The ice cubes hit the bottom of the crystal tumbler with a sharp, rhythmic clack that matches the repetitive bassline of that ‘Blue Monday’ song currently looping in my skull. It is 11:08 PM. Sarah-not her real name, but the archetype is real enough to bleed-doesn’t look at the glowing rectangle of her laptop anymore. She just stared at the reflection of her own tired eyes in the window of her 48th-floor office. Her LinkedIn profile, a meticulously curated museum of professional triumphs and ‘humbled to announce’ updates, suggests a woman at the peak of her powers. Her internal reality, however, feels more like a hollowed-out tree trunk, standing only because the wind hasn’t shifted yet. She pours three fingers of Scotch, not because she wants to savor the peat, but because she needs to silence the vibration under her skin. It is not a drink; it is a tactical shutdown sequence.
We have spent the last 28 years as a society fetishizing the concept of grit. But working where I do, as a prison education coordinator, I have learned that the human psyche doesn’t actually ‘bounce back’-it merely adapts to higher levels of pressure until the structural integrity of the soul is compromised. We are rewarding high-functioning self-destruction and calling it leadership.
The Straight Face Behind Razor Wire
“
“Emerson, the problem isn’t the bars. It’s the effort it takes to keep your face straight when you’re dying.”
– Emerson A.J. (Inmate)
This resonated with me because I see that same ‘straight face’ in every high-achiever I know. They are terrified that if they stop for 18 minutes, the momentum that sustains them will evaporate, leaving them to face the void they’ve been outrunning since they were 28. It’s a frantic, silent pursuit of a finish line that doesn’t exist.
The math of the high-achiever always results in a deficit.
When your professional identity consumes your personal identity, there is no one left to inhabit the body when the office lights go out. You become a ghost in a very expensive machine. You start to find that the only way to feel anything is through escalation. I’ve watched people spend $878 on a single dinner just to feel a momentary spark of luxury that might distract them from the fact that they haven’t had a genuine conversation with their spouse in 118 days.
The Cost of Being Unreachable
I’ve made mistakes in my own life, thinking that if I just worked 68 hours a week instead of 58, I could somehow solve the fundamental loneliness of being human. The irony is that the more ‘successful’ you are, the harder it is to ask for help. A person making $488,000 a year is expected to have it all figured out. This expectation is a coffin.
Admitted Substance Use
Of Those Struggling
There is a specific kind of physiological betrayal that happens when you’ve been living on cortisol for 18 months straight. Your body forgets how to exist in a state of rest. This is the moment where the bridge between ‘thriving’ and ‘dying’ finally collapses. It’s the moment when places like
become more than just a thought-they become a lifeline for someone who has forgotten how to breathe without a deadline looming over them.
The Illusion of Infinite Momentum
The woods are infinite if you don’t know how to step off the track.
I’ve seen men in prison find more peace in an 8-by-10 cell than some CEOs find in their 2008-square-foot penthouses. Why? Because the inmate eventually has to stop running. The CEO can keep running until their heart stops. There is a terrifying freedom in hitting bottom, because there is nowhere left to fall. The high-achiever’s tragedy is that they are so good at hovering just above the bottom that they never actually land and start the process of rebuilding.
We need to dismantle the idea that resilience is about endurance. Real resilience is the ability to recognize when the path you are on is a circle leading back to the same cliff. It is the courage to be ‘low-functioning’ for a while so you can eventually be a whole person.
I remember a specific Tuesday when I realized I had spent 28 minutes staring at a blank wall because I couldn’t remember why I had walked into the room. My brain had simply checked out. It was a protest. My body was on strike. I could have pushed through it-but ‘pushing through’ was the very thing that was killing me.
The Wrong Mountain
“
Success without sanity is just a very well-funded tragedy.
I’ve spent 18 years watching people try to negotiate with their demons. You can’t negotiate with a fire. You can only starve it of oxygen or walk away from the building. For the high-achiever, ‘walking away’ feels like death. It feels like admitting that the last 28 years of effort were a mistake.
We are masters of the ‘pivot’ in business, but we are paralyzed when it comes to pivoting in our own lives. We have become experts at hiding the 88 ways we are falling apart, and in doing so, we have made ourselves unreachable.
The descent is where the life is. It’s where the air is thicker and the ground is solid. It’s where you stop being a ‘performer’ and start being a human being again. When was the last time you felt the weight of your own life without trying to turn it into a success story?
What Happens If You Actually Stop?
What if the person who fails to bill that 18th hour is actually the person who finally starts living? We are so afraid of the void that we fill it with wreckage. Maybe it’s time to let the void be.
Maybe it’s time to admit that being ‘high-functioning’ is just a polite way of saying you’re a very efficient ghost.
– The descent is where the life is.