The Hidden Wound Behind Every High Achiever

What if everything you've been working toward isn't actually what you want?

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What if the achieving, the pushing, the reinventing, the never stopping isn't ambition?

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What if it's armor?

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What if underneath all of it there is a woman who is exhausted and afraid and

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running from something she has never let herself fully feel.

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If that has landed somewhere in your chest, stay with me

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because today we're going to talk about what success stops when success stops being a dream and starts being a survival strategy.

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Think about your biggest accomplishment. The one that took the most out of you.

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The one you worked the hardest for. The one that when you finally achieved it should have felt like something.

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How did it feel? If the honest answer is it felt like nothing or I barely stopped to acknowledge it before moving to the next, you are not alone.

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You are not broken. But you are running.

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The question isn't whether you are successful.

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The question is what is your success trying to prove?

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Underneath almost every pattern of overachievement is a wound that whispers, "You are not enough.

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You are not worthy. You are not lovable.

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And the achieving becomes the answer to the wound.

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If I accomplish enough, maybe I'll finally feel worthy.

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If I build enough, maybe I'll finally feel lovable.

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But here's what nobody tells you. No accomplishment can reach the wound.

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Because the wound isn't in the resume. It's in your nervous system.

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It's in the little girl who learned that who she was wasn't safe to show.

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The achieving keeps you moving, but it never takes you home.

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What are your accomplishments trying to prove?

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And to whom you have nothing to fear but fear itself.

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And how that engine became when that became my driving engine.

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I looked for accomplishments.

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I did a lot of things to be somebody that I wanted to be. But I never felt anything and I was always going on to the next.

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When I finally wrote my books and got them where I wanted them and I became a number one bestseller, I became

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internationally award-winning on all three of them.

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It didn't do anything. The second book had started because I started to take give myself more credit, but the first one it meant nothing.

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And that was not an easy book to write. It was not an easy book to live through.

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But it wasn't enough because I always felt like I had something important to do and I haven't found it. And when I wrote those books,

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I thought that they were going to be something different than what they were.

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I do now see what those books are, but I didn't do it. I didn't see it during that period of time.

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I didn't realize how deep I was going and to what level I was starting to show the world who I was

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where I was unearthing the truth of who I was and not the lies that were perpetuated on me.

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I knew something was wrong. I've always known something was wrong. I didn't know what that was.

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But I always felt like I had to prove that I was worthy. I always said God didn't make junk.

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And yet somehow I feel like I wasn't in line at the time this happened. I mean seriously, I mean this is a little girl

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talking. This is somebody who's trying to make sense of a world because the first time that I started that this

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pattern came in and I'm going to go deeper into it because this is right now I'm living in this pattern and I'm seeing it and I've been asking for it is

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at six years old I told my father the truth. I called him a hypocrite without knowing what that word meant and I got

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smacked across my face. And I remember the words I said and I remember where I

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was was I said, "Dad, I don't have to do what you say because what you do is

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different." And I got walloped across the face and I didn't understand that. And I remember

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not knowing that. I got older and I understood what I had done. I called him a hypocrite. But what it also did is it

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it said what the psychologists always said, little kids learn from their parents. We it's not what they say, it's

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what they do. And I was telling him that totally innocent.

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Totally innocent.

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But what I learned is honesty wasn't safe. And so I spent the rest of my life trying to pro prove that that moment wasn't true.

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But see, here's what else happened in that period. I became a young adult and an adult.

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And I I always always always heard my mother tell me, "You're going to hell

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because you're mean and you tell people you hurt people's feelings all the time." And I listened to that for years about how I hurt everybody. And one day

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I stood up to her and I said, "I don't intend to hurt people. I never have. I tell people the truth." And with inside the word truth is the word hurt.

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Hence, truth hurts.

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And I remember the first time when I stood up to my mother, I was so incredibly angry because I was so tired

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of hearing it. I I knew I knew without a shadow of a doubt that that was a lie. And it always came from your intention.

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If I intended to hurt somebody, that's one thing. But that was never my intention. And I think what it was is

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that I could see through my parents and they hated me for it.

