The Squirrel Wheel of Worry: How High Achievers Get Trapped

Posted on September 16, 2025 by Stacy Braiuca, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

The Squirrel Wheel of Worry: How High Achievers Get Trapped

You know that feeling when you’re running on what feels like a hamster wheel—except it’s not a hamster wheel at all. It’s a squirrel wheel of worry.

Round and round you go: "What if I’m screwing up my kids? Am I even good at my job? Everybody else seems to have it figured out—why don’t I?"

If you’re an accomplished woman who appears to have it all together on the outside but secretly battles that constant mental chatter, you’re not alone. You’re also not broken. You’re just caught in a cycle that was never designed for brilliant multi-passionate minds like yours.

The High Achiever’s Paradox
Research from the Harvard Business Review shows that high achievers are 40% more likely to experience what psychologists call “imposter syndrome” than their average-performing counterparts¹. But here’s what’s fascinating: the very traits that make you successful are the same ones that keep you trapped on the squirrel wheel.

Your conscientiousness makes you second-guess every decision. Your empathy makes you worry about everyone else’s needs before your own. Your perfectionism makes you replay every conversation, wondering if you said the right thing.

You’re accomplished, responsible and everyone comes to you for advice, but you’re constantly second-guessing yourself and lying awake at night with racing thoughts about whether you’re good enough, doing enough or making the right decisions. You’re tired of feeling like you’re running on a hamster wheel, or maybe it’s a squirrel wheel of worry and are ready to finally find the peace and confidence you’ve been craving.

The 2 AM Mental Audit
That voice in your head at 2 AM isn’t random. It’s your brain trying to solve an impossible equation: “How can I be perfect enough to deserve my success?”

Neuroscience research shows that high-achieving women’s brains process criticism differently than praise. We’re literally wired to remember the one negative comment while forgetting ten positive ones².
This creates what I call “achievement anxiety”—the fear that your success is somehow fraudulent and everyone will eventually figure out you don’t belong.

My Journey from the Squirrel Wheel to Solid Ground
Hello, I’m Stacy Braiuca, known as the Squirrel Wrangler, and I lived on this wheel for 20 years. As a clinical therapist helping others with anxiety, I was secretly struggling with my own Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), which was also quickly spinning up my own personal “Imposter Syndrome Hell”.
I know what it’s like to lay awake at 2 AM with racing thoughts, to second-guess every decision I made, and to feel like you’re drowning in your own mind. I was like that duck that seems so calm on the surface and paddling like hell underneath the water.

Then on November 17, 2022, everything changed—it marked the end of a 20-year journey and the beginning of a new quantum leap. During a two week intensive Master Practitioner Certification training on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Mental Emotional Release® (MER®) techniques, something clicked at a cellular level. For the first time in decades, my mind went genuinely quiet. Not managed-quiet or medicated-quiet, but naturally, peacefully quiet. I was finally at rest.
And now three years on, the memory of what that anxiety felt like is a blurry old fuzzy memory, like a postcard from somewhere I was but really didn’t like.

Why Traditional Success Strategies Fail
Most success advice tells high achievers to “push through” or “fake it till you make it.” But this only makes the squirrel wheel spin faster. And like those social media memes where the wheel spins more and launches the hamster across their cage in a flash, it does the same to you dear squirrel….
When you’re already accomplished but still feel broken by your scattered nature, adding more pressure isn’t the solution. You need a different approach—one that celebrates your multi-passionate genius instead of trying to fix it.

For 20 years, I had used that endless supply of band-aids with my clients all the time, but it was only a temporary solution. These techniques provided temporary relief, but they never addressed the root cause.

The Systemic Foundation Difference
My proprietary Squirrel Wrangling Method doesn’t just address symptoms. I created a systemic foundation using my Four Pillar Framework that I created in 2001 and several other frameworks I have curated over the years that becomes both your starting point AND your launching pad for future goals.
The Four Pillar Framework creates systematic rotation through four life areas:

Body: • Physical health • Energy management
• Somatic awareness
Mind: • Intellectual growth • Skill development • Cognitive expansion
Relationships: • Connection • Communication • Community building
Spirit: • Purpose • Meaning • Transcendent experiences

Using my systematic rotation of body, mind, relationships and spirit, we find and release old programming using a combination of NLP, MER® (where we choose one area of your life to focus in on), Hypnosis, and many other methods. Then we dig in to uncover, address, and reprogram those negative emotions, limiting beliefs and self-doubt by using the Mental Emotional Release® process and other tools.

