Summary: Why High-Functioning People Stay Stuck in Survival Mode
In this episode of *Conversations with Therapists*, Marta Hatter, LCSW of Revelation Counseling, explains why so many capable, “put-together” people are quietly running on survival mode without realizing it. She describes the nervous system like a thick elastic band: everyday stress stretches it, and a healthy system snaps back. But under prolonged or intense pressure, the band stays stretched, and small triggers start producing outsized reactions, either lashing out (sympathetic overactivation) or shutting down into busyness and disconnection (parasympathetic shutdown).
High-functioning people are especially prone to hiding in their own competence. Because they’re skilled at coping and solving problems, they often overdrive into productivity rather than rest or connection, which masks loneliness and exhaustion behind a veneer of success.
Hatter also explains how unresolved trauma and emotional wounds don’t stay in the past. They resurface as present-day reactions, what she calls “living in trauma time,” triggered by associations the conscious mind may not even recognize. This same mechanism explains why people repeat painful relationship patterns: the nervous system gravitates toward what’s familiar, even when it’s unhealthy.
Finally, Hatter discusses EMDR therapy’s use beyond trauma treatment, for performance blocks, stage fright, and self-doubt in athletes, performers, and everyday people. By reprocessing the negative beliefs underlying a perceived threat, EMDR lowers distress and allows confidence, creativity, and performance to naturally rise.
# Transcript: Why High-Functioning People Stay Stuck in Survival Mode
### Marta Hatter, LCSW | Conversations with Therapists
**Devorah:** Welcome back to Conversations with Therapists. Today I’m joined by Marta Hatter of Revelation Counseling. Marta, thank you for being here.
**Marta Hatter:** Thank you for having me.
**Devorah:** Marta, in your experience, when do normal nerves or stress cross the line into something that begins affecting a person’s confidence, relationships, or daily functioning?
**Marta Hatter:** Well, what I always tell people is to look and see how quickly their system bounces back. The way our nervous system works, it’s like a giant, really thick elastic band, and when things happen, it starts getting stretched, right? Little things happen, it stretches a little bit. The day is very stressful; it’s stretching out a little more. If we stay in a state of pressure, or something’s really hard, it’s lasting, it goes tighter and tighter and tighter. So, with regular everyday things, it gets stretched out a little bit, it comes back. It needs to be flexible. It stretches out a little bit, comes back.
So, if someone is having little regular annoyances — like your coffee gets spilled, or there’s traffic on the way to work, or somebody’s really irritating, little things like this — it should bounce back. It should bounce back. But sometimes there’s too much pressure, or too much pressure for too long, or the system is not doing well, and it gets tighter and tighter and tighter, and then it’s like we’re overreacting or underreacting.
So, as far as the things to look for, it would be if a small thing happens and we’re furious, or there’s a big reaction to it, we want to kind of stop and go, “Was that just sort of unusual, or is that starting to be something repeated?” Because when that elastic band, it crosses the line when it’s like permanently stretched, right? Like it’s feeling like it’s going to snap.
And the interesting thing is the way our system is created, it can overreact or underreact. Everybody doesn’t react the same way when they’re in that pressure and it’s pulled too tight. So, you might have the traffic-rage person, right? Or snapping at somebody you don’t usually snap at, that’s unlike you. Or sometimes people just kind of go into themselves, and they go into busyness, or they hide in productivity, and they’re not actually engaging or emotionally present. So the shutdown side is the parasympathetic part of our nervous system, and the active, engaging, even hypervigilant, overactive side is the sympathetic part of our nervous system.
So it’s about flexibility, because when it gets too tight and it stays that way, then we’re in survival mode. We answer differently, we’re speaking differently, we interact differently. And then when a person starts having distress or stress with coworkers, people they care about, etc., that’s when it really affects the self-confidence, and the daily functioning starts to really show a difference, because they’re operating in survival mode.
**Devorah:** I’ve never heard the nervous system be compared to an elastic band, but the way you explained it makes a lot of sense. And it seems like, even in our modern lingo, you hear the word, “Oh, this person snapped.” They just snap. It’s almost like people’s nervous systems, maybe as a result of trauma, but even just everyday life and stress, can get to that point of eventually snapping.
I am wondering, however, why so many high-functioning people will struggle silently for years before seeking help. I mean, you mentioned people sometimes throw themselves into productivity as a way of coping with stretching of the elastic. So, from the therapist perspective, how do you see these high-functioning people coming in after seemingly putting on this mask of “everything’s fine, I’m coping, I’m doing productive things”? How do you see that in session? And how do you sort of reconcile those years of wear and tear, so to speak, on their rubber band?
**Marta Hatter:** It’s really interesting when this happens, and we’re in survival mode, the system is working really hard to stay in control, right? Because inside we’re not feeling in control. So whether it’s the overactive or the underactive, high-functioning people are really good at coping, really good at solving problems, really good at being responsible, because that’s how they got to be high-functioning. So often they will overdrive into that, and there’s a lot of suffering that can be hidden by success. There might be actual loneliness taking place.
Sometimes it’s subtle things — it might just look like, “Oh, this person is always so busy, so busy, so busy.” But even when they have some moments there, they don’t have the flexibility in the system to go calm down and connect to something that’s refreshing to them or that’s recharging them. They’re still busy. They feel like they’ve got to get to the next thing. They’ve got to get to the next thing. They’ve got to get to the next thing.
So the high-functioning people can actually hide in the success. And it’s not conscious — they’re not doing this on purpose. The system is working really hard to stay in control, but it does interfere with relationships and things, because you only have so much energy. So maybe something you usually care about, the response is, “You figure it out. You make the decision. I’m not going to deal with it,” because there’s a limit to what we can do.
