🗞️ The Wellness Briefing – Edition No. 23 “Trust Fatigue: When Leadership Turns Into Hypervigilance” | December 2, 2025

3 minute read

Quick, high-impact wellness insights for ambitious professionals. Delivered Tuesdays.

Welcome Back to The Wellness Briefing

High performers treat risk the same way they treat rest: they wait for the perfect moment that never arrives. But the truth is this — your life and career expand when you take smart, controlled risks, not when you cling to certainty as a coping mechanism.

This week, we’re breaking down how to make decisions that stretch your growth — without stretching your nervous system to snapping point.

Let’s get into it.

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🧠 1 Insight Worth Reading: A 2025 Deloitte Well-Being Survey found that 77% of employees have experienced burnout feeling “constantly on alert”, even during downtime. The report links this pattern to anticipatory stress — essentially, your brain rehearsing catastrophes to feel prepared.

The real problem with being “constantly on alert”:
Leaders with high in anticipatory stress tend to have lower recovery quality, even when they sleep 7+ hours. Hypervigilance drains you even when nothing is wrong.

Trust fatigue isn’t about others. It’s about your nervous system expecting threat where there is none.

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💡 What That Means for You: If you feel like you can’t relax unless you’re checking in, checking up, or checking everything, you’re not experiencing “high standards.” You’re experiencing a dysregulated stress cycle.

When your baseline state is bracing for impact:

• Small emails feel urgent

• Neutral feedback feels threatening

• Minor mistakes feel like personal exposure

• Rest feels unsafe

Leadership becomes surveillance — and recovery becomes impossible.

Trust fatigue is not a mindset issue. It’s a physiological bottleneck that constricts your creativity, strategic thinking, and capacity to connect.

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✅ Try This: Use this quick pattern disruptor during moments of “I should check on it”: The 20/80 Scan

Ask yourself:

1. Is 20% of this urge about real risk…
   (a deadline, a dependency, a decision?)

2. …or is 80% about my nervous system trying to preempt discomfort? (fear of judgment, visibility, uncertainty?)

If it’s mostly emotional risk — pause. Let the discomfort rise and fall for 30 seconds before acting. You’ll train your brain to respond, not react.

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🎯 Pro Tip from the Guide: Hypervigilance is the nervous system’s attempt at quality control.

But leaders who excel sustainably do this instead:

“Shift from monitoring to meaning-making.”

Don’t ask: What might go wrong?

Ask: What would build capability? Psychological safety? Alignment?

Leadership grows when surveillance decreases.

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🧩 Extra: The Neuroscience of Hypervigilant Leadership: A 2022 study found that chronic monitoring engages the amygdala’s threat-response circuits more intensely than high-pressure decision-making itself.
Translation: Being in control is less stressful than watching for potential loss of control.

This is why:

• You crash after big presentations

• You feel tired after “easy but visible” tasks

• You dread weekends with no structure

• You can’t mentally shut down during PTO

Your brain is wired to detect danger — even in inbox notifications.

Trust fatigue isn’t a personality flaw. It’s a nervous system habit.

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🛠️ Tool / Resource Spotlight: Explore The Neuroception Framework by Dr. Stephen Porges — a model explaining how your body perceives safety or threat before your mind has time to think.

Key takeaway for leaders:

• You can’t logic your way out of hypervigilance.

• You must signal safety to your body — through breath, boundaries, and capacity-building.

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📊 Wellness Stat of the Week: Deloitte 2025 Workplace Well-Being Survey found 74% of employees report workload and leadership pressures as the biggest obstacles to their well-being, and only 52% consistently practice restorative habits (micro-breaks, sleep, movement).

Turns out letting go is measurable — and impactful.

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💬 Coaching Cue: “Trust isn’t the opposite of control — safety is. Build safety in your body, and your leadership will follow.”

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📣 Pulse Check:

Where does hypervigilance show up most for you: email, meetings, performance, or downtime?

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📈 The Burnout Approval Matrix: Trust Fatigue — A grid to highlight what are strategic risks vs. what might be self-sabotage.

Want more support?

• Book your free 20-min burnout consult here

• Download your full Burnout Recovery Roadmap Guide

• Get future issues delivered to your inbox Sign up here.

See you next Tuesday.
– Michelle

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