Ep. 233 The Missing Key to High Performance: Why Your Nervous System Runs the Show

Episode Overview

In this powerful episode, Kristen explores a deeper layer of hustle culture—one most people never identify: hustle as a survival response. Drawing from personal experiences, trauma-informed coaching, and neuroscience, she unpacks how our nervous systems are often running the show without us even realizing it.

You’ll learn why high-performers hit burnout despite consuming all the right strategies, and how unaddressed stress patterns are sabotaging our leadership, productivity, and peace. Kristen also introduces the four main survival responses (fight, flight, freeze, and fawn) and how they show up in real life, business, parenting, and more.

Whether you feel stuck in cycles of burnout, perfectionism, or chronic overworking—this episode will help you understand the real driver behind those patterns and how to finally change them.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• Why hustle is often a survival strategy, not a strategy for success
• The neuroscience behind why we freeze, overwork, or people-please under stress
• How early childhood experiences shaped your default stress response
• The difference between reaction and response—and why it matters
• Why information alone isn’t enough: the gap between knowledge and action
• How to begin regulating your nervous system in real-time

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro: Life as a sideline sports mom

02:00 – Recapping the three-part healing series

03:30 – The survival response hidden inside hustle culture

04:35 – Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and how it shows up in business

05:28 – The real reason we stay stuck in reactivity loops

06:35 – Looking for security in external outcomes (and why it backfires)

07:30 – Childhood experiences that shaped our nervous systems

08:20 – Example: scarcity, chaos, and “fighting for the meat”

10:00 – Why children default to shame without external narration

11:00 – How childhood survival strategies bleed into adulthood

12:00 – What your frontal lobe does—and why it goes offline under stress

13:00 – The “infobesity epidemic” and why personal development isn’t working

14:50 – The two speeds we operate in: 0 or 100 mph

15:45 – Nervous system regulation is the real key to high performance

16:30 – What triggers actually feel like in the body (even online)

17:48 – Our brain’s obsession with certainty and black-and-white thinking

19:00 – One grounding question to ask when you’re spiraling

20:25 – Kristen’s own journey with chronic dysregulation and burnout

21:27 – The four major nervous system stress responses explained

22:30 – Fight: control as a form of safety

23:34 – Freeze: perfectionism, overthinking, and inability to start

24:30 – Fawn: people-pleasing as emotional self-preservation

25:45 – How to create safety for others with different responses

26:20 – Social media and collective dysregulation

27:15 – Rear lobe vs. frontal lobe thinking

28:00 – From reaction to conscious response: the real work

29:10 – One simple regulation tool to start using today

30:00 – Regulating ≠ never being triggered—it’s about knowing what to do

31:00 – Why this conversation is the future of personal development

32:03 – Take the new stress type quiz + download the full 26-page report

Key Takeaways

• Most people are unknowingly operating from survival mode every day
• Your nervous system is either helping or hijacking your decision-making
• High performers are often stuck in hustle loops not from laziness, but from dysregulation
• True transformation doesn’t happen from learning more—it happens when we can apply what we know, and...