When the working day ends, many of us do not actually decompress.

We sedate.
We distract.
We scroll.
We pour a drink.
We call it recovery.

And sometimes that brings temporary relief.

But not always restoration.

Sometimes it just delays contact with what has built up inside:
tension,
irritability,
restlessness,
fatigue,
a body that still does not feel safe enough to switch off.

That is why the end of the day matters.
And for many of us, the end of the working week matters even more.

If we do not know how to come down properly,
we can end up carrying the week in our nervous system while trying to escape it.

A simpler and healthier recovery process is one that I often offer my clients:

Tense → Notice → Release → Recover → Renew.

Before you begin, rate your current level of activation from 0 to 10.

0 = deeply settled
10 = highly activated, stressed, or overwhelmed

Pause.

Take three 3:6 breaths:
in for a count of 3,
out for a count of 6,
and repeat twice more.

Notice what is happening in your body.
Name what has built up.
Notice where it sits in your body.
Choose what would actually help you decompress.

Not what will distract you.
What will help you recover.

Maybe it is a walk.
A stretch.
Silence.
A bath.
A proper meal.
An early night.
A long exhale.
No alcohol tonight.

Then rate your activation again.

Then follow through on the choice you made.

And rate your activation once more.

Did your system begin to come down?
Did your body actually begin to recover?

Recovery is not indulgence.

It is a skill.

And for many of us, it is a missing skill.
But it is also a learnable one.

Sometimes the most important part of the day is not how we push through.

It is how we come down.

Recovery is not a luxury.
It is a resilience practice.

Note: In the developmental sequence I use, recovery and decompression is one of the first skills to build. Many of us struggle to grow well because we do not yet know how to come down well.

Why changing how we think so often fails to change how we live

Many of us know exactly why we do what we do.

We understand the childhood pattern.
We can name the trigger.
We recognise the unhelpful cognition.
We can even catch the story we are telling ourselves.

And yet, in the moment that matters, we still do the old thing.

Why?

Because psychological change is not only cognitive.

It is also procedural.

That means it is not just about what we think, understand, or can explain.
It is about what we have learned to do.

Take learning to drive.

Before we first sat in the driver’s seat, many of us had no real idea how many skills were involved.

Then came the awkward phase.

We knew what we were supposed to do, but we could not yet do it properly.

Mirror.
Clutch.
Gear.
Signal.
Steering.
Judging speed.
Watching the road.
Not stalling.
Not panicking.

At first it took huge concentration.

Then, gradually, with repetition, something changed.

What was once clumsy and effortful became more natural.

Eventually, many of us could drive for long periods without consciously thinking about each individual step.

That is procedural learning.

And a great deal of psychological life works like that too.

Many of us have learned procedures for:

how to respond to tension,
how to deal with criticism,
how to handle shame,
how to protect ourselves in relationships,
how to react when someone is angry,
how to cope with uncertainty,
how to override our own needs.

The difficulty is that some of us learned these procedures under stress.

Or from people who were themselves not well taught.

Or in environments where what we learned was really a survival adaptation.

So now, in adult life, we may still be running old procedures automatically.

People-pleasing can be a procedure we learned of scanning others and overriding our own needs in order to preserve connection.

Imposter syndrome can be a procedure we learned of anticipating shame and trying to prevent exposure by over-preparing, second-guessing ourselves, or shrinking.

Overthinking can be a procedure we learned of using thought to create safety, control uncertainty, or avoid our inner experience.

Obsessive or OCD-type loops can involve procedures we learned of using repetitive thought or checking routines to reduce fear by creating a temporary illusion of certainty.

Depressive vulnerability can emerge when we have learned to suppress, disconnect from, or leave unprocessed the feelings we struggled to metabolise.

Losing ourselves in relationships can be a procedure we learned of abandoning our own signals, limits, and identity in order to maintain attachment.

That is why cognitive change, on its own, is often not the full change.

We may recognise the thought.
Challenge the belief.
Replace the story.