**Devorah:** You also work extensively with trauma, grief, loss, anxiety, depression, and relationship challenges. How do unresolved experiences or emotional wounds often show up in people’s everyday lives and relationships?
**Marta Hatter:** Unresolved things that take place — experiences, maybe some memory, something that was said, something that was done, something that we lived through — if they’re unresolved and the emotional wounds are still within, they rarely really stay in the past. What happens is they masquerade as everyday problems.
So something happens that kind of triggers the old, unhealed wound, or something takes place that there’s an association to something that’s happened to you in the past. And maybe you have recall of what took place in the past, and maybe you don’t, but we still have the reactions, because the body and the mind, they store everything, right? So, it’s almost like there’s a remote control, and when an association takes place — people often call them triggers — and this reaction that comes up, that’s really about the past. Right now, I call it living in trauma time, because it’s the traumatic or unhealed thing from the past that’s actually giving you that reaction at the time.
And you may not be conscious of it. You could actually be a safe, happy person who’s loved, that has a reaction to things as though you’re not, because that’s encoded and saved within the system differently when we have a lot of adrenaline, when it’s something traumatic or something emotionally difficult. And then that old remote control gets pushed, and then we’re living in trauma time — the masquerade.
**Devorah:** Following up on that question, why is it that sometimes people keep repeating the same painful relationship patterns, even when they consciously know that they want something different?
**Marta Hatter:** It’s very frustrating, and can actually be very painful and very dangerous for people as well. But when we become used to something — let’s say growing up with perhaps a very controlling, angry-type parent that micromanages everything, and it just seems really hard to live with — you think you never want to be with that kind of person again. Well, our system becomes sort of used to that, somewhat desensitized. So then perhaps there are other relationships — at work, maybe a neighbor, maybe a roommate, maybe a boyfriend or girlfriend — where there are similar dynamics. Well, the system is drawn to those because they’re familiar. So there’s a level of comfort even though it’s not good for you. And then often the dysfunctional things, or the difficult things, or the dangerous things show up.
And that’s why it’s so important, for example, in EMDR therapy, when we reprocess these targets — like maybe it would be, “Why am I in this relationship?” — maybe that’s the target. So when we work through that and it gets reprocessed, then that distress falls, and there’s a freedom that comes up, because that old stuff is released.
**Devorah:** EMDR is often associated with trauma treatment, but you also use it for peak performance work. How does EMDR help people move through performance blocks, anxiety, or self-doubt?
**Marta Hatter:** There’s so much endorsement for EMDR and trauma, crisis, grief, loss, and it’s wonderful and it’s sound. I’m a big advocate, I’m a big fan. When it comes to performance, something very similar takes place if there’s a block. For example, if a very creative person is just stuck — they can’t write another chapter. Or perhaps it’s an athlete that’s in a slump. Or an actor or actress who’s very accomplished can develop stage fright.
What takes place is something happens — maybe a few things, maybe just one thing. Maybe a sports commentator makes a very negative comment. Maybe there’s somebody evaluating the performance, and something very disappointing takes place. It could be physical to the body — maybe an athlete having an injury or something like that. Well, within us, oftentimes we develop negative cognitions, or negative beliefs about ourselves, and they are traumatic. They are traumatic. It doesn’t matter if it seems kind of little to us compared to someone that’s in the middle of a war or something — it works the same way in how our system is set up.
And then that becomes a block, and they’re unable to perform at their highest, because the nervous system is perceiving threat that’s not there. So then when we reprocess that and we work through that, it’s fascinating, because the creativity and the ability comes up as the distress goes down.
**Devorah:** People often assume that performance issues are just about confidence or discipline — meaning, if I practice this a hundred times, then I’ll be good at it. What do you think is actually happening, though, underneath the surface? And what does this look like also for not just athletes or high-performing people? What can the sort of everyday person understand from performance anxiety, and how to effectively work through it?
**Marta Hatter:** That’s a great question. There can be performance anxiety — let’s say I’m newly married, and I’m kind of intimidated by my new father-in-law. So I have difficulty speaking up or being comfortable in a conversation. Or let’s say I’m getting ready to take a licensing exam in my profession, and my practice scores are like 94%, 98%, and then I go to take the actual licensing exam and I absolutely bomb it.
What happens underneath is the negative cognitions, whether we’re aware of them or not, block — the nervous system is reacting as though there’s a perceived threat, even though there isn’t. And it can be something we have recall of. There’s a lot of science to all of this — I hope we don’t give you too much science — but with explicit memories, it’s something that’s clear to you: your address, your friend’s phone number, what the most important holidays are to you, etc. Your implicit memories can be something that took place a long time ago, and you don’t even have recall of it, but that is saved within your system, and you might be having that reaction now.
Everybody’s system works this way. We just have different things that might cause a block, and then we have things happening in real life that might or might not be perceived as threat by the system. So I can cognitively go, “Well, everything about this father — he’s nice to me, he’s welcoming to me into the family, there’s no reason that I should feel this way.” Yet at the emotional level, I’m having this reaction, and I don’t know that he reminds me of some super mean teacher I had when I was in fifth or sixth grade — but the memories are still in there.
So those are the types of things that we don’t question why. We identify it, we reprocess it, and when that distress comes down that’s associated with something, there’s like a bridge — so the distress comes down, and then the capability and the freedom and the peace of mind comes up, and then, whatever it is, our performance is better, because we’re relationally, emotionally well, connecting to what’s taking place right now.
**Devorah:** I know I learned a lot from speaking to you in this episode, and I’m really excited for whoever is watching this to have learned so much, and to also be able to reach out and schedule a consultation with you to learn more, and to know that deep healing is possible.
**Marta Hatter:** Thank you, because I love to talk about this. There’s nothing I think is as satisfying as seeing people be freed up to be functioning well and well-connected and content. So, thank you very much for your time.