Therapy for High Achievers, Entrepreneurs,
& Executives
Jessica Healy, LMHC, LCPC
Therapy in NY, MA, ME, FL
“I got everything I wanted… Why do I feel so bad?”
Therapy for high achievers focuses on this very relatable human experience. It somehow doesn’t seem right to feel bad when things seem so good on the outside. It also might seem like no one will want to listen to you complaining about your fate when you “have everything.” On paper, it all looks great, but underneath, something’s off, and that nagging feeling is only getting louder as time goes on.
High achievers are really good at powering through and excelling in a crunch (though perhaps the rush you used to get from that has gotten less satisfying lately). Often, you already know what issues you come up against, and it has always seemed pointless to harp on them. “What good does complaining do? Is that going to make anything change? Just accept things as they are and move on, don’t let it live rent-free in your brain.” But it’s still there, nagging away, even when you believed you had accepted it.
Therapy for High Achievers:
When Success Stops Feeling Like Success
Success can start to feel like a curse when you have to keep chasing it. Rest can feel impossible, like you would be missing something important if you don’t stay plugged in. You can’t rest when dropping the ball could lead to failure.
Western culture lines up the boxes to be ticked by the “winners”: good university, loving partner, stable career, beautiful home. But what’s next? What happens when there’s no longer an obvious goal to work towards? Panic can set in when you start to slow down. Perhaps your confidence begins to waver when no achievement seems great enough. Or it can turn on itself and feel like the people around you are there only because of your success, and can’t be trusted.
Pro tip: a classic psychoanalytic book on the developmental origins of this pattern is The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller. Highly recommend!
Common challenges faced by high achievers include:
Therapy for Entrepreneurs and Founders
Starting a business can be all-consuming, and it’s impossible not to have some identity wrapped up in it. When you’ve put so much passion and energy into it, it may feel like there’s no “off” switch. Work can begin to feel like the only place you can be yourself, more comfortable even than with friends and family. Being a successful entrepreneur or founder can be an isolating experience as not everyone understands what you’ve gone through to get where you are, and how lonely it can be at the top. Burnout is common, and may feel like overwork is the only way to succeed.
Therapy for
Executives & Professionals
Being in the C-suite or at the senior management level is both rewarding and challenging. Being the one everyone leans on, both at work and at home, is a lot of responsibility, and can be exhausting. Performing at a high level constantly, and putting out fires frequently can wear you down. Regardless of the position you hold, it can still feel like you are underappreciated or unrecognized even when you’re overfunctioning and holding it all together all the time.
People in high level positions can face much criticism about the choices they make for the greater good of the company. It can chip away at you when it seems like no matter how hard you work, there’s still some aspect of it someone’s upset about. You may no longer feel up for the task of learning from failure in the way you used to love doing.
Therapy for
Perfectionism & the Inner Critic
Using IFS language, we could say that you may have a cluster of parts around perfectionism, or “doing things properly.” These could include a critical part telling you everything you’ve messed up and have to fix, a part with exacting perfectionist standards, and, probably, a part that’s exhausted from being perfect all the time. A part of you may be experiencing performance anxiety, especially before particularly important meetings or presentations, which can be quite overwhelming and somatic in nature. Another part of you might have Imposter syndrome, starting to question whether you really know what you’re doing anymore. By getting to know this subsystem in therapy, you will be better able to choose when to allow for mistakes and when to ask more of yourself and others.
People with demanding work who have to be “on” all the time can suffer greatly behind the scenes; many even have the lonely experience of not wanting to “bring down” their family and friends by sharing the depth of what they’re experiencing. Drinking and drugs might help blow off steam, but you know that’s not sustainable in the long term, and might wonder what the alternative could be.
Therapy for
Perfectionism & the Inner Critic
Using IFS language, we could say that you may have a cluster of parts around perfectionism, or “doing things properly.” These could include a critical part telling you everything you’ve messed up and have to fix, a part with exacting perfectionist standards, and, probably, a part that’s exhausted from being perfect all the time. A part of you may be experiencing performance anxiety, especially before particularly important meetings or presentations, which can be quite overwhelming and somatic in nature. Another part of you might have Imposter syndrome, starting to question whether you really know what you’re doing anymore. By getting to know this subsystem in therapy, you will be better able to choose when to allow for mistakes and when to ask more of yourself and others.
People with demanding work who have to be “on” all the time can suffer greatly behind the scenes; many even have the lonely experience of not wanting to “bring down” their family and friends by sharing the depth of what they’re experiencing. Drinking and drugs might help blow off steam, but you know that’s not sustainable in the long term, and might wonder what the alternative could be.
Therapy for
Burnout
It can be challenging to balance fulfilling your basic needs (eating, sleeping, and connecting with loved ones) with the parts of you that feel the urgency of high stakes, high standards, and approaching deadlines. You may not necessarily have an issue with time management, it just may be that it’s impossible to get as much done in a given amount of time because your burnt out system is rejecting the task. Workaholism is a way of life for many of us, and it can be hard to step out of that cycle when it is habitual and so often rewarded.
A Somatic, IFS-Informed Approach for People Who Think Their Way Through Everything
Mindful awareness of the body is an important building block of IFS. The awareness of the felt sense of the body (interoceptive awareness) is a more ancient neurological process than language, and even than visual imagery. While top-down therapy exploring the repetition of undesired patterns is useful up to a certain point, there are often many unconscious factors that hold those patterns in place, so it’s important to work bottom-up as well. Slowing down and paying attention to our bodily sensations shines the spotlight on parts of ourselves we may be accustomed to pushing aside until their messages become urgent or overwhelming.
If you can’t easily access body sensations, that is great information as well, and there’s actually a lot to explore around this process of your body “turning down the volume” so low. This is somatic therapy, too!
