173. Getting Comfortable in Your Own Skin
- cindyesliger
- Jul 3
- 13 min read
Updated: Jul 17
From the outside, it may seem like we have it all together, but inside, many of us are carrying a silent weight of anxiety and self-imposed pressure. By recognizing when our busyness is a mask and learning to sit with discomfort, we begin to reclaim control of our minds, bodies, and careers. It’s not about doing more—it’s about showing up with presence, curiosity, and trust.
Discomfort doesn't mean you're failing. In fact, learning to sit with discomfort is one of the most powerful emotional resilience skills you can build.
Are you constantly busy but secretly overwhelmed, wondering if it’s all just masking something deeper? Are you praised for being calm under pressure but feel like you’re spinning inside? Are you uncomfortable with slowing down because stillness feels unfamiliar or unsafe?
You’ll learn that getting comfortable in your own skin isn’t about achieving more—it’s about recognizing when anxiety is driving your behavior and learning how to reclaim calm through presence, curiosity, and emotional resilience.
WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
Why distinguishing between stress and anxiety is crucial to breaking the cycle of overfunctioning and regaining control
3 practical tips to interrupt the anxiety loop
Why redefining success leads to more sustainable power and peace
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success podcast, episode one hundred and seventy-three. I'm your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way.
From the outside, maybe it looks like you're thriving. You're calm under pressure, always prepared, and managing every challenge that comes your way with grace, making it all look easy. High-achieving women in demanding fields are often praised for this steady presence. But, behind that composed exterior, many are quietly carrying an invisible load: a relentless undercurrent of anxiety, stress, and self-imposed pressure to be everything for everyone. The constant busyness becomes a shield, a way to manage the discomfort bubbling under the surface, until the pace itself becomes unsustainable. The world sees strength. What they don't see is how exhausting it is to stay ahead of the anxiety by never sitting still.
In this episode, we're pulling back the curtain on what's really happening behind that polished exterior. We'll explore how to recognize when you're using your constant busyness as a coping mechanism, how to separate stress from anxiety so you can respond more effectively, and why learning to sit with discomfort is the key to reclaiming control over your mind, body, and, ultimately, your career.
Getting comfortable in your own skin isn't about doing more or striving harder – it's about showing up differently. It's about choosing presence over perfection, curiosity over criticism, and trust over fear – intentionally, one moment at a time.
When people look at you, do they see someone who seems to have it all together? Calm, confident, early to every meeting. The one they can count on to always volunteer to help, staying late without complaint, and somehow, making it all look effortless. But, behind that polished exterior, there's often a very different story playing out – one filled with racing thoughts, relentless self-pressure, and the invisible load that so many high-achieving women carry but rarely talk about.
Many high-achievers function at incredibly high levels, even while quietly battling anxiety or depression. It's a strength, but when left unchecked, it can also become a trap. The truth is, relentless busyness often masks deep-seated anxiety. While constant motion can feel like control, it can slowly disconnect you from yourself, your real goals, and the career success you truly deserve.
There's a pervasive myth in our culture that the goal is to 'have it all together'. If you can operate at a high level under pressure, you're praised, admired, even rewarded. But, what often gets missed is that so many women who look calm and collected are secretly battling a torrent of anxiety beneath the surface. From the outside, we might seem superhuman: always early, always prepared, always dependable. But on the inside, it might feel like our minds are running a-mile-a-minute, jumping from task to task, carrying a gnawing fear that we'll let someone – or ourselves – down if we slip up even once. It's exhausting. And yet, it's so normalized that many of us high-achievers don't even realize there's another way.
At first glance, busyness seems productive, and sometimes, it is. It can temporarily distract us from intrusive thoughts or emotional discomfort. And, in high-pressure workplaces, that distraction can even feel like an asset. In the short term, busyness soothes us. We get a dopamine hit from checking off tasks. We avoid uncomfortable emotions. We stay in control.
But over time, it comes at a major cost. We lose connection to our actual goals and desires. We start operating on autopilot, mindlessly hopping from one task to the next. We feel increasingly disconnected from our own lives, as if we're watching it unfold instead of actively shaping it.
