71. Pressure Is a Privilege

Pressure has a way of getting personal fast. Not the everyday stress of traffic or deadlines, but the kind that makes you wonder if you’re really cut out for the thing you want. I go back to a moment that still blows my mind: at 15 years old, I worked inside the oncology department at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, helping in a cancer research lab and sitting at round tables with doctors. It matured me, stretched me, and also introduced me to high-stakes environments way earlier than most people experience. 

That early intensity didn’t end when I clocked out. I talk honestly about growing up with pressure at home, the emotional cost of being pushed toward “acceptable” futures, and how repeated shut-downs can turned into an inner voice that said "you are not enough". 

From applying to West Point and considering big life paths to struggling through a major that didn’t fit, this is a real look at how family expectations can shape identity, confidence, and decision-making. 

We also go into the body side of pressure: how the gym can be a powerful tool for self-care and mental health, then quietly become another place to punish yourself through comparison, perfectionism, and never feeling done. 

I break down the difference between productive pressure that builds you and destructive pressure that tears you down, plus the inner work that helped me shift my self-talk, rethink worth, and start carrying pressure like a privilege instead of a threat. 

If you’ve been feeling anxious, stuck, or stretched thin, press play and sit with the questions I share near the end. 

If you want the deeper lessons behind strength training, I write a weekly newsletter called Between Reps: Building the Unbreakable Woman. Check it out HERE

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Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only.  This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.

