My Therapist Told Me My Biggest Coping Mechanism Was Performance. She Was Right.
- Zachary Leal
- Jun 26
- 3 min read
I was sitting in therapy when my therapist said something that stopped me cold.
She told me my biggest coping mechanism — the one I had never noticed, the one I had never even considered a coping mechanism — was performance.
Not alcohol. Not avoidance. Not anger. Performance. Doing. Staying busy. Checking things off a list so I could feel like I was in control.
And she was right.
Why Am I Always Busy But Still Anxious?
If you have ever asked yourself why you feel anxious even when you are being productive, even when you are doing everything right, even when your life looks functional from the outside — this might be why.
Performance feels like control. And control feels safe. When you are doing, planning, producing, and achieving, you do not have to sit with the unknown. You do not have to feel the uncertainty of not knowing what comes next.
But here is the problem. There is no knowing what comes next. There never was. And the more energy you pour into trying to control the uncontrollable, the more anxious and exhausted you become.
I did this for most of my life. It is really only been less than a year that I have been able to sit and just be. And even now it takes practice.
The Practice
The most powerful thing I have done this year is nothing.
That sounds easy. It is not.
Here is how I actually do it. I close my eyes. I put headphones or earmuffs on to help with the silence. And then I just notice. Not judge. Not fix. Not think. Just notice.
Notice your thoughts. Notice your emotional feelings. Notice your physical sensations. Notice your breathing without trying to control it. Just let it be there.
Start with five minutes. I just recently moved to ten.
What happens when you do this consistently — even for a few minutes a day — is that you begin to build a separation between yourself and your thoughts, your feelings, your physical sensations. You stop identifying with all of it and start identifying with whatever is doing the noticing.
That noticing presence — the witness, the watcher — is what is at the core of who you actually are. And when you connect with it, the things happening on the outside become a lot less scary.
What This Unlocks
When you are no longer identified with your thoughts, your feelings, and your outcomes, something shifts.
The relationships, the money, the results — they stop being things you are afraid of losing. They stop having the same grip on you. Not because you stop caring. But because you are no longer dependent on them to feel okay.
That is the freedom that the doing never gave me no matter how much I produced or achieved.
And it started with five minutes of doing nothing.
The Connection to Closing the Gap
Performance is one of the most common ways people live dis-integrated lives without knowing it.
When you are performing — at work, at home, in your relationships — you are not showing up as yourself. You are showing up as the version of you that feels safe, in control, and acceptable to others.
The practice of doing nothing is not passive. It is actually the most direct path to finding out who you are when you stop performing.
And that is exactly where the work of closing the gap begins.
If any of this resonates I would love to hear what came up for you. Start a conversation:
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