Realizing Your Strengths Were Survival Skills: The Hidden Cost of High Achievement

What if your greatest traits—the things you’ve always prided yourself on and been recognized for—are actually survival responses your nervous system took on from complex trauma as a child? In this extremely personal and vulnerable episode, I share my eye-opening realization that the perfectionism, people pleasing, and high achievement behind all my “success” in life really stem from deep wounds I’m now working to heal. 

As hard as this is to put out there, I see more and more women wrestling as I do—especially once you reach perimenopause and can no longer perform up to your old standards. This episode introduces a variety of themes I’ll expand on greatly moving forward: complex trauma, protective adaptations, hypervigilance, high functioning anxiety, and more.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• How every time I thought I found a solution to life’s challenges, it turned out that there was a bigger, deeper layer going on beneath the surface 
• Why trying to ignore or erase the wounded parts of you only backfires, and why it’s crucial to honor your many parts while minimizing the one(s) that no longer serve you
• The huge, huge tradeoff between being needed and honoring your own needs—and what that means for women like me who unknowingly defined themselves and their life’s purpose around fulfilling everyone else’s needs at the expense of your own
• How, sadly, awareness of your wounds and issues is not the same as actually healing from them
• How the metaphor of “molting” offers a comforting perspective shift in the midst of a painful healing journey 

 HOMEWORK:

Your homework for today is to email me or DM me on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity to let me know if this episode resonated with you. Do you wrestle with perfectionism? People pleasing? High achievement? High-functioning anxiety? Martyr mentality? Would love to connect further! 

COMING UP NEXT:

Join me back next episode where I interview renowned psychologist, Dr. Hayden Finch, on procrastination and high-functioning anxiety.

CONNECT WITH AMBER: Website | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn

Ready to finally get to the root of your problems and change your life FOR GOOD? Book your free 60-minute consult to learn more about working 1:1 with Dr. Amber.