Transcript

What Real Pressure Feels Like

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body Podcast. I am your host, Tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate creative, storyteller, and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body. Welcome back to the show. I am your host, Tiana. When was the last time that you felt real pressure? Not stress, not inconvenience, but the kind of pressure that made you question whether you were actually built for the thing that you were reaching for or that you were pursuing. Now, in this episode, I'm going to share with you a story from my very first job when I was 15 years old and why thinking back on it now, it's absolutely insane the type of job that it was at such a young age. I'm also going to share with you my thoughts about how pressure, especially from the people that love us the most, can actually be damaging if you're carrying it the wrong way, if you're interpreting it the wrong way. And then we will reframe how we carry our emotional weight. Like, how are we going to move through life with some of the heavier stuff or the stuff that we don't talk about? So let's get started with this wild job story. And this came to me today because I was training a client and we're both from the Bronx. And I had said to her, you know, funny enough, when I was 15 years old, I worked at Montefiore Medical Center, which is in the northwestern part of the Bronx. It's very close to Westchester County. And if you're not from the area, it's part of New York City. The Bronx is one of the boroughs. But I would say it's probably a 30-minute drive along the West Side Highway up the Henry Hudson Parkway. So if there was no traffic and you were on a clear roadway, not taking regular, you know, street traffic, probably a 30-minute drive, maybe 25 minutes, uh, just for reference. And at the time I lived further north in Westchester County, but my stepdad worked in the Bronx as well. He's an attorney and his office was not terribly far. So he was a real one and he would drop me off in the morning. He would go to work, I'd be at work, and then he would pick me up in the afternoon. And sometimes my mom would pick me up, just depended on the day. And we'd go back to Westchester. But here's the thing about this job that was so interesting to me, thinking about it now, at 47 years old. I was 15 years old and I worked in the oncology department of a major metropolitan hospital. And we're talking New York City, okay? We're talking about walking into areas where I had to have a badge that were, you know, a certain status. I was by myself most of the day, in between work functions. For example, if I wanted to take a break, if I went out for lunch, if I was waiting for someone to pick me up, little old me at 15 years old was in these different areas by myself. And contrary to what may be portrayed on television and in movies, New York City is not all dangerous. But you need to be alert and you need to know your surroundings, you need to be aware. You, you know, can't uh wander off into space. You have to be vigilant. And, you know, at this time, I would say most 15-year-olds were probably camp counselors, or they were a lifeguard at a pool or at the beach, or maybe they did babysitting. Or, you know, I remember one of my high school friends, he worked at the pizza shop down the street from me. But, you know, no, for me, I had to work in a cancer research laboratory in a major hospital. And, you know, it just totally tracks because I grew up with a lot of pressure. And my mom always wanted the best for me. However, her delivery was not always the nicest. And this was an opportunity to put something that would help me get into college. This would, this is something I could put on my college applications and talk about in any essays that I had to write. And hopefully it would, you know, we we hoped at the time it would set me apart from other applicants. Did it help? I don't know. Did it help me get a scholarship? Maybe. Who knows? It was so long ago. Uh, but you know, at 15, I think about 15-year-olds today. And if I had a 15-year-old daughter, I would not be okay with her working in a busy New York City hospital, even though, you know, during the day she's in a laboratory, she's with other doctors, you know, not by herself, but like the it's the going in and out, it's the hangout. And I remember thinking back, I remember there was a gentleman that used to flirt with me, and he was a lot older. And I was only 15 years old. Aye, aye, aye. Nothing ever happened. I don't even remember the guy's name, but I knew. I knew at 15 years old that he thought I was cute, you know. Um very interesting. Wow. You know, I didn't remember that until I was actually mic'd up and talking about it. But going back to, you know, that experience, it helped me mature for sure. Not the guy, I'm talking about the actual job because I worked in in the research laboratory. So we were analyzing blood samples, and I learned the whole process. Uh, I learned how to identify different cells, and I even sat and joined the doctors at their round table. And at a very, very impressionable place in my growth, I learned how to conduct myself among professionals. I learned how to pay attention, how to articulate things, how to use my manners and you know, show respect. And it helped me tremendously in all areas of my life. But at 15, to be in such a high-stakes environment, there's a lot of pressure there. And then when I would go home, there was a lot of pressure at home as well. Now, my stepdad was pretty laid back. My mom was all over me all the time. You know, I know it was from concern. I know she only wanted the best for me, and I know that in some ways she was trying to create an environment and provide something that she did not have herself, and to make sure that I not only got opportunities that she did not, but that I not only took the opportunities, but that I chose the best, nothing but the best for me, no matter the cost, meaning the emotional cost. And so in high school, I was pulling all nighters to get good grades. Uh, I struggled with studying. I was not naturally a good student. I would read the same page of text or in my notes over and over and over and over again. I struggled in school. And I'm sure if I said this in front of my mom or if she ever listens to this episode, she will roll her eyes and be like, that's not true. But it absolutely is true. The thing is, I was also good at playing the game. I know now that back then, you know, I could talk the talk. But when it came down to taking the tests, when it came down to getting specific about things, that's where I would feel frozen or stuck. Now, I've mentioned this in other episodes. There was a lot of stress in the house. My younger brother, the one closest to me in age, was constantly in and out of trouble. And my mom and stepdad were trying to have a baby. So my junior year of high school, my mom was pregnant, so there was a lot of emotions, you know, the roller coaster ride of emotions, and then there was a baby in the house. And so there was a lot of stress. There was fighting. My dad was in jail. I was always trying to go see him and, you know, write him letters and get calls from him. And there was a lot of just high-flying emotions at all times. But the thing that was the hardest for me was being pressured to make certain decisions about my future at such a young age. So I applied to uh West Point as well as Annapolis. Those are both military academies. And I did that primarily because I wanted excellent education. And I thought that's a great path for me to go. And you get a quote unquote free education. There's absolutely nothing free about it because you give your life to the armed forces. But I thought, you know, maybe I'm cut out for this. Maybe it would be really cool. I had always thought as a little girl, it would