When Success Feels Heavy

You can hit deadlines, keep life running, and still feel unseen. Many high-functioning adults live with a quiet tug of anxiety or exhaustion while everyone around them assumes they’re “doing great.” Today, we’ll explore why this happens and how you can begin shifting the balance from head to heart.

Today’s Quick Overview:

🔬Science Spotlight: The overlooked trait that explains anxiety and depression in 1 in 3 people...
🛠️ Tool of The Week: The self-compassion break that shifts your body's stress response in under a minute by treating yourself like someone you actually care about...
📰 Mental Health News: How high-functioning adults can break out of the "mind versus heart" battle and why looking fine on the outside makes it harder to get support..
🙏Daily Practice: Learning about patience and community from a dawn beekeeping lesson where thousands of bees contribute to something larger than themselves...

Let's take your internal temperature right now:

How warm or cool does this Monday morning feel in your body? Are you running hot with anticipation and energy, ready to dive in? Feeling cool and slow, like you need time to warm up to the week? Whatever your temperature, honor it. Hot energy needs outlets, cool energy needs gentle coaxing, and everything in between needs patience.

Quick vote so we can size it to your morning. No wrong answers—pick what helps you actually do it.

13 Shadow Work Prompts for Inner Healing

We all carry parts of ourselves we've hidden due to shame, fear, or being misunderstood. These 13 journaling prompts help you gently explore beliefs and patterns that live in the shadows, not to fix them, but to understand them with compassion.

How to get yours: Reply to this email with today's date (August 25, 2025) and we'll send you the printable PDF within 24 hours. No strings attached. You can then print it at home or at your local print shop in any size you prefer.

Answered by: Eleni Paris, LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist); Founder/Owner of Eleni Paris, LMFT, LLC

High Functioning Mental Health Struggles: Longing to feel Understood, Supported, and Seen

High-functioning adults often experience these struggles both personally and professionally, yet their challenges can go unnoticed or dismissed by friends and colleagues.

Let’s first define what we mean by “high functioning”: Individuals who appear successful and organized in work and daily life, yet quietly face mental health challenges that aren’t obvious to others.

Professionally, they meet work expectations, hold responsibilities, and perform well. Personally, they manage relationships, household duties, and daily life routines. Yet beneath this exterior, they may struggle with anxiety, depression, or overwhelm that others can’t see.

Many high-functioning adults describe feeling dismissed because they ‘look fine’ on the outside. Others find that the usual self-care tips, such as exercise, journaling, and meditation, don’t seem to help because they’re already doing those things. On top of that, they’re often the ones others turn to for support, which leaves little space for their own emotional needs.

Over time, this can create imposter syndrome: “Maybe I’m not really struggling if I can still function”, or a deep loneliness when friends and relationships no longer feel aligned as you grow and heal.

For many in leadership roles, helping professions, or family caretaker positions, it feels almost impossible to admit they need support themselves.

This is where I’d like to introduce and explore the “mind/heart” battle, which, over time, with whatever kind of mental health support you may choose, will come to feel more supported and balanced. To do this, let’s break down the differences and how this may apply to you, as you long to feel better understood, supported, and seen. 

There are many reasons we lean on rationale - a wonderful strength! At the same time, it may impede when our hearts are yearning to feel deeply, desire to heal, and then go forward with emotional trust in ourselves and others. 

So, how do you go from operating mostly from your rational mind, a place that brings you lots of success in your life, to the emotional? And why am I saying that this may be the bridge to peace for you? 

Being emotionally exhausted from holding in feelings and fearing disapproval and/or coming off as if you don’t have all of the answers is depriving yourself of the ultimate self-care practices: Honoring what’s happening in your heart, a place that is shared by all humanity. You deserve to heal and grow, regardless of circumstances.

If you’ve been over-functioning for years, it may even feel strange to ask what you truly need. Guilt can creep in and sound like, “I shouldn’t feel this way, I have so much to be grateful for.” However, gratitude and struggle can coexist. Naming your truth doesn’t make you ungrateful; it makes you human.

Here are a few ways to begin this process of taking care of the heart and your emotional well-being

If this resonates with you, know you are not alone. Your struggles are real, even if they don’t look typical. Letting your heart be heard can be the bravest and most restorative step you take. 

Eleni Paris is a licensed marriage and family therapist dedicated to helping individuals, couples, and families build stronger, healthy, and more respectful relationships. She blends narrative, solution-focused, and emotionally-focused approaches with a compassionate, strengths-based perspective to support meaningful growth and connection.

Explore Eleni Paris’s Psychology Today profile
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The Self-Compassion Break

What it is: A three-step pause you take when you're struggling, stressed, or beating yourself up. It takes less than a minute but shifts how you relate to your own pain.

Why it works: When you're struggling, your brain's threat system activates, flooding you with stress hormones and self-criticism. Self-compassion activates your caregiving system instead, the same one that lights up when you comfort someone you love. By acknowledging suffering without judgment, connecting with our shared humanity, and offering kindness, you create emotional safety that allows for real healing and growth.

