EP36: The Hidden Cost of Holding Everything Together

Leadership isn’t just strategic.

It’s physiological.

Many leaders spend years absorbing pressure, regulating teams, carrying uncertainty, and creating stability for everyone around them. From the outside they appear composed, capable, and dependable. Internally, many are running dangerously close to empty.

In this episode, Nick explores the hidden cost of becoming the emotional anchor for those around you. Drawing on research from emotional labour, neuroscience, psychological safety, compassion fatigue, and nervous system regulation, he unpacks why so many high-performing leaders struggle to sustain the very success they’ve worked so hard to create.

This is a conversation about leadership capacity, emotional responsibility, recovery, and the difference between carrying pressure and being consumed by it.

Because the most depleted leaders are rarely the ones doing the most.

They’re often the ones holding the most.

Three Key Takeaways

1. Leadership is biologically expensive.
Every time you regulate a room, absorb tension, or hold stability for others, your nervous system is doing real physiological work. Eventually, that bill arrives.

2. Burnout and compassion fatigue are not the same thing.
Burnout comes from doing too much. Compassion fatigue comes from giving too much without receiving enough support in return.

3. Rest is not recovery.
Many leaders pause without actually discharging accumulated stress. Sustainable leadership requires completing the stress cycle, not simply stepping away from work.

If something in this conversation resonated, stay with it for a moment.

And if this work has supported you in some way, leaving a rating or sharing the episode genuinely helps these conversations reach more people quietly carrying the same pressure.

⚡ Discover where your capacity, clarity, or leadership may be leaking:
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Explore the work at frequencycoaching.com

Connect:

