Compulsive overachieving is often a sign of an activated flight state – one of the 4-Fs of trauma (fight, flight, freeze, fawn). It shows up as staying busy for the sake of staying busy, an inability to sit still, a packed calendar, an eventful resume and an inability to cope with making mistakes.
The flight response can be so deeply embedded in a person that they end up identifying with its traits, owning them as part of their personality. Take perfectionism as a prime example. Even the zodiac treats perfectionism as a personality trait, but beneath it is most likely a stuck flight response spinning and spinning to keep you safe from a threat you’re no longer aware of. It’s just always been there, motivating you to try harder and go farther – get ahead of the pack. Even the metaphors scream “run, run, run!”
People stuck in a flight response are hugely rewarded for it. Every boss wants to hire an over-achiever: just read a few of the near-impossible job descriptions out there and you’ll see how modern society worships at the alter of perpetual flight.
You might feel reluctant to heal this side of yourself, seeing it as your primary route to money, reputation and love. But it's impacting your quality of life, even if it’s hard to see. Perpetual flight leads to insomnia, chronic indigestion, an escapist mentality and even chronic pain caused by years and years of over-tense muscles.
These consequences literally cut life short. They disrupt relationships, cut you off from true relaxation and lead to disease states if unaddressed. What’s worse is how, at the end of the day, it’s impossible to feel successful and beloved enough, no matter how much effort we expended to win the race. This is how we know it’s a threat response more than a personality trait. It’s how we know we need to heal.
If you’re ready to ease away from perfectionism and make real rest and relaxation possible for you, try living by the rule of minimum effective dose. This core tenet of Applied Neurology aims to find the least amount of effort you can expend to get a good result. Not a great result. Not a perfect result. Just a good, positive result. And stop there.
With neuro work, clients learn to assess the state of their nervous system in real time, and this empowers them to stop at that well-balanced moment when a drill is enough to encourage neuroplastic change, but not so much that it triggers a threat state.
In the real world, minimum effective dose looks like sending an email without re-reading it six times. It looks like leaving the party when you feel like you’re done, not trying to keep pace with everyone else. It looks like letting a first draft be good enough for a client review, rather than spending 15 more hours making perfect what the client will inevitably change.
With minimum effective dose built into your habits, you preserve time and drop the need to rush around trying to get everything done. You also preserve energy that you can apply toward reducing your overall anxiety load. These are how to actually get ahead of the pack.
What if it feels too risky and scary to accept “good” instead of “perfect?" That’s where neuro tools can help.
Last week, I launched a one-of-a-kind video series designed to help you transform your stress responses into conscious healing. Participants learn:
the basics about the nervous system
how to interact with it
how to recognize its unique needs
and start training parts that are hungry for extra support.
Over the course of eight modules, you learn how to leverage each threat response for growth. I share nearly two dozen different neuro drills and tools that, with about 12 weeks of practice, can heal, support and bring a sense of ease and comfort into your neural network.
Best of all? You get to work at your own pace. You set the timeline. There is no need to set time aside for in-person classes or to even feel compelled to compete against classmates on progress. You have the power to grow at precisely the pace you need. And I even teach you how to know what your nervous system needs by using simple range of motion assessments!
Find your own minimum effective dose and grow your capacity to turn your flight response into healthy mobilized energy by purchasing the course today. Between now and Mothers' Day (May 12), you can even take advantage of its launch price – $200 below full price.
If you’re ready to move from flight to ease, from fight to power, from freeze to embodied or from fawn to assertive, this course is designed specifically for you. Why? Because we all have stressors. We just don’t always know how to turn them into strength.