It's important to pause and ask yourself, "Can you simply be without constantly doing?". When there's a gap in your schedule, do you instinctively rush to fill it? If the idea of slowing down makes you uncomfortable, it's worth getting curious about why – because that discomfort is trying to tell you something.
One of the most empowering steps you can take is learning to tell the difference between stress and anxiety – because they're not the same thing, and they require different responses.
Stress is tied to a specific, solvable problem or a particular stressor.
Anxiety, on the other hand, is tied to a hypothetical or uncontrollable scenario.
The key question to ask yourself is, "Is there something I can do about this right now?". If the answer is yes, you're likely dealing with stress, and some form of action will help. If the answer is no, you're likely facing anxiety, and action won't fix it.
This distinction matters because busyness often disguises anxiety as problem-solving. You keep doing and doing, thinking you're addressing issues, when in reality you're spinning your wheels, trying to soothe a fear you can't outrun.
Your body will often tell you what your mind is trying to suppress. You just have to pay attention. Common physical, cognitive, and emotional cues include a racing heart, tight chest, trembling voice, mental fog, irritability, and mindless task-hopping. These are all normal physiological responses – your body's way of preparing for a threat. The goal isn't to eliminate them; it's to get comfortable noticing them without spiraling into fear. And that's where the real work begins.
Here are three steps to breaking the anxiety loop:
Get Curious About Your Symptoms: Instead of immediately reacting to your racing heart or the tightness in your chest, pause and observe. Where do you feel it? How intense is it? What thoughts are coming up? Curiosity softens the emotional charge around physical sensations, making them easier to tolerate.
Separate Sensation From Fear: A racing heart doesn't necessarily mean you're unsafe. A trembling voice doesn't necessarily mean you're failing. It's just your body's alarm system doing its job. Naming sensations without judgment helps you separate physical feelings from fearful interpretations.
Practice Sitting With Discomfort: Instead of rushing to fix or numb the discomfort, practice staying with it, for even just a few minutes. Breathe. Notice and name the sensations. Then, let them pass. You might be surprised at how quickly that can happen. The more you practice, the less power these symptoms have over you and the more genuine control you reclaim.
Busyness as a coping mechanism keeps you operating on autopilot, reacting to external pressures instead of intentionally shaping your own path. It's no wonder that so many high-achieving women, despite significant outward success, report feeling exhausted, disconnected, and disillusioned with their career trajectories. Without awareness, the anxiety loop keeps you striving harder and faster, while feeling emptier inside. But, when you learn to recognize the difference between stress and anxiety, tune into your body's signals, and stay present through discomfort, everything changes.
You begin to act more deliberately, rather than simply in response to the fear you're feeling. You set boundaries that serve you, not just others. You redefine success on your own terms, not based on chasing endless external validation or ticking the next checkbox on someone else's list. You start to trust yourself, not just when you're performing at your best, but when you're simply being you – messy missteps, anxious thoughts, racing heart, and all.
Now that we've peeled back the layers on how busyness can mask deeper anxiety, it's time to lean into what it actually takes to reclaim our calm – not by force, but by choosing a different way to relate to discomfort itself. Most of us are no strangers to stress, but few of us are taught how to exist with it, without immediately springing into action. Instead, the default has often been to do more, to stay busy, in order to stay ahead of the feelings that seem too messy, too inconvenient, or too vulnerable to acknowledge. But, what if there's real strength, not in outpacing discomfort, but in learning to stay with it, breathe through it, and not let it define us.
The first step toward real freedom is understanding that discomfort isn't something you have to eliminate. You're not broken because you feel stressed or anxious. Discomfort doesn't mean you're failing. In fact, learning to sit with discomfort is one of the most powerful emotional resilience skills you can build. It's a leadership skill, and more importantly, it's a life skill.
Instead of pushing it away, numbing it, fixing it, or running from it, we can practice simply staying present with it, even if it's awkward, even if it's unfamiliar. Because the discomfort isn't dangerous, it's just uncomfortable, and you are strong enough to handle a little discomfort.
A practical way to build this skill is by doing an experiment leveraging your curiosity. The next time you feel that telltale tightness in your chest, your mind racing, or your stomach twisting itself into knots, pause for a moment. Instead of powering through, distracting yourself, or criticizing yourself for your reaction, shift into the role of an observer.
