In Hamilton County, high performance can hide executive burnout

By MARTHA FERNANDEZ
Guest Columnist

Hamilton County is built on high performance. In Carmel, Fishers, Westfield, and Noblesville, the people next door are often executives, business owners, physicians, and attorneys, along with the spouses who keep everything running around them.

That culture has a blind spot. Around here, if your numbers are good, everyone assumes you are good. That assumption can be wrong.

I am a licensed clinical social worker and a co-founder of CEREVITY, a network of independent licensed clinicians that works with executives and other high achievers. A 2026 CEREVITY review, 67 percent of High-Achievers Peak During Peak Strain, looked at 287 high achievers who sought therapy through our network. Sixty-seven percent said they were performing at their peak during the same period their strain was at its worst.

Read that again. For two out of three people in that review, the best results came at the worst time. The quarter that earned the bonus was the quarter they stopped sleeping.

That is why results are a poor warning system. Boards look at revenue. Partners look at billable hours. Spouses look at the promotion. Everyone is watching the scoreboard, and the scoreboard says everything is fine.

There is a reason for that pattern. From the outside, strain often looks like drive. The executive answering email at midnight looks committed. The owner who never takes a day off looks dedicated. The parent who coaches, volunteers, and closes deals looks like a model of balance. In a community that rewards all of that, the warning signs get applause.

The cost shows up later. A separate 2026 CEREVITY review, Why Executives Wait 21 Months for Therapy, looked at 307 executives and found they waited a median of 21 months before a first session. Fifty-eight percent waited until a crisis forced them to act. By then, the strain that never showed up in the numbers is showing up everywhere else: in a marriage, in a health scare, in a sudden resignation.

Consider a composite drawn from patterns I see, not any one person. A regional vice president in Fishers just had her best year. She also has not taken a real vacation in three years, is snapping at her teenagers and cannot remember the last time she enjoyed a weekend. Her company sends her a congratulations note. Nobody asks how she is.

If performance is not the signal, what is? Watch for the quieter changes. Sleep that keeps getting shorter. Irritability with the people you love most. A calendar with no time off in it. Hobbies that disappear. A drink that has become a nightly requirement. Those are the signs that strain is building, even while the numbers climb.

Hamilton County can do better by its high performers in a few simple ways.

Families and friends can ask a different question. Not “How is work?” but “How are you sleeping?” or “When did you last take a day off?”

Employers can stop treating great results as proof of wellbeing and make confidential mental health care easy to use before anyone is in crisis, with no reporting back to the boss.

Leaders in the county’s companies, hospitals and congregations can talk openly about getting help themselves. One respected voice saying, “I saw a therapist during my best year at work,” can change what a whole office believes is normal.

And the high performers themselves can get help while things are still going well. Therapy is not only for when life falls apart. It can be the thing that keeps it from falling apart.

This community celebrates people who push hard and win. It can also be the place where pushing hard and getting help are seen as part of the same strength.

Martha Fernandez, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker who co-founded CEREVITY, a private-pay concierge network of independent licensed clinicians built for high achievers. Her book is Wired to Burn. You can learn more at cerevity.com.