Today I want to talk about a phenomenon we’re seeing with so many of our clients -because it’s something I think you will eerily relate to as well. In our programs we tend to work with mid-career, mid-life professionals – so usually people in their mid to late 30s to 50s. These are people who have been in the workforce for 20 plus years. Many have led teams, million dollar projects,  they’ve gotten awards in their fields, they’ve mentored others and they’re the ones people turn to for advice. 

But here’s what’s weird, at least to them. Despite the fact that they have spent YEARS proving themselves, despite the fact that they are full fledged and highly accomplished adults with big titles and substantial salaries… it’s remarkably easy for them to feel reduced to being a vulnerable, nervous kid all over again. 

Specifically, it’s this visceral feeling of getting in trouble. Which if you were the good kid, the gold star student, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s this bizarre brand of dread that might start in your chest or stomach. Your heart rate spikes, not gradually, but all at once and it may stay there for hours. This hypervigilance kicks in – suddenly you’re scanning every interaction, every email, every change in expression, trying to figure out what you did wrong and scanning for confirmation or signs that you’re safe, that you’re okay, that no one is ACTUALLY mad at you. 

It’s not just typical anxiety. It’s not general stress about your performance. It’s this very particular childhood-like sensation of being caught doing something you should’ve known better than to do, of having disappointed someone in authority, that you’re about to be called out for not being good enough, smart enough, careful enough.. It’s the same reaction when you heard your full name called from across the house in that tone, or when the teacher asked you to stay after class. Even though you’re 45 years old, your body is responding like you’re eight years old and about to lose recess privileges. 

There’s this specific flavor of shame that accompanies it too. Not just embarrassment about a mistake which is bad enough, but a deeper feeling of having let someone down, of not being the reliable person everyone thought you were. Again, it’s reminiscent of the shame you felt as a kid when you forgot to do your homework or when you let down a teacher who believed in you. That sense that you’ve somehow failed to live up to expectations you may not have even fully understood. 

The regression happens so fast it’s almost disorienting. One moment you’re an accomplished professional making big decisions and leading people. The next moment, someone questions your approach or asks for clarification on something, or you get a snide email, and boom – you’re transported back to that vulnerable state where you feel small, exposed, like you’re about to be found out as inadequate somehow. Your adult brain knows this doesn’t make logical sense, but your nervous system has already launched into full reactive mode.

It can be triggered by the smallest things. Not actual crises or serious mistakes, but minor feedback, gentle corrections, or even neutral communication that your nervous system interprets as threats. 

The whole experience can be so bewildering because it leaves you feeling simultaneously like a totally competent adult who knows better AND like a scared child who just wants to hide until the grown-ups stop being upset. It’s this bizarre split where part of you recognizes how irrational the response is, while another part of you is completely convinced that you’re about to face serious consequences for some issue you can’t even name… or that might not even be real. 

Now, the reason I wanted to dedicate an entire episode to this topic is because while this reaction is incredibly common among the leaders I coach, it’s also like a closely guarded dirty little secret they have because it feels so incongruent with your professional identity. You’re supposed to be the calm, collected leader. You’re the one people come to for guidance and reassurance. You’re not supposed to be the one having a mini-panic response because someone asked you to revise a proposal.  So you might think, how could I possibly admit this? How do you tell someone that despite your tenure and level that you sometimes feel like a scared kid who’s about to get sent to the principal’s office? How do you explain that the same person who  presents to executive committees also feels like an email is equivalent to their parents yelling at them? 

The silence only makes it worse, because then you start to think you’re the only one which makes you feel even more defective.

This is actually a big reason why I’m hosting my upcoming event, High Performance Under High Pressure. It’s happening Sept 9th at 3pm ET and during that training, I’m going to be sharing the 6 mental shifts elite leaders use to stay confident, calm, and in control in demanding roles – without sacrificing their sensitivity. We are bringing you inside the minds of top performers at companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft who broke the cycle of grinding harder but advancing slower. All you have to do is head to melodywilding.com/highperformance to RSVP or you can also find the link in the show notes. 

I can tell you firsthand that leaders who reach the highest levels aren’t the ones who never experience that “getting in trouble” sensation. Many do, especially if they are more sensitive. They’re just the ones though who’ve learned to recognize it for what it is – an outdated alarm system – and have developed tools to regulate their nervous system before it hijacks their presence and all the credibility they’ve built. 

Because that constant hypervigilance, that scanning for threats, that tendency to interpret neutral feedback as evidence of impending doom – it’s exactly what keeps smart, driven, thoughtful people like you stuck right where you are. When you’re operating from a place of “I hope I’m not in trouble,” you’re not operating from a place of confidence in the value you bring to the table. 