Name what you're feeling. Where in your body is it showing up? How strong is it? What does it feel like?
Then, get curious. What happens if you don't try to fix it immediately? What if you just notice it, stay with it, and trust that it will pass? (Because, believe me, it always does.)
Instead of fearing your body's signals, study them, get familiar with them. See them for what they are – your body's very normal attempt to protect you. And, in doing so, you take away the fear, which lets you take back your power.
This is where the power of acceptance comes in. Acceptance doesn't mean you have to like feeling anxious. It doesn't mean you stop caring about your emotional well-being. It means you recognize that your body's stress response – the racing heart, the sweaty palms, the shaky voice – it's not trying to sabotage you, it's just trying to keep you safe.
It's an ancient system that evolved to face real threats like predators, not office politics or information overload. In our modern world, most of these 'threats' are psychological, not physical – but your body still reacts the same way. When you allow discomfort to exist without urgently needing to 'solve' it, your nervous system starts to learn that you're actually okay. Over time, the stress response becomes less intense, less frequent, and less overwhelming. You stop living like you're under siege. You start living like you're actually in control.
Of course, in the middle of a high-stakes meeting or a stressful work presentation, it's not always practical to drop everything and dive deep into mindful observation. Sometimes, you just need a quick tool to pull you back into the present in order to interrupt the anxiety spiral before it hijacks your entire nervous system. This is where practical, real-time techniques for managing anxiety can be game-changers.
One of the simplest methods is using your senses to override your stress response.
If you feel yourself spiraling, you can engage touch by splashing cold water on your hands or face, or discreetly holding an ice cube. The physical shock interrupts the stress loop and forces your body to focus elsewhere.
You can engage sound by blasting a favorite song through your headphones. The familiarity and rhythm can ground you quickly.
Sight can help too, by closing your eyes for just a few moments to reset, then slowly reopening them and expanding your peripheral vision, noticing the broader environment, instead of zeroing in only on the stressor in front of you.
And, if all else fails, mental distraction is another tool that can work. Try doing a simple math problem in your head, counting backwards from one hundred by sevens, or trying to recite the alphabet backwards – you get bonus points if you can skip every second letter. These tactics don't erase the source of your stress, but they interrupt the panic long enough for you to regain composure.
Another key to reclaiming your calm is understanding the difference between worry and rumination, since both are common traps for high-achievers.
Worry tends to be about the future. What if I fail? What if they don't like my idea?
Whereas rumination is about the past. I shouldn't have said that. Why did I mess up that opportunity?
Both worry and rumination drain your energy and steal your focus. And neither one is actually useful. Awareness is your first line of defense. When you notice yourself spiraling into worry or rumination, gently redirect yourself back to the present moment. Right here, right now. Not five steps ahead, and not ten mistakes behind. Focusing on just this breath, this task, or this choice.
Of course, no process of personal growth is complete without acknowledging the common pitfalls along the way. Here are seven of the most common you may identify with:
Mistaking constant busyness for real progress. This is a big one. Just because you're doing a lot, doesn't mean you're moving meaningfully towards your goals.
Over-identifying with the 'strong, calm achiever' persona. This can be a trap. If you feel like you can never show vulnerability, you're not empowered – you're imprisoned.
Ignoring small signs of overwhelm. Pay attention if you're having trouble focusing, trouble sleeping, or feeling emotionally numb. These can often lead to much bigger consequences, if left unchecked.
Resistance to stillness. This is a flashing red sign that you need more presence, not more productivity.
Perfectionism. This can masquerade as high standards, but often masks deep-seated anxiety about not being good enough.
Worry and rumination. This will sap your energy if you're not careful.
Emotional numbing behaviors. This can show up as mindless scrolling, overeating, excessive drinking, or even overworking. All of which offer temporary relief at the cost of your long-term well-being.
Recognizing these patterns early might allow you to course-correct before you hit rock bottom. It gives you the opportunity to steer your life with intention, rather than being pushed along by old fears.
Choosing to be present and curious isn't about lowering your ambition. You can still be a high-achieving powerhouse. When you stop letting anxiety run the show, you might even become more powerful – and a whole lot more at peace. So, the real question becomes: how do you start making that shift without feeling like you're adding yet another thing to your already overloaded plate?
