I am finally admitting it!

Hello and welcome! I am so glad you are here.

Alright...I have a confession for you! (nervous inhale).

My name is Chrissy and I am a recovering high achiever. I spent close to a decade - A DECADE! - of my life stuck in the NEED to achieve. A nasty cycle of seeking constant external achievements to meet my emotional needs. This nasty cycle had me pretty stuck with some self sabotaging habits of being emotionally unavailable to myself and to others. A recipe for a lot of unhappiness, depression and burnout, misaligned relationships and an emptiness that just couldn't be soothed or filled. Can you say ouch?!

PHEW! Ok! That wasn't so bad after all!

I want to share a little bit more of my story with you. And what on earth I am talking about with being a 'recovering' high achiever.

Let's maybe start with some of the basics. Each and every one of us, have emotional needs. And these emotional needs can be boiled down to three - YES JUST THREE.

1) LOVE

2) SAFETY

3) CONNECTION & BELONGING

That's it. These are simple words, and in one way they are 'simple' needs.

SO WHY ARE THEY SO COMPLICATED TO MEET AND CAUSE US SUCH FRUSTRATION?!

Well, because relationship to ourselves and to others are not always so 'easy'. Relationships require communication, vulnerability, awareness, presence and attunement.

Our early relationships, or what can be called 'primary' relationships teach us pretty much everything we know about relationships AND these three emotional needs. We are learning unconsciously everything about experiencing ourselves with these emotional needs, our own body and connection to others.

We learn what is SAFE or not. We learn what is LOVE or not. And we learn what CONNECTION and BELONGING are or aren't. All through the lens of our primary caregivers (which includes their upbringing - you can see how convoluted this gets right?!)

This is a good spot to touch on the topic of 'intergenerational' - how things are literally passed down in family lines, through generations. Trauma, addictions, finances, belief and meaning making systems, religion, habits and routines, traditions etc etc...you get the picture.

SO! Through our primary family unit, however that is composed, we learn what these three needs are or aren't, and we learn how to meet these needs (or not) in relationship to others and ourselves.

As we develop and grow older, we start to learn a little more subconsciously and even consciously, about relationships and how they meet, or don't meet our emotional needs.

AND WE LEARN COPING MECHANISMS AROUND EMOTIONAL NEEDS AND RELATIONSHIPS.

"For me to feel safe I need to hide my emotions"

"When parents fight the one who yells louder wins"

"I am only celebrated when I get good grades"

"Love means self sacrifice"

"One partner is always second"

"Work comes before rest and play"

"I can only be accepted if I believe what they believe"

"I don't agree with my family, but they can never know this about me"

"I am safe when I meet their needs first"

The list goes on with what we can learn about emotional needs and relationships. It is quite interesting actually, that we learn SO much in our developmental years whether we know it or not. And what is MORE interesting, if you ask me - is that we kind of have our "initial" growing up. And then we come to a place in life of REALLY GROWING UP. And CHOOSING for ourselves, what we keep and what we let go of from our early years. (Continue reading for more on this!)

OK! Back to the whole point of this post! Outing my high achiever past and the key things I have learned.

I grew up in a nuclear family on a farm, and somewhere in my growing up - I started to connect achievements with meeting emotional needs of LOVE, SAFETY, CONNECTION & BELONGING. I can't say it was one traumatic event that did this. I can't say one specific moment of connecting this coping mechanism to my emotional needs being met. I also am NOT saying my parents never met my emotional needs. There is just an interesting compilation of things that created this for me. Getting a whopping boost of LOVE, SAFETY, CONNECTION & BELONGING when I achieved good grades in school, had notes sent home from teachers about my performance, won poetry or art contests etc etc. It is such a simple and benign way of connecting achievements to meeting emotional needs. At least for me, it was this way.

There are also many more direct and painful ways we learn the need to achieve - "If you don't ace the test tomorrow I will take your computer away/you can't go to the birthday party etc etc"

Something else to consider here - during our "formative" years we haven't really developed our own individual identity. And it is very easy and even more common, to form what some academics call a 'false' identity through our developmental experiences and environment. It is false not because we want to deceive or because we are flawed in any type of way. It is "false" because of exactly what I am trying to get at - the coping mechanisms and behaviours we learn in these early years, to meet our emotional needs are usually EXTERNAL to ourselves. The false identity doesn't come intrinsically from within ourself.

