Unmasking High-Functioning Depression and Emotional Bankruptcy

Richard Zwicky: Hi everyone, it's Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy, the show where we know there's no one path to healthy, so we explore them one of the things we've come across a couple of times on the show, it's come up as imposter syndrome. It's come up as people dealing with different forms of depression, is high functioning depression, which is often an overlooked mental health challenge. When we look at people who are, and appear from the outside to be extremely successful, they're productive, they show up, they irroachable in terms of

Laura: Thank you for having me on the show.

Richard Zwicky: How everything's done, they perform. And yet, despite the outward appearances, they live with chronic stress. They deal with emotional numbness where they're not connecting in the relationships. And in fact, they're disconnected even from themselves. So joining us today to discuss that phenomenon and how we can address it is Laura Ramos who is the founder of Redefine Wellness and ment. Welcome aboard the show Laura. Imposter syndrome is something that every entrepreneur goes through and I think most executives go through because we can't believe we got where we did and we know so little. We hire people to surround us to do so many great things. We're always amazed by them, but wonder how do we deserve this? And that becomes a question which people struggle to deal with when you're inside it and people outside it don't see it. But it goes to the meaning of the word success. And so I'd like to start with, perhaps a thought with what have you learned from your work that really changed how you would define success and a successful life? Because if you don't have that placed right, you can't get anywhere.

Laura: So many different thoughts. The first thing that comes up is that we are praised for doing and not being or feeling. So the more we get praised. And as an entrepreneur, it can be pretty isolating to hold all the feelings for our staff and the people that we work with and, not have anyone to really be able to be honest with about the feelings that come up with the business and the stress. One thing that has been more and more apparent in the work that I've done with highly successful businessmen that have been in business for decades has been that they pride themselves in having wealth and then also have the realization that they are emotionally and spiritually bankrupt. And so it's one of those things where I don't know that many people know that I think because they get praised for being successful because they're building and the more they have the more praise they get that having real intimate connections with family members or friends becomes not a priority.

Richard Zwicky: The term emotionally bankrupt is one that often gets misconstrued because a lot of people they say it and what they mean is basically they have no scruples or morals, but that's not the same thing. How do you mean it and how should people think about that? Because it's hard to consider that about oneself.

Laura: Thank you for that. In the context that I'm referring to, it is the inability to access or to have conversations that are vulnerable where we're talking about emotions and feelings and have a vocabulary for what it is that we're ex have the courage to have the vulnerability and have conversations that are vulnerable. Also another way would be like when we take a look at our relationships and at am I having meaningful relationships? Am I feeling connected? Do I feel understood? Do I feel that I'm seeking to understand the closest individuals to me? And so when that's not the case for us. That's not a bank and that's not an area that we're seeking to build similar to what we're building when we're building wealth or when we're building a business and our focus is to build that wealth. If we're not doing the same in our own connections and our own v vulnerability the people that we have in our lives, then that is the definition that I'm using here when it comes to emotionally bankrupt in these meaningful connections. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Richard Zwicky: But that also ties into masking where people won't are afraid to show who they are.

Laura: I worked with a man and I have permission to talk about his story and he said to the outside world I am a family man and I praised my parents and I praised the background that I had and have always put my parents on a pedestal and the family that I had as a pedestal. That was the image I would wanted to portray in addition to be highly successful. I came from a small farm and if I can do it you can do it. And then as we look at his life later in his life, he's 62 years old and started the journey at 62 and started to really look at the fact I haven't taken a deep look at how my entire life everything that I did was out of a trauma response out of that wanting to be seen and praised. He came from a really large family and was the last of the kids that were born.

00:05:00

Laura: And so the parents were done raising kids, and in the picture that he portrays, There is none of the fact that he was raised by one of his sisters or that his brother would torture him as a little kid, he thought it was funny to play with him and have a pillow over his head and suffocate him. And he learned from a really young age, I need to survive. I need to be tough.

