If you’re waking before your alarm goes off, heart thudding, anxiety on full blast – overwhelmed by getting the kids out the door, the commute, and what is waiting for you at work – you’re not alone.  More midlife professionals than ever are struggling.  If you’ve ever said in frustration ’What is wrong with me?  Why can’t I just…..?” – this article is for you.

THE HIDDEN PATTERNS OF MIDLIFE OVERWHELM

If you’re in your late 30s, 40s, or 50s and feeling like life is getting heavier—even though you’re doing “everything right”—you’re not imagining it.

You’re also not alone.

Many high-achieving adults reach a point where life looks great on the outside—a stable career, financial security, and enough money to afford the ‘extras’—while inside life feels chaotic, frustrating, and increasingly unsustainable.

If you are a knowledge worker with high standards, you are at risk of burnout. 

Humans are not designed to operate in constant overdrive and yet, that is what modern day life rewards us for doing.  High performers are excellent at pushing past their capacity and surviving long after their nervous system is begging for relief.  You start to see it in physical symptoms and cognitive decline, noticing an extra ten pounds creeping up on you or finding yourself dropping balls that you used to juggle with ease.

You’re not broken – you’re depleted – and it makes sense. 

Read on if you want to understand what is happening from a biological, physiological, and psychological perspective – and how you can shift to give your system some much needed relief.

HOW HIGH STANDARDS QUIETLY PUSH HIGH-ACHIEVERS INTO BURNOUT

High standards aren’t the problem – until they are.

For many high performers, the high standards we hold ourselves to created success early in life but start creating nervous-system overload as we move through midlife.

Here’s what the research tells about why:

1. High Standards Increase Allostatic Load (the Wear & Tear of Stress)

The human body isn’t built for constant pressure and stress.

Beyond the “flight-or-fight” response to acute stress events, there are events in day to day life that produce an underlying state of chronic stress that, over time, leads to wear and tear on the body, referred to as “allostatic load”. This is because stress involves two-way communciation between your brain and other critical systems, like your cardiovascular and immune systems.

Neuroscientist Bruce McEwen’s work on allostatic load shows that chronic demand (emotional, cognitive, work-related, or relational) elevates stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline and, over years or decades, this creates measurable wear on the brain and body.

• This explains why high-achievers can have higher allostatic load scores, even when their lives look “successful” and they can’t point to a source of acute stress to explain how they’re feeling.
• The chronic elevation of cortisol has been linked to reduced capacity for recovery, impaired decision-making, and increased emotional reactivity.
• McEwen’s research shows that extended periods of “high output” shift the nervous system into more reactive states because the body stops believing that rest is safe.

Put simply, your high standards will keep you going… until your biology can’t keep up.

This explains how we find ourselves on the midlife struggle bus, confused about why the things that always worked to carry us through challenging work assignments or to recover from intense periods of output, stop working.

To reverse the trend, we first need to accept that our capacity is limited (gross, I know) – and develop awareness of the allostatic load we’ve been carrying and how it’s affecting our capacity.

2. Perfectionism Triggers Threat Responses in the Brain

Perfectionism, which can show up as “high internal standards”, activates the brain’s error monitoring system (the anterior cingulate cortex).

Research shows that:

• People with high self-imposed standards display stronger error-related negativity (ERN) in the brain – meaning the brain treats even small mistakes as threats to our safety.
• This activates the amygdala, which increases vigilance, tension, and anticipatory stress.

Over time, this pattern teaches the nervous system that anything less than perfect = danger.

This is why high performers often say:

“I can’t relax.”

They’re right! Biologically, their brain is scanning for errors the way it would scan for threats.

Add to this that, as we progress professionally, start families, and take on leadership positions in our community – we take on increasing responsibilities and it becomes more and more difficult to scratch that ‘perfection’ itch to our satisfaction.  We spread ourselves thin, run ourselves down – and ironically, create the exact conditions that make errors and oversights more likely.

3. High Standards Increase Cognitive Load & Decision Fatigue

High-achievers typically self-impose higher expectations across multiple domains: work, parenting, productivity, health, relationships, self-growth.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister’s research on decision fatigue showed that:

• The average adult makes ~35,000 decisions per day.
• High-achievers may make significantly more because they analyze, optimize, and self-monitor.
• Cognitive load increases cortisol, decreases working memory, and reduces emotional regulation capacity.