The truth is, you don't have to overhaul your whole life in one grand gesture. In fact, trying would likely just trigger more anxiety. So, start small. Focus on just doing one thing at a time. When you sit down to write an email, just write that email. When you're in a meeting, just listen and take notes, without mentally preparing your to-do list for afterward. Tiny moments of true presence build trust with yourself. Every moment you stay with yourself, even just for a few seconds, proves to your body and your brain that you don't have to live in a constant state of fight-or-flight. It's not about forcing stillness. It's about giving yourself permission to simply 'be'. No judgment, no hidden agenda, no fear of what you might be forgetting.
So, how do we make this shift sustainable? How do we make it something that actually feels empowering, rather than just another task to be done perfectly? It comes down to strategies that work with your life, not against it.
If you define success only by how much you accomplish, you feed the anxiety loop. You become a machine. Try redefining success based on presence, intentionality, and alignment with your real goals and values. At the end of the day, rather than asking yourself, "Did I do enough?" instead, try asking, "Did I show up intentionally?". That's what will truly move you forward, both professionally and personally.
You might not realize that your body knows when you're stressed before your mind does. Start checking in regularly: Is my jaw tight? Are my shoulders creeping up to my ears? Is my breathing more shallow than normal? When you notice that tension, pause. Take one slow breath. Roll your shoulders back. Loosen your jaw. These tiny resets keep your nervous system from spinning out of control.
Then, before responding, try giving yourself a moment of stillness. It doesn't have to be a big thing. Stillness can be taking 30 seconds to breathe slowly before opening an email, or it can be feeling the warmth of your coffee cup in your hands. Building a tolerance for 'being' without 'doing' takes time, so start small and go gently. Over time, what once felt unbearable becomes second nature.
Also, when you feel the tension rising, don't immediately leap into fixing mode. Discomfort isn't a crisis – it's just data. Take a pause and get curious about what your body perceives as a threat and what might be triggering it. Give it a name. Hypothesize about what it's trying to tell you. Curiosity disarms the fear better than trying to control everything ever could.
You don't have to have it all together, all the time. Find one or two trusted people, be it a friend, colleague, mentor, or maybe a coach to whom you can say, "I'm feeling anxious today", or "I'm struggling with this and I don't have it all figured out yet". Cultivate these types of safe spaces for emotional honesty to remind yourself that vulnerability isn't weakness. It's about being real. And it's where real resilience begins.
Even if the world sees only your calm and strength, it's your willingness to slow down, to notice, and to stay present with yourself – especially when no one is watching – that creates true, lasting power. Recognizing when busyness is masking anxiety and learning to sit with the discomfort is one of the bravest moves you can make for your mind, your body, and your career. You don't have to be more to be enough. You don't have to fight harder to be worthy. You are already enough, and you are already worthy. And, the more you practice showing up for yourself, the more unstoppable you become.
Getting comfortable in your own skin isn't about becoming someone else or pretending you've transcended all discomfort. It's about learning that you can handle the full range of your emotions – joy, anxiety, fear, discomfort, all of it – without needing to run away. It's about remembering that you are not broken because you feel anxious. You are not failing because you need rest or stillness. And, you are not weak because you sometimes struggle.
Your worth isn't based on how flawlessly you perform or how composed you appear. You are deserving of grace and compassion, both from others and, most importantly, from yourself.
You are courageous because you are willing to see yourself clearly, stay present even when it's hard, and keep choosing to show up anyway. The goal isn't to never feel anxious again. The goal is to trust yourself to face whatever comes – because that's all part of feeling fully alive.
And, that is what getting comfortable in your own skin is really about.
And that's it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide to Recognizing When You're Masking Anxiety cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode one hundred and seventy-three.
Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch, I'm on Instagram @cindyesliger. My email address is info@cindyesliger.com.
If you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out The Confidence Collective. It's my monthly coaching program where we dig a little deeper into what's holding you back in your career and we find the workarounds. We help you overcome the barriers and create the career you want. Join me over at cindyesliger.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in The Confidence Collective.
Until next week, I'm Cindy Esliger. Thanks for listening.