Richard Zwicky: And that leads of course to the question of

Laura: If I'm going to be seen, or acknowledged, I need to succeed, I need to prove myself. And so that drive is what drove him to really be successful. I need to be seen. I need to be tougher. I need to just keep going. What I feel doesn't matter. What I do matters. I think achievement becomes a coping mechanism early in life and

Richard Zwicky: Why is it that individuals in these positions generally are the lost ones to realize they're struggling or the lost ones to admit because we may realize but we don't always admit.

Laura: Doing more becomes safer than feeling more. So, it's just do more. High performers learn that productivity is rewarded and vulnerability is penalized. So they outsource their self-worth to outcomes and do not focus on stress, do not focus on emotions, do not focus on lack of connection, lack of what is happening with our relationships or partnerships. And they do avoid those tough conversations. They avoid anything that is challenging. And their sole purpose is to achieve and to get that pat in the back. Be recognized, have recognition, do more, and be seen more.

Richard Zwicky: And that's re but that really speak to they're working to somebody else's standard of what success is. And you know what? If it is the problem isn't really that people are failing to succeed, but if they're really succeeding at a life that no longer fits who they are,

Laura: I think that's when those tough realizations happen for this gentleman that I talked about. He got to a place where He created a legacy for his family, was ready to retire. His family has money, his kids have money his grandkids have money, everybody will have money for generations to come. So now he wants to enjoy the money that he built to have the life that he wants and he doesn't have a very close relationship with his wife and doesn't have a very close relationship with his kids or he does but it's very businessoriented and so he now is seeking more and understanding that the entire time I had really strong emotions and really strong feelings. I wanted that connection from early in life, but I thought it was much easier for me to excel and succeed at this versus focus on something that I did not know how to approach. So yes, at the end of all this time, he is now really reconciling his life and saying, "Is this what I wanted? Did I want to really have this distance between my children? How do I gain closeness? How do I revisit those tough conversations that I just did not know how to have and live more like myself?

Richard Zwicky: But that speaks very much to what they're chasing is emotional safety. And how do you know how does one become aware that we don't have emotional safety if we don't have a reference point?

Laura: I mean, I think that's the challenge. I think that we don't put a lot of focus on checking in with ourselves. We don't teach that in school. We don't teach emotional regulation unless you get out of line and then you're disruptive, then you get disciplined. But we don't teach our children. I mean, I think we're doing a much better job now. But growing up during the time we grew up there was definitely no focus on what you're feeling having tough conversations having a conversation period. We grew up in an era where you're not to say anything not to be seen if something is going on go regulate yourself and come back when you're ready. And so yes I think there is a big challenge with not knowing what you don't know.

00:10:00

Laura: You do not know that you're disregulated. You don't necessarily know that you're keeping a distance between you and your loved ones or your closest people in your life. And that this has just become a way of life.

Richard Zwicky: And is there a common trigger that makes people recognize that?

Laura: Emotional suppress suppression isn't laziness or weakness, but it's become an adapted skill that once worked and now it's more costly for people that are evaluating their life. I think it's when they lose their ability, when their window of tolerance gets shorter and shorter and shorter. So, the stress that they allow in their life, all of the focus on business allows them to be triggered easier when emotional regulations come up. They're so focused on business. So focused on keep keeping the business going that emotional numbness, insomnia, irritability, all of that is a tab that get happens in our body. The body keeps a score and so the numbness,

Richard Zwicky: It does. Yep. Thanks.

Laura: The insomnia, the irritability just stacks and stacks and stacks and at some point that bill is due. And so there's something that happens in this one area that you're not an expert at, Usually it has to do with our relationships. Usually has to do with family members. We talk to a lot of execs that say, in business it's this relationship with my wife or it's this relationship with my kid, I don't know what to do here. And those are what we call the trigger that it's such a widely used word but that is what activates this bill that the body has been keeping the score the emotional numbness the insomnia the irritability the stacking of all of that will be the trigger that says okay I'm completely dregulated and I don't know how to deal with a simple argument with my wife or an argument with my kids and

Richard Zwicky: What? Yeah.

Laura: Usually that will be Pain is a huge motivation. Pain with our family members, pain with the people that mattered to us most.