We are not as aware of our own unique needs and more aligned ways to meet them; we are going through the conditioned motions to access even a hint of LOVE, SAFETY, CONNECTION & BELONGING.

Now, I am going to share something that feels "risky" however I don't believe it's risky because it's not true.

(Vulnerable confession - it feels risky simply because some people may disagree).

I will say it anyway! The need to achieve is honestly like an addiction, in its most simple form and mechanism of action. And in the words of Dr. Gabor Matè, this would be 'the white gloves of addiction' - an addiction process that appears not at all harmful in the same way alcohol or substances present.

Breaking the process down...

• You have an emotional need and an emotional experience.....seeking safety from a parent, longing for love, or needing connection and belonging to a group identity and support as examples. Whatever the needs is - you have it. And you look for a way to meet it. Simply human.

• You achieve some kind of something and the way your emotional need is met is like a MASSIVE DOPAMINE dump in your brain! Like whoa?! I didn't know they cared so deeply about ....... and you get twice the amount of praise, hugs, words of affirmation, identity reinforcement etc etc. *The catch that you learn later in life is that this dopamine dump was in response to something EXTERNAL from you; ouch.

• And then this natural high fades, life goes on and well, you bump into another emotional experience and need. You now know, your quickest way to that awesome dopamine dump, is achievement (consciously or not).

• Repeat this cycle enough, and you will need more and more external achievements to even get close to meeting the emotional need. AND! The force you have to use to achieve, increases its demand on you - hello exhaustion, depression, anxiety and burnout.

This is a very good set up and SO easy to get pulled into! I mean, I did! And I know many of you can relate in so many various ways.

(*SIDE NOTE!!!! Achievements can be almost anything if we think about it. Grades, cleaning a home, jobs, volunteer work, maintaining our physique a certain way, like literally we can use anything as an achievement).

Alright....so the need to achieve!

In junior high and high school I achieved and met emotional needs through my grades, extra projects, volunteer work and taking on the class identity as "the keener". Here is a little sneak peak for you.....just press play.

I had no awareness whatsoever, that I was meeting emotional needs through EXTERNAL achievements. And at this point in my life, it served me well; or I should say it served my false identity of 'the keener' well. I created an identity as a high achiever and it paid off! Hello easy access to dopamine! (And the creation of a false self that later turned into sneaky self-sabotage, burnout and depression.)

After high school there was a very small and quiet part of me that wanted to move away from my home town. I wanted a tiny little apartment and I dreamed about riding the subway to school. This was a genuine desire I had (and would make such a great post at some point!). It was also a secret part of myself I never shared with anyone - why you ask? Because it didn't match my false identity and to be brutally honest, my false identity was fragile and didn't have to ability to speak my deeper personal truth.

And here is the thing - a false identity built externally through achievements keeps you tied to the relationships that are meeting your needs THROUGH the achievements. And for me, proximity mattered. I found myself feeling major anxiety and misalignment between how I met emotional needs with my achievements and that tiny part of me that wanted to leave. Like a good achiever, I chose to stay close to home where I new I could easily meet emotional needs. Hint - this is called self abandonment; and it builds into self resentment real fast.

Long story short! I went into nursing school, and continued on in my cycle of the need to achieve. And further reinforced this false identity of 'the achiever' my friends and family came to know me as. I like to call this "a performative life". And it definitely felt soul-less; in fact it was actually very robotic. For me it was literally a performance. White picket fence syndrome - the house behind the white picket fence is immaculate and looked up to, but on the inside completely empty and rotting with neglect.

In post secondary school my need to achieve was at an all time high! Take a look here...I was a pharmacy assistant and kept pushing for the best grades in nursing. I was committed to my performative life and achievements that kept me thinking I was loved, safe, connected and belonged somewhere.

What is interesting though, is that through my post secondary years I really started to notice feelings of something being amiss. Feeling kind of empty truth be told. Increasing anxiety around keeping up with the need to achieve that maintained love, safety, connection and belonging for my false identity.