And yet our body may still brace.
Our feelings may still flood or shut down.
Our impulses may still run the old route.
Our relationships may still organise around the old pattern.

Knowing is not the same as being able.

Real change often means retraining the procedure.

Not just understanding the pattern,
but building the capacity to do something different when the pattern activates.

That is why psychological growth is often much less like hearing a good explanation, and much more like learning to drive differently.

At first it feels awkward and effortful.

But with the right kind of practice, a different response can become more available, more natural, and eventually more embodied.

So yes, cognitive change matters.

But if we want change that holds under pressure, we usually need more than a better thought.

We need practice.

We need repetition.

We need new procedures.

In coming posts, I’ll say more about some of these procedures, and how we begin to build them in everyday life.

Benchmarking versus narcissism: the surprising difference

It can make very good sense for organisations to benchmark aspects of their performance against other organisations.

We compare.
We notice gaps.
We learn.
We improve.

That is not automatically unhealthy.

I was thinking about this recently in an indoor cycling class.

You know the kind of thing:
like a disco on a static bike.

Darkness.
Flashing lights.
Loud music.
“Go faster” instructions.
Whooping.

At one point I looked across at the electronic screen on the bike of the guy next to me.

He had gone further than me.
Burnt more calories.

That fired me up.

I pushed harder.

And, me being me, I found myself wondering:
is this narcissistic?

A few sessions later, I was reliably ahead of him.

And the truth is: he really helped me improve.

Without either of us ever speaking.
Without me needing to undermine him.
Without huge emotional cost.

That got me thinking.

There is a big psychological difference between benchmarking and narcissistic comparison.

Both involve comparison.

But comparison alone is not the issue.

The difference is often what happens inside us during the comparison.

In healthy benchmarking, we may notice:
interest,
motivation,
challenge,
admiration,
energy,
drive.

We see where we are.
We see what is possible.
And we use the gap to grow.

In more narcissistic process, the emotional tone is often very different.

The comparison may trigger:
shame,
envy,
deflation,
humiliation,
resentment,
grandiosity,
or a strong need to restore superiority.

Now the issue is no longer:
“How can I learn from this?”

It becomes:
“What does this say about me?”
“Am I losing?”
“How do I get above them again?”
“How do I protect my status?”

That is a very different internal world.

And it carries a very different emotional cost.

So perhaps the difference between benchmarking and narcissism is not the presence of comparison.

It is the psychological meaning of the comparison.

Can we use another person’s performance as information?

Or do we experience it as injury?

Can we be stretched by the gap?

Or do we become shamed by it?

Can we improve without needing the other person diminished?

That seems to me to be the real distinction.

In my cycling example, the other rider became a benchmark.

Not a threat.
Not an enemy.
Not a wound.

And that is why the process helped me grow.

This matters in organisations too.

Healthy cultures use benchmarking to learn, adapt, and raise standards.

More narcissistic cultures often use comparison to organise shame, status anxiety, defensiveness, and blame.

Superficially, both may look competitive.

Psychologically, they are very different.

Comparison is not the problem.

Shame-laden comparison is.

When we stop feeling sexy, it is not always an attractiveness problem.

Sometimes it is a vitality problem.

We can be attractive, accomplished, admired, loved even — and still not feel sexy.

Why?

Because feeling sexy is rarely just about looks.

At a deeper level, it is often about whether we feel:

alive in our body,
safe enough to inhabit ourselves,
connected to our feelings,
free enough from shame,
and able to let our energy come through.

Over the years, what I’ve seen in therapy and coaching with individuals and couples is how so many of us can lose touch with feeling sexy after:

childhood trauma,
abuse or neglect,
childbirth,
illness,
cancer,
burnout,
redundancy,
grief,
betrayal,
or simply years of overriding our own needs.

In other words, losing touch with feeling sexy is often not a cosmetic problem.

It is a human vitality problem.

And that matters.

Because feeling sexy, at its healthiest, is not about performance, posing, or becoming someone else’s fantasy.