Richard Zwicky: Because one of the people groups we're most trying to perform for is our families. The ones we know we care about most. And we don't always know how to show it, right?

Laura: And it's so and not easy you build a life for them and you build wealth and financial security then it's like you I gave you financial security and often times our family members are like you yes and I don't have you yes and you're completely disconnected yes we can't have tough conversations Correct.

Richard Zwicky: And it's difficult because in those positions you don't always know how to build that bridge.

Laura: It takes a lot of vulnerability to do that.

Richard Zwicky: It does. And one of the things around that is high performers work towards goals and

Laura: I think it has to do with normalizing the state that they're in.

Richard Zwicky: They always have a next goal and they often don't stop to think what the final goal is and what are mile milestones and how do we not move those goalposts because you need to take the time to stop and appreciate what you've accomplished. Why do high performers tend to keep moving that finish Hey, look.

Laura: I set a goal and once I get that goal, I get praised and then it's like, okay, I need a new goal. I need what's next. Because that The reward is not just the praise, the being seen, being acknowledged. It's somehow a payoff for all the work that I've done. And I think subconsciously we know that we're putting a lot of things aside to get this one reward.

00:15:00

Laura: And then the poll you called it the goalpost and

Richard Zwicky: Goalposts and milestones, right?

Laura: The milestones we move the finish line. Okay, let's do this. If I did that, imagine what I can do next. If I did that, let's do more. That reward becomes so great until it doesn't.

Richard Zwicky: And that reminds me a lot of people with their attachment styles and avoidance behavior where driving for success is almost become a socially acceptable form of avoidance where we're avoiding that finish line because we're pushing it out to something further. We're pulling away from it in so many ways. And it's documented people bring their attachment styles to the workplace. They just show up differently in different ways. If you're looking at yourself and wondering how you fit, what are some good questions to ask to understand, am I doing this? Right.

Laura: To understand am I doing this? I think we can look at if you have used self-care as a reward versus an absolute must and being able to incorporate instead of emotionally If you're avoiding s, tough conversations with your wife or your loved ones and you'd rather go to work and put off that tough conversation for later or until they feel better until they're over it, then that's a good indication that there isn't the emot emotional intelligence to really deal with the tough conversations. The challenging thing it isn't just about emotional intelligence is that really from early on we get conditioned to do more and achieve and not feel and not deal with the cracks. We don't talk about the things that aren't going And as a leader, talking about the crap cracks in emotional relationships or in business isn't something you share with everyone. So you get conditioned to not talk about what's not going right. And then that isolation piece happens. And so a lot of times we go decades without ever recognizing that there's something else that I need to work on. But our closest loved ones will and the relationship we have with them usually will be the indication that there's an alignment that I'm not reaching. There is a part of my life that I'm neglecting that I'm completely avoiding.

Richard Zwicky: And that's a key element because when somebody moves up through an organization as a leader and that's different from a manager who's managing people versus leading people growing and there's no definition or role that says vice president. There's a role that says bellboy. You can be the leader in the organization or the people being anywhere. And that's an important distinction when we're thinking about it. But when you're a leader, your identity is built around being the strong one, being successful in the way that people are looking at you and you're look tuned to look at yourself and the dependable one. Anybody would be afraid of what happens if that gets peeled back. How do we help people who are feeling discomfort peel that layer back without them feeling they're going to crack or fall apart or let everybody down by deal with themselves?

Laura: H. Yeah. As you're describing leader, I think part of what we're being asked to do as we're evolving is to redefine and the definition we have for leader. I know in our agency here, we were trying to do things differently in the sense that we hire therapists, we hire holistic practitioners, from the person who answers the call to the person who greets you at the door to the person who's working with you in a session.

Richard Zwicky: Breaker.

Laura: They all were all at the same level. Everyone has input on the client and everybody's input matters. But the most important thing that I think that we're doing here is instead of having that corporate mentality of check your own emotions at the door and make sure that you're ready for work when you show up, our check-ins in the morning have to do with how are you doing emotionally? What's going on? And I think as a leader myself and my co-founder have had the courage to say yeah today's a rough day like I didn't really get any sleep.