This gives us a systemic foundation to begin your journey and also a systemic foundation to launch your future goals and memories from. What makes this unique is how we use the Four Pillar Foundation to begin your journey.

But here’s what makes this different: We don’t just organize your present—we create a foundation that propels your future. Then we go into your future with more magic!

The Mental Emotional Release® Breakthrough
The deeper transformation happens when we choose one specific area of life to address those negative emotions, limiting beliefs, and self-doubt using the Mental Emotional Release® process and other tools.
So we not only address the concerns, but we eliminate them for good by reprogramming the very roots of where they began in your life. This isn’t management; it’s transformation at the cellular level.

Real Results: From Broken to Brilliant
My clients go from feeling broken by their scattered nature to celebrating their new clarity and their multi-passionate genius with concrete tools that actually rebuild the empowering structures in their lives, not just address the symptoms they were fighting.

One powerful result my clients get is they stop losing sleep because of racing thoughts. Instead of lying awake at 2 AM spiraling about whether they’re good enough or making the right decisions, they actually sleep through the night.

They go from checking their phone obsessively, second-guessing every email they send and constantly asking others for validation to making decisions confidently trusting their own judgment without that constant mental squirrel chatter.

What I love most is that moment when a client messages me and says something like “I slept through the night for the first time in months” or “I made a decision today without asking three people what they thought first.” What they report are not always big dramatic transformations. They often have those quiet everyday victories where they realize their mind isn’t their enemy anymore. And they are often more powerful than the nuclear level drama changes.

And the best part…. their own projects now flourish in a way they never had dreamed possible before.

The Navigator You Need
You don’t need another productivity hack or mindset mantra. You need someone who understands that your scattered mind isn’t a problem to fix—it’s a superpower to organize.

You need a navigator who’s walked down that dark path of achievement anxiety and found the way out. Someone who can show you how to step off the squirrel wheel of worry and onto solid ground.
I’m not just somebody who studied this in textbooks. As both an active clinician and someone who lived with GAD for years while working professionally with others dealing with the same thing, I know with absolute certainty that these techniques actually work because they put my own anxiety disorder into remission.

Your peace of mind is waiting. When you can wrangle your inner squirrels—those limiting beliefs, negative emotions, and baggage—you stop living in survival mode and you start experiencing the peace and joy that’s been waiting for you all along.

After struggling with my own anxiety disorder for so long, witnessing someone else experience that magic moment when they break free from that mental prison and just breathe is everything to me.
Ready to step off the squirrel wheel and onto solid ground? Contact me to discover how the Squirrel Wrangling Method creates the systemic foundation for both your healing and your future success.

Because brilliant minds deserve brilliant solutions.

References and Resources
1. Harvard Business Review. (2022). The Imposter Syndrome Epidemic Among High-Achieving Women.
2. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. (2022). Gender differences in processing criticism versus praise.
About Mental Emotional Release® (MER®): Mental Emotional Release® is a proprietary technique developed by Dr. Matthew James, adapted from his father’s pioneering work with Timeline Therapy®. Dr. Matt James leads Empowerment, Inc., the world’s foremost organization specializing in alternative and integrative approaches to psychology, human understanding, and personal growth, fostering values of pono (integrity), ho’omanaloa (empowerment), kina’ole (excellence), aloha (happiness), and lokahi (unity).

About the Author: Stacy Braiuca, known as the Squirrel Wrangler, holds degrees as a BSW, MSW, MPH, and clinical licenses as an LCSW, LSCSW, and LICSW. She is a Master Practitioner of NLP, Mental Emotional Release®, and Hypnosis certified by the Association of Integrative Psychology. Because when you can wrangle your inner squirrels, you stop living in survival mode and you start experiencing the peace and joy that’s been waiting for you all along.