be amazing to be a pilot or to do something really unique, adventurous, and special. What that was, I wasn't quite sure. So I started this application process, and throughout the process, I wound up withdrawing my application from Annapolis because when I gave it more thought, the idea of going out uh into the middle of the ocean or being put on a submarine for months at a time did not appeal to me. But being at West Point wasn't too bad because it was only about an hour north of where I was living at the time. It's a beautiful area, and my parents could come and visit me uh more frequently. However, I didn't get in. I made it all the way through the process, and then I was put on the wait list. So I wanted to do engineering or I wanted to do something with math. And by the time I found out I wasn't going to go to West Point, I had my other college choices listed, and I was trying to decide what major I wanted. And here's the really heartbreaking part for me. I would throw out ideas, I would talk to my mom about what I was interested in, and it would just be a flat out no. So I thought about maybe being a math teacher. I love math, no. I thought about being an English teacher, no. And when you're 15, 16, 17, and you're trying to figure out what are you going to do for the rest of your life, it feels like it's a high-stakes conversation and there's a lot of pressure there, right? So if I kept getting shot down with all of my ideas, it started to feel like I wasn't good enough, that none of my ideas were good enough. And the part that was really difficult for me is that I knew in my teens I was suppressing my creativity. My parents were both struggling artists and then business owners, and they didn't want that life for me. They wanted me to go to college, they wanted me to get a job, and they wanted me to make a ton of money. So if it wasn't a lawyer or a doctor, really the only thing that my mom would accept was engineering. Now, mind you, I should have had the guts to change my major, or I should have had the guts to say, you know what, this is my life and my future, and I have to do something that I'm interested in. And what screwed me up big time was that I was smart enough to do engineering. I wasn't great at it, but I could get by. So talk about a slice of humble pie because I graduated in close to the top of my high school class. And then go to college, and everyone at college is a valedictorian or a salutatorian or is in the top percentages of their graduating class. That's the whole bunch. So now you're a little fish in a big pond, and your grades suck, and you're just getting by when you used to be a straight A student. But the thing that was so hard was that I also felt like a failure emotionally at home because all of the ideas that I had, I either had to keep them to myself or push them down or suppress them or keep them tucked away. Because in my mind, I couldn't make the distinction between my proposed ideas not being good enough for my mom versus me being good enough for my mom. And that was super tough. The delivery, the harshness, the judgment. It just felt like doors were always closing whenever I would try to open them up to have conversations. And I think that there was just always a lot of tension between her and I because of my early childhood when I didn't spend a lot of time with her from the age of around four until I was about nine or ten, I didn't see my mom that much. So there was always this sort of internal struggle in our relationship because it was like the elephant in the room. But what happens when you're carrying something around internally and it has no place to go? It starts to consume you, right? This pressure that just became louder, like a critic in my head, or just like a voice and it had no outlet, nowhere to go. Now I started working out towards the end of high school. I I didn't do it consistently just because it really wasn't a priority the first year or two. I was freshman in college, just getting my footing. My academics, like I said, were not that amazing. So I had to do what I could with what I had available to me. And I think through most of my freshman year, I might have gone to the gym once a week, maybe twice. Not enough for me, but it was all I could do. And eventually I started to see a return on my investment and I started to carve out more time for the gym. I started to notice that my mental health was in much better place at the end of each workout. And I made better choices as far as what I was going to eat in the dining hall. I slept better. The stress and the pressure never went anywhere. That was still there. But I noticed these small positive benefits from my routine. So I started to prioritize the gym a little bit more. But then something else happened. I started to punish myself by going heavier in the gym. So first, this thing that I found that became a relief kind of morphed into another way for me to beat myself up, for me to tell myself I wasn't good enough, for me to stare at my reflection and compare myself to women in the fitness magazines, or to, you know, the models in the posters on the wall in the gym, or the other girls who seem to have it all, you know, have the car in the sorority, the hot boyfriend, and they have the six-pack, they have an easy major. Life is good. And I'm over here like, yeah, this isn't cutting it for me. I gotta push myself harder. I'm not doing enough. And I started to develop stuff like stomach issues, thinning hair, anxiety, biting my nails. Now people did know I was under an enormous amount of pressure, the people around me. I wasn't necessarily good at articulating what was wrong. I just struggled and I cried a lot. I always leaned or fell back on the fact that, you know, I hated my major and my parents were forcing me to do something I didn't want to do, and it's my life, and I felt like I had no control. And then I also missed my dad. I also missed my baby brother who was born my senior year, so he was, you know, like a toddler when I left to go to college. And I just kept moving. I just kept going to class, I kept going to the gym, I kept punishing myself. And then eventually I started to slow down a little bit. I realized throughout the the later years of college that we were getting close to the end. And if I could just make it one more day, if I could just get through this class, if I could just get through this exam, if I could just get through this project, if I could just get to the next break, and then I could go home and be at home for a little bit. It was a lot. I mean, my hands are shaking actually as I'm talking because I kind of forgot how much pressure I used to put on myself. But what does that mean? So now as I'm sharing all of this with you, maybe you recognized little pieces of yourself in my story. And I wanna I want you to know if you're if you're feeling pressure about something, that means it's important, that means it matters to you, that means it's worth doing, that means there's high stakes. It's not random, and it's not necessarily all bad. Once I graduated from college, and by the way, I barely, barely graduated. I mean, oh my goodness. So I took all these elections, it's a total sidebar. Here we go. The Tiana sidebar, part one. I took all these electives, right? My freshman year, I took a class called History of the Future, which is kind of scary because some of the stuff we talked about, I am actually witnessing happen. I took a sex education class, which was a total elective, my junior year. It was uh really more of a philosophy class, and it was fucking amazing. I took a biology class. I loved all of my electives. I love all of these artistic elective courses, and I thought that if I did well in those, it would help bring my GPA up. What I did not know until the end of my senior year, pretty close to graduation, was when they do the GPA for your major in order to make