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I also know that my mother told me that she loved me and my mother did not love me. Okay, these are things that I I

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always felt. I always knew. And when that woman died, she proved that I was right my whole life because that woman

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left me out of her will when I listened to her my whole life saying, "I'm going to leave something for all my kids

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because I think it's really important." And she very intentionally and deliberately kept me out of her will.

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And I remember when I stared at that will the day that I buried her and I just realized I was never loved.

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That woman really hated me for whatever reason. I didn't know why.

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I didn't care anymore. It just hurt. And I walked away from my family at that moment. I was like, I'm done. I don't

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know who you people are. I do not understand what's going on with the death of this woman. The woman was crazy.

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I don't know who you are. We didn't learn this. And spirit had to tell me, "No, you didn't learn this because you're not

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them. You were never them." And that's this is all in my books. And

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this is a best-selling, award-winning book. This is the pain that I went through. This is what we go through when we wake up and start remembering.

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And that should have been enough for me to be able to say, "Wow, I really did something." But see what happened is I

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felt nothing because I never felt worthy.

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The underlying of unworthiness is unlovable. But see, I resolved that. But

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I never got through the unworthiness part. I never felt like I was good enough. I never knew why because every

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time I stood up for myself in my life, people had an issue.

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I walked around my life staying silent. I didn't know how to

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speak in my 20s. I really didn't. I knew how to vomit emotion, but I didn't know how to do anything else. I was so full

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of anger and so full of rage and I wanted people to leave me alone because I could not take any more pain.

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And being an empath, I was taking on even more. And the world wasn't even fully crazy yet. It was getting there, but it wasn't there yet.

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And I remember just I had to release the rage. And I had to find what that rage was.

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And I've been asking because I've been feeling a block and I did a couple of things this week or

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no it was last week. I did breath work and I couldn't hear anything the woman said. I just was breathing. That's all I

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could hear because the music was too loud. And it was okay because I also know that spirit has a tendency to blind my ears if they want me to be have a

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solo experience. And apparently that's what they did because everyone could hear this woman find except for me. So I realized that spirit put their hands

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over my ears. And there were three cards that came up that she read from. I don't know who the first two were, but I did hear the archangel Michael. I did hear

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it was the root chakra. And I heard it was a block.

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And I'm like, "Okay, well that explains a lot of what I've been experiencing and feeling at that moment."

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And so I kept asking my body, what is going on with you? What is it? What am I blocked from?

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And today it was driven home because today

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I remember my mother telling me how I was going to hell. And I heard that almost every single day of my life for years.

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And I the Tasmanian devil came out for that moment. You know, I I do my thing because I had to release the emotion.

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And it made sense to me and it brought tears to my eyes because then I go into a nonviolent communication

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webinar meeting, whatever it was. And I go, it goes further

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because the gentleman I was with, we talked about Catholic school and how the nuns and the priests and all this, I'm like, "Oh my god." And all I saw was

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that just the layering and the layering and the layering of you're not allowed to speak up.

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You're not allowed to share anything.

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We don't want to hear anything you have to say. And I interpreted it as I'm unlovable.

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I'm unworthy. And I don't even know why I'm here. And then I wondered why am I suicidal?

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because what I have is way beyond post-traumatic stress syndrome because this was repeated to me my entire life

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until I hit my 30s. And I told my mother that if she didn't stop,

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she would never see me again. And she knew I meant it and I did mean it

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because I was done. I couldn't take any more pain on.

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And so I continued to persevere. And everybody always had issues about my anger. And I'm like, well, I don't know why you're saying that because I'm fine with my anger. My anger kept me alive.

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My anger kept me moving forward. But it wasn't anger. It was rage.

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But see, when I wasn't angry or raging and people are saying, "You have a lot of anger." And I would just look at them and say, "Yeah, so what's your point?

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I'm not showing it. So what are you hiding in your anger?

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Because there it was easier to point the finger than to look at themselves because I was a mirror as all people are mirrors to us.

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And I had to keep and I kept moving. I didn't take any anger on I didn't take it was like wow people really have

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issues with me boy and I'm still here and I didn't want to continue living out

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of rage and anger and in spite of it all. I wanted to find another way to be okay in my body with my life and start

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recognizing that I am a good person and that I am valuable and I have something to say.