This pattern keeps you trapped in two ways. Number one, you hold yourself back and take yourself out of the running for opportunities because you think “If I can barely handle the stress of my workload NOW without freaking out, then how could I possibly handle MORE”. 

And two, when others can see or sense when you’re operating from fear, and it undermines their trust in your abilities. When you hedge your recommendations with seventeen caveats because you’re terrified of being wrong, people hear uncertainty. When you ramble through explanations because you’re afraid someone will find a hole in your logic, you sound unprepared. When you go silent in challenging moments because you’re afraid of saying the wrong thing, you seem clueless. When leaders above you are deciding who’s ready for bigger responsibilities, they’re looking for people who can stay calm under pressure, who can make decisions with incomplete information, who can advocate for their vision even when it’s challenged.

This creates a vicious cycle. The more you doubt yourself, the more others start to doubt you too. The more you operate from fear, the more you reinforce to yourself that there’s something to be afraid of. 

So today, I want to help you understand why this feeling of being in trouble at work happens and give you some tools to start shifting out of it. Because you absolutely have to address this pattern if you want to step into bigger and better things in your career.  The bad news is, there are always going to be challenges and triggers, even more so as you take on more responsibility. But the good news is that your nervous system learned this “getting in trouble” response, which means it can unlearn it too. 

So let’s start unpacking where this reaction comes from. Because it didn’t just develop in your adult professional life – it’s much older than that. It’s programming that was installed when you were young, probably between the ages of 3 and 10, when your brain was still figuring out how to navigate relationships with authority figures and what it meant to be safe and accepted by them.

During those formative years, your brain was essentially building a blueprint for how relationships work, particularly with people who have power over you. If you have kids then you know that children don’t just need food and shelter to survive – they need emotional connection and approval from their caregivers. Your developing brain understood, on a very primitive level, that being rejected or disappointing the adults in your life could genuinely threaten your survival.

So your nervous system probably became incredibly sophisticated at reading emotional cues and predicting potential threats to that crucial bond – and most of this is happening outside your conscious awareness. It learned to notice when Mom’s voice had that particular edge, when Dad’s face showed signs of frustration, when the teacher’s smile seemed forced, or your sports coach seemed disappointed. 

Now, if you relate to being a Sensitive Striver, you came into the world with “observant wiring” – with a brain and body more naturally attuned to subtleties in your environment. You were probably the kid who noticed things other children missed: the slight tension in a room when adults were trying to hide their stress, the way someone’s energy shifted even when their words stayed the same, the emotional undercurrents that others seemed oblivious to. Your brain was processing more information, picking up on micro-expressions, tone variations, and cues that give you a more complete picture of what’s really happening around you. 

And for you, nature might have met nurture: In some family systems or environments, that heightened sensitivity became not just useful but necessary for emotional or even physical safety. Maybe you grew up in a household where emotions ran high and you learned that reading the room could help you avoid conflict. Maybe you had a parent who was unpredictable, and your survival strategy was to become expert at detecting their mood shifts before they escalated. Or perhaps you were in situations where being the “good kid” who anticipated everyone’s needs was the way to secure your place and avoid being a burden.

So it created this perfect storm where your innate sensitivity was reinforced and amplified by circumstances that made emotional scanning really valuable and those neural pathways got more and more strong and persistent.

Every time you successfully avoided disappointing an adult by reading their mood correctly, every time you got praise for being “good,” every time you felt that wash of relief when you realized you weren’t actually in trouble – your brain was strengthening the neural pathway that said: “Pay close attention to authority figures. Their approval equals safety. Their disapproval equals danger.” 

You probably got attention and approval when you brought home good grades, when you followed rules perfectly, when you didn’t express your opinion or make a fuss, you anticipated what adults needed before they asked. Your developing brain made a very logical connection: “I am safe and loved when I do things right. I am at risk when I make mistakes or fall short of expectations.”

The problem is, these neural pathways don’t just POOF disappear when you turn 18 and enter the workforce. Your brain is now taking professional situations and processing them through the same lens and old programming.  Your boss’s expression gets processed the same way your parent’s frustration did twenty years ago, triggering the same protective responses even when protection isn’t rationally needed. This is why the reaction feels so visceral and so immediate. 

Add to all of this, that the work environment itself is designed in ways that can trigger these old patterns. You have clear hierarchies, performance reviews that feel remarkably similar to report cards, and systems where your livelihood literally depends on keeping authority figures satisfied with your work. 

