The Hidden Cost of Having It All Together

How shame turns achievers into islands

Hello, to my overachievers, my doom spiralers, and anyone feeling overwhelmed this week! I feel a little embarrassed to share this week's newsletter…but…here we go.

This weekend, I found myself curled up in the fetal position on my boyfriend's chest, sobbing about my to-do list. Like crying-so-hard-I-couldn't-speak sobbing.

My brain had short-circuited into a BLURRY nightmare of everything from the past month:

• Work on sold out coaching program, The Coven (YAY but also it has to be THE BEST)

• Plan in-person retreat (coming soon 👀!)

• Perfect my upcoming journal (WHEN WILL THIS END?!)

• Brainstorm innovative publicity (not just normal!)

• Develop ideas for new book (that will change the world)

• BUILD COMMUNITY! Family Meeting! Substack Live!

• Make every business decision under the sun, moon, and stars

• Organize my entire business (Who do you hire? HOW?)

• OH, AND LOS ANGELES! AND THE WORLD! AND AMERICA! GAH!

I was exhausted. Three-week stress headache, floaters in my eyes from 8+ hours of screen time daily. I was doing everything but somehow not doing enough. So I sobbed and eventually got a turkey sandwich.

has anyone else been here? just me?

The next morning,

I woke up feeling a million times better. Lighter. Not fine, but functional. Like I could breathe again. And it wasn't because my to-do list magically disappeared—I still had the same amount of stuff to do. The only reason I felt better was because I had confessed to someone else how overwhelmed I felt.

One of the worst parts of being an overachiever (which we've ALL been forced to be just to survive) is that we set impossibly high bars for ourselves, then feel shame when we can't reach them. Thoughts like "Shouldn't I be able to achieve this?" and "What's wrong with me?" play loudly in our minds. We feel that full-body sick sensation—the embodiment of shame from not being good enough. The more ashamed we get, the more isolated we feel, until we're trapped in a negative feedback loop:

Keep shame secret → Feel more ashamed → Need to keep it more secret.

Behold! The Negative Feedback Loop.

While working on my upcoming journal, I came across research from Michael L. Slepian, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at Columbia studying the psychology of secrets. He found that the real problem with secrets isn't the mental tax of concealing them—it's the social isolation that results from hiding yourself. He writes:

Mind wandering to secrets can bring about psychological harms for a variety of reasons, including increasing feelings of shame, isolation, uncertainty, and inauthenticity. Multiple measures of such burden are related to lower life satisfaction, anxiety, and loneliness, and the harm associated with frequently thinking about secrets appears to be culturally universal.

I’m a living example of this.

When I say I felt better Monday, it wasn't because my life got easier overnight. It was because I shared what I was feeling—out loud, with another person.

I'm slowly making peace with the fact that I'm always going to be a doer. A builder. A woman with a million ideas and a never-ending scroll of to-dos. While that's powerful, it's also heavy.  I sometimes mistake achievement for worth, and productivity for peace. But they're not the same. At all.

So if you're feeling overwhelmed right now, I don't have a 10-step solution. SORRY! But honestly 10 steps of anything would probably kill me right now. But I do have one small thing you can try today: Tell someone how you're feeling. And if you don't have someone safe to talk to, open up your journal and tell the page.

I want to hear from YOU!

Do you ever feel like you're doing everything but still not doing enough? How do you cope in those moments? If you don’t have anyone to tell - I’ll be your boyfriend. Cry to me in the comments or in the chat!

Last week, we had a great response to the idea of Motion Before Emotion:

The Bright Spot

Podcasts, articles, and products that are bringing a little glow into my life this week.

• Podcast: Good Hang with Tina Fey

  • How did I miss this podcast?! It’s called Good Hang and - get this - it’s actually a GOOD HANG. Every week, Amy Poehler brings on guests and they don’t talk about anything serious. They just vibe. Laugh. Be charming. This episode featured Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, Zarna Garg, Rachel Dratch, and Fred Armisen, and it’s everything you want from your imaginary group chat with iconic comedians.

  • Bright spot moment: the first sixty seconds when Rachel Dratch can’t figure out how to use her headphones. Pure serotonin.

• Article: 22 New Jobs A.I Could Give You

  • This piece dives into something I hadn’t thought about: A.I. isn’t just invading our jobs - it’s deciding which jobs need humans now. Experts argue that future roles will lean into our uniquely human strengths: empathy, creativity, strategic thinking. Those “standard” tasks? A.I. will gladly take them over - but it wants us to stay where we shine.

  • Bright spot moment: realizing that we don’t need to compete with A.I. - just claim the parts of human work that A.I. can’t reach. And that… actually feels energizing, not scary.

• Product: South Korean Viral Face Mask

  • My gentleman friend (yes, we’re calling him that now) just got back from South Korea and brought me a bag of viral skincare products. An elite move. I’m testing each one like I’m running my own clinical trial, but one is already a standout: this overnight mask. It goes on white, turns clear, and when you wake up? Your face actually glows. Like... your skin has entered its dewy era.

    • Huge thanks to

      Rory Uphold
      , who translated all the instructions for me because of course they’re in Korean and of course I didn’t even try Google Translate. I am who I am.

And if you have a Bright Spot this week, drop it in the chat - I want to hear what's making your life feel even 2% more joyful.

Preview of This Week’s Glow Getters

Inside The Glow Getters this week, we’ll be using our journals like that safe friend. The one who doesn’t judge, doesn’t interrupt, and doesn’t need you to be perfect. Just honest. It’s where we offload the shame and find our way back to ourselves.