Joanne Smith explains how high drive and conscientiousness, though valuable, can exhaust your nervous system. After a car accident overwhelmed her coping capacity, she developed chronic symptoms from relentless self-imposed pressure.
You know, no one's going to turn around and say, Jo, stop being more conscientious. Jo, stop putting other people ahead of yourself. It's very rarely that someone will ask you to stop doing these things because they— other people love it, you know. They benefit from that massively, especially like in the workplace or in family life, friendships. Being highly driven, wanting to be— do well and be successful is not bad. But when it becomes an issue is when our nervous system is constantly operating as though we need to continue with those amazing standards, constantly being on guard. Like, it, it does become a problem for many people. And for me, it was following the car accident really that the imaginary bucket that was coping with all this stuff was probably filling very gradually until one day something happened and it overflowed and I developed chronic symptoms, um, after having an accident.
