The Tiredness Trap Week 5: The Hidden Exhaustion of High Performance

You may have noticed there was no email last week.

The irony is not lost on me. A series about exhaustion, interrupted by exhaustion.

Here is what actually happened. I hit a wall. Not a dramatic one. The quiet kind, the one that arrives without announcement, where everything starts to feel like too much and the tank is simply empty. I’d been in my head too much, running on lists and output and forward motion, and somewhere along the way I’d stopped doing the things I know help.

I noticed it. Named it. Put my feet on the ground, literally, and paid attention to what my body was telling me. Talked it through with my therapist. And then, slowly, I came back.

That is not a failure of the process. That is the process.

Recovery is not a destination you arrive at and stay. It is a practice you return to, repeatedly, for the rest of your life. I don’t always get it right. I’m not sure anyone does.

The Boom

I want to give you a specific example, because the abstract version of this doesn’t do it justice.

Recently I’ve been working on improving the quality of consultation processes and note-keeping at the Centre for Men’s Health, where I do my testosterone and sexual health work. It’s a project that combines almost everything I enjoy: quality improvement, research, analysis, attention to detail, holding responsibility for something meaningful. It’s also genuinely novel.

I noticed I was becoming very focused on it. Evenings that should have been with my family, I’d find myself back at the computer, adding, editing, improving. Not because I had to. Because it was almost the only thing on my mind. The project had filled the available space and then kept expanding.

That is hyperfocus. For an ADHD brain, it isn’t a choice. It is the system doing what the system does when it finds something sufficiently novel and engaging. From the outside this can look like extraordinary dedication. From the inside, it is a kind of possession. The thing has you, not the other way around.

The Crash

The switch, when it comes, is overnight. Almost literally.

One day: energy, ideas, momentum, everything connected and flowing. The next: nothing. Morose thoughts that stick and won’t shift. Life feeling a bit pointless, a bit hollow. No interest in anything. Unable to locate the motivation that was so vivid twenty-four hours ago.

My wife tells me I recover from these down days quickly. By the next morning I’m usually okay. Which is characteristic of the ADHD pattern. The same intensity that drives the boom drives the recovery. The dial moves fast in both directions.

But here is what the crash actually costs, even when it’s brief. It costs presence. It costs connection. It costs the evening with the people you love, which you gave to the project, and then it costs the day when you’re flat and unreachable.

The Thing Underneath the High Performance

There is something harder to talk about underneath all of this.

A child-like enthusiasm for certain kinds of work sits alongside a fragile sense of self. The joy of diving deep into something is real. But so is the discomfort of being seen doing it well.

As a child, I hated being the centre of attention. Doing well at something came with a particular kind of shame: a sense that I was taking up too much space, being too much, inviting scrutiny I didn’t want. Some version of that has never entirely gone away.

Writing this series involves putting a lot of myself into a public space, week after week. That takes more out of me than it might appear to from the outside. Sometimes it is genuinely too much.

The imposter arrives regularly. The voice that says: who do you think you are?

I’ve learned something useful about that voice. Fighting it doesn’t work. What helps is acknowledgement. Thank you for being here. Thank you for keeping me honest and level-headed. The imposter isn’t the enemy. It’s a guard against arrogance. It has something to add, if you can hear it without being ruled by it.

The Grounding Work

When I hit the wall last week, the thing that helped most was something very simple.

I stopped. I shifted my attention to my feet on the ground. I engaged my senses with what was actually in front of me. Not the list of things undone. The roses in the garden, just beginning to bloom. The sound of birds in the morning. The specific quality of the light.

This is taken from John Eaton’s Reverse Therapy approach. The central idea is the distinction between the body-mind and the head-mind. The body-mind is present, sensory, connected to what is actually happening now. The head-mind is elsewhere, planning, worrying, running scenarios, living in abstraction.

For men who are ADHD, neurodivergent, or high-performance processors, the head-mind tends to dominate. The body becomes transport for the brain rather than a source of information in its own right.

The exercise is simply this: when you notice you’re not present, think “stop.” Shift awareness to your feet on the ground. Engage your senses with now.

It sounds almost insultingly simple. It works because it interrupts the loop and returns you to a body that is, right now, not in danger.

More on the high-performance processor approach: Your High-Performance Processing System Needs Different Operating Conditions

Change One Thing

Next time you feel the boom pulling you away from the people in front of you, notice it.

You don’t have to stop the project. Just pause for a moment. Put your feet on the ground. Name what you’re feeling: I’m hyperfocused. I’m in the boom. I’m not quite here right now.

That single act of naming is the beginning of choice.

Leave a comment below and tell me whether you recognise the boom-crash pattern.

References

Andreassen, C.S. et al. The relationship between workaholism and symptoms of psychiatric disorders. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 2016.

Eaton, J. Reverse Therapy. Hammersmith Press, 2005.

Barkley, R.A. Taking Charge of Adult ADHD. Guilford Press, 2010.

WFSBP/ASLM Lifestyle Medicine Guidelines for Major Depressive Disorder, 2022.