Why You Always Feel Like You’re Doing Something Wrong (Even When You’re Not)

If you constantly feel like you’re behind, doing something wrong, or not quite getting it right…even when nothing is actually wrong…this episode will explain why.

This isn’t about time management, discipline, or doing more.

It’s about the invisible rules you’re still living by.

In this episode, I break down why high-achieving women feel pressure even in calm moments, how internalized expectations create guilt and overwhelm, and how to start separating the rules you actually want from the ones you inherited without realizing it.

You’ll learn:

• Why you feel “off” even when everything looks fine on paper
• How internal rules create constant low-level guilt and pressure
• The difference between rules you choose vs rules you absorbed
• Why trying to follow all the rules at once leads to burnout
• How to start living with more clarity, calm, and self-trust

This is a foundational episode if you’re tired of holding everything together while quietly feeling like you’re never quite doing enough.

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

If you've been walking around with that low grade feeling that you're doing something wrong, even when you're obviously not doing anything wrong, this episode is for you. There's no crisis, no urgent deadline. No one is upset with you, nothing urgent, and still there's this background tension like you're behind or you're missing something, or you're about to be attacked or judged, or you're one step from disappointing someone. Not urgent panic or chaos, just that hum of I should be doing this better. That feeling usually isn't coming from what's happening right now in this moment. It's coming from living inside a rule book you never consciously agreed to and then trying to follow it. Perhaps several rule books all at once. I realized something slightly embarrassing about myself. I was alone in my kitchen. I work home alone. No one else home. I dropped like food on the floor and I said, oh, sorry. Out loud to absolutely no one. I also say excuse me, and sorry to my dog, and I stopped mid word in this instance and thought, who am I apologizing to? There's no person there nor no authority figure. No witness. Just me. And it occurred to me that I wasn't apologizing to a person. I was apologizing to a rule. A rule that says, don't get, don't make a mess. You might get in trouble. Don't be so careless. Don't be so inconvenient. Don't create extra work. Don't be a problem, right? These voices, and once I noticed it, I couldn't unsee it. I couldn't unsee how many of these tiny rules were running in the background all day long. Hey, you're listening to Back To You with Anne Jones, the podcast for high capacity women who are tired of holding everything together while quietly losing themselves. Here we rebuild calm, clarity, and self-trust so you can stop reacting to life and start living it on your own terms. Most high capacity women aren't exhausted because life is objectively too hard. They're exhausted because they're trying to satisfy hundreds of invisible expectations and simultaneously; how you should look, how you should behave, how much you should handle, how patient you should be, what you should say, how organized your home should be, how much money you should make, how productive you should be, how calm you should be, how little you should need. Rules about being pleasant, responsible, efficient, likable, low maintenance, easy to be around, not disappointing, not messy, not emotional at inconvenient times, and the pressure comes from trying to satisfy all of them, even when they contradict each other. Now, here's the important part. Rules themselves are not the problem. Life actually requires some rules, right? Every system needs parameters to function. If a business says you can't bring dogs inside, that's not personal. It's communication. They're telling you how their space operates. You can decide whether you want to go in there without your dog or just not go there at all. If you book at a nice spa, they require a credit card to hold your appointment. That's the policy. If you're not comfortable with it, then you don't have to book there. There's no drama. It's not personal, it's just information. Road rules exist if you want to drive on public roads, in most places, airline rules exist. if you wanna fly commercially with them. Your parents had rules in their house when you were a kid. Rules are simply conditions for participation. The issue isn't that rules exist. It's how many of the rules are shaping your life now that aren't ones that you consciously chose as an adult. They were absorbed early and never revisited, but because they were installed when you were small, they feel like facts instead of true decisions and preferences based on your Values. Or you have received them by influence, like media and social influence as an adult. So here's the question I want you to sit with today. What rules are you still following? And I'm gonna share. What rules are you still following that no one is actually enforcing anymore? Not laws or workplace policies, not things you'd get in literal trouble for. Though, but like internal rules that nobody's policing. The ones that say you should always be productive, you should always handle things without help. You should do it yourself. You shouldn't upset people. You shouldn't cancel or change plans. You shouldn't need more sleep than someone else, or more food or less food. You shouldn't fall behind. You shouldn't be inconsistent. You shouldn't change your mind... the rules that make you feel guilty, even when you have permission to stop.

Speaker 2 4:17

And sometimes the cost of those rules doesn't show up immediately as usual, this episode was inspired both by my experience and my beautiful clients, and I had a client recently tell me something that she still feels a lump in her throat about. When her second baby was born, her toddler son would, like when she was home alone, when her husband was working, her toddler son would knock on the door and try to come into the room while she was putting the newborn to bed and she had absorbed this rule as many of us do as parents, especially new parents or parents to young kids or trying to get kids to sleep, that he couldn't be there. He couldn't be in there like this would ruin the rule. And she reacted to him in a way that she wishes that she hadn't. And now, years later, like when we revisited it, she's like, I wish I just let him in and let him snuggle. But like she was following this rule, nothing catastrophic happened. everybody was fine. It's not about blame. She was reflecting on following a rule that she had never like really chosen herself. So it's just such a beau and I can relate to this as well. I had like very similar experience, when my daughter was really young. And so what I'm trying to draw your attention to is quiet moment where your gut says one thing, but the rule says another. And you override your gut and yourself. That's the part that sticks.