And confusion and depression around 'why don't I feel as good as my achievements should make me feel'?! And that original dopamine high that I previously got - well it just wasn't the same. The stakes were higher to get that same burst of it. And soon enough, it just wasn't there. In my relationships? I felt inauthentic - words of praise started to fall flat. I felt more and more misunderstood and not seen and heard.

(And how could I be truly seen and heard?! Performing in life from a false identity; hiding the REAL me!)

In addition to my academic achievements, I had another way of "achieving" in life. The meaning making system I grew up with had more or less "rules" for a good life. Believe in God, get baptized, do the good work, get married...you get the idea. And so I did! I checked that list off like the A-student I had been up to this point. This is where my need to achieve REALLY started to override my body - I can clearly remember moments where I did not want to get married (remember that tiny part of me I mentioned, that wanted to move away and ride the subway?). I got married anyway! Mind over matter. I was living a checklist life of achievements that got me SOME love, gave me SOME safety, and offered SOME connection and belonging - but here is the major downfall. All of this was no longer actually meeting emotional needs. In fact, it almost seemed to do the opposite! I was even more 'hungry' for achievements - chasing that dopamine high of love, safety, connection and belonging.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CONTINUE TO LIVE AND FUNCTION FROM A FALSE IDENTITY AND THE COPING MECHANISMS THAT ONLY PARTIALLY MEET YOUR EMOTIONAL NEEDS.

There is a lack of genuine and aligned love, safety, connection and belonging. It is love, safety and connection that fulfill your false identity......sooner or later your genuine and unique self (your soul, your spirit, if you will) will demand you give up the charade.

The false self will rot you from the inside out like termites to wood. And from my experiences....this is absolutely visceral and painful. Sooner or later you find yourself completely gutted and burnt out and depressed. You start to realize the false identity and much maintaining it robbed you of genuine relationships and fulfilling life. And the more you realize this, you start to really recognize how you have only offered yourself breadcrumbs for your emotional needs and somehow ended up being emotionally unavailable with yourself and others. At least, this was my experience.

This is the critical tipping point. The tower moment. The fork in the road. The world collapse. The dark night of the soul. Whatever you want to call it.

You come to a place of either accepting RADICAL SELF RESPONSIBILITY for yourself and your life; or you continue to live committed to a performative life that has left you empty, burnt out and depressed.

Why is it painful to admit our own false identity?! Because we have lived years (heck, I did a decade!) performing and perfecting it - we built our life and relationships around it.

Letting go of the false identity can feel like a crisis - our mind, conscious or not - perceives letting go of this false identity as DIRECT threat to our emotional needs getting met. And this threatens our very survival.

....read it again, and let it sink in. This was a heavy moment for me. And I can tell you that I did not survive this without RADICAL SELF RESPONSIBILITY.

You can survive this too. I promise. If I somehow made it out on the other side, you can too.

And that is why I am sharing my story here. I hope to encourage and empower.

HOW TO SURVIVE THIS; TIPS FROM A RECOVERING HIGH ACHIEVER;

• start to check in with yourself; thoughts, beliefs, emotions, sensations, and your own values

• be brutally honest with yourself - do you like the achievements you are chasing?

• get grounded; find a counsellor, start journalling, taking care of yourself and build good mental health hygiene practices

• reflect on any or all of the times your were performing life as the high achiever; what did you notice in your mind, heart and gut? Did this feel harmonious? Or did it feel forced, robotic, grinding or riddled with irritable energy? LOG THAT INTO YOUR MIND so when it comes up again you can notice it SOONER

• get connected as best as you can, to your inner monologue - that tiny voice that whispered in the beginning, your hopes and dreams and desires

• assess relationships - how emotionally available are these people? AND! Can you be emotionally available with them, or are you still performing?

Interested to learn more about the need to achieve, emotional needs and emotional unavailability in relationships?!

I have something I am SO excited to share with you!

Here is a slide deck and video recording all about this! I have custom created each slide and curated all of the information on it for you to use from the comfort of your own home and at your own pace!

High Achiever's & Emotional Unavailability.

Buy Now

There is also a BONUS workbook full of great tools for you to get acquainted with! Journal prompts, self reflective questions, and tools to really start to learn about your own unique emotional experiences. Want to slowly learn how to build emotional availability? The bonus workbook has got you covered!

Want to read more? CLICK HERE.

Want to hear a little more? Watch here:

As always...

Journey on,

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