EP34: Why You Can't Switch Off — The Nervous System Nobody Taught You About

You're achieving. The results are there. But underneath it all something feels like it's contracting — and you can't figure out why.

In this episode I walk through the mechanism behind high performance breakdown. Not the strategy side. The biological side. Why capable people find themselves wired, hollow, and unable to rest — and what it's actually costing them in their decisions, their relationships, and their ceiling.

If you've ever ended a week more depleted than the work should have made you, this one is for you.

If something in this conversation resonated, stay with it for a moment.

And if this work has supported you in some way, leaving a rating or sharing the episode genuinely helps these conversations reach more people quietly carrying the same pressure.

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Explore the work at frequencycoaching.com

Connect:

Nick — @vonpitt

Transcript

welcome to your Frequency Shift podcast
I'm Nick
I'm Karis
together we help founders
leaders and families recalibrate life
love and business at the level that actually matters
your nervous system and your frequency
in this space
we speak honestly about the things that drain you
and the practices that restore you
from relationships and polarity
to leadership and legacy
we strip it back so that you can show up fully alive
at home and in the boardroom
whether it's the two of us or powerful guest joining in
this podcast is here to help you shift
you've been awake since 5:00am
probably earlier your mind's been running
and before your feet have even touched the floor
you're thinking about the messages
the responsibilities the people that are relying on you
there are probably a lot of things that could go wrong
amidst everything that you're navigating
you may have been tempted to grab your phone
and doing so before you've arrived in your body
and so you just move and you run before 6:00am hits
you've probably taken on the world
there's this constant hum within your system
and if you can't switch off
you can't stop moving
and you get home and the work is still there
you're going to bed and the work is still there
and it's not that you're necessarily exhausted
just from work it's the fact that
you just haven't been able to switch off
and put that side of you to rest
and give it an opportunity to just rejuvenate
and to restore and yes
maybe the the things are moving
maybe there's also progress that's been made
maybe that's what you tell yourself
because the more that we look at
why performance breaks down
it's almost never about strategy
why businesses break
it's almost never about the operations
it comes back to discipline and human psychology
and then I find underneath that
what actually comes up is
it's never about this desire to achieve
or wanting to improve or wanting to be better
it's actually the system that falls underneath that
it's the the nervous system
and when it is functioning optimally
and doing what it's designed to do
but you don't necessarily understand how modern day
work life
career actually affects
that fundamental part of what makes you
you and what allows your system to function
in the way in which it does
then it becomes a problem
and there's a
there's a certain ask made by modern society around
modern day achievement
and the demands that it makes from you and your system
this video isn't a therapy session
it's not gonna be a self help conversation
it's really about being the missing explanation on
why capable people burn out
or why they feel wired and tired
and why they sometimes find themselves feeling
really drawn and just hollow internally
you get to a point where it looks great on paper
but the way that you're feeling
just doesn't match what is happening
on a day to day basis
and I've been there numerous times
and
I've sat across a lot of people who have lived there
for a long time as well
so what does the nervous system actually do
it is a response architecture
so what you find the nervous system is always scanning
always re evaluating how it should
respond to the current stimulus that is coming in
so in a high performing scenario or environment
you'll find that tight deadlines
high stakes
or just a constant pressure being placed on a person
ends up creating a a low grade level of stress
or you could even say threat
and it's not necessarily seen as an emergency
but you are lacking one of the fundamental pieces
that the nervous system craves
your entire system craves
this is safety
you don't feel safe and this isn't weakness
this is just biology
and when you look at how the nervous system
was designed it was never meant to be in this alert
based state over a long period of time
and that pressure
and that volume is what leads to the fatigue
the burnout the underlying things and
and symptoms that most people can relate to
who really try to push themselves beyond their limits
they don't necessarily understand
how to switch themselves on and off consistently
so when I give show you this
this quick diagram here and on here
you'll see that there's regulated
activated and shutdown
so this is pulled from polyvagal theory
but just so you can walk
away with something that you understand
and you can see
and you can differentiate where you're sitting
regulated is presently a decisive
it's able to think
and to essentially feel simultaneously
and this is the ideal space where
where leadership decision making
authentic expression lies
that's where you're in your power
then you get to activate it
so this is when you're wired
there's an an output that's been asked to view
and that's what's driving the behaviour
so it looks like high performance from the outside
but there's an enormous cost on the inside
it's socially acceptable
but that's the state that most people get stuck in
it's this continuous activated state
and when you've lived in there for long periods of time
you then find yourself in the shutdown side of things
where there is this numbness dissociation
or withdrawal that actually comes into play
and the tank is empty decisions feel impossible
because you actually cannot think
your entire system is not allowing you to think
it's in shutdown
and often this is seen as laziness and even depression
and the thing that most high performers
end up experiencing
is this oscillation between the two
so it's activation
or activated state and the shutdown state
and this is the cycle
this is that feast and famine cycle
it's like ah
I've given myself enough reprieve
to jump back into this activated state
and perform at an incredible length
and go to incredible heights
do all these amazing things
and you might even feel that it's sustainable
on some level but eventually
the body crashes and it communicates with you
and it gives you all these telltale signs
whilst you're in there
but if you're unable to notice it
well you end up just repeating the same mechanic
so the thing is like
why does this affect high performers specifically
and going through my own journey within this space
I used to perceive slowing down as being a threat
a threat to what I was building
a threat to what I was doing
a threat to all these external things
but more importantly it was a threat to the identity
that I was functioning from
and that was quite scary
when I looked at it from that perspective
it meant that my system never got an opportunity to
recover
it was always going it was looking for the next thing
it is always looking for this output driven response
and the thing is when when you have come from a
