Coping Strategies for Perfectionists and High Achievers

When Pain and Mood Become One

There’s a moment when it clicks – when you realise that pain isn’t just a physical sensation, separate from your thoughts and emotions.

Pain isn’t just in the muscles or joints. It’s in the brain. It’s in the emotions. It’s in the way you relate to yourself.

When stress, anxiety, or overwhelm take over, pain doesn’t just seem worse – it is worse. That’s because the neural pathways that process pain are deeply wired into the emotional centres of the brain, particularly those connected to fear and distress.

Pushing through and ignoring the signals might seem like logical strategies. But in reality, they often make things worse.

And overwork? That’s a major trigger for this cycle – especially if you’re a perfectionist who expects a lot from yourself. Whether it’s professional deadlines, family responsibilities, or the relentless push to do more, the pressure builds in the same way.

This kind of pain – sometimes called neuroplastic pain – isn’t just physical, but deeply shaped by emotions, habits, and learned patterns in the brain.

How Overworking Fuels the Pain-Mood Cycle

If you’re a high achiever or a perfectionist, putting a lot of pressure on yourself is second nature. Success, productivity, and achievement may feel closely tied to your self-worth. While these traits can drive ambition, they also activate inner parts that push you past your limits, often at the cost of your well-being.

For many high achievers and perfectionists, overwork is a way of proving worth, maintaining control, or avoiding feelings of failure. When stress rises, instead of listening to discomfort, they push harder – reinforcing the very cycle they’re trying to escape.

But here’s the real tension: discomfort itself isn’t always a sign to stop - sometimes pushing through is necessary. The real issue is knowing when to push and when to step back, allowing your body to release rather than accumulate stress and tension.

The Inner Parts Of You

Inside, different parts of you try to manage this tension – whether that’s meeting deadlines, caring for others, or keeping everything under control. Each one has good intentions – keeping you on track, protecting you from failure, or making sure you don’t collapse under the weight of it all. But when they go unchecked, they create tension, stress, and ultimately, more pain.

These parts are central to Internal Family Systems (IFS), a model that views the mind as made up of different inner ‘parts’ – distinct voices or roles that each serve a purpose. Some parts push for achievement, some monitor for failure, while others try to manage stress. Together, they drive the pain-mood loop.

Achieving Parts push you forward, keeping you focused on goals and productivity. But they don’t always know when to stop.
Judging Parts assess your performance, warning you of what could go wrong. They aim to help but can turn into harsh inner critics, creating anxiety that tightens the body even more.
Rejuvenating Parts long for rest and balance, but when they’re ignored for too long, they might try to shut everything down – or resort to distractions that don’t actually restore you.
The Bracing Parts take over the body, physically locking muscles into stiffness, as if sheer force could keep the discomfort in check. This is the part that makes you haul yourself up, shoulders back, chest out, in an attempt to redistribute discomfort from one area that’s screaming at you. But instead of relieving pain, it adds layers of extra strain, tightening everything until exhaustion sets in.

Whether your pain shows up at work, at home, or in daily tasks, the pattern is the same.

The Pain-Mood Pressure Cooker or When You Push Through Too Much

Does this sound familiar?

You have responsibilities. Expectations – some from others, but mostly from yourself. Maybe it’s work deadlines, caring for family, or just the endless to-do list that never seems to shrink. Slowing down feels like falling behind.

Pain starts – Achieving Parts take the lead, pushing you to power through. They dismiss discomfort and insist, “Keep going – there’s no time to stop.”
Distraction kicks in – The Achieving Parts keep you focused on tasks, hoping to override the pain.
Pain intensifies – Judging Parts step in, raising concerns: “You can’t afford to slow down. What if this never improves?” Anxiety spikes, making pain feel even worse.
Tension builds – The Bracing Part locks your body into stiffness, trying to redistribute discomfort. You might sit up straighter, push your shoulders back, or engage muscles that shouldn’t have to work so hard.
Hypervigilance increases – Judging Parts sound the alarm: “What if you can’t keep up?” Now the body isn’t just in pain – it’s caught in a cycle of fear and pressure.
Mood spirals – The nervous system becomes overwhelmed. Stress fuels the pain, and pain fuels the stress.
Resistance kicks in – The more you fight the pain, the stronger it feels. Rejuvenating Parts may try to help, but if they don’t get real space for rest, they may resort to numbing or avoidance instead.

Pain, stress, and tension don’t just disappear when ignored - they build. The more you override pain signals, the more they layer into your system, turning momentary discomfort into something more ingrained and persistent.

The more you push through pain, the more your muscles tense and your nervous system braces, making it harder to release tension later.
The more stress gets bottled up, the more sensitised your system becomes to pain.
The harder you fight discomfort, the more it reinforces itself.

If you want to stop pain from escalating, you have to stop bracing against it. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for deeper, more persistent discomfort in the long run.

Breaking the Cycle: The Fish in Water Analogy

Here’s the single most important skill in breaking free from this loop:

Noticing when you’re in it.

Pain doesn’t just happen in the body – it happens in your entire experience.

Think of a fish swimming in water. It doesn’t realise it’s surrounded by water; it’s just moving through it.

Pain and stress are like that water. When you’re caught in the pain-mood cycle, it’s hard to see beyond it. The Achieving Parts push harder, the Judging Parts create more anxiety, and the Bracing Part tightens everything in an effort to control discomfort.

But the moment the fish jumps out of the water, it realises what it’s been in all along.

Likewise, the moment you recognise the pattern – when you step back and see the cycle for what it is – everything shifts. Instead of being lost in the spiral for hours or days, you can create a pause. A moment of space.

And what you do with that space is everything.

Softening Awareness, Expanding Choice

It’s not just about being kinder to yourself. That’s part of it – but real change comes when you bring in all of the 8 C’s from Internal Family Systems (IFS):

Curiosity – What’s happening in your body right now? Can you observe without judgment?
Clarity – What part of you is driving your response? Is it the Achieving Part? The Judging Part? The Bracing Part?
Compassion – Can you meet your pain with kindness, warmth and understanding, rather than frustration or resistance?
Calmness – What happens if you soften your breath, even slightly?
Connectedness – Can you bring awareness to your whole body, rather than just the part that hurts?
Confidence – Do you trust that your body can find ease, even in discomfort?
Creativity – What small shift could you try? Adjusting your posture? Changing how you breathe?
Courage – Can you stay with the experience, rather than immediately reacting?

This is what leads to real transformation – not just breaking the cycle but shifting the way you relate to your body entirely.

Final Thoughts

Pain doesn’t have to control the day.

When you bring awareness, balance, and a shift in perspective, everything changes.

You can learn to move differently – to hold your body with more ease, to let go of tension instead of gripping tighter, to step out of the cycle rather than getting pulled in deeper.

And when all parts – Achieving, Judging, Rejuvenating, and Bracing – learn to work together, they help you move toward healing, rather than just survival.

What about you? Have you noticed how your mood affects pain? What helps you shift?

Managing Chronic Pain and Stress at Work and in Life