When Doing Stops Working: Meeting the Feelings You’ve Been Running From

At some point, the doing stops working.

Not because you’re lazy. Not because you’ve failed. But because the strategy you built to survive has finally done its job — and now it’s asking to be laid down.

Most people don’t burn out because they’re weak. They burn out because they’re excellent at functioning without feeling.

The hard worker in you learned very early that movement was safer than stillness. That productivity was praised. That usefulness secured belonging. That being “low maintenance” kept the peace.

So you became efficient. Capable. Dependable.

The one who holds it all together.

And slowly — almost invisibly — your nervous system learned this equation:

If I keep doing, I don’t have to feel.

Overworking as a Coping Strategy (Not a Character Flaw)

Psychologically speaking, overworking is rarely about ambition alone. It’s far more often about regulation.

When you are busy:

• Your mind is occupied

• Your body stays activated

• Your emotional signals are dampened

This is not accidental. It’s adaptive.

For many of us, slowing down once meant:

• Being flooded with emotion

• Being alone with confusion

• Being confronted with unmet needs

• Feeling grief we didn’t have support for

So the system adapted.

Anecdotally, I see this again and again in clinic and in conversation.

The woman who collapses emotionally the moment her children leave home — because she finally stops moving.

The man who panics on holiday — insomnia, irritability, restlessness — because his nervous system doesn’t know how to be without output.

The caregiver who feels nothing until illness forces rest — and then feels everything at once.

Overworking is not the problem. It’s the solution your system chose when feeling didn’t feel safe.

The Chemical Hook We Rarely Talk About

There’s another layer we don’t often acknowledge: reward chemistry.

Every time you achieve, complete, help, fix, succeed — your brain releases dopamine. Add praise, appreciation, or validation, and you get serotonin and oxytocin too.

It feels good. Of course it does.

But when those chemicals become your primary source of regulation, something subtle happens:

• Your sense of worth becomes externally referenced

• Stillness feels uncomfortable, even threatening

• Rest feels undeserved

• Presence feels pointless unless it’s productive

Even the humble, behind-the-scenes worker isn’t exempt.

Refusing praise doesn’t mean you’re not hooked. It often just means the identity has shifted from “Look at me” to “I don’t need anything.”

Both bypass the same thing: direct contact with the emotional body.

Why Feeling Wasn’t Safe (And What That Created)

Here are some of the most common reasons people avoid presence with their emotional body — and the mindsets that grow from them:

• Feeling was punished or dismissed→ “My emotions are inconvenient.”

• Feeling overwhelmed caregivers→ “I must stay strong.”

• No one helped regulate big feelings→ “I’ll handle it myself.”

• Emotions led to conflict or abandonment→ “Better not go there.”

• Sensitivity was mocked or minimised→ “I’ll harden up.”

• Love was conditional on performance→ “I am what I do.”

  
  

These aren’t beliefs you chose. They are conclusions drawn by a nervous system trying to survive. But what once kept you safe now keeps you disconnected.

Coming Back to the Emotional Body (Gently)

You don’t return to feeling by forcing it. You return by inviting it.

The emotional body doesn’t speak in sentences. It speaks in sensation, tone, temperature, pressure, movement.

Below is a simple but profound practice — not to fix anything, but to re-establish relationship.

Meditation: Re-Entering the Emotional Body

Sit or lie comfortably.

Place one hand on your heart. Place the other on your solar plexus (just below the ribcage). Allow your jaw and your shoulders to soften.

Begin the 4/6 breath:

• Inhale through the heart for 4

• Exhale through the solar plexus for 6

No forcing. No visualising. Just sensing.

Imagine the breath moving awareness, not air.

After a few rounds, ask silently:

What is present here, without needing to change it?

You may notice:

• Heaviness in the chest → often linked to grief or longing

• Tightness in the solar plexus → control, anxiety, suppressed anger

• Numbness → protection, overwhelm, old shutdown

• Warmth → safety, relief, connection

• Fluttering → anticipation, fear, vulnerability

There is no correct experience.

If emotion arises, you don’t need to analyse it. Just keep breathing with it.

If nothing arises, that is also information — often a sign of long-term self-containment.

Stay for a few minutes.

When you’re ready, gently release the practice and return.

Where This Actually Ends

The hard worker doesn’t need to disappear. They just need relief from being in charge of your worth.

Feeling doesn’t mean collapsing. Presence doesn’t mean losing momentum. Rest doesn’t mean becoming irrelevant.

It means you stop abandoning yourself in order to be acceptable.

And paradoxically — when feeling becomes safe — doing becomes cleaner, truer, less desperate.

Not driven by avoidance. Not fuelled by proving. But arising from choice. And that’s when work becomes an expression of self —not an escape from it.