When High Performance Stops Feeling Like a Strength

Agni Czarnecka
Dec 17, 2025
4 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

Busy working proffessionals rushing to work in London City or Canary Wharf

Most people who contact me don’t say, “I think I’m burned out.”

They say things like:

“I’m just tired – everyone is tired.” “It’s only until this deal closes.” “Other people seem to cope. I should be able to as well.”

On paper, they’re doing well: senior roles in finance, law, tech, consulting or creative agencies in the City and Canary Wharf. The CV reads as it “should”. But somewhere between meetings, inboxes and deadlines, something has started to fray.

They describe a drift from engaged and driven to flat, irritable, or strangely absent from their own life.

I’m a UKCP-accredited psychodynamic psychotherapist and coach based in Canary Wharf in East London, working with people in London and online across the UK and Europe. At Thinking Hour, I see many high-pressure professionals, executives, creatives, founders and expats who are used to performing at a very high level – and who are often slow to recognise the cost.

How burnout can look in high performers

Burnout in this context rarely announces itself dramatically. It tends to arrive quietly and then stay.

It might look like:

Finding it harder to think clearly or make decisions that once felt simple.
A sense of distance or numbness – going through the motions, but not really inhabiting the day.
Being exhausted but wired at night; waking already tired.
Physical tension that is “probably nothing”: headaches, tight chest, stomach issues.
Work that once felt meaningful now feeling thin, grey, or purely instrumental.

From the outside, very little may have changed. Emails are answered, projects completed, small talk maintained. Inside, there is often a sense of slipping out of one’s own life.

The beliefs that keep people stuck

People who come to see me have usually managed alone for a long time. A few familiar beliefs tend to sit underneath that:

“I should be able to handle this.” Many of my clients have built careers on being the person who copes. Asking for help can feel unfamiliar or even threatening to a well-established identity.

“This is just what the job is.” In environments where long hours and high stress are normal, it becomes difficult to tell the difference between “demanding but sustainable” and “quietly unsustainable”.

“If I just organise myself better, it will feel different.” There is often a persistent hope that one more system, one more push, one more promotion will finally bring ease. Instead, the pattern repeats at a higher level.

These are understandable responses. They are also part of what keeps people circling the same place.

What we pay attention to in therapy

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is less about giving advice and more about creating a space to think carefully about how you are living, and why.

A few strands of work often emerge with City professionals:

1. How “success” has been defined

Many people arrive with a clear external picture of success – role, salary, reputation – and a much less defined inner picture.

In our conversations, we might look at questions such as:

What do you actually experience across a typical week?
Where, if anywhere, is there room for rest, connection, play or thought?
How did your current version of “doing well” get built?

This is not about dismantling ambition. It is about noticing whether the current structure still serves you.

2. Old patterns in a new setting

Psychodynamic work pays attention to patterns that repeat.

Someone who consistently takes on more than is sustainable, finds it hard to set limits with senior colleagues, and feels guilty when not being “useful” may be re-enacting something that has been present for a long time – long before Canary Wharf.

We explore where these expectations of yourself came from, how they show up now (at work and outside it), and what it might be like to relate to yourself and others differently.

3. Change that is realistic in a demanding job

Most people I work with do not want to abandon their careers. They are often deeply engaged with their work and care about it.

So part of the task is to think realistically about change:

Which demands are fixed, and which are more negotiable than they appear?
Where are you operating from perfectionism rather than from what the situation actually requires?
What would boundaries look like that are firm enough to protect you, but still compatible with your role?
What might it mean to make a significant decision (promotion, move, change of path) from a place of clarity rather than exhaustion?

The aim is a life that remains ambitious, but not at the expense of your health, relationships or sense of self.

If this feels uncomfortably familiar

If parts of this sound close to home, you don’t need a crisis in order to take it seriously.

You might want to notice:

How long it has been since you had a week without evening or weekend work.
How often you tell yourself that things will calm down “after this project” – and how long you’ve been saying that.
How you would respond if a colleague you respect described feeling the way you currently do.

Sometimes simply allowing yourself to answer these questions honestly is the first shift.

An open and airy space for thinking and contemplation

A space for clear thinking

Thinking Hour was created as a space for clear thinking in the middle of complex lives.

I offer weekly 50-minute sessions online in Canary Wharf for people across the UK and EU time zones.

In our work together, we put time aside to:

understand what has brought you to this point,
trace the patterns that quietly keep you in it, and
think about what a different, more sustainable way of living and working might look like for you.

If you would like to explore this, you’re welcome to start with a free 15-minute online consultation to see whether we might be a good fit.