The Research Behind… “Why High Performers Hide the Injury”

In my last blog, Playing Through the Injury Won't Make the Hurt Go Away, I begrudgingly admitted the "root cause." It was me. The restructuring came with a cheap shot at my ego. I called it fine. The injury festered and spread sepsis throughout everything — including my game. 

For you, it might not be a career that ended. Maybe a role that ended too soon. A marriage. A friendship that went quiet.

Different hit. Same 3 AM question: 

Why did my role change take me out of my game?

I went looking for why it took my BFF calling me out before admitting that I got butt-hurt. What I found made me sigh with relief — and annoyed. Of course, there's research on this. Of course, there is a simple move to stop it, too.

TL;DR — For the Impatient (You Know Who You Are)

1. Feeling relief AND being butt-hurt at the same time isn't a contradiction. The Dual Process Model says your brain swings between loss mode and rebuilding mode when a central identity takes a hit. You're not going crazy. This is wiring, not drama.
2. Strong players hide the hits best. Self-concealment is the default move when your self-image as "the one who always sees it coming" gets blindsided. You can't let anyone — including yourself — know you got injured when you're still calling the plays.
3. Hiding it uses the same fuel you need to read the game and trust your own calls. Thought suppression keeps a “don’t think about it” patrol running in the background — and the more you suppress, the more you pretend, make excuses, and blame others for being “off your game.”
4. One move can stop the injury from festering. Affect labeling — putting the real words to what happened, out loud, to one person who already has your back — stops the loop and frees the exact bandwidth you've been burning. Yup, it's that simple.

Now that you're curious enough to keep reading — here are the details.

Why I Feel Two Completely Opposite Emotions at the Same Time?

Psychology Today explained it simply. When the decision to leave is made FOR you — not BY you — you take it personally like an attack on your ego. A cheap shot that you didn’t see coming. Even if you have been feeling trapped, plotting ways to get out, and are relieved when you finally leave. When your role and your identity have been the same thing for decades, a hit to one is a hit on both.

The Dual Process Model — the actual name for this — says that when your mind finally processes these conflicts, you will swing between the relief and the hurt. Sometimes in the same afternoon. Sometimes in the same sentence. So if you choose your terms and timing of the leave, your ego gets to walk off the court on its own two feet. When the decision is made for you, your Self can feel relieved, and your Ego can still be on the floor, clutching its ribs. Who has the last say in your story matters.

My Self was genuinely relieved.
My Ego genuinely got rocked.
Would have been nice to know this six months ago.

Admitting This Is Hard. Especially to Yourself.

You knew exactly who to call. You have people who would show up within four minutes of a text, no questions asked, coffee and pizza in hand. So why didn’t you?

Because the call wasn’t about trusting them. It was about admitting something to you.

I might be more afraid of my judgment of myself than anyone else.

PMC research on Self-Concealment found that people who hide distress aren’t protecting their reputation. They’re protecting their self-opinion. The secrecy is aimed inward, not outward. And PMC’s study on Self-Concealment found that the stronger the player, the better they can hide this from everyone.

Do I get a prize for doing this so well?

Why Can't I Just Get Over It and Move On?

You know that person where something is always going wrong — and it is NEVER their fault? They have a story for everything. An excuse for every miss?

Now ask yourself — when was the last time YOU did that?
No judgement. You could say it in your head, to protect your cover story.

A meta-analysis on Thought Suppression found that the more you try NOT to think about something, the more you think about it. Your brain has to keep working to push that thought back down — a constant “don’t think about it” patrol running in the background. That patrol uses the same fuel you need to read the room, to perform, to make calls on your life.

So this is why I was off my game.

Because your brain has been playing four-on-five — keeping one defender on the court full-time just to guard the thought you refused to look at.

My subconscious was running a covert operation to screw up my game. Six months of it. Annoyed my BFF saw it before I admitted it.

One Move. Not a Rebuild. One Move.

As I was researching for this post, I kept waiting for a complicated answer. Something elaborate. Something that explained why I was such a dope!

Instead, Psychology Today gave me something offensively simple — Affect Labeling. The whole concept? Name what you’ve been carrying. Out loud. To one specific person. That changes how your brain processes it.

That’s it? One sentence to one person? Four minutes over coffee or pizza, and I’ll get my game back?

Here’s the kicker. The size of the disclosure doesn’t matter. The honesty does. That’s what lifts the burden. That’s what stops the loop. That’s what puts My Self back in the game.

One honest sentence doesn’t rebuild the whole team. But it does blow the whistle on the covert operation that’s been running your game from the bench.

Your Move?

You felt two things at once — that’s the Dual Process Model doing exactly what it’s designed to do. You hid the hit because strong players conceal — that’s self-concealment, not weakness. You ran the suppression loop and drained the exact bandwidth you needed — that’s thought suppression. One honest sentence to one person stopped it all — that’s affect labeling, and it’s annoyingly simple.

Four moving parts. One move.

Life interrupted you for a reason.

If you ignore the hit long enough,
the injury will fester and turn septic.
Untreated injuries don’t stay quiet.

This research just handed you the playbook.

Name it to yourself.
Call your person.
Then get back in the game.

Make ONE Move.