00:20:00

Laura: I'm really irritated this morning. And just being able to voice that and in the first couple of meetings and with the team that we created. I think that there was a sense of okay, we'll see how this goes. And people staff talked about how different that was and they're not used to it. And so a lot of times our staff when we check in about how we're feeling, we get people that say fine, good, and we ask a follow-up question. And say more about that. To really get people comfortable to talk about, not always being okay because we know that we're not always going to be okay, but we wanted to provide a safe environment where people could get used to talking about that. And two things can be true. I could be really tired and frustrated today. And I can also know that I have a list of things to do and I'm going to finish everything on that list and I'm going to do it to the best of my ability. And having the space and to be able to talk about that might make all the difference. I can just be able to say voice it, and then it's done. Feels much better after I let the weight of that go. And so it's like I'm validating my feelings, and I also know that there are things I have to do. The other thing that we do is, there's been times when someone walks in here and they just went through a breakup and so they're not emotionally present. They felt safe enough to share that with us and they had a full workload of clients that were going to see. And so we created a space where that person was able to share that with us through a check-in. It wasn't like they came to us and pulled us aside, but through a morning check-in. And we circled back with that individual and said, " we'll cover your sessions. We'll cancel some or move some. Please go home if you feel like going home." And they took us up on it. And then we've had other staff member that said, "No, as soon as I was able to just voice that, I feel good about it. "Thank you for allowing me the space to circle back about." I think it's having the courage having the courage as leaders create change and take a risk on doing things differently, redefining what we see as leadership,

Richard Zwicky: That's key because you can't really demonstrate leadership if you're not performing yourself. But at the same time you can create the environment for others and so many then fake it. They've created for others but they're really not living that same truth for themselves which is incredibly challenging because they can see and know it benefits everyone but still not see it in themselves. And is that because people can become so accustomed to the stress and the persona they've adopted that it feels calm and so everything else feels uncomfortable and they can't realize what's going on around them. Right.

Laura: I think especially High performers will normalize that state of and they mistake hypervigilance for focus and dysregulation for drive. And so that drive becomes something that's so normal that they do not even know that it is a trauma a response to that stress. And so that to get people to stop that and to shift that I think it takes a couple of things. Is it takes an environment where people are modeling a different way of responding to emotions and talking about dysregulation, a different way to define high performance and what that means. And high performing should not be at the expense of your own mental health. And I think that's where it's just a slight adjustment that I wish we could do,

Richard Zwicky: What is And it's revved up.

Laura: Self-care? Can we incorporate understanding what our central nervous system do? We have the ability to see that this behavior that we've normalized is basically our central nervous system just revved up all the time. Just go

Richard Zwicky: It's all the time we're sitting there. But for the listener who appears successful or they're partnered with somebody who appears successful but privately they feel exhausted and disconnected or emotionally flat or they can see that and that there's something off in their partner.

00:25:00

Richard Zwicky: What's the really smart but uncomfortable question they should be asking right now to start opening that door? Thank you.

Laura: I think one of the things we if I was listening, I would want our listeners to kind of evaluate whether or not they have safety within the relationship to have these conversations. So, safety first. Especially high achievers, they'll get really motivated "Yep, that sounds like exactly I need to do and it becomes a give me 10 things to do and I'll do them. Just write down what I need to do." Right? When I had this conversation with the person I talked about ear earlier high achiever realized that there was an area he had not looked at and he came to me and he said, "I want the 10 steps to get myself to where I need to be emotionally." And it does not work like that, The first thing is safety. You have to realize your central nervous system needs to know that it's okay to take this big leap and I'm not going to do it from the same motivation of I'm revved up. So now I am going to see this problem and I'm going to tackle this problem like I would a business problem. And so first what you would do from an emotional standpoint is going to look completely different than what you do from a business list or how you tackle a problem during business. It is not the same. So anything you've learned about success in business goes out the door and you have to unlearn some of that because this is going to take a lot of patience. It's going to take a lot of checking in. So, it's going to be neck down and not from your head. It's going to take understanding what the physiology is doing, what your breath is doing, what your central nervous system is doing. So, it's going to take a lot of check-ins and before you have conversations with your partner or your kids, and ask whether or not they feel like you're fully present or whether or not they feel like we could work on our relationship because that would be one question to have would you be interested in doing a retreat? Not like a couple's therapy because that signals there's something wrong, but just is there some work that we could do in the relationship. But before we even have our listeners do that, they would need to feel that they are safe enough to have a really vulnerable conversation and a conversation that they've never had before. If it's something they've never talked about, they might be met with resistance from the people that are closest to them because it'll be a different language. You've been speaking one language and this is how you've been leading your life and all of a sudden you hear a podcast and you want to approach things very differently. And if you do not kind of sense whether or not you're safe and talk to make

