When burnout hits or toxic work takes its toll, you don’t fall apart randomly.
The parts of you that formed years ago to protect you from pain, shame, and helplessness — they step up. They take over. They do what they were built to do.
In the HeartRich framework, I call them your Inner Crews.
For a long time, the people around me thought I was doing fine. From most angles, my life looked stable — even successful.
Inside, I had a word for what was actually happening. A word I made up, because no existing word quite covered it.
Depranxed.
Why can’t I speak up when I need to? Why do I keep people-pleasing even when it costs me? Why do I just want Thai food but end up wherever everyone else wants to go?
Underneath all of it is a quieter, more painful question: What is wrong with me?
Nothing is wrong with you. But something very specific is happening.
When stress hits, old defenses take over – overexplaining, people-pleasing, perfectionism, interrupting, even going silent and shutting down. The APPs MAP helps leaders understand these patterns and begin the inner work to reclaim calm, confidence, and choice so they can show up authentically and powerfully.
Carl Jung called it the Shadow: the parts of ourselves we’d rather not see. Our hidden fears, flaws, impulses, needs, and shames. The weakness we can’t tolerate in others.
In Self Leadership and parts work, we know the Shadow by another name: the Exiles.
Here’s what happens when you finally turn toward the parts of yourself you’ve been hiding from.