21. What Happens When High-Achievers Finally Stop Running

21. What Happens When High-Achievers Finally Stop Running

Are you afraid of what will happen if you stop? If you stop fixing, planning, “doing”to-doing” yourself through the day?

The past weeks, I’ve been sitting with some old patterns of mine—patterns I’ve been dealing with my entire life. 

And this is what I noticed: The wound that makes you hyper-independent is the same wound that makes you abandon yourself completely. Both are responses to the same fear.

The fear that somehow you are fundamentally unloved, not enough, and unsafe.

Both of these keep you running—not toward a goal, but away from a feeling.

In this episode, I’m talking about what becomes possible when you finally stop long enough to be with what’s already here.

Why I Disappeared for Three Weeks

Hello. So you might have noticed there hasn’t been a podcast in a couple of weeks, and the reason is that a lot of stuff has come up for me lately, and I needed to take some time to process all of that.

To be honest with you, I’ve been exhausted. I’ve been tired. And since I’m very much done performing, I didn’t want to push myself to do anything—including this podcast.

Not only has a lot been going on internally within me, but also externally:

I left with a lot of insights that I wanted to share with you on this podcast. But when I came back and sat down to record, it felt like a performance.

I started procrastinating the whole thing. Said I was going to do it later, and then later became tomorrow, and then tomorrow became next week.

In that procrastination, I noticed an inner critic voice coming in, starting to say that now you really should start doing this. And when that inner critic came in and tried to punish me to sit down and record, I started to hate the entire podcast. I started to hate what I was going to say.

I went into perfection mode. I started assuming that what I have to say—how can that simply be interesting for anyone?

And that’s when I realized: It’s time for a break.

Understanding Eclipse Season: The Virgo-Pisces Axis (And Why It Matters)

Those of you who follow astrology know that we’ve been in eclipse season.

Now a little disclaimer: I’m not your astro girly. I’m not an expert in any way. But the past few weeks I have been reading up a little bit about it because I’ve been trying to make sense of the patterns in my own life and the energy that showed up.

What Are Eclipses?

Eclipses are supercharged new and full moons. They act like plot twists, cosmic course corrections, if you will.

And they come in pairs along opposite zodiac signs. The one we just had was in Virgo and Pisces.

The cycle repeats every 18 to 19 years. The Virgo-Pisces Eclipse we’ve had in the past:

The energies we’ve been dealing with now are the opposites between Virgo and Pisces.

Virgo Energy: Control & Perfectionism

Virgo is the sign of detail, of discernment, of health routines, daily rhythm, body awareness. It’s also characterized by a strong work ethic and about creating order.

Its shadow? Perfectionism, criticism, control, obsessing about health and so on.

Pisces Energy: Flow & Escapism

In its opposite, we have the sign of Pisces.

Pisces is a water sign. It’s sensitive, it’s compassionate. It’s characterized by intuition, surrender, oneness, dreams, flow, and a very adaptable nature.

The shadow side? This adaptability and intuition and kind of dream and flow state is escapism and losing your identity by overextending your compassion for others.

The Balance We’re All Being Asked to Find

So the energy we’ve all been dealing with at the end of September and actually even into October is balancing these two:

And because they repeat every 18 years, the eclipses that happen now echo back to 2006 and 2017. The themes we were working on then are what are being rewritten now.

My Personal Pattern: How Hyper-Independence and Self-Abandonment Are Connected

Personally, I have my south node in Virgo and my north node in Pisces. So this energy between Virgo and Pisces is also my personal karma and dharma.

The familiar pattern I divert back into is:

But also the grounded version of Virgo. I feel very familiar and safe in that energy, in that grounded, detail-oriented, problem-solving kind of energy.

What I’m being called toward is more connection, more surrender, following my intuition, partnership, intimacy—learning to trust, to allow, and let messiness be there without having to constantly refine and perfect everything.

Looking Back: 2006-2017

So when I look back to what happened for me in 2006-07, 2015, and 2017, it’s very clear why I felt so exhausted this time around.

In 2006, I graduated from gymnasium. I moved from home and I started business school at Stockholm School of Economics. This is essentially when I entered my hyper-control, independence, extreme performance and achievement and survival mode era—where I used food, doing, and self-abuse through an inner critic as ways of coping.

If we fast forward to 2015 and 2017, the pendulum kind of swung the other way. This was when I was living in Dublin. I was working at Google, very successful on paper. I was still in that work-hard mentality, but it shifted more from work, work to work-hard-play-hard type of lifestyle.

Where the play part wasn’t always healthy and sound, to be honest with you. In a lot of ways, I lost myself in it.

I completely lacked boundaries. I had a lot of fun, but it came with a pretty big cost.

The Shadow of Pisces Shows Up

It’s very clear now that’s the shadow of Pisces showing up—because I had been in the shadow version of Virgo: perfectionism, overly critical. And you can only be in this energy for so long.

So then the Pisces energy showed up as an antidote to that. My selfless desire to help others and to be loved and to belong made me neglect my own needs and lose myself in the process.

“All that hyper-independence and control I had built up until then had a reaction in the form of escapism. And both of these are sides of the same wound.”

The wound of: I’m not safe. I’m not enough. I’m not loved.

