The Mask of High-Performance

I am infamous, in my household, for achieving something long-awaited and instantly shifting my focus to the next challenge. I might pause and smile for a moment, glancing at the vista from the summit. But I've barely caught my breath before I'm summoning my energy for the next new goal.

My husband tries to make me stand still to take it all in, but I resist him and shrug off any suggestion that I pause. I used to believe this was because I genuinely relish the next thing to do. 

Now, I'm not so sure.

A mask of high performing, worn over a lifetime, makes this part of me hard to see. "Don't you know I'm busy?" she says, hurrying off the moment I focus on her. I admire her constant flurry of activity. But she wears her competence like armor as when I notice this, I grow curious.

When I think about it, I have rarely seen myself step back, survey a job well done, and rest.

"Ha!" my high performing part says to me, even now, "Life is too short to waste on rest." And with that summary dismissal, off she goes again, making lists and managing me without a thought to how it feels, for the rest of me, to experience that.

Complex Trauma (CPTSD) and High-Performance

For those of us with complex trauma from childhood, my hardworking part might sound familiar.

Many of us were raised by parents who managed our behavior through control, either directly with rigid rules and punishment or indirectly with impossible expectations. We learned, in these environments, that we must work hard to earn love, to experience emotional safety, and to have a chance at belonging.

Our parents might have praised us at the dinner table, then turned to criticize, moments later, something we didn't say “right.” Maybe we earned good grades at school, but didn’t place first and they let us know it wasn’t “good enough.” Or perhaps we saw the praise they offered others — but rarely us — so we kept trying.

It’s a trap to focus on high performance as a way to gain love, safety, and belonging.

The rewards never last.

There's always another task to excel at or a new level of high-performance to attain.

In these less than nourishing environments, performance became the way we earned others' esteem and how we learned to esteem ourselves. 

This part of me, with her constant competence, isn't motivated by the glow of her achievements. She works so hard because she's terrified that something bad will happen, if she doesn't.

When I sit with this hardworking part of me, using my skills as a trauma specialist to navigate my inner world, she's willing to talk to me if I’m respectful.

"What are you afraid will happen, if you stop managing everything all the time?" I ask.

Instantly, my stomach clenches in response. The bottom of the world drops out from under me, and I feel a knot of terror in my throat. My breath catches in my chest as it tightens. I suddenly feel hopeless, vulnerable, and alone — and as the feelings engulf me, I become those things. 

It takes all my focus to stay present, while these feelings wash over me.

I remind myself that these feelings are a flashback and not from anything that’s happening now. It takes a moment to center and reorient back to the life, the marriage, and the home I’ve built.

"Oh," I say to her with understanding, "I see."

My high-performance part is not working without stop because she loves the thrill of motion or the rewards of achievement. She works this way, in constant motion, because her movement masks the loneliness, confusion, and pain hiding underneath.

It's not that she can't relax.

She won't.

Why would she, when the dread starts pulling the very instant she takes a pause?

Complex Trauma (CPTSD) and Emotional Flashbacks

Most of us don’t realize when we’re having an emotional flashback.

We can start to recognize them, when we realize the intensity we feel doesn’t fit with what’s currently happening.

“Nothing is wrong,” our friends or partners might say, in an effort to comfort us.

Hearing this, we might sink further into confusion and even self-hatred. “If nothing is wrong,” we say silently to ourselves, “why do I feel this way?

Emotional flashbacks arise from body-based memory fragments that want to reconsolidate into more narrative, complete memories.

Often, they emerge when something reminds us of the original trauma — maybe a glance, a harsh word, or even the time of year when, as children, we felt the saddest and most alone. These things come up to be acknowledged and met, but we usually turn away from our deepest neediness and abandon the most vulnerable parts of us.

Until we learn better ways, we model how we treat ourselves on how we were treated. 

Because part of me feels so lonely and afraid she can barely breathe, my hardworking part does her best to self-soothe by focusing externally. She efforts and never rests, in a valiant attempt to keep us safe.

She never wants to feel the parts of me carrying fear and loneliness. But the moment she tries to rest, there they are. There they’ve been this whole time.

To my hardworking part, this is terrifying.

She associates these feelings with being “too much.”  And they were too much, in childhood. They were too much to feel and too much to make sense of, so my nervous system went into freeze mode and hid the truth of them away.

My hardworking part doesn’t believe she has the capacity to cope with them. She shifts her focus to external activity and attempts to outrun them instead. 

It is an impossible task that only I can resolve, by bringing my adult awareness to what is a decades-long standoff in my nervous system.

Control, Perfectionism, and High-Performance

Emotional flashbacks surprise and easily derail us because we try to find a present-moment reason why we feel so strongly.

We feel awful and because something must be causing it, our hardworking parts look dutifully for what's wrong. We might point the finger at our partners, or our work, or the state of the world — all easy targets.

When we turn our attention with care towards the feelings of dread and loneliness that we carry in our bodies, we meet parts of ourselves we often feel reluctant to meet. That's why doing this level of work is effectively supported by working with someone like me (or another somatic trauma specialist). I know how to guide the journey so that we rapidly reach the parts of us who long to be seen and connected with. And who, until we meet them, wait in various states of despair and distress for some hope of care.

The invitation is to learn how to meet and work with the parts of us who don't feel safe slowing down. Instead of responding to them with annoyance and wishing they would go away, we need to learn why they do what they do.

There is always a good reason.

Then, we slowly turn towards the things those hardworking parts of us try so hard not to feel. Not to re-experience or to remember what happened or why we feel that way. Excavating the past is not required to help and heal.

The Potential of Trauma Resolution

The process I'm describing might sound like something from a fairy tale. The hero journeys to confront an imagined antagonist, shows their true character, and has the treasure revealed. Perhaps those old stories are also maps for this work. 

Another way to look at this process involves the science of memory reconsolidation.

The body speaks to us in language we can understand. Somatic experiences, like tightness, constriction, and heaviness come into awareness and indicate the body holds something that doesn't feel natural or good. It's our job to listen and to respond.

I love to approach this work with the language of parts. A part of me is hardworking because she feels dread when she stops. That dread is a part of me who carries a belief that she doesn't deserve love for who she is, but only for what she does. That vulnerable part carries this belief not because it's true, but because she learned it in childhood. The work becomes helping her to gently reorient towards my care and attention and allow her to unburden herself of the heaviness and dread of those false beliefs.

If you're curious what this could look like in your own life, I'd love to have a conversation and explore working together. I have two spaces in my practice to begin this May. If this is calling you, let's connect.

*

Elie Losleben supports individuals and couples internationally through trauma resolution and embodied healing. She brings extensive training in somatic approaches and a deep understanding of how the nervous system shapes our capacity for connection. To learn more about working together, you're welcome to reach out.