Why high achievers are secretly terrified of free time

A love letter to every eldest child and perfectionist who's ever felt their stomach drop when the calendar gets quiet.

Like many of you, I'm in a torrid love affair with productivity. But something I don't talk about nearly enough is how free time can trigger the same fight-or-flight response as an actual emergency.

It's July, and my therapist friends are texting me with that familiar summer panic: "Half my clients are on vacation. Should I be worried? Maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was." My friends who work freelance are having similar spirals when big projects wrap up. My entrepreneur friends feel this way too when they make an exit and suddenly have no idea what to do next.

And honestly? I get it. Because I've been there too: refreshing my email obsessively during slow periods, questioning my abilities when the external validation drops off, feeling that familiar eldest-child anxiety creeping in when I'm not actively solving someone's problem.

The particular panic of high achievers

Here's what most people don't realize about those of us who learned early that our worth equals our productivity: stillness doesn't feel like peace. It feels threatening. Dangerous, even.

We're the ones who saved Christmas money not for toys but for college tuition since we were five years old. Who got the straight A's, carried the family emotional load, and learned that love comes through being helpful, responsible, the one everyone can count on. So when summer hits and suddenly we're not getting those constant "What would I do without you!" messages... it's like our entire sense of self starts to unravel.

I remember the first summer I experienced this as a new therapist. My caseload dropped from packed solid to swiss cheese, and instead of feeling like I could take a breath, I felt... unnerved. Like maybe I wasn't as good as I thought. Maybe my clients all hated me. Maybe I should quit and live in a monastery on a remote island.

The psychology behind this is fascinating and brutal: when achievement becomes associated with survival, our nervous systems literally interpret downtime as danger. We're wired like hunters in a world that sometimes requires us to be farmers, and we don't know how to just... be.

When busy becomes your baseline

You know that feeling when your calendar has an unexpected gap and instead of thinking "great, a breather," your brain immediately goes to "oh no, what's wrong?"

Maybe you're a consultant whose biggest client project just finished. Maybe you're in sales and it's that weird week between quarters. Maybe you're a freelancer and three contracts ended at once. Or yes, maybe you're a therapist whose clients are all on vacation and suddenly your Tuesday looks very, very empty.

That uneasy feeling isn’t about your competence. It's about an identity that got quietly tangled up with being needed.

I see this with every high achiever I work with. The successful entrepreneur who sold their company and feels completely lost. The eldest daughter who moved out and doesn't know who she is when she's not solving everyone's problems. The overachiever who got laid off and suddenly questions everything they thought they knew about themselves.

Because here's the thing: We don't just fear failure. We fear stillness.

What I wish someone had told me about identity and work

Your worth doesn't vanish when your roles and responsibilities do, but rebuilding your sense of self outside of productivity? That's one of the biggest challenges we face as high achieving humans.

I learned this the hard way when I lost a role that had become my entire identity. For years, I'd built my life around being a pastor: my community, my purpose, my sense of who I was. When that ended abruptly, I didn't just lose a job. I lost me. Or so I thought.

The truth is, I'd just forgotten who I was outside the achievement. Outside the being needed. Outside the constant external validation that I was doing something meaningful.

And maybe there's something in your life that brings up those same blips of fear. The quiet moments when you wonder: "If I'm not achieving something, if I'm not helping someone, if my calendar isn't packed... then who am I?"

What to do if this is you

If you're reading this and thinking "okay, she's basically describing my entire personality," I want you to know that you’re not locked in to living this way. Here's what I've learned helps you disconnect your identity from achievement after over a decade of helping people just like us:

1. Regulate your nervous system

The high-achieving brain isn't broken, it's engineered for intensity. We literally have a different relationship with dopamine, the "do it again" neurotransmitter. We don't get satisfied or rewarded as easily as others. We're always chasing more. This isn't a character flaw, it's brain chemistry.

But here's the problem: when we get all our dopamine hits from work, we become dependent on external circumstances for our emotional stability. Your mood becomes hostage to whether you get that text back, whether the client signs the contract, whether your boss notices your late nights.

The solution isn't to fight your wiring, it's to work with it strategically. You need to diversify your reward loops with activities that require effort that aren't necessarily monetized. One of my clients trains for marathons. Another learned Portuguese. The key is delayed gratification and high effort, what I call “marathon dopamine, not donut dopamine."

This isn't about adding more to your plate. It's about giving your nervous system multiple sources of that "I accomplished something meaningful" feeling so you're not completely at the mercy of your work schedule.

2. Get curious about who you are underneath all the accomplishments

When you've spent decades building your identity around what you do, the idea of discovering who you are can feel terrifying. Where do you even start?

This matters because when your sense of self is entirely wrapped up in external achievements, you’re less emotionally resilient. Every setback feels existential. Every quiet period feels like evidence that you're failing at life.