And one side says: “Okay, I’ll control everything to survive. I’ll just perform and achieve and try to tick as many boxes as possible and hopefully that will make me feel safe.”

Whereas the other says: “I’ll abandon myself and I’ll dissolve and I’ll people-please, and I’ll just be whoever I need to be so that I hopefully can be accepted and loved.”

What Happened When I Finally Stopped Running

The past weeks, all of this came up. I could feel the heavy perfectionist. I could feel and hear the achiever in me, the inner critic—but also the pattern of just wanting to check out, escape reality and not be here.

And to be honest with you, it felt very heavy and scary.

So when I came home from the hike, I really longed for slow integration.

And the interesting thing is that the trip I had done before the hike was a trip to Dublin—which isn’t a coincidence. I haven’t really been back since I moved from there.

Being in the same place where all of these patterns happened during eclipse season obviously amplified all of this.

When Commitments Started Piling Up

When I came back and I had a longing for integration, like clockwork, commitments started piling up. Like all of a sudden I got a huge to-do list—and not the to-do list that makes you feel excited, but the one that causes anxiety.

My inner critic showed up trying to push, punish, and scare me into doing stuff.

The interesting thing here is that I knew I wasn’t in them any longer. I knew that I was watching them, but I still felt them—which meant that I had to stop and let myself feel it all. Because that’s the only way to let go, at least the only way I’ve figured out.

The Feelings I Let Myself Feel

So I felt. I felt:

And I also felt fear of where I am right now. I felt fear of the state of the world, of the bigness coming. I felt pain in my body. I felt exhaustion, tiredness.

I basically watched my patterns in deeper and more intimate ways.

The Meta-Moment: When Even Healing Becomes a To-Do List

And I realized that the reason why I had been so exhausted in the past was because I was in the habit of beating myself up, telling myself that I should be better, be more, or different somehow.

And interestingly, at the same time, there’s a bit of a meta-moment—because while I was having all of these insights and feeling all of these things, I noticed there was a voice that said: “Okay, now you need to do something with this. Share it or write it down, or somehow you now need to act on this huge insight, this integration that you’re doing.”

“I saw that there is a part of me that believes that the answer to everything is some sort of productivity.”

That even when I have an insight about myself and discover deeper layers of myself, I somehow have to turn that into a task list.

Doing the Opposite of What I’ve Always Done

So while I was feeling all of this, I did the opposite that a past version of me would’ve done.

The past version of me, first of all, wouldn’t have felt anything and pushed through and ignored it.

So I did the opposite. I did nourishing things:

And it felt so liberating to do that.

When I just accepted it all, the voice whose sole mission up to this point was to get my ass moving through criticism quieted.

So it felt like the eclipse was really giving me the permission to step out of whatever performance machine I was still in.

“There’s nothing I have to do. There’s nothing I should do or should be or should say. All there is: to show up as myself.”

The Shift: From Proving to Being

The shift I’ve been going through these weeks has really helped me land in:

If any of this resonates, if you feel that you constantly have to do something just to earn a seat at the table, it’s worth paying attention to.

You don’t need an inner bully, an inner critic to get you moving. That’s not ambition—to constantly have to force-push yourself into doing something.

If that’s the case, it’s fear that is running the show.

And it doesn’t have to be like this.

What I Learned on the Mountain: There’s Nowhere to Get

Take the feeling seriously. You don’t have to believe the story behind it.

The story being: “I’m not good enough because I do this and this, and I always fuck things up.”

That’s the story. You don’t have to buy into your story, but take your emotion seriously.

And it’s not about blowing up your entire life. It’s rather about:

And maybe the life you want isn’t out there. Maybe it is buried under everything you’ve agreed to out of fear.

The Biggest Insight From the Hike

That is my experience from these past weeks, and actually it’s even one of the biggest insights I had from the three-day hike we did in the mountains.

I realized—even as we were walking and we were literally going to a destination—I wasn’t there to get to the destination, to get to these huts we were going to.

I was there to do the hike.

“So what if the same applies to life? What if there’s nowhere to get? What if there’s no destination? What if you never will be done?”

Maybe the answer to everything that you’re seeking is just to stop long enough to show yourself compassion and unconditional love.

Your Invitation: See Beyond Your Current Circumstances

Before I send you off, here’s my invitation:

See beyond your current circumstances.

Your mind operates from the past. Your thoughts are mostly from the past. They’re not true now, and you don’t have to buy into this story.

When you connect with yourself in the present moment—with your body, with the emotions that are running through your body, with the sensations, with where you are right now—and when you feel the emotions that are fueling your thoughts, you might discover that what you’ve been carrying for a long time can be let go of.

Not in a dramatic act. It just dissipates.

This is the key to inner peace and freedom: to simply be with what is—not resisting it, not wishing it was different, not hoping things will get better.

Hope actually doesn’t get you anywhere. It just creates more fear.

All you have to do is to accept what is going on and see where that takes you.

That’s the work.

All right, thank you for tuning into what turned out to be a bit of a personal episode. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re listening.

Let me know if any of this resonated with you or if you have any thoughts. I love to hear from you.

Speak to you next time..

Share
Share
Pin
TOPIC: Claim Your Self Worth