a background where you're having to be on all the time
to be good or to be great
or to protect yourself from threats well
that state ends up being a space of safety and control
and certainty
and so we end up building ourselves around that
that makes it exceptionally difficult to
unplug from that space and say wow
this isn't sustainable this isn't me
there must be another way for me to drive
the same level of output
and create
similar outcomes without me having this back end tax
that comes into play when my body can't move anymore
so I found that there were four patterns that came up
when I started to see this
function of how I was doing things differently
and the first one was hyper vigilance as leadership
constantly scanning for what can go wrong
constantly being the pessimist
and it's so easily mistaken for diligence
and actually it's the nervous system
trying to distinguish between a
a genuine threat
and the ordinary friction of building
or doing something
and notice how it comes back again to the safety piece
you're looking for a sense of safety
and if you're unsure of what that looks like
or it feels so foreign to you
it's very difficult to recognize that
this is where you're leading from
and then there's business
and we're using business as regulation being
running a a business or a busy mess
as I like to say so your calendar is full
and because there's this
idea behind empty space being a bad thing
empty space feels more dangerous to you
than being overloaded with work
and with business
there's a deep connection to movement
and that movement is the only thing that keeps
your anxiety from moving to a high
and maintaining this low hum that just sits there
but it's manageable you you can work with that
and it keeps it below the surface and it burns you out
that is just a telltale sign that you are just
overstimulated
you are feeling under threat and you are again
in that activated state
where you're just doing an emotional distancing
as a third pattern would
tied in deeply to being perceived as being strong
so
how this pattern actually comes up is
people that are nearest and dearest to you
typically don't get a lot of you
and it's not a it's again
it's not because you don't care
it's not because you don't want to be there
it's just that
your system has Learned over the years
to deprioritize things that don't feel urgent
so if they're not under threat
I I don't have to focus on that
but your business and your role and the
the things that you're busy doing and building
that feels like it's under threat
that feels like it needs your attention
and so it gets it and this comes up so often in homes
and men struggle with this
cause this ties into stone walling
and ties into emotional vulnerability and things
but it's it's really it
it when you're looking at this as a
high performing function it makes a lot of sense and
and this is one that I personally suffered from
the Sunday dread it's Sunday and you should be resting
but you find it really difficult to rest
and more commonly than not
you find yourself more tired on a Monday
because you have rested and it's really that
that whole idea that you're not
clear on what is safe and what is not
work feels safe doing things feels safe
moving feels safe but sitting down resting
allowing that activation loop to actually close itself
well that feels horrible to you because it
it it feels foreign
and it comes back to your system
no longer remembers what true safety feels like
so we then move into the real cost of all of this
you've got a couple of patterns that are there
you've got the
the three different states that you get to embody into
which is probably more prominent than not
and you dance between those two
and when we do break this down and look at it
you know
what actually breaks because of these patterns
and because of us staying in
this continuous flux of shutdown and activation
there's three areas that I find that this really hits
hard on
the first one would be decision quality
when we look at decision quality
it's a dysregulated nervous system
that essentially cannot access the prefrontal cortex
so that means that your strategic thinking
creative thinking
holding complex ideas without reacting doesn't exist
and because there's this continuous hum
and there's this chronic activation that takes place
you don't have access to thinking differently
and thinking out the box and holding this vision
so you're you're not performing at your best
your thinking actually takes a massive hit
because you don't feel safe
and you don't have the resources
your body isn't giving your prefrontal cortex the
the resources to actually do what it does best
because you're in that flight freeze
fawn response we then look at the other part
which is well
your relationships and been disconnected
but when we look at actual chemistry
and your biological reality
I'd like to look at co regulation
so when you're chronically disregulated
what actually happens is
you end up infecting the people around you
and so they become disregulated
they pick up on those biological markers
stress is essentially contagious fun fact
and so you'll find your partner
your children are heightened
especially in your space
you might have picked it up from your partner
you know
things stirred up the minute you came back into play
that's normally a a
a very
clear reflection of this going on in your system
and in your household and lastly
the ceiling
so
there is a very hard limit on how far nervous system
deregulation will carry you
so most people hit it somewhere
when they are really successful and significant
and then there's this massive crash
they essentially see this the next level
but they they just don't have access to it
it's because they don't have the fuel
to actually get there um and again
it comes back to it's not strategy
it is the internal capacity needed to
match that external ambition
that's what's been asked of you
but you just don't have what you need to get there
so now
I wanna invite you to go back to that 5:00am wake up
your feet haven't touched the floor yet
and your mind has possibly been running all night
or you woke up
and the first thought you have is that meeting
or that presentation
or that decision or that difficult conversation
or that fire that you've been
having to fix over the last couple of weeks
and it feels urgent
that impulse to grab your phone and to start fixing
or start doing something
and notice that there's a pause there
that you can install in that moment
before the day starts running away from you
before you start running away from yourself
and the honest question that I'd
I want to bring into the space would be not are you
necessarily performing
but what is that
level of performance and output actually costing you
and more importantly does that cost still make sense
and thank you again for taking the time to watch
listen and to ideally take something with you
that you get to see yourself a little bit more clearly
and a question that I have for you
and you feel free to drop this in the comments is
you know
which one of the four patterns landed most for you
what spoke to you the most
and feel free to to share
and if you wanna dive a little bit deeper
there's a capacity assessment in the link below
or on my website Frequency coaching.com
forward slash assessment
where you can dive a little bit deeper into
where you're leaking energy
power and capacity it takes about 3 minutes
and it's a clear diagnostic with next steps
trust that you have the ability
to make a different decision
and in turn make the shift
catch you in the next episode cheers