Keep Going: Stop numbing yourself and start paying attention
About this episode
Anne Karber discusses the dangers of numbing oneself to cope with grief and the pressures of a high-stakes work environment.
I sat down with Anne Karber and what struck me right away was not the résumé. Entrepreneur, author, podcast host , all of that is fine, but it is not the story. The story is what happens when you build a life that works on paper and still feels wrong when you wake up in it. She came up in construction, which is not a forgiving place. Long hours, constant pressure, and a culture that rewards output above everything else. She learned to operate in that mode early. Work harder than everyone else. Push through anything. Do not stop to think about how you feel because that slows you down. That approach got her success in the way most people define it. Money, stability, control. But it also trained her to ignore anything that did not fit into that system. Then her sister died, suddenly and without warning, and that kind of loss does not fit into a system built on control. It breaks it. What followed was not some dramatic collapse. It was something more common and more dangerous. She kept going, but she started numbing herself to get through it. Work during the day, drinking at night, and repeating that cycle until it became normal. Not chaos, just a steady flattening of everything that…
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