saying where he said we're condemned to be free. One meaning I assign it to is we're always free, always choosing. Even when we say we aren't, we're always making decisions. It choosing, even when we say we aren't, we're always making decisions. It's always one or the other. Or if we say we're not choosing, we still are choosing. But most of us we choose without knowing we're choosing. Most of us we don't choose. We inherit or we choose what we don't want or a lack of actually doing the work to know what we want.
Jennifer Walter:But the moment you see this script, you become free to rewrite it, and that's also what existentialism teaches us. The moment you see this script, you become free to rewrite it, and that's also what existentialism teaches us. The moment you see the script, you're free to rewrite it. You don't need to focus on finishing whatever life idea script you have in front of you. You don't right, you can write another script. And also, you don't, don't focus on finishing your new script, just focus on writing the first word and I promise you it won't be neat, it won't be. It won't be, it won't be probably the best thing you wrote ever or did. It won't be tidy, but it will be true. So allow it to be messy, expect it to be messy for it to be true.
Jennifer Walter:So the most radical truth of symbolic interactionism is also this if meaning is made and meaning can be remade, so what the fuck? You didn't write the original script, no one did. But you get to revise it. You get to go back and say you know what I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a different act. Now you get to step off the stage. You get to be whole, not just polished, messy, not just admirable, loved, truly loved, free, not just functional. So this isn't the end of your story. This isn't. This isn't the end. It's the moment you step off the stage, take off the mask and start writing a life that's finally yours right the stage. Take off the mask and start writing a life that's finally yours Right. And if you're ready to take that step, to move from insight into embodiment.
Jennifer Walter:I've created something just for you there for this episode 100, there is a little bonus version of this episode. I'll guide you through a full transformative exercise to uncover the role you have been performing, to identify the audience you've been playing to, and to really reclaim the words that have defined you and rewrite them on your own terms. Rewrite them on your own terms. This is a gentle but powerful unmasking. I'll return to your own language and return to the version of you that was never meant to be a performer.
Jennifer Walter:You can get instant access when you sign up for my monthly newsletter, soft. The link is in the show notes. Once you sign up, you'll have an email in your inbox, and soft is a really cool place to read. Anyway, it's where I share slow reflections. It's kind of like the spoon. Soft is also like the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down and, believe me, I'm always taking my medicine too, and there are tools to help you to come home to yourself. Again and again and again. I'm excited. I'll meet you there to get instant access. Sign up. If not, that is totally cool. I'll see you back on CineGround next week. Love us, and just like that, we've reached the end of another journey together on the CineGroup podcast. Thank you for spending time with us.
Jennifer Walter:Curious for more stories or in search of the resources mentioned in today's episode, visit us at cineigroupodcastcom for everything you need and if you're ready to embrace your scenic route, I've got something special for you. Step off the beaten path with my scenic route affirmation card deck. It's crafted for those moments when you're seeking courage, yearning to trust your inner voice and eager to carve out a path authentically, unmistakably yours. Pick your scenic route affirmation today and let it support you. Excited about where your journey might lead, I certainly am. Remember, the scenic route is not just about the destination, but the experiences, learnings and joy we discover along the way. Thank you for being here and I look forward to seeing you on the scenic route again.