Richard Zwicky: It's hard to figure out the framework on the go when we don't have the road map already built for us and we don't understand where we really are on that map in the first place which I think is where people run into and struggle and you touched on something really important of a couple of minutes ago and we are running short time so to end on this is as people are framing that and looking at it highly successful people and we're talking about people who are usually in a business or on a commercial activity successful but not always but you're used to rationalizing and working through the problem. You touched upon that you have to start sensing differently without the road map. How do you even know where to begin?

Laura: So that I guess if we would create a quick road map and something that you can do before you have card conversations that start implementing something that you could do for your body that would help just kind of regulate everything. I think as people that are high performers they understand when the stress has gotten to max moments. So they understand that everything else is kind of always revved, but they understand where they've hit the peak of their stress. So, in those moments, I would advise people to start implementing just a sigh or some breath work that doesn't have to be, a full breath work class, but just taking a moment to take some oxygen in and take a physiological sigh. And that is the fastest, it's actually evidence-based to downshift a stress response. And so starting there, I work on my stress response? Can I intentionally consciously work on that? And then once I can do that, can I learn to kind of scan my body? Can I work on, creating a recovery rhythm that is non-negotiable?

00:30:00

Laura: So, I'm rewarding myself by doing self-care, but is there something I can do in the morning? Movement that isn't fitness, It's not performance based. So, Can I, practice? I know some people say that getting on a shaker plate is really helpful for them because it kind of moves the energy. Doing some walking every day. So creating a rhythm where you do those no matter what is going on and start checking in. So if we start there and we create some safety within our own system, then we can start having those conversations. If you're truly not aware if there's a disconnect between you and your partner, then maybe you could feel comfortable to have those conversations. If it's so disconnected and so hard, it feels so hard to have a conversation that's vulnerable, I would look into getting a coach. I would look into getting a therapist to start having those conversations.

Richard Zwicky: That's exactly the right path figuring it out. Laura we are out of time for today, but if people want to reach out to you, learn more, maybe approach you in your clinic, how can they contact you?

Laura: Redefine wellness and treatment in Scottsdale is the name of the website is on them.

Richard Zwicky: So Laura, we are out of time for today, but people who want to learn a bit more about you and your services, how can they contact you?

Laura: They can reach us on the website. Yeah, it's would do. How do I say that and not sound like a total dork? Look for us on the web.

Richard Zwicky: Do you want to get the address? You just you can find us on the web at you should say that.

Laura: Find us on the web. And then we also do intensives and retreats for high achieving. Find us on the web. Okay. Sorry. They can find us on the web at redefine wellness and

Richard Zwicky: I'll go back. So, Laura, we are out of time for today, but people who want to learn more and reach out to you, how can they contact you and find out more about where to find them?

Laura: Treatment. It is in Scottsdale. We also do executive retreats. So, if someone just wanted to do something on a weekend and not have to do long-term therapy, they could have a stress-free weekend come learn more about what it is that they're doing and implement some tools that they can take with them. Find us on the web and I'd be happy to talk to anyone who gives us a call.

Richard Zwicky: Wonderful. Thanks for joining us today on High on Healthy Laura and

Laura: Thank you, Richard.

Richard Zwicky: Thanks to everybody for listening. I'm Richard Zwick and we'll be back again with you soon.