sure you can graduate, all of those elective classes don't count. They're not included. It's only the core curriculum. So I was sweating. My parents came for graduation weekend. There were so many different ceremonies and events, and I walked, I had my cap and gown, and truth be told, I did not know if I actually graduated or not. I went through the whole thing, did the whole song and dance. And in the back of my head, I'm like, fuck. I hope I made it. I made it barely, barely, barely. Barely, barely just made it, but I made it. There was somebody looking out for me, I gotta tell you. So when you're having a moment of feeling this kind of pressure, it tells you three things. One, you care about the outcome. If you didn't care about the outcome, there would be nothing to feel. The this pressure that you're feeling is evidence that you're invested. Two, it tells you that you're close to something that is requiring more of you. It's uncomfortable, but that's not a sign to stop. It's a sign that you are being stretched and that you need to grow. That's a good thing. And three that you haven't quit yet. Because if you've already given up on the idea, you wouldn't feel that pressure. They feel relief or they might feel emptiness, but they're not gonna feel that kind of pressure. So what's important for me to mention here in this conversation is there's a difference between pressure being productive versus destructive. When it's productive, it's gonna push you forward. It'll come from your standards. It'll come from you knowing yourself. It'll come from being so grounded in your beliefs and in your own capacity that it'll challenge you. Destructive pressure is gonna feel like tearing you down. It's gonna come from something you fear or something you are trying to control or something you haven't processed, or some sort of unreasonable expectation, or something reminiscent of something that someone told you when you were a child that you you couldn't meet up to. Destructive pressure tells you that your instincts are wrong. It makes you feel small. It makes you want to recluse, it wants you to pull in and contract. And the work is learning how to tell the difference and figuring out what to do with each sensation or each kind of pressure that you feel. Because not all of this pressure is created equal. Now, up until this point, I've just shared with you how I have tortured myself, how I've beaten myself up, and how I created all sorts of anxiety-riddled situations for myself. But I have not shared with you yet how I changed that. And it started with the inner work, with the self-talk, with realizing that the pressure I was feeling had shifted at some point in my adult life from things I was actually hearing my parents say to me, specifically my mom say to me, and how it shifted into the inner narrative that I was telling myself. And I vividly remember um the early years of my career were incredibly hard. Um, so I graduated college in 2000 and I was working, uh, I was bartending on the side to make extra money. And then I had an apartment. I had a boyfriend that lived with me temporarily. I kicked him out for many reasons. And my dad moved in. I was helping my dad get on his feet. He was on parole. So my expenses were very high. And I was living outside my means. I was, you know, burning up my credit cards and feeling all sorts of stress. Eventually, I moved out of that apartment, left my dad behind again for various reasons. And I was living in a very cute little one-bedroom a little further north, closer to where I lived when I was in high school, actually. And I didn't have much. And I remember I was still paying off my student loans from college and a car note and a bunch of other things. And things were so intense at one point in time that it was kind of like, well, I'm gonna pay these bills late, and then I'm gonna pay these bills really late. And back in the day, we would get these like pink envelopes from the insurance company when your bill was was past due. And stupid me, I didn't know at the time that, you know, once it was past due, like you you're not really fully covered. Uh not, I don't know if that would have changed how I handled it, because if you don't got it, you don't got it, right? But I remember I had these piles of like bills, like, okay, well, these are gonna get paid soon, these are gonna get paid a little bit later, and and so on and so forth. And really having this talk with myself, like, all right, girl, what are we doing here? We either need to make more money, we need to find a better job, we need to stop settling for less. We need to learn how to negotiate. And I discovered the secret. And it helped me a lot. It changed my perspective. Now, I will tell you in the beginning, if you are not familiar with the law of attraction in the beginning, it feels like a lie. It feels like you're bullshitting yourself, it feels like you're living in a delusion because reality is what you see. And until you take radical responsibility, you don't realize that your reality is just a mirror reflecting back to you how you feel about yourself and who you are, not what you want. The secret teaches that you get what you want. No, not exactly. You attract on a vibrational level what you feel you are worth. So for me, this was a tug of war for years because I always felt like I was not enough. Well, guess what? If you feel like you're not enough, how much are you gonna have? Not enough. But I also realized that the way I was treating myself in the gym was not conducive to long-term health and longevity, even though that's how I am masked it. That's what I called it. So I slowed down with that. I recalibrated everything I was doing. I started to look at the way that I was fueling my body, how I was treating myself, how I was brainwashed into feeling like I had to be productive all the time. Because if I slowed down, what was gonna happen? And I remember at a point in time, I worked full-time during the week. I had one bartending job on Thursday night and Saturday night, had another bartending job on Friday night, and then I usually would go dancing for a few hours on Sunday morning. I would give myself that little permission slip to have fun, uh, typically involving extracurricular activities. Not proud of that, but that's the truth. And then I would go home and sleep all day Sunday, only to repeat the whole vicious cycle on Monday. And I had to really step back from all of it. I had to shift how I was treating myself in the gym. I had to change how I was showing up to work. I had to just change the things I was doing and the way that I was speaking to myself and all of that. And let me tell you, it was not easy. It took a long time, it took a lot longer than I wanted it to. But when you are unprogramming yourself and shifting things, you have to be kind. You have to be nice to yourself, you have to be graceful. And so I have taken all of these experiences and now I incorporate it into my coaching style. Because a lot of times I see my clients, I know their situation better than they know it. I pick up nuanced things in between what they're saying, the way they're saying it, the energy in which they say it, what they're not telling me. And I know how to work around that. I know how to help them. At some point, we have to stop looking at the gym as punishment, as penalty. At some point, you have to move on from the way things used to be to create a better future for yourself. At some point, you have to ask yourself if the way that you're talking to yourself and the things that you're constantly thinking, are those true? Or are those just feelings that you have felt and thoughts that you have thought, and you've been doing them and living in those places for so long that you believe them to be true, but you actually don't know if they are in fact true.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

What? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

So the next time that you are feeling all sorts of pressure in your life, you're starting to feel anxious. I want you to ask yourself, whose voice has been setting your standard? And is that someone you actually want to be accountable to? Second question Where in your life are you applying pressure that you are punishing yourself as opposed to building yourself up? And three, what would it look like if you were to carry the pressure you're under right now as a sign of your capacity and your ability rather than inadequacy? Think about that. I know this conversation may be heavy for some of you, but this is the kind of thinking I do all day long. I have been told my whole life I'm too intense. I don't give a fuck. Yes, I am intense. I feel on such an insanely deep level that I feel badly for people who don't have the capacity to feel it, the capacity that I can feel because it's amazing. It's extremely painful too, but it's also so beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

So I want you to slow down.

How To Connect And Support

SPEAKER_00 33:22

I want you to remember that the person who has learned to carry pressure with intention and with self-awareness is the most powerful person in any room because they see pressure as a privilege. They won't panic because they've kind of been preparing for it their whole life. So, what are you gonna do with that excess weight? What are you gonna do with the stuff you're carrying around right now? How are you going to move that energy? Maybe it's through working out, maybe it's through strength training. That's a good place to start. Now, if you are thinking to yourself, I don't know, I don't know how to even begin looking at this stuff and carrying, you know, what do you mean carrying this pressure? Okay, let's let's back it up a little bit. The next time you find yourself thinking a negative thought or beating yourself up about something because you feel like you're not good enough, I want you to slow down and ask yourself, is that something that you truly believe, or is that something that you believe because you have heard it from someone else who cares about you for a long time? And it's recurred over and over and over again. If you're not already working out, what are you doing? Let's go get to the gym. It's a perfect way to move that energy. So I know this conversation was heavy, but it's something that's been top of mind. And it's something that I thought about a lot today as I was reflecting on the conversation I had with my client on the squat rack about how amazing I think it is that at 15 years old I was moving around a hospital in New York City by myself, going in and out of, you know, these high-pressure areas, sitting at round tables with these oncologists and researchers, reading medical journals. What? 15 years old. I don't know. I don't know if they even still have that program, to be honest. It would be amazing if they did. But I want you to remember, you're not under pressure because you're failing. You're under pressure because maybe you're being asked to do something that's stretching you. And that's not a crisis, that's actually an invitation. If you want to hang out with me, you can follow along on my journey on Instagram, Substack, and you can also check out the new strength training program that I have released called Lift Like You Mean It. It is available for purchase now. And if you want to share a little bit with me about what you're currently working on, you can send me a DM on Instagram. Again, check the show notes for all the links to stay in contact with me. And if you found this episode helpful, please do me a favor, share it with a friend. That is the best way for me to grow the show, is by getting into the ears of new listeners. I appreciate your time and attention as always, and I appreciate you showing up for yourself. I'll see you on the next one.