231. I avoided vulnerability at all costs until life gave me no choice (Part 1)

If you're the one who always has it together, the one everybody expects to be okay, the one who would genuinely rather deal with it alone than give people the opportunity to disappoint you — this episode is going to feel uncomfortably familiar.

I'm gonna be honest about what it actually feels like to be placed on a pedestal you never asked to be on, why vulnerability felt like the enemy for most of my life, and what God had to take me through in 2025 to break all of that out of me (and he was not gentle about it).

We'll discuss:

• Why I disdain vulnerability & why high achievers specifically, struggle with vulnerability
• The four responses you almost always get when you open up as the strong one (and why they make you want to never do it again)
• What being placed on a pedestal actually costs you and how it quietly conditions you to keep everything to yourself
• What it took for me to finally understand why I was so allergic to vulnerability and what it was really protecting me from

If you can relate to this, know that the high achiever conditioning doesn't just stop at your vulnerability, it affects your ability to actually pursue the things you want in life because you're so used to performing. Once you remove that conditioning from your identity, it opens up a world of possibilities you couldn't step into as that performative version of yourself. For coaching to remove the high achiever conditioning from your identity to step into your next level, enroll in the Spring cohort: https://secludedthoughts.com/identity

[Substack] Diary of a High Achiever: https://diaryofahighachiever.substack.com/

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