Plus, the higher you rise, the more visible your potential mistakes become. When you were managing a small team, a misstep might affect a few people and be quickly forgotten. But when you’re leading a division, your decisions are scrutinized by multiple stakeholders, discussed in leadership meetings you’re not part of, and sometimes become the subject of gossip and politics. So your nervous system isn’t completely wrong to detect there are some similarities here! Just like when you were a kid, there really are authority figures watching your performance, evaluating whether you’re meeting expectations, and potentially having conversations about your behavior when you’re not in the room. The stakes are real, even if they’re not life-or-death, which is why that worry about “being bad” can come up and linger longer. 

And as you move up in your career, feedback also becomes much more ambiguous. When you were junior, you probably got clear direction: “Complete this report by Friday. Format it like this. Include these sections.” Success was relatively straightforward to measure. But at senior levels, you’re dealing with decisions where there’s no clear right answer, political dynamics that shift constantly, and expectations that are often unspoken or even contradictory.

This ambiguity is particularly challenging for Sensitive Strivers because your brain is constantly trying to figure out the “right” way to do things, but at higher levels, the rules are murky and constantly changing. So your brain, which is already primed to scan for signs of approval or disapproval, goes into overdrive trying to decode the signals all around you – and that process itself can drain your energy and leave you with less emotional wherewithal to respond in a grounded way when little threats do come up. 

Think of your nervous system like a bucket.You have a certain amount of water in that bucket which is your bandwidth for handling stress and uncertainty. When you’re constantly scanning for threats, taking in more information, trying to predict what people think about you,  you’re using up the water in that bucket really quickly. By the time something actually happens that triggers that “getting in trouble” feeling – even something minor like a teammate asking you a question in a meeting – your emotional reserves are already depleted. You don’t have the psychological bandwidth to take a step back and assess the situation objectively so your reaction feels disproportionate to what’s happening. Your tired brain defaults to the quickest, most familiar response pattern: panic first, think later. 

This is why you might handle a major crisis with complete composure on Monday morning when you’re fresh, but then completely spiral over a mildly critical email on Thursday afternoon when you’ve spent three days hyperanalyzing everything. It’s not that Thursday’s email was objectively worse – it’s that your CAPACITY to regulate your response is already lower. 

The irony is that the more senior your role becomes, the more demands there are on your mental and emotional energy, which means if you’re not careful or don’t have the right tools and mindset in place, then you’re even more likely to be operating from this depleted state. 

Alright, let’s review what we’ve covered so far: your childhood wiring can play a role, as can the dynamics of your work environment and just being a person with a career today. When that intersects with being a naturally more sensitive person, it creates this perfect storm where you feel “wrong,” “bad,” or like you’re going to get in trouble – even when there’s no objective evidence to support that feeling.

I share all this not to say that you should blame your parents or your upbringing (though of course, PLEASE unpack it with a trained professional) but so that you can see how your past might be informing your present reactions. Because that insight, that understanding this gives you agency to change it. 

I’m also not suggesting you up and leave your job tomorrow. Most people don’t have the luxury of doing that, even if they’re stuck in a genuinely toxic situation. Plus you need to realize: you take yourself everywhere you go. There’s a phrase from my therapy days that applies perfectly here – you repeat what you don’t repair. If you don’t address this pattern of reacting to workplace challenges like you’re about to get in trouble, it will follow you to every role, every company, every relationship you have.

You could get the perfect job with the perfect boss in the perfect company, and if this internal alarm system is still running unchecked, you’ll find ways to feel anxious and threatened there too. Your nervous system will scan for problems until it finds them – or creates them. So don’t get me wrong, changing your external circumstances can 100% help, especially if you have the means and opportunity to do that. But no matter what, learning to regulate your internal response so that you can show up as the confident, competent leader you actually are is BEYOND critical regardless of what’s happening around you – regardless of whether you’re in your current role or team or another one in the future. 

So how do you begin doing that?

The first step is actually what we’ve been doing here – naming the pattern. Most people, especially Sensitive Strivers experience that “getting in trouble” feeling and immediately get swept up in the story their mind creates: “What did I do wrong? How can I fix this? What are they thinking about me?” But once you understand that this is an old program running, you can start to catch it in real time.

So the next time you feel that familiar knot in your stomach when you see an unexpected meeting request, or your heart rate spikes when someone asks to “circle back” on something, name what’s happening: “Okay, there’s that childhood alarm going off again. My body thinks I’m in trouble, but let me look at the actual facts here.” 

This is actually called “cognitive labeling” in psychology. It’s a fancy way of saying that when you give the unknown a label, the fear center of your brain literally calms down. I have cats and so I think about it like the difference between hearing a strange noise at night in your house and knowing it was the cats knocking something down vs. having no idea what it was. Your brain stops running the threat -because it now has information about what’s actually happening. When you can say, “Oh this is just my childhood programming getting played out here,” you move from being at the mercy of an unnamed force to being someone who understands what’s happening and can respond accordingly.