When cognitive load is chronically high, the prefrontal cortex (your logical, strategic center) gets depleted and the brain shifts into short-term, reactive survival mode.

You don’t feel less capable, necessarily – but you do feel frayed.

You find yourself increasingly challenged to remember details, things start to slip through the cracks, and your anxiety goes into overdrive as you start having to check and double check yourself, no longer able to trust your mind. This can be a frightening scenario for someone who’s entire profession is built on their intelligence and competence (ask me how I know)! The hard truth is that carrying a heavy cognitive load for too long DOES make you less capable.

If you find yourself paralyzed by decisions that used to feel simple, or your confidence starts to feel shaky after a couple of ‘misses’ – this is your body’s internal warning system that you are entering survival mode.  It is important to pay attention because when you get stuck here, your prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive function and rational thought – takes a back seat to your amygdala, the part of your brain that scans for threats, responds to danger, and reacts to predominently fearful scenarios. 

When you start living from a place of fear, confidence plummets, anxiety skyrockets, and performance suffers.

4. Competence As Identity Creates Biological Pressure

Carol Dweck’s research on identity-linked achievement shows that when people define themselves by being capable, reliable, or high-performing, the nervous system treats any “dip in competence” as a threat to identity.

Identity threat → amygdala activation → cortisol release.

If your entire life, people have reinforced internal messages such as:

• “I’m the strong one.”

• “I figure things out.”

• “People rely on me.”

…then your biology reacts to slowing down as if it’s unsafe to do so.

Your standards stop being goals – and any dip in performance is interpreted by your brain as actual danger, perpetuating a cycle of perceived threat – fear – reaction – aka “survival mode”.

The biological and physiological outcomes are familiar – high cortisol, chronic stress (remember the allostatic load), and eventually, decreased performance and well-being.

5. High Standards Reduce Recovery Time and Capacity

Robert Sapolsky’s work on stress and recovery shows that recovery isn’t optional; it’s a biological necessity. His research highlights that stress can alter brain structures and affect the body’s systems, leading to long-term health issues if not addressed. Holding unreasonably high standards for ourselves tends to compress or eliminate rest.

This looks like:

• You “push through” fatigue.
• You work during downtime.
• You over-function for others.
• You treat rest as something earned rather than required.

Chronic under-recovery has measurable effects:

• Decreased heart-rate variability (HRV), a key sign of reduced nervous-system flexibility,
• Increased baseline cortisol,
• Reduced emotional regulation, and
• Decreased executive functioning.

Eventually, your body stops asking for rest – and rest even feels unsafe.  But rest isn’t optional, it is essential – and when you aren’t able to rest and recover, your body, brain – and performance – suffer.

Understanding that this is a biological mecahanism can help us give permission for the things we know aid in recovery – taking time to meditate or exercise, for example, which can help counteract chronic stress.

THE BOTTOM LINE

High standards aren’t always harmful.

But relentless high standards without time for recovery, especially when this goes on for years, can shift the nervous system from performance mode into survival mode, eventually outpacing what your nervous system, and other biological systems, can tolerate.

This is when performance slips, exhaustion creeps in, and, if it goes on unchecked long enough – we start to experience chronic health problems and burnout.

THE GOOD NEWS

The same science that explains what is happening to our body and brain when we put ourselves in a ‘self-induced’ constant stress response also helps us understand how to do things in a more supportive way.

A great place to start?  Building deeper awareness of what your capacity is and examining the activities that drain or energize you. This opens up the opportunity to manage your focus and commitments to be in better alignment with the capacity and energy you bring to each day.

If you’d like to learn more, I invite you to complete the Re-Anchored Reset, a mini course that, for a limited time only, is available completely for free to our first 100 subscribers! In this course, we’ll walk you through a self assessment that considers capacity, energy, and demands – and will show you a simple process that takes 5-10 minutes and that can be used to recalibrate your commitments when you feel yourself slipping into overwhelm.

With love,

Angelina