Transcript

0:00

I really debated whether to share this publicly because, you know, it's still unfolding and it's very vulnerable, very, very sensitive. And yet I think reveals something that a lot of us struggle with. Welcome to more time for mom. where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. You know those moments where you just go through some really deep soul-searching and realize things that suddenly make sense after like hitting your head against a wall? I feel like I have been in a period of just great awakening and I'm really thankful for it. I really increasingly know I am not alone in this, but it's just hard, right? It's hard to realize that the things you thought were your greatest strengths, the things that have gotten you where they've gotten you in life and the things for which you have been praised and recognized. it's hard to realize that those are actually trauma responses from deep wounds you still carry. And then, as I will get into even more, it's so hard to realize that the mere awareness of those wounds was not enough to heal them. That a lot of additional work is still required in order to unpack all of that trauma and truly do the deep work of healing. In case you haven't already picked up on from previous episodes, the whole reason I started this podcast is to help overwhelmed moms really get to the root of their stress. So many of us are living in a constant state of stress. I have spent years researching what causes that and how to fix that. And I've made such great strides in all of these things that have helped all of these productivity and time management strategies or even mindset tools. And then more recently, I went so much deeper and have been getting certified as a neurosomatic expert on top of my certification as a life coach. And all of it was driven by my own personal journey of self-discovery and growth. and wanting to get to the root of my wounds because I saw firsthand how they were showing up in my daily life, how they were affecting my parenting, how they were impeding my connection with my husband in our marriage. And a lot of progress has been made, but yet there are still many, many, many more things to learn. I will talk next episode and even more in the coming episodes after that about my journey with high functioning anxiety and how I've started to really realize this affects me and of course what I'm doing about it. But I think like so many women, I have long thought that my thoughts and my high-powered brain and my high-functioning, over-achieving nature, that those were the essence of all the great things that I have relied upon. for my quote-unquote success thus far in life. Like, for the first time, I'm realizing that maybe that's not normal. And maybe it's not good. That maybe my brain took on a lot of protective adaptations from a young age that have led me to be the hypervigilant, overachieving person that I am. And while there are so many good things about that, it has definitely come with a lot of added weight, if not pressure and obligation, and then has taken such a physical toll over me over the years as well, which has naturally affected my husband and kids. And it's just something that I'm slowly unpacking. Of course, I'm working with my own coach on and continuing to do all of the neurosomatic work that I can on it as well. But as much as I have become aware of my own tendencies, I think I've spoken before, I will speak more, but my first thought the solution was just that I didn't know how to balance work and motherhood. And that threw me into postpartum depression, became suicidal after my first son was born. But I got through that and I started doing a lot of things to protect my mental health and sleep and take better care of myself physically, which made a huge difference. And then as I added more kids into the mix, I thought the problem was more just the logistics of balancing all the different moving pieces of my life. And so the productivity, the planning, the time management strategies, they really fixed things for a while. Until the pandemic hit, followed by losing several loved ones in the span of just a few months, and then culminating in losing my mother, which was the most heart-wrenching, grief-filled moment I've ever experienced, right? And so how could I work? How could I be present? How could I produce in that moment? Of course I couldn't. And so it really just called into question all of those prior strategies and helped me realize that those were not the answer either. They didn't get to the root of the problem. They did not prevent all of the difficulty I experienced in the midst of grief and uncertainty. So then I learned a lot more about mindset and the power that we have over our thoughts to direct our feelings, our actions, and our results. Oh, I mean, this made a world of difference. Truly did. But even still, the more I have learned about the brain and the nervous system and the way that stress affects your body, the more I see how chronic stress is often the root or comes from the traumatic adaptations we take on in the midst of complex trauma we acquire through our childhood experiences. And I've just become so aware of the things that have affected me. And yet, I think I really fell into the trap of believing that awareness was enough. And that just thinking things through was enough. when now I'm realizing that it's not. Because I STILL feel the weight and the physical toll that all of that thinking has taken on my body, let alone my relationships and my ability to show up and perform in my current life. I'm just in the midst of a whole new awakening, realizing not just how much more work I have to do on myself, But I think like more desire than ever to finally let go of those protective adaptations I've acquired. Things like my perfectionism, my people pleasing, my over-functioning, my hyper-vigilance. And it's, it's, it's really feeling so scary to me because it's like letting go of your life jacket, your life rep, the things you have held onto. Subconsciously, of course, but all of these years, those were the things that I used to keep me safe. And I want to let them go. I've been working on that for years, but like really, truly letting them go is so scary. It's having a lot of implications for my job, for my business, for my home life. And it's beautiful, but there's just a lot of peaceful surrender that is taking place. I have had many, many conversations with so many other women that are going through very similar types of things. And I feel very called to pivot moving forward and be parsing apart what it means to have high functioning anxiety and to heal that so that it doesn't control or restrict your life anymore. By heal, I don't mean like ever get over it. These are not things that I think we'll ever fully abandon or not deal with. But the