Notice the tone I’m using when I talk to myself about this reaction. It’s not judgmental or harsh. I’m not saying “What an idiot you are” or “I can’t believe you’re overreacting again.” That kind of self-criticism just adds another layer of stress which you don’t need. Instead, the tone is neutral, almost curious.

You can even add in phrases that normalize the experience entirely. My friend and past podcast guest Jay Fields taught me to use language like “It makes so much sense why I’d feel that way” or I also like to say “How human of me to assume that or react that way,” or This kind of language acknowledges the reaction without making you wrong for having it.

When you speak to yourself this way, you’re treating your nervous system like a well-meaning but overly protective friend. It’s just trying to keep you safe even though it’s using outdated information. You’re not angry at your friend for being concerned – you’re just gently correcting their assessment of the situation. This goes such a long way to create that inner sense the psychological safety that you actually need to calm down. 

Another tactic you can use when that “OMG I’m in trouble” response comes up is to use a because statement. When you feel that triggered reaction, complete this sentence: “I’m feeling ____ because…” For example: “I’m feeling like I’m in trouble because there’s a lot of red markup on this document and it reminds me of getting a D in AP English,” or “I’m panicking because my boss’s tone was short and I’m jumping right to the conclusion that I’m getting fired.” Because statements trigger the logical reasoning part of your brain, which can help pull you out of that hazy emotional swirl. You’re making your mind switch from purely emotional processing to analytical processing. When you’re in that triggered state, you’re operating primarily from what’s called limbic system – the emotional center that’s all about survival and threat detection. But the moment you start looking for reasons and connections, you activate your prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for logic, reasoning, and putting things in perspective.

The beauty of this technique is that it often reveals how your current reaction is being hijacked by something completely unrelated to the present situation. You might realize: “I’m feeling defensive because this feedback reminds me of my dad pointing out everything I did wrong,” or “I’m spiraling because getting called into an unexpected meeting feels exactly like being written up in middle school. “Suddenly you can see there might be multiple interpretations of the situation, not just the catastrophic one your nervous system defaulted to.

And again, when you do this, the current situation often loses its emotional charge. You can literally feel yourself downshift when you make that connection. It’s like your brain goes, “Oh, wait. This isn’t actually about my competence as a professional. This is about my 12-year-old self and I can remind that version of me that we’ve got this.”

Full disclosure – all of this takes practice. Calming these reactions will not happen overnight. I think you’re smart enough to know that. You didn’t develop this pattern in a week, and you won’t completely rewire it in a week either. But what you can do is start recognizing it when it happens, begin to separate the alarm from the actual situation, and gradually build your tolerance for the discomfort that comes with leadership-level challenges. With time and the right approach, that visceral “getting in trouble” reaction will become nothing more than background noise that you notice but don’t let drive your decisions. 

We’ve only scratched the surface here, but hopefully this episode is helping you see how much your success at work is actually tied to your ability to manage your internal responses. Your inner world – your thoughts, emotions, insecurities, habits and more. All of that mental chatter is quietly shaping every interaction you have. Every opportunity you do or don’t raise you hand for. 

And many high-achievers spend enormous energy trying to control their external circumstances while completely ignoring the system inside them that’s actually running the show. Two people can face the exact same workplace challenge and have completely different outcomes, not because of their skill level or experience, but because of how they’re processing what’s happening internally.

At the High Performance Under High Pressure training happening September 9th at 3pm ET, we’re going to be unpacking 6 specific toxic beliefs that are keeping you stuck in cycles of self-doubt and exhaustion – even when you’re crushing it on the outside. Because when you rewire these beliefs, make these mental shifts. That’s when you command respect without working weekends to earn it. When you can disagree in meetings without getting a lump in your throat. When you finally feel as capable as everyone already knows you are externally.

Make sure to RSVP at melodywilding.com/highperformance – you can also find that link in the show notes. During this training, we’re also going to be opening the doors to the next cohort of RESILIENT, my 3-month program for Sensitive Strivers who are ready to double their confidence in 90 days. 

This is the only leadership training and coaching prorgam of it’s kind that gives you step by step strategies to take your sensitivity – the very thing you’ve been told is a PROBLEM – and turn it into your competitive EDGE. After just 13 weeks in the program our clients report that they’re 

📈 75% stronger at being assertive and saying no
📈 73% calmer under pressure
📈 63% more in control of their emotions

And we’d love to help you next. So make sure you RSVP for the High Performance Under High pressure training on September 9th.  You’re going to want to be there live for the best pricing and bonuses we offer for RESILIENT. Again, that’s melodywilding.com/highperformance. I’ll see you there and I’ll catch you in the next episode!