Start small and get concrete. Ask yourself: What are five things that define you outside of your role? What did you love as a child, before achievement was ever on your radar? How did you play before anyone taught you that play wasn't productive?

As a kid I loved experimenting in the kitchen. Now as an adult I host dinner parties and develop recipes from my own creative mind, not because it’s productive, but because it brings me joy. It's a piece of me that exists independent of what others think. When my work gets stressful, I can still make a yummy meal and feel like the world is ok.

The goal isn't to become a completely different person, but to remember that you were a valuable and whole human being before you became an achievement machine.

3. Plan for the emotional detox

When things slow down, whether it's summer break, a career transition, or just a quiet week, your nervous system might crash. You might feel foggy, agitated, aimless. Most high achievers panic when this happens and assume something's wrong.

Here's what's actually happening: your body has been running on stress hormones and external validation for so long that when the stimulation drops, you go through a kind of withdrawal. Your brain literally doesn't know how to process rest as safe.

This isn't a sign that something's wrong with you. It's your brain adjusting to a different rhythm. But if you don't anticipate it, you'll either create artificial chaos to feel "normal" again or spiral into self-doubt about your worth.

Instead, plan for it. Lower your expectations of yourself during transitions. Get extra support. Tell your trusted people that you might feel weird for a while and that it's part of the process, not evidence that you're broken. Give yourself permission to feel disoriented without making it mean anything about your capabilities.

4. Build a personal board of directors

High achievers often excel at networking for business but struggle with relationships that exist purely for connection and support. We're so used to being the one everyone turns to that we forget we need people too.

This matters because when your identity is wrapped up in being needed, you become isolated in your struggles. You can't admit when things are hard because that might make you seem less competent. You end up carrying everything alone, which makes the quiet periods feel even more existentially threatening.

You need people who know you intimately and love you at your core, not your achievements. A personal board of directors is like a company’s board of directors- it’s your personal avengers team who have experience and wisdom in the things that matter most. They’re able to tell you when you’ve lost your way, and redirect you when you’re getting off course. This includes friends who understand your journey, mentors who've walked similar paths, and yes, probably a therapist who can help you untangle the identity knots you've been carrying since childhood.

But here's the key: your calendar should reflect what you say matters most. If relationships matter to you, they need to show up in your schedule with the same priority as your client calls. Stop giving the people you love your leftover time and energy.

5. Remember that evolution isn't extinction

When high achievers hit a transition period, there's often this terror that if they stop pushing so hard, they'll lose their edge entirely. That if they're not constantly achieving, they'll become complacent and mediocre.

This fear keeps people stuck in cycles of burnout because they're afraid that rest equals insignificance. But your purpose and identity don't disappear when your role changes, the path evolves. That thing that drives you to help people, to create, to make a difference? It's bigger than any one job or season.

I used to think my purpose was tied to being a pastor. When I lost that role, I thought I'd lost my calling entirely. But over time, I realized my deeper purpose, helping people love their lives so they never want to leave them, could be expressed in countless ways. Writing, speaking, therapy, even the way I show up in friendships.

Your core gifts and values don't vanish when circumstances change. They find new expressions, new outlets, new ways to show up in the world. The goal isn't to hold onto old ways of doing things forever, it's to trust that you'll evolve and find new ways to make a difference.

Being completely honest with you

Can we talk about something? This whole "finding yourself outside of work" thing? It's actually terrifying for those of us who learned that our value comes from what we produce.

It feels like standing at the edge of a cliff and being told to trust that there's something solid underneath all the doing. It feels vulnerable and uncertain and completely against everything that got us this far.

And that's exactly why it's so important.

Because what happens when you build your sense of self entirely around achievement? You become a hostage to it. You lose the ability to enjoy the quiet moments because they feel like evidence that you're not needed.

But here's what I've discovered: The most fulfilling parts of life often happen in the spaces between the achievements. In the conversations that last three hours longer than planned. In the moment you realize you haven't checked your email in two days and you feel... fine. In the deep satisfaction of creating something just because it brings you joy.

The bottom line

If your calendar lightened up this summer, if you're an eldest child who moved away from the family chaos, if you're any kind of high achiever facing a season of less external validation, you're not broken. You're not losing your touch. You're not suddenly less valuable.

You're just being invited to remember who you are when you're not performing.

It's one of the scariest and most important challenges you'll ever face.

And maybe, just maybe, building a life that feels like home even when the inbox is empty is the most meaningful work you'll ever do.

What's one small thing you can do this week to connect with a part of yourself that exists independent of your productivity? Not because it will make you better at your role and responsibilities, but because it will remind you that you are so much more than what you do.

You always have been.

If this resonated with you, would you mind scrolling down and hitting that little heart? It genuinely makes my day and helps me know what's landing. Thanks for reading.

Therese 💜