It is often about feeling more fully present, alive, embodied, and at ease in ourselves.

And for many of us, it also affects how we show up in our couple relationships.

When vitality drops, shame rises, or we become cut off from our body, it is often harder for us to feel playful, open, desirous, expressive, or fully present with a partner.

So this is not only an individual issue.

It can also affect how we maintain, or lose touch with, closeness and connection in our couple relationships.

From this perspective, feeling sexy depends on a cluster of trainable psychological skills.

For example:

Body attunement
Our capacity to notice what is happening inside our body — sensation, warmth, tension, pleasure, contraction, breath, rhythm.

Emotional processing
Our ability to stay with our feelings long enough to understand and work through them, rather than instantly shutting them down or distracting ourselves away from them.

Healthy self-worth
Our capacity to retain dignity, worth, and lovability even when we feel exposed, imperfect, vulnerable, or seen. Shame is one of the greatest killers of sexiness.

Recovery and sustainable energy
Our ability to restore ourselves after stress rather than simply keep pushing on. When we are chronically depleted, sensuality often disappears.

Healthy boundaries
Our capacity to say yes and no clearly. Boundaries create safety, and safety often makes desire, presence, and authentic expression more possible.

Embodied presence
Our ability to let ourselves arrive. To be here. To take up space. To let our voice, face, movement, and energy come through without collapsing into self-monitoring.

These are not fixed traits.

They are skills.

And like other skills, they can be developed.

So perhaps the better question is not:

“How do I become sexier?”

But:

“What has happened to my vitality?”
“And what skills would help me come back to life inside myself?”

When a CEO avoids discomfort, the organisation pays.

Not only in strategy.
In mood.
In trust.
In clarity.
In conflict.
And eventually, in how customers get treated.

When the person at the top has a strongly avoidant process, the effects are often subtle at first.

Strategy stays vague.
Decisions stay soft.
Difficult conversations get delayed.
Tension is managed indirectly rather than addressed directly.

And the people one or two rungs below the CEO are often the first to really feel it.

They are told to move.
Then criticised for moving.

They are given direction.
Then blamed when that direction upsets a stakeholder.

They are expected to handle conflict.
But are not backed when conflict comes.

Over time, this creates a particular kind of organisational strain:
responsibility without authority,
movement without sponsorship,
and frustration without clarity.

People start second-guessing themselves.
They over-function.
They walk on eggshells.
They become more concerned with avoiding upset than with facing reality.

This is one of the hidden costs of avoidant leadership.

Avoidance can look polite.
It can look thoughtful.
It can even look strategic.

But often it is neither.

Often it is a person trying to manage internal discomfort by delaying contact with what feels painful, exposing, conflictual, or uncertain.

And when that happens at the top, the whole organisation adapts around it.

In an emotionally mature organisation, negativity travels up the chain, where it can be metabolised by people with the authority, emotional maturity, and resource to process it safely.

That is part of leadership.

Not just setting direction,
but absorbing strain without exporting it downward.

Because if difficulty is not processed at the top, it tends to travel down.

Into senior teams.
Into middle managers.
Into frontline staff.
Into the people with the least power and the fewest resources to hold it well.

And if it is not metabolised there either, it often spills outward.

Onto colleagues.
Onto teams.
Onto customers.

The encouraging part is this:

Avoidant process is not fixed.

It can change.

In my clinical dataset of 104 clients, the average avoidant score reduced from 29.5/56 in the clinical range at the start to 13.5/56 in the non-clinical range at the end, after an average of 19 sessions.
Effect size d = 2.13, p < .001.

That is a large shift.

So this is not about shaming avoidant CEOs.

It is about recognising that avoidance has consequences,
and that people can train beyond it.

Because better leadership requires the capacity to tolerate difficult feelings, stay in contact with reality, stay clearer and more decisive under pressure, and repair strain in relationships rather than retreat from it.

If the top of the organisation cannot metabolise difficulty, the bottom of the organisation will end up carrying it.