Many high achievers avoid feelings without even realising it. In demanding careers, staying productive is celebrated, but it can become a way to disconnect from emotions. Understanding why high achievers avoid feelings is key to changing these patterns. If you’re a professional who prides yourself on results, you might see yourself in these subtle but powerful behaviours.
Why High Achievers Avoid Feelings at Work
High-achieving professionals often work in environments that value composure, control, and results. Emotions can feel like a liability—something to manage or hide. Over time, you learn strategies to keep feelings at bay so you can stay “on” at work. But avoiding emotions doesn’t make them disappear. Instead, it often makes them stronger, showing up as stress, anxiety, and burnout.
How High Achievers Learn to Avoid Feelings
These patterns usually don’t start in the workplace alone. Many high achievers learn them much earlier in life. For example, growing up in families where achievement was praised over emotional expression, where feelings were dismissed, or where conflict was avoided, can teach you to suppress vulnerability to maintain approval and safety. Some may have experienced parentification—taking on adult responsibilities or emotional caretaking roles for others—leaving little space to attend to their own feelings. Over time, these early experiences make emotional avoidance feel not just practical, but necessary.
Stopping to reflect can even feel dangerous or unsafe, because it means facing emotions long pushed aside. For professionals used to control and performance, allowing space for feelings can feel unfamiliar, overwhelming, or threatening. Cultural and social expectations to “be strong,” “stay professional,” or “never let them see you sweat” further reinforce these patterns, making them seem normal—even virtuous—until they start to hurt.
1. Filling Every Gap in Your Calendar
High-achieving professionals often keep their schedules packed, believing it’s a sign of commitment and effectiveness. But deliberately leaving no downtime can be a way to avoid self-reflection. Free time invites emotions like anxiety, grief, or self-doubt to surface. By staying in constant motion, you can avoid facing uncomfortable inner experiences you’re not ready to acknowledge.
2. Labeling It “Just Being Busy” to Avoid Emotions
Being busy is socially rewarded and easy to justify. But “just busy” can also be code for avoiding emotional needs you don’t want to face. By focusing on task lists and productivity, you don’t have to acknowledge feelings of loneliness, overwhelm, or dissatisfaction. This avoidance keeps you from recognising what you might actually need—like rest, connection, or support.
3. Using Work Hours to Sidestep Personal Life
Working late or staying constantly “available” can seem like dedication, but it often serves as escape. It allows you to delay or avoid personal conversations, conflict, or introspection. Instead of facing relationship tension, worries about home life, or even just sitting with your own thoughts, you stay in the safer, more controlled environment of professional responsibilities.
4. Changing the Subject to Avoid Emotional Intimacy
For many professionals, talking about feelings feels too vulnerable—or even “unprofessional.” So when someone asks how you really are, you deflect to safe, surface-level topics. This isn’t just social politeness; it’s a defence against the discomfort of emotional exposure. Avoiding these conversations keeps you from having to admit you’re struggling, worried, or in pain.
5. Defaulting to Problem-Solving Mode
High-achievers are often praised for being solution-focused. But constantly jumping to fix things can be a way to avoid actually feeling them. Emotions are messy and can’t always be solved. Offering solutions instead of sitting with feelings offers control, avoids uncertainty, and maintains the image of being capable—even when the underlying need is for empathy and understanding.
6. Answering “How Are You?” with Work Updates
Replying with what you’re working on is a safe way to avoid admitting to more vulnerable feelings. It keeps your professional mask firmly in place, showing competence instead of uncertainty. Admitting you’re anxious, sad, or tired can feel too exposed, especially in environments that value stoicism and constant performance.
7. Overthinking as a Way High Achievers Avoid Feelings
Intellectualising is a powerful way to keep emotions at arm’s length. By analysing and strategising about problems, you can avoid actually experiencing them. This creates a sense of safety and control. While insight is valuable, it can become a trap if it prevents you from feeling your emotions fully and processing them in a meaningful way.
8. Being the “Calm, Capable One” to Avoid Vulnerability
Many professionals pride themselves on being reliable and unflappable. Admitting you’re struggling can feel like failing at your role. This expectation to always be steady often leads to suppressing your own emotions. While it may help you cope in the short term, it can leave you feeling isolated, unsupported, and unable to ask for help when you really need it.
9. Working Harder When Stress or Anxiety Surface
When stress rises, the instinct is often to double down on work. It feels productive and provides temporary relief—a way to regain a sense of control. But this approach distracts you from understanding what’s actually causing your distress. Over time, it can fuel chronic stress, burnout, and leave you feeling disconnected from your own needs.
10. Striving for Perfection to Avoid Vulnerability
Perfectionism can look like admirable high standards, but it’s often a shield against feeling exposed. By getting everything “right,” you hope to avoid criticism, rejection, or feelings of inadequacy. It’s a way to stay safe from the discomfort of being human and imperfect. But this drive for flawlessness is exhausting and unsustainable, keeping you in a cycle of self-criticism and anxiety.
How EMDR Therapy Helps High Achievers Avoiding Feelings
One effective way to address these patterns is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) therapy. Originally developed for trauma, EMDR is widely used to help professionals work through anxiety, perfectionism, and emotional avoidance.
EMDR therapy can help high achievers avoid feelings by:
✅ Identifying and processing the root experiences and beliefs that fuel avoidance and perfectionism
✅ Reducing the emotional intensity of stressful memories and beliefs
✅ Helping you tolerate, understand, and integrate feelings instead of suppressing them
✅ Supporting a healthier, more balanced relationship with work and yourself
EMDR isn’t about making you less ambitious. It’s about helping you approach life and work with greater emotional freedom, security, and sustainability—so you can keep achieving without sacrificing your wellbeing.
About the Author
Dr. Pauline Chiarizia is a Counselling Psychologist specialising in trauma and eating disorders. She offers online talk therapy and EMDR for individuals who are ready to explore themselves more deeply, break free from unhelpful patterns, and address challenges like anxiety, low self-esteem, and burnout.
Dr. Chiarizia helps high-achieving professionals and others develop resilience, strengthen self-trust, and build the confidence to navigate life’s challenges—personally and professionally. Her approach empowers clients to cope with adversity while also being fully present for moments of joy, love, and connection.
She offers therapy online, based in London, and is available to clients across the UK, EU, and US.