Nick — @vonpitt

Transcript

you walk into the room before anyone else arrives
before you've said a word
you can feel it
someone's anxiety about the quarter
the tension from a conversation that
hasn't happened yet
the angst within your team
and without being asked
without even consciously deciding to
you absorb it
you adjust
you regulate so that everyone else can function
and that happens
before the first agenda item has been addressed
most of the leaders that I've been working with
have been doing this for years
they've been absorbing the room
holding space
staying regulated so everyone else feels safe
and almost none of them have had anyone
name the cost of doing that
today I want to name it
there's a kinda leader who is everywhere
but nowhere at the same time
they show up
they are present they are available
the team sees them
they are reliable
steady and composed even relatable
but in internally and privately
they are running on empty
they're not in crisis they are not failing
and this isn't
necessarily seen by the people around them
they're just in this holding pattern
holding everything steady
if that's you I want you to know something
before we go further in this conversation
it's
not something that a better morning routine can fix
or a new framework or strategy
what you're experiencing has a name
it's a biological mechanism
and it's been accumulating in your space longer than
you might probably realize
in 1983 a sociologist called Ali Hosschild
published a book called The Managed Heart
and she'd been studying flight attendants
and debt collectors over a period of time
and she was trying to understand
something that no one had
necessarily named before
her definition was clear and simple
it was the management of feeling
to create a publicly observable display
in other words
the work in making sure that the outside
matches what the situation requires
versus what's actually happening in the inside
and she identified two ways in which people do this
the first is surface acting
so you pretend that you have the right feeling
you adjust your tone your body
your movements and you don't feel any shift take place
the second is deep acting
you go deeper
you actually end up conjuring the feeling itself
you make yourself feel steady
and so you generate this state within yourself
and here is what Hotz Child found
surface acting essentially
you get really good at building up this persona
and this mask
but you actually detach yourself from your feelings
so you're ending up losing the ability
to attune to what
you actually feel
underneath the mask that you're wearing
the deep acting on the other hand
well that erodes something else completely
your feelings become instruments of your role
these are just things that you start generating
on demand so tools for your leadership
tools for your role
tools that end up being instruments
at your Beck and call
and it essentially stops feeling like yours
and so she called this the double bind between self
alienation and inauthenticity
and for leaders well
the stakes are higher
than for anyone else that she studied
a flight attendant's shift ends
yours doesn't
I want to show you what's actually happening
in your nervous system every time you hold a room
because at the end of the day
this isn't metaphorical this is biological
Steven Paulger's developed
what is called polyvagal theory
and it maps out how the nervous system responds
to social and environmental cues
so
when you are the regulatory anchor of a specific room
the person whose nervous system
that everyone else attunes themselves to
they are essentially
having to co regulate against that person
in this case you
here is what's happening underneath
that composure that you are expressing
so your ventral vagal complex is continuously activated
it's broadcasting safety through
through your face through your voice
through your posture
and at the same time
it's suppressing your own defensive states
so your own anxiety
and your own activation gets suppressed
so while you're doing that
your prefrontal cortex which is the part of your brain
that's responsible for your decision making
your strategy and your creative thinking
that is trying to suppress your amygdala
to keep a threat response from surfacing
whilst you are acting as that anchor in the room
and this is metabolically expensive
so over time with insufficient recovery
this stress response system begins to dysregulate
and so the cortisol levels in your system stay elevated
and that amygdala which should be kept in check
is no longer kept in check
and your prefrontal cortex tires
because you actually don't have enough capacity
to maintain it and everything becomes hyperactive
the brain's own regulatory architecture begins to fail
and everything begins to break down from there
and here's something that neuroscience shows
so with chronic unrecovered activation
grey matter in the prefrontal cortex
actually begins to thin over time
the structure is responsible for your presence
your decision quality and your emotional flexibility
and it physically degrades
and again this is why we're saying
this is not necessarily a weakness
it is just biology
it is just a physical function of your system
the nervous system has been doing expensive
biological work
with insufficient recovery
and there is this unpaid Bill
that tends to always arrive consistently
so let me describe to you what this
looks like in practice
so you arrive home after a long day
you've been on since 5:00am
you have held the team through an uncertain quarter
you've had to make decisions
you've micromanaged you've absorbed anxiety
different pressures
and you even have to stay regulated
when the situation wasn't
and then your youngest child comes into the room
and wants to show you something that they've built
and they're
so proud of what they've been able to achieve with
in their little pocket of their day
and there's a moment where you feel
it's a flicker of frustration before the love comes in
before you are able to really connect
and disconnect from the day that you've just had
and that frustration isn't about them
it's this residue that is built up throughout the day
throughout the weeks throughout the months
where you've had to absorb everyone else's stress
and
and now it's fine
finally finding a space to land
and so the people you work with gets the best of you
and the people who love you get what's left
and I see this pattern in almost every
high capacity leader
the emotional availability at work is real
and it is sustained it is felt
it is seen
and the emotional availability at home
it's not nothing
but it's what's left over
and this is what makes it even harder
the research on team dynamics
shows that this can cascade
both ways
a 2024 study of 372 team members and 62 managers
mapped exactly what happens
when a leader is emotionally exhausted
the leader withdraws not dramatically
but subtly they become present but absent
available on the calendar but not in the room
the team detects it
and the research shows that what falls first
is psychological safety people stop speaking up