When your inner critic gets loud, pause for one minute:

This short practice shifts your body out of stress and into care mode. It’s the same response that activates when you comfort a friend, only now, you’re giving it back to yourself. Try it after a mistake, a rejection, or whenever you notice harsh self-talk. It’s a way of telling your nervous system: “I’ve got you.”

The Overlooked Trait That Explains Anxiety and Depression in 1 in 3 People

Research finding: Researchers found strong evidence that highly sensitive people, or those who deeply perceive and process environmental stimuli like bright lights, subtle changes, and others' emotions, are significantly more likely to experience depression, anxiety, PTSD, agoraphobia, and avoidant personality disorder.

However, the research also showed that highly sensitive people are more responsive to positive experiences, including psychological treatment, and may benefit more from interventions like applied relaxation and mindfulness techniques.

Why it matters: This research validates what many sensitive people have long suspected, that their heightened awareness of environmental stimuli isn't just a personality quirk, but a trait that genuinely affects mental health vulnerability.

Understanding sensitivity as a legitimate factor in mental health could transform how we approach diagnosis and treatment, moving away from one-size-fits-all approaches toward more personalized care.

Try it today: If you've always felt like you react more intensely to your environment than others, recognize this as a valid trait rather than a weakness. Your nervous system may simply be calibrated to process more information. Pay attention to how environmental factors affect your mood and energy. Working with your sensitivity rather than against it can be a powerful tool for mental wellness.

Today’s Visualization Journey: Beekeeping Lesson at Dawn

Imagine stepping into a bee suit as the sun rises. The air is cool, the hives hum with purpose. Each bee moves with quiet dedication, building something larger than itself. The beekeeper smiles: “Bees teach you patience and community. Each one shows up, does their part, and trusts that it matters.

Your reflection: What’s one small contribution you can make this week: steady and simple, like the bees?

Today’s Affirmations

Most weeks require you to start before you feel ready, to take steps before you can see the whole path. Preparation is helpful, but it's not a prerequisite for beginning.

Try this: When you notice yourself waiting to feel more prepared, remind yourself: "I can start with what I know right now and learn the rest as I go. Readiness often comes through doing, not before it."

Gratitude Spotlight

Today's Invitation: "What's one routine or ritual from your weekend that you can carry a piece of into this Monday?"

Why It Matters: Mondays don't have to be a complete reset that abandons everything good about your weekend. When we bridge the gap between rest and work with intentional elements of care, we're practicing gratitude for our own well-being rather than seeing it as something that only exists in "free time."

Try This: As you move through today, consciously bring one small element of weekend-you into Monday-you.

Why it matters today: We often beat ourselves up for feeling confused about our direction in life, as if everyone else has it figured out while we're still wandering around lost. But Maslow reminds us that clarity about what we truly want, not what we think we should want, is actually one of the hardest things to achieve. Most people are making it up as they go along, too.

Bring it into your day: If you've been feeling frustrated about not knowing exactly what you want in some area of your life, give yourself some compassion. Instead of pressuring yourself to have all the answers, focus on what feels right in this moment.

Your 3-Minute Writing Invitation: “What’s one worry I could set down for just today, and what would I do with the freed mental space?”

Why Today's Prompt Matters: Writing about temporarily releasing one worry, just for today, can help you experience how much mental energy becomes available when you're not constantly tending to anxiety.

New to journaling? Start with one honest sentence. There’s no wrong way to do this. Think of your journal as a conversation with yourself, not a performance. Over time, these small notes can help you notice patterns, celebrate quiet wins, and stay connected to the person that you’re becoming.

The "Compliment a Stranger" Challenge

This week, give one genuine compliment to someone you don't know well. Keep it simple and specific: "I love that color on you," "Your smile is contagious," or "Thank you for being so patient with that customer."

Why it works: Small acts of kindness toward strangers break us out of our own heads and remind us that we're all connected. Plus, you never know when your words might be exactly what someone needed to hear that day.

Try this: Look for something genuine you actually notice rather than forcing it. The goal is authentic appreciation, not just checking off a task.

 Permission to Not Have a Good Reason for Your Preferences

Your likes and dislikes don’t need to be justified. “I just prefer this” is a complete sentence. We often feel pressured to have articulate reasons for our tastes and choices, but many preferences exist below the level of rational explanation. Your preferences don't need to make sense to other people to be real and worth honoring.

Tonight's Gentle Review

 Invite the day to exhale by asking yourself:

Release Ritual: Take three slow, deep breaths while pressing your feet firmly into the ground. With each exhale, imagine any Monday pressure sinking down through your feet and being absorbed by the earth beneath you.

Monday often starts with feeling pulled in multiple directions by other people's priorities and expectations. This question invites you to remember that your time is ultimately yours to allocate, even when external demands feel overwhelming or non-negotiable.

Hit reply and tell us: what did you release, and how did it feel? We feature a few anonymous responses in future editions, so keep an eye out. You might just see your words helping someone else breathe easier.

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Coming Tuesday: Breaking out of the "good person" prison where your authentic self gets locked away, and why being real instead of perfect creates deeper connections than always being nice.

Researched and edited by Natasha. Designed with love by Kaye.

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*The Daily Wellness shares educational content only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice and diagnosis. Please consult a licensed provider for personalized care.