Rise Up: The Inner Work with Vicky Ross
Rise Up: The Inner Work with Vicky Ross is a podcast for anyone who knows there is more to them than the patterns they keep repeating.
In each episode, Vicky brings together three decades of experience in human behaviour, neuroscience, emotional mastery, identity, and the deeper spiritual and energetic layers that shape our lives. This is a space to slow down, hear yourself differently, and understand why you think, feel, and behave the way you do — and how to shift it.
Through stories, insights, and real-life anonymous sessions, you’ll explore the beliefs, paradigms, conditioning, and internal narratives that quietly direct your life. You’ll learn how awareness, understanding, and unlearning create space for something new — a life that aligns with who you truly are.
This is not about motivation.
It’s about remembering your power, your truth, and the part of you that knows what you want is available to you.
When you understand your inner world, you can reshape your outer one.
Rise up into the life you want to live — the one lived entirely on your terms.
Rise Up: The Inner Work with Vicky Ross
When Holding It Together Finally Breaks You
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So many people move through life appearing capable, calm, and in control — while underneath, something is quietly wearing them down.
In this episode of Rise Up, I explore what happens when survival becomes a way of life. When “being strong” turns into holding everything together at the cost of your health, your peace, and your sense of self.
We look at the difference between breaking down, breaking open, and breaking through — and why some people reach a crisis point while others use discomfort as an invitation to change. I talk about how stress, emotional suppression, and long-term misalignment can show up as exhaustion, illness, anxiety, or a deep sense of emptiness, even when life looks fine on the outside.
This conversation isn’t about fixing yourself or judging how you’ve coped. What you’ve been living with is understandable. It’s justified. And it makes sense.
But it’s also an invitation.
An invitation to stop surviving.
To stop carrying what was never meant to be carried alone.
And to begin recognising who you are beneath the patterns that once kept you safe.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re “holding it together” — and wondering how long you can keep doing that — this episode is for you.
Here is to your success,
Love Vicky
This episode reflects my interpretation and awareness-based philosophical perspective, shaped by years of personal experience, training, reading, and research.
It is not medical, psychological, or therapeutic advice and does not replace professional support.
The language used is descriptive and reflective, not diagnostic.
Not everyone will resonate with these ideas — and that is completely okay.
You are responsible for your own interpretations, decisions, and the changes you choose to make in your life.
Should you want to join my community, click on this link: https://vickyross.mvsite.app/products/courses/view/1171591/?action=signup
Hi, I'm Vicky Ross and welcome back to Rise of Podcasts. This is a space for reflection, awareness, and honest conversations about being human. So today I want to talk about something that I see again and again. And it's something that I really, really want to share. So people who look like they're doing okay. I want, you know, the functioning, they're capable, they're intelligent, they're holding it together. But underneath, something isn't right. And what I've learned over more than 30 years of this work is this most people don't break open, they break down. And there's a very big difference between the two. From a very young age, most of us learn how to survive. Now that's not a bad thing. But you know, in that how to survive is how we learn to cope, we learn not to fall apart, and we learn how to be strong, responsible, capable, reliable. And we learn how to look okay long before we learn how to be okay. And I want to say something that's really important here. When people break down, it's understandable, it's justified. What's happening in their lives often is hard, but the pressure is real and the stress makes sense. So this isn't about judgment or blame. So just because something is understandable and justified, it doesn't mean that it's healthy or right. Because when stress becomes chronic, when emotions like fear, worry, overwhelm are lived in a day after day scenario, the body adapts to that chemistry, and over time that chemistry becomes toxic. So the breakdown makes sense, but it doesn't make the way we've been living sustainable. And that's where the problem is. A breakdown isn't weakness, it's exhaustion. It's emotional exhaustion where people can't cope anymore. They're on edge, they're tearful, overwhelmed, always close to the surface. Physically, their body is tired all the time, sleep doesn't restore, energy disappears, weight creeps on, and sometimes the body starts speaking through illness, which is really like a lot of stress that's been going on for a long time. Behaviorally, most people lose meaning, they feel scattered, they're reckless, they don't see their point anymore. It's just they're so exhausted with the fight that nothing makes sense. And sometimes there are dark thoughts, not always acted on, but imagined. Not because they want to die, but because they can't see a way to live like this anymore. They're not breaking open, they're breaking down. So breaking through looks very, very different. When somebody finally stops, but really stops, something else can happen. So when you stop that stress, you allow, so in other words, you know, I sometimes do a thing called the pause challenge because what I want is for people to just stop, breathe, step back, think about their thinking, and then something else can happen. And that's often a deep sense of calm, a peace that can feel strange sometimes because people haven't felt peaceful for a long time. So it feels odd. And this part is the important part. At first, that calm can feel like a loss of purpose. So in my work with people, I sometimes find that people go from being in this high manic stress to suddenly totally down, chill, relaxed, to the point that they start to think, well, if nothing matters, nothing matters. It doesn't matter whether I do this or not, it doesn't matter if this happens, it doesn't matter if that happens, and they really truly feel like they've lost the purpose of life. And people will say things like, I don't care anymore, nothing matters, I don't I I don't know who I am now. I knew what I was then when I was a stressful, but I don't know now who I am. And I just want to reassure you that this phase is not failure, but it's actually recovery. When you've lived in stress and worry and