I appreciate an analytical scientific mind – my own led the way to a number of published articles on the arts and clinical work – though I have learned to allow it to relax enough to let in alternative sources of information. I arrived to somatic work skeptical of bringing the nonverbal into therapy (yes, it can all sound a little woo-woo sometimes). My experience as a Certified Massage Practitioner (CMP) in California for four years, as well as my training in various somatic modalities, such as somatic IFS and Hakomi, have convinced me that the data provided by interoceptive awareness is invaluable to the healing process. The science bears this out, too.
A Somatic, IFS-Informed Approach
for
People Who Think Their Way Through Everything
I specialize in doing somatic work with folks who identify as “intellectualizers,” a category which many high achievers fall into. It’s especially important for intellectualizers to approach therapy not only “top-down,” by talking through your patterns and implementing cognitive tools, but also “bottom-up,” by seeking the invaluable data held by the body through slowing down and learning mindful somatic awareness.
Mindful awareness of the body is an important building block of IFS. The awareness of the felt sense of the body (interoceptive awareness) is a more ancient neurological process than language, and even than visual imagery. While top-down therapy exploring the repetition of undesired patterns is useful up to a certain point, there are often many unconscious factors that hold those patterns in place, so it’s important to work bottom-up as well. Slowing down and paying attention to our bodily sensations shines the spotlight on parts of ourselves we may be accustomed to pushing aside until their messages become urgent or overwhelming.
If you can’t easily access body sensations, that is great information as well, and there’s actually a lot to explore around this process of your body “turning down the volume” so low. This is somatic therapy, too!
I appreciate an analytical scientific mind – my own led the way to a number of published articles on the arts and clinical work – though I have learned to allow it to relax enough to let in alternative sources of information. I arrived to somatic work skeptical of bringing the nonverbal into therapy (yes, it can all sound a little woo-woo sometimes). My experience as a Certified Massage Practitioner (CMP) in California for four years, as well as my training in various somatic modalities, such as somatic IFS and Hakomi, have convinced me that the data provided by interoceptive awareness is invaluable to the healing process. The science bears this out, too.
Online Therapy for High Achievers
in New York, Massachusetts, Florida and Maine
I see most of my high-achieving clients online for convenience, offering virtual psychotherapy to clients in:
- New York
(Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens) - Massachusetts
(Boston area, North Shore, Western Mass.) - Maine
(Portland, Falmouth) - Florida
(Miami, Ft. Lauderdale)I am available to work with coaching clients anywhere in the world.
In-person sessions are available in Portland, ME, as well as twice per year in Brooklyn, NY.
Frequently Asked Questions About
Therapy for High Achievers
What do high achievers struggle with?
Plenty! Perfectionism is at the top of the list. High achievers may have symptoms of depression and anxiety, though they often unconsciously mask it as they may not feel they can tarnish their reputation by allowing their difficulties to be seen by others. This can result in feeling isolated and lonely, like no one really knows them, or would like them if they really knew them. They may have a hard time with rest and slowing down. Workaholism may impact relationships with family and friends, and they may cope with stress by using harmful substances or behaviors.
Therapy has begun to have less stigma associated with it, but it can still be useful to present it as a preventative rather than a fix. It’s healthier to bring the car in for a tune-up when you start to hear a weird noise rather than waiting for it to break down.
What is High Achiever Syndrome?
High Achiever Syndrome is thinking of yourself less as a human being than as a human “doing”; you tie your self-worth to your achievements and successes rather than realizing you are valuable just as you are, as every human is, regardless of their accomplishments. This is a vicious cycle because no amount of external validation is ever enough and it’s easy to run yourself into the ground trying to get it. The goalposts are always moving, and there can be no rest.
Hakomi actually has a term for this way of being in the world: the Industrious/Over-Focused “character style.”
Is therapy different from executive coaching?
Executive coaching is usually goal-oriented and time-bound; therapy is growth-oriented and open-ended. Therapy, and IFS/”parts work” in particular, often goes deeper, and gets more to the root of what is holding you back from the change you seek. There are strategies for behavior change, cognitive methods to focus attention and shift self-talk, and approaches to communication that are useful in the shorter term, which we can certainly discuss. Often, however, the piece that high achievers are missing is tuning in to what comes up when things slow down, which tends to be work that’s more open ended.
Can therapy help with burnout?
Yes! I have helped clients develop new habits who have taken leaves of absence from work due to burnout; I have also worked with clients in demanding jobs who have shifted their approach to work/life balance on the fly – both ways are possible. Becoming more attuned to the signals your system sends that alert you that you are taking on too much is possible at any time. Listening to and obliging those signals may be a greater challenge but is also possible whenever you are ready.
I am doing well on paper. Is that a reason for therapy?
Many high achievers put off starting therapy because they feel bad for feeling bad, since their lives look great on paper. I urge you not to talk yourself out of that sinking feeling. You can only push it away for so long, and attending to it sooner rather than later will likely be less painful in the end. However, each of us is on our own timeline, so if now’s not the time, I will be here when you’re ready.
How do sessions fit around a demanding schedule?
Therapy with me consists of weekly 50 minute sessions, meeting at the same time each week. We can reschedule our session for a different time during the same calendar week if work obligations conflict with our regular meeting time. Consistent attendance is important for us to develop a trusting relationship, so if you can’t foresee making room for one hour per week for sessions at the moment, this may not be the right time to start therapy with me.
Do you offer therapy online?
Yes! Most of my clients opt for online therapy out of convenience. My online therapy clients meet me via Zoom, which is secure and HIPAA compliant.
I offer online therapy for clients in New York, Massachusetts, Maine, and Florida, and coaching for folks anywhere in the world.
I offer in-person sessions in Portland, ME, as well as twice per year in Brooklyn, NY.