more we recognize them, the more we heal from them, the lesser role they will play. When we realize we are made of many parts, The more we can let those parts coexist in harmony without letting any one part dominate us the way that it has up to this point, but without needing that part to be completely erased or severed. We're not trying to cut off a part of yourself. We're just going to quiet it down and help you to realize that that part is not you. It is just part of you. I know I'm being annoyingly vague here because I'm trying not to go into too much detail until a lot of big things have gotten resolved in my personal life. But this is big, deep, important work. And I invite you on this journey with me, especially if you are someone who has built your whole identity around achieving and performing and striving and trying to be the person that everybody depends on. One of the most beautiful recognitions I've had in the last few weeks is starting to see the extent to which I built my entire personality around being needed. And what a sense of purpose that gave me, right? To be the person that my parents needed. to be overly responsible and take on so much responsibility around the house so that it was less stress on their shoulders, or how my teachers needed me to be the excellent student to set a great example for my classmates, or how every relationship I've been in has always come down to me wanting and needing to feel needed in order to feel good enough about myself that I can do what I need to do in the rest of my life. What I realize is that those of us who have built our identity around being needed are likely to experience huge tension and discomfort as we start to realize the toll that fulfilling other people's needs has taken on us and how when we then start to recognize and make space for our own needs and devote more of ourselves to fulfilling our own needs, there is this inevitable trade-off between then being able to meet other people's needs versus pour into ourselves. And that can feel challenging and threatening to others that have always relied on us, right, to be their source of strength. And if we don't have as much to give to them, then they don't know what to do and we don't know what to do. Yet we've got to put ourselves first. We have to allow ourselves to have needs and to then heed those needs in order to have the energy and the love that we want to pour out to others. I hate that this is a trade-off, and maybe it's not for everybody, but I think for a lot of high-achieving women, when we get to this point in our late 30s, early 40s, perimenopause journey, we just do not anymore have the physical energy that we used to have. In fact, it's quite the opposite where we actually do ourselves a huge disservice by trying to push through and perform up to our old standards. We literally cannot anymore, at least without taking an even greater toll on ourselves physically and emotionally. So when your body and brain are putting the brakes on, you start to be aware of how you've always denied and repressed your own needs because they were inconvenient to others, right? Like your caregivers didn't know how to handle their own needs. So you immediately stepped up and, and kind of took on this parentification role where you were not only denying your own needs, but trying to meet your caregiver's needs so that your sweet little nervous system could feel safe. And then that developed the personality trait of always putting everyone else first, being a people pleaser, and the one that was extra responsible, the one everyone depended on, the one everyone went to for help and advice. You could never say no, you never wanted to let other people down, but that meant you didn't really have maybe healthy protective boundaries. And now here we are in our midlife losing it. Because we need boundaries. We need to say no in order to say yes to ourselves. And it's so hard. But it's so beautiful. And I'm just in the midst of this great unfolding. There's one final thing that is really resonating with me right now. And I heard it somewhere on Instagram. I wish I knew the original source. But this person was talking about how birds go through a period of molting where they literally lose their feathers and cannot fly for a while until they grow new ones that are stronger and better able to carry them forward in the future. And that's what I feel like I'm going through. Truly. I feel like I am, like everything in my life is just kind of on pause while I have lost the feathers that enabled me to fly all of these years, these decades of high performance and high achieving and striving and perfectionism and people pleasing and high functioning anxiety. I am so tired. I am so worn down and now. you know, my feathers are gone. I have lost them. And I know that new ones are growing in. But in the meantime, I look like a wreck. I feel like a wreck. And there's just a whole lot of surrender that is happening. So I invite you to consider whether you too are in that kind of phase and to trust that it really is leading somewhere beautiful. The new you is emerging. But we have to let the old one go. We have to recognize that that old version of ourselves served a purpose, but maybe it was always someone else's purpose. and to grow into our true purpose moving forward, we have to have our own needs. We have to say no to other people's needs, and we have to just come to love the many, many parts of ourselves, but let the old parts be more quiet so that we can hear the real deep ones that are crying out to be heard. If this episode resonated with you, your homework is to please, please, please send me a DM on Instagram at Solutions for Simplicity, or you can always email me through the link in the show notes, but I would love to continue this conversation. Always pray I'm not alone in this. I'm not the only crazy person on this journey, but I know I'm not. I've spoken with so many of you. I just encourage you. You are not alone. And I am happy to be vulnerable with you about my journey in hopes that it's the message you need to hear, the permission you need for yourself. Then join me back next episode where I am going to be sharing the most powerful interview with a procrastination and high functioning anxiety expert. You do not want to miss it. Whether you wrestle with procrastination or have the slightest inkling that you might have high functioning anxiety or not, I promise, this episode is going to blow your mind and have you rethinking so much about your own life, just like I've been doing. So meet me back next Tuesday, 5am Eastern, for another episode and until then, remember nothing you do Changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is, so the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe, and if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.