The thing everyone feels but no one talks about
Hey Reader,
I used to film my YouTube videos and be completely pitted out by the end.
Like, drenched in sweat… exhausted and needing to lay on the couch for an hour before I could do anything else.
And for a long time, I told myself this was ‘normal.’
“content creation is hard.”
“performing takes energy.”
“this is what the job costs.”
Except… I wasn’t doing anything hard. I was sitting in my house talking to a camera. There’s no reason that should feel like running a marathon.
So what the hell was going on?
Here’s what I eventually figured out: I had this belief running in the background that I couldn’t just be Clark… I had to be impressive.
Like this massive psychological pressure, I had to be ‘mind-blowing.’ Think Tony Robbins meets TED Talk meets whatever the algorithm wanted that week.
Who wouldn’t be tired after that?
Most of us are doing some version of getting ‘pitted out’ without realizing it.
Maybe you show up to social situations with your “fun personality” turned on, then spend the whole drive home wondering why you feel so drained.
Or you’re a month into a new relationship and still feel like if they saw the real you, they’d leave.
And you got the job, but your first thought was “if they really knew me, they’d take it back.”
What I’m describing has a name, and it’s not burnout or introversion or “just being tired.”
It’s shame.
You might not even call it that, but it’s running way more of your life than you think.
If you’re up for going deeper on this, keep reading. This one’s not our lightest subject, but it will change how you see yourself, and your next breakthrough is on the other side of it.
The Gap
We all have two versions of ourselves.
There’s who you are in public.
The front-facing version of you that wants to be seen a certain way. Says “I’m doing great” when you’re not. Changes your opinion in group conversations so you don’t rock the boat. The version you think people want to see.
Then there’s who you are in private.
The behind the scenes, Saturday morning you. The version with all the bad habits and anxieties and fears. The part of you that wonders if people knew what was really going on behind the scenes, would they still feel the same way?
And when those two versions inevitably don’t match, you get this low-grade tension that never fully goes away.
Guilt vs. Shame
People use guilt/shame interchangeably and they’re not the same thing.
Guilt is “I did something bad.”
You cut someone off in traffic, you feel bad about it, you move on. That’s healthy.
Shame is “I am bad.”
It’s the belief that if people really knew you, they’d reject you.
And so you hide. You construct another version of yourself, a persona, because somewhere along the way you decided the real you wasn’t acceptable.
The problem with operating from a place of persona is that you can never actually receive love.
Even when people give it to you, there’s always this voice in the back of your head going “yeah, but they don’t know the real me. They like the version I’m presenting, not who I actually am.”
The love goes to the persona. And you’re standing behind it, wondering if any of it was ever really meant for you.
Nobody says this out loud, but you feel it.
That constant tension is the cost of performing.
The self-help trap
This is where I want to get a little nuanced, and where I think self-help culture makes this worse.
If you’re not careful, you build an idealized you in your head. The version that runs 50 habits at once, never gets an off day, and somehow wakes up motivated every morning. “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” That’s what you hear everywhere.
And then you do something completely human: you sleep in, you skip the workout, you procrastinate, you have a low-energy week.
And instead of adjusting like it’s no big deal, you use it as evidence to beat yourself up with.
We can use self-improvement to fuel self-hate.
The thing that’s supposed to make you better makes you fragile instead because your worth is tied to performance.
And underneath all of it? Shame.
The belief that who you are right now isn’t okay, so you have to constantly be becoming someone else just to deserve love or success or whatever you’re chasing.
The solution to all of this isn’t more self-improvement.
It’s more self-acceptance.
And this is the part we rarely focus on because it’s not as sexy. Morning routines get clicks. Self-acceptance doesn’t.
I avoided this work throughout my 20s because I thought if I stopped performing, I’d stop producing.
That’s the lie a lot of entrepreneurs live under.
What actually happens is your goals lose their desperation, not your drive. You stop chasing from a hurt place and start building from a true one.
Where to start
If any of this is landing, here’s an exercise my coach gave me that was simple but hit hard.
Grab a journal and go somewhere quiet.
Write down the messages you received as a kid that made you feel like it wasn’t okay to be who you were, just as you were.
Don’t overthink it. Just let it rip and try to trace back where some of this shame actually came from, because it didn’t appear out of nowhere. It has roots.
You might find your fear of being “too much” is from being told to quiet down as a kid.
Or your need to always have a joke ready is from learning that humor kept the peace.
One important thing: name it, don’t blame it.
The goal isn’t to trap yourself in victim mode or figure out whose fault everything was. You’re just trying to identify the messages so you can start questioning them.
Because anytime you’re trying to alter yourself, it’s usually because somewhere along the way you decided that version of you wasn’t acceptable.
What happens when you do
Remember how I opened this newsletter? Pitted out after filming, exhausted from just talking into a camera?
As I started doing this work, I began experimenting with just being me in content. Not amping up my energy. Not forcing jokes. Just showing up as I actually was that day.
And something shifted.
Videos took way less energy. The resistance faded. The clients we attracted were better. A lot of the procrastination I thought was a discipline problem turned out to be a shame problem.
This is always a work in progress. But damn, your life gets easier when you stop maintaining a character.
It’s not a quick fix. But it’s your starting place.
See you next saturday,
CK