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And I just kept moving through my life and just kept going deeper and deeper. I watch the anger and rage release. I It's

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not all gone. It probably will never be all gone, but I am releasing a lot. And what I was at 20 to where I am today is

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night and day. And when people still try to tell me that I'm not allowed to say anything or even if I'm being crystal

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clear and they're choosing not to hear it, I'm going to say something because I have a right to say it.

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And I'm not going to be blamed for something that somebody else starts, but I will finish it and I will end it. and I will do my best not to hurt your feelings, but you want to keep pushing.

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I will push back because we as women don't push back. I know that when it comes to men, a lot of times I still

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believe everything they say and know it's and yet I do it anyways.

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And I realize this and I'm learning to stop doing that because we as women were conditioned and trained to listen to a

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man and we were subservient to them. And no, we are not.

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No, we are not. We are different from men. We are not above them. We are not below them. We are different. We are

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supposed to be complimentary to our partner.

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And yet, for some reason, we still take the role. We're supposed to do it. We're the caregivers. We're supposed to provide for the families. Man doesn't

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want to be in the family anymore. The woman gets stuck with the kids because that's what she does as a mother.

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And that's not right. And it's wrong.

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And that's our society. And I blame our society for a lot of that. I don't know when we went wrong. I don't know why we went wrong, but we chose to go wrong.

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And that's what it is. But I wanted my life to be different. I wanted to set a different example. I wanted to to live

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differently than everyone else. And so I found Mary Morrisy and I found David Bearer and with David Bearer he had the

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whole human framework and I was working on my unworthiness and I realized that the core wound was really deeper. It was

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um I am unlovable and I worked through it and I started to

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see the pattern when I would spiral out so I could stop the p the spiral because

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that was making me crazy. And so if I could stop the spiral, I could stop that and I can start shifting and growing.

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And it was a huge answer for what I was looking for at that time.

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And then the day came when S was injured from work and I was trying to help him and after two weeks I couldn't do

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anything and I felt helpless. I felt unworthy. I felt like I should be able to do this because that's what women do and there was nothing I could do.

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So, I collapsed into tears and he came into the bedroom and he got on the bed and he just held me and I was just

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sobbing and I told him, "I feel like a failure." And the moment those words came out, the

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voice in my head said, "You are anything but a failure." At that moment, I saw all of my

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accomplishments at once, not as proof of being worthy,

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but as evidence of who I already am. And that realization, I knew that Sal had to do this alone.

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That was the moment I stopped confusing love with control.

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That was the moment that I finally came home.

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A paradigm is a belief so deeply embedded that it feels like fact.

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I am not enough. I have to earn love.

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My worth is tied to my productivity. These aren't truths.

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They are paradigms.

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and paradigms can be questioned and proven wrong. So here's the practice.

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Write down one belief that drives your achieving something like I have to do blank to be worthy.

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Now look at it. Is this actually provably objectively true?

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Write down three pieces of evidence that prove it wrong.

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Just three.

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They don't have to be big. They just have to be real.

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Because the moment you can see one crack in the paradigm, the light gets in.

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And paradigms that have light in them cannot hold the same power over you.

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Now, now I want you to close your eyes.

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Put your hand on your heart and take in a deep breath and exhale.

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Bring to mind the version of you that achieves

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The one who pushes who proves, who never stops.

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Look at her with compassion.

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She has been working so hard for so long.

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trying to earn something that was never actually in question.

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Now bring to mind the version of you underneath all of that.

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The one who just wants to rest, who just wants to be loved.

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who just wants to know I am enough exactly as I am.

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Now say to yourself, I don't have to earn my worth.

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I don't have to prove my value.

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I was enough before the first accomplishment and I am enough right now.

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God did not make junk. He made me.

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Take in one long breath.

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and let it go

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and open your eyes when you're ready. Your success is real.

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Everything you have built is real.

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and none of it is the source of your worth.

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Next week I'm going to talk about what collapse is trying to tell you.

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Come check out the I am the light sanctuary for 7 days to see if this is a fit. No pressure.

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Maybe this is what you've been looking for so you can finally let down your hair.

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The link will be in the show notes.

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Thank you for watching and if you want to be notified when my next video drops, subscribe to the channel and you won't miss another episode.

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I am Kathleen Flanigan. You don't have to carry this alone.

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