Speaker 5:35

Who would you be if you weren't trying to be good all the time? Not reckless, not selfish, not irresponsible. Just not constantly over responsible and measuring yourself against an invisible checklist because a lot of the pressure, high achieving women feel is not coming from their actual circumstances. It's coming from the gap between real life and the standards they think they're supposed to meet. Standards about appearance, productivity, parenting, relationships, aging. Health, nutrition, success, money, emotional control, and how much you should be able to carry without complaining. Most of these standards were not consciously chosen. They're someone else's thought, or they were picked up from family, school, culture, religion, diet, culture, workplace, social media, and from watching other women run themselves into the ground and calling it the way it is. So if you were praised for being capable, mature. Helpful, easy questioning those rules probably didn't feel safe and probably doesn't feel safe, so you kept them. Here's where it gets interesting, because adulthood is not about having no rules. that's chaos, right? Adulthood is about choosing your rules and your structure consciously. So, many years ago, I started asking myself a different question, not how do I get rid of rules, but which ones are actually mine? Which ones actually make my better, calmer, kinder, richer, simpler, and more aligned, and which ones are not mine? Or just create pressure, guilt, or performative effort? And once I started looking at it that way, I realized I actually do live by a lot of rules, but the difference is I chose them, or I consciously decided to keep them like I heard it and I liked it, and I choose to keep it because it's in line with my values, not because I'm afraid of getting in trouble, not because anybody's watching, and not because I'm trying to be impressive, but because they support the kind of life and energy that I want to live inside. I'm gonna share them. with you, And when you group them, they stop feeling like pressure and start looking like design. So I'm gonna share mine. these are my personal. You do not have to buy into these. You're welcome to have them or borrow them. You're welcome to hate them because I don't care. They're still my rules that I'm choosing be inspired or not. But here they are. These are my personal kindness and respect rules. Always say please and thank you. I'm Canadian. What can I say? I always tip at least 20% minimum by default. Don't gossip or speculate about people. Don't point at people, hug until the other person lets go. These are not about being perfect. They just help me move through the world in a way that feels clean and respectful to me based on my values and who I want to be. Here are my health and body rules. brush your teeth twice a day. Floss nightly, floss before you brush. Wash your hands after you go to the bathroom. Wash your hands before you eat. Wash your hands when you come into the house. Palm sized portion of protein at every meal. Have a salad at least with, one meal a day. That one came straight from my mom. I kept that one. These are not punishment. These are maintenance. Don't drive. If you can bike, don't bike. If you can walk. here are my relationship and communication rules. Never say something to myself. I wouldn't say to a friend I don't even think it, and if I do, I catch it and correct it. I use the word and instead of, but whenever possible, listening, listening to something can be multitasking, but looking is a single task activity. So if I'm looking at a computer, a phone, a tv, I'm not doing anything else. These protect my connection and my mental health. Here are my home and daily life rules. No shoes in the house. Gross. Make coffee and lunch the night before, not the morning of. Protect my peace. Rise pee. Meditate. Open the blinds first thing. Never go to bed without washing your face. No matter how tired or intoxicated you are.

9:12

I always back into parking spots, not because somebody told me to. It just makes leaving easier. It removes friction later.

Speaker 9:19

Tiny things that remove friction from the day. These are my personal boundaries and identity rules. I don't drink alcohol when that is working. I don't buy gifts just because it's somebody's birthday. I need a gift. I want be inspired. I want it to be for you. Never tell a lie. It's just easier. Don't smoke, don't wear crocs or flip flops unless you're getting from the pool, outta the pool.

Speaker 3 9:38

And this one, it's funny, I just thought of it while I was making this list, but I have this habit of when I get dressed, matching my underwear to whatever I'm wearing that day, which is totally arbitrary, but it's not hurting anybody. I might keep it.

Speaker 9:50

Now that probably sounds like a lot of rules when I say it out loud, but I just wanted to give you examples because in my real life it is not heavy. It is stabilizing and it feels free because I know what my personal operating procedure is. I also have ones for my relationship, for parenting and for how I earn and spend money. And those are mine and they are stabilizing. So it makes it very easy to make a decision or a choice. Cause I already know what my, I would, I even prefer the term like operating principles and procedures over rules, but also these rules don't demand perfection. They actually reduced decisions, fatigue. They support the environment that I wanna live in, and most importantly, I chose them. I'm not following them because I'm scared of judgment or I saw them on Instagram, I'm following them because they make my life easier or more aligned or more connected, and therefore everyone else's life and I'm allowed to revise them at any time. When you don't choose your rules consciously, you don't live by your values, you live by anxiety and external validation. You spend your energy trying not to mess up instead of deciding what actually matters to you. And that's a huge time suck, and that is where the constant overwhelm comes from. Not too much life. Too many internal obligations competing for control. Coming back to yourself often starts with clearing space, not removing all the structure, but removing inherited pressure. So here's something you might want to sit with after this episode. If you threw out every rule that only exists just to make you look acceptable. Which ones would you keep? What would you choose on purpose? What would support the woman you actually want to be, not the one that you were trained to perform as? this is the deeper work behind back to you. Not becoming a different person, not optimizing yourself into exhaustion, not chasing endless discipline, but learning how to come back to your own centre and build the life you desire from there. If this stirred something in you, the wait list for back to you is open right now, doors are not open yet, but the women on that list will get bonuses, first options for VIP and the earliest access, and if a full program feels like too much right now, start with the free self-trust email experience. It's short. It is calm and easy. It's designed for the moments when you feel scattered, overwhelmed, or pulled in 11 directions. You do not need a new personality. You do not need more pressure. You just need fewer rules that don't belong to you, and a stronger connection to the ones that do. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.