they stop raising concerns
they stop asking questions
and from there innovation slows
communication closes and the team itself stops adapting
and the leader's internal state
is the key differentiator
it is the most upstream variable
in whether the team functions optimally or not
and Amy Edmondson
has spent decades studying psychological safety
and to put it simply
if the employees don't speak up
we can almost always assume
the leader has not created a psychologically
safe environment
and you cannot create psychological safety from
a state or space of depletion
and I wanna make a distinction
that I think most leadership content
gets wrong
there are two different kinds of depletion
and they have two cause
and two very different solutions
so most people know burnout
it comes from doing too much
without sufficient time or resources
it builds gradually
and you can make meaningful progress by reducing load
and essentially adding in space for recovery
but
there's something else that I call compassion fatigue
and this is slightly different
compassion fatigue is not caused by doing too much
it is caused by giving too much
without receiving in return
so
Professor Paul Gilbert has spent decades studying this
and describes it as compassion neglect
the leader is expanding an enormous amount
of biological energy
while their own well being goes unsupported
and doesn't that sound familiar
the symptoms are different
and it's not primarily exhaustion
it's one way to put it
is the erosion of capacity to care for oneself
and here's a couple of things that you
you might be familiar with
there's an emotional attachment that may arise
within your team members
and here's a couple of things that tend to occur
when this arises
you experience
emotional detachment from your team members
and it's very subtle
you notice that there's more cynicism
not necessarily towards the work
but towards the vision and towards your colleagues
partners team members
there's a definitive decrease in impatience
and you notice that you want to react
instead of respond and you just don't
that fuse is exceptionally short
and there's this feeling
that you might be just going through the motions
with the people that are nearest and dearest to you
and so there's a complete lack of presence
and critically the solution looks different
burnout recovers with rest
compassion fatigue recovers when the leader
begins to receive
and not just give
and most leadership advice addresses the first
but ignores the second completely
so I wanna share with you what
recovery actually looks like
because I think most leaders have a version of recovery
that is really just a pause
and a forced pause I might add
Peter Levine spent decades studying
how the nervous system processes stress
and his core finding was this
stress is not a psychological event
it is a physiological one
when the nervous system mobilizes survival energy
which is exactly what happens every time you absorb
a room and stay composed
under pressure the energy needs somewhere to go
in animals it discharges automatically
and after the threat passes
they shake tremble pant
the stress cycle in and of itself completes
the nervous system is then able to return to baseline
in leaders however
the energy mobilizes but cannot discharge
the professional context demands composure
the survival energy is essentially suppressed
compartmentalized and one's having to push through it
and so this energy stores in the body
so it's seen as chronic muscle tension
hypervigilance or even disturbed sleep
and more common than not the inability to switch off
even when nothing is happening
and here is the critical thing
each subsequent stressor adds to the existing load
rather than processing through it
it's very important to keep in mind
so most leaders think of recovery as going on holiday
and the holiday doesn't refresh
the weekend disappears into this low grade anxiety
because the week is about to start again
and it's essentially a way to visualise this
as if you have paused on stop
on top of all the stored energy
that is yet to be processed
and you have yet to discharge it
rest is not the same as recovery
real recovery
means that you have to complete the stress cycle
and it's physical it's not just this
cognitive thing that you mentally process
it's happening in the body
not just in the mind
and I've noticed that the leaders that are able
to sustain a certain level of performance
are not just pushing through
this they have found a way to
let go of this stored charge in their system
so they have more capacity and in turn
they are capable of managing
what lands on their desk on a day to day basis
so I want to come back to the room
the one you walked into before anyone else arrived
the absorption that happened before
that first agenda item
the regulation that you provided others
so that they could function
the holding that will happen again tomorrow
and the day after that
and every other day that you have to lead
none of this is wrong and in fact
some of this is exactly right
the capacity to hold the room
to regulate under pressure
to hold a vision to be patient
to be the one that others orient themselves around
that is genuine strength
but strength and sustainability are different things
and the question that I want to leave you with is not
how do I stop carrying this
it's has any of this ever been named
measured or addressed
or have I simply called it leadership
and just kept moving forward
because the leaders who I work with
who are genuinely sustainable
are not the ones who carry less
they are the ones that finally understand
what they are carrying
and they build a structure
that can hold some of it for them
and the most depleted leaders are not the ones
that are doing the most
they are the ones holding the most
without anyone holding anything for them
if this landed
share this with someone who needs to hear it
and
if you're curious
and want to dive deeper into yourself
check out the capacity assessment at Frequency Coaching
forward slash assessment
where you can take a 3 minute diagnostic
to see where you're leaking power and capacity
leading takes courage
leading takes perseverance
leading takes
the ability to discern through uncertainty
and really trust your gut
and to recognize patterns
there's just so many nuances
and there is so much noise out there today
but if you're choosing to play the game
and you're choosing to play it
at a level where you are competitive
not just with other people
but with the highest expression of yourself
something that I've come to know later
rather than sooner
is that you cannot play this game on your own
all of us do not have the ability
to see all our blind spots
and to maintain a true north
I wanna acknowledge the fact that you took a moment
to point yourself today and just recognize that
leadership requires courage
persistence discernment and strength
and it's so much easier nowadays
to compartmentalize ourselves
and want to lone wolf this idea of foundership
leadership stewardship
again trust
and know that you have the ability to make the shift
see you in the next one