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Request an appointment by clicking here or by calling 704-444-0087
Dr. Savannah McSheffrey
High performers are often praised for their reliability and ability to multitask.
They’re the person who says yes when others hesitate. They stay on top of their Slack messages all day. They respond to the late email.
Over time, however, this strength can quietly become a liability.
Many of the professionals I work with experience a familiar internal pattern:
So you say yes. You continue to push past observing your own limits or respecting your own boundaries on time. But later you feel the cost. You have less protected time for personally meaningful or creative tasks.
This is where a concept from Dialectical Behavior Therapy called opposite action becomes useful.
Guilt can be an incredibly useful emotion. It signals when we’ve violated our values or harmed someone. In those cases, guilt helps guide repair. If we value honesty and knowingly lie or mislead someone, then guilt is there to remind us of what is important and urges us to apologize or correct what we have done.
But high performers often experience unjustified guilt—feeling guilty not because they did something wrong, but because they didn’t meet someone else’s expectations.
Examples include:
In these situations, guilt shows up even though you’ve done nothing wrong. Setting a limit feels wrong, so we give into the urge to say yes to immediately decrease our own unjustified guilt.
In fact, the opposite may be true: protecting your time may be aligned with your deeper values.
In DBT, opposite action means doing the behavioral opposite of what an emotion urges you to do when acting on the emotion is doing more harm than good.
For those who struggle with unjustified guilt, the nagging feeling of guilt often urges you to:
When guilt is unjustified, the opposite action is:
This will feel deeply uncomfortable at first.
Your nervous system may interpret it as selfish, rude, or irresponsible. But discomfort doesn’t mean the action is wrong. Often it simply means you’re breaking an old habit that no longer serves you.
High performers are often expected to produce their most valuable thinking under conditions of constant interruption. And there are more micro-disruptions than ever before! Modern life is full of emails pushed to your device and constant messages on Slack, Teams, or texts. We often wear the ability to multitask as a badge of honor.
But meaningful progress on complex work requires sustained cognitive engagement, which is what attention management expert, , calls deep work.
Deep work requires:
Without boundaries, these conditions rarely occur.
Instead, the day becomes fragmented by requests, messages, and “quick asks.”
The result isn’t just lost time. It’s lost cognitive depth.
Here’s the paradox many high performers eventually discover:
The more successful you become, the more requests you receive.
If every request receives a yes, your time becomes owned by other people’s priorities.
Boundaries are not selfish.
They are structural requirements for producing meaningful work.
If guilt shows up when you protect your time, try experimenting with opposite action in small ways.
You receive a request and feel the familiar pull:
I should say yes.
Pause and label the emotion: This is guilt.
Ask yourself:
If the guilt isn’t justified, opposite action may be appropriate.
Instead of accommodating, try setting a clear boundary:
No elaborate explanation is required. In fact, keeping it concise often helps with additional urges to overexplain and over-apologize.
Opposite action works because behavior changes emotion over time.
If you repeatedly hold the boundary, the guilt gradually reduces. You are gradually creating new patterns that will move you closer to what is more important to you.
Learning to say no does more than free up time.
It creates the conditions for:
Ironically, the people who do the most impactful work are rarely the ones who say yes to everything.
They are the ones who protect the time necessary to do their best thinking.
I often ask my clients a simple question:
What action moves you toward the kind of professional—and person—you want to be?
If you want to be a person with more fulfillment, meaning, or inner peace, opposite action for guilt can move you in that direction. Saying no and feeling the guilt can lead you to protect the space where your most important work happens.
High performers often don’t need more discipline. They need support in protecting their time, energy, and attention. If guilt, overcommitment, or difficulty setting boundaries is getting in the way of your well-being or your most meaningful work, therapy can help. Reach out to learn more or book a consultation.