overthinking for a long, long time, the calm, the relaxed, that just feels very unfamiliar. And the body's resting for the first time in a long, long time. And purpose just doesn't disappear forever. It does come back. I've seen it time and time again. When people have rested, especially if they've rested mentally and emotionally, they start to get excited about things. So purpose does come back. And it comes back from a rested nervous system rather than a stressed one. So people ask me, you know, why would it take a crisis, like you know, an illness or burnout or relationship breakdowns, job losses, panic attacks, you know, something that tips you over the edge. Why will it take that? Now, I don't see this crisis as a punishment. I don't even see it as bad luck. I see it as an interruption, an energetic interruption for life. It's um a wake-up call, a forced pause, if you like, a soul-level intervention. It's your body saying this way of living is no longer sustainable, it's not what I want, it's not what I came to do, and therefore stop. And the longer we ignore the discomfort of living in stress, the louder that interruption has to become because it needs to be heard. Now, so many people wear the I'm fine mask. Not because they're lying, but because they don't know how to be with what they feel. I know this really personally. There was a time in my life when I held everything in. I didn't talk about what was really going on in my life. Not even my best friends, not my school friends, not my best friend, in fact, not even my family. I did not share how I felt inside with anybody. Partly I didn't talk about it because I think I felt ashamed about what was happening in my life, but mostly because I hadn't learned how to emotionally cope. Uh I was really scared that if I spoke, I would break down. And to me, breakdown meant weakness. Um, I felt like I would lose control, that I wouldn't be able to stop crying. The idea of being pitied by people that were concerned about me, but it felt like, oh God, it just felt awful to be pitied and all that. So I stayed quiet, I functioned, and I looked okay. And inside I wasn't okay at all. I remember in my final year of school in high school, we had a free period, and one of the teachers came and sat with me. And she said to me, Can I ask you a question? And I went, Yeah, sure. And she said, I have taught for many, many years, and I have seen girls be happy, be sad, be angry, be bored, you know, have you know, like experiencing everything. She says, You I've only seen happy. And I kind of wonder sometimes, I a question, do you ever cry? And I was like, whoa, I I I didn't, I didn't even think about that. And I said to her, Of course I cry, and I did, I cried a lot. Um, but I had learned to hold back, hold in, hold it together. And I did that for a long time until I felt like I could cope, that I could share it with somebody without breaking down. And people would say, Oh my god, that's terrible. And I'd go, Yeah, yeah, but it's okay, it's fine, I'm over it. You know, it's it's it's no problem. Because I couldn't cope. I couldn't cope with the level of my emotions. So yeah, I looked okay, but I wasn't okay at all. And that mask, it can protect us from shame and judgment and vulnerability, but it also keeps us stuck because we don't actually deal with things, we don't heal, we just survive really. Um so I understand that people do that because they feel they have no option. And this is what some most people, I wasn't, for instance, but what we weren't told that you can heal properly and nobody will notice. So you still look like you, you still sound like you, you still show up as you because that pain you hit so well, you did the work and then you healed the pain, but on the outside everything was fine and it still is fine. So you still show up as you, but inside everything is different. And the thing that used to hurt doesn't land in the same way, which is a good thing. The stories lose the grip, the emotional charge uh dissolves, and sometimes, which is weird, sometimes people feel disappointed by that. They feel disappointed that they've done all this work to unravel all this pain that they've been covering up and this healing, and nobody has noticed. They think, well, surely someone should have noticed how far I've come. And people kind of treat them as if you don't understand because you know, you you've never had pain. Meantime, you've had excruciating pain that you've been masking. So if there's a grief around that, that it it you know that people ever noticed, it doesn't mean that you've failed. It just means that the healing is still unfolding. And the only reason I'm mentioning this is because I've met people that have masked all their lives and covered up and have done all the work and nobody knows, and nobody recognizes, and they get no recognition, and they're okay with that because the job is for them. But I get people that will say how people treat them as if they don't know anything, because you haven't suffered when actually they've suffered massively. But again, all I want to let you know is that if that is still a problem for you, if that seems to be a problem for you, you know, things have not dissolved completely, you're still on that journey. So if there's a grief or something, it's still unfolding. I just want to let you know that you're doing the work and it's brilliant, but it's still unfolding. Because true healing doesn't need to be witnessed. You don't heal for an applause, you heal for freedom. So, what is this about then? Well, this isn't about fixing yourself, it's about recognizing yourself. The parts of you that get wounded, reactive and emotional, that's not who you are. That's a learned survival state. And the more aware you become of that, the more your life can start to soften. And maybe you don't need to get so upset about life. Maybe you don't even need to take everything so seriously. Maybe the work isn't to heal what's wrong with you, but to wake up to who you are and recognize that you've always been okay. So if something in this episode stayed with you, let it settle. Notice it. You don't do need to do anything right now. But I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts. So I would love if you could leave me a comment and tell me what this brought up for you. And if you feel drawn to explore more of this work and go deeper, you can always find me at vecuross.com. Or you can also join my beautiful membership community when you're ready because that's where you get a lot of community and support with like-minded people that all are striving for the same thing. So you don't have to do this alone. We are here to help with support, or at least I am. So um, I want to wish you a good week. I hope to hear from you and hear to your success. Share this episode if it resonated with you, and um, thank you for listening.