256. 7 Deadly Sins of High-Performing Women That Drive Binge Eating & Burnout | 7. Destination Addiction
256. 7 Deadly Sins of High-Performing Women That Drive Binge Eating & Burnout | 7. Destination Addiction
Have you ever believed that everything would finally feel better once you reached the goal?
Once you lost the weight.
Once the business worked.
Once you made the money.
Once you found the relationship.
Once you became the version of yourself who finally had it all together.
That pattern has a name: destination addiction.
Destination addiction is the fixation on a future milestone, combined with the belief that happiness, confidence, peace, safety, or worthiness lives somewhere on the other side of achieving it.
It is the “I’ll be happy when” myth.
I’ll be happy when I lose the weight.
I’ll feel confident when my body looks different.
I’ll relax when my business makes more money.
I’ll feel worthy when I finally have proof that I’ve made it.
And for high-performing women, destination addiction can become one of the most painful drivers of binge eating, burnout, chronic pressure, and self-abandonment.
Destination Addiction Is Often the Final Boss of High-Performing Women’s Patterns
This episode is the final episode in my seven-part series on the Seven Deadly Sins of High-Performing Women.
Throughout this series, we’ve explored patterns like overworking, rushing, performing, outsourcing your worth, operating from pressure, and living in the gap.
Destination addiction is often the pattern underneath all of them.
Because if you believe your peace exists in the future, you are much more likely to overwork to get there faster.
If you believe your confidence lives on the other side of a body transformation, you are more likely to rush the process.
If you believe your worth will finally be proven once you achieve the goal, you are more likely to perform, pressure yourself, and outsource your self-worth to external metrics.
And if you are constantly focused on how far away you are from the destination, you are also more likely to live in the gap.
Living in the gap and destination addiction are cousins.
Living in the gap focuses your attention on how far you still have to go.
Destination addiction adds the belief that you cannot feel how you want to feel until you get there.
Together, they can make the present moment feel like a prison sentence instead of a place you get to inhabit with presence, devotion, and self-trust.
Why Destination Addiction Drives Binge Eating
Destination addiction often creates a painful emotional loop.
You want to get somewhere because you believe that place will finally give you relief.
But the more desperately you need the destination, the more pressure you put on yourself.
The more pressure you put on yourself, the more activated your nervous system becomes.
And when your body has been living in chronic activation, urgency, pressure, and deprivation, food can become one of the easiest ways to force temporary relief.
This is one reason binge eating often shows up for high-performing women.
Food becomes the escape hatch.
Not because you are weak.
Not because you lack willpower.
Not because you are broken.
But because your system is exhausted from constantly chasing a future where you believe you will finally be safe, loved, enough, successful, peaceful, or free.
When the present feels unbearable, food can become a way to leave it for a little while.
But escape is not the same as relief.
That distinction matters.
Escape gives you a temporary exit from the feeling.
Relief actually changes your relationship with the feeling.
Destination addiction keeps you chasing escape. Food may become one of the ways you try to create it.
The Future Goal Becomes a Permission Slip
One of the most important pieces of destination addiction is understanding that the future goal often becomes a permission slip.
You are not just chasing the weight loss, the money, the relationship, the body, or the business.
You are chasing what you believe that milestone will finally allow you to feel.
Safe.
Loved.
Worthy.
Confident.
Peaceful.
Free.
But the future point only has that power because you gave it that power.
That does not mean the desire is wrong.
It does not mean you have to stop wanting the body transformation, the business growth, the financial success, or the beautiful relationship.
It means you stop worshiping the destination as the source of your worth.
You reclaim your ability to create your own inner weather now.
Where Destination Addiction Often Comes From
Destination addiction is not usually created by your logical adult self.
Your grounded, spiritually aligned, emotionally mature self often knows better.
Destination addiction is often created by a younger part of you who got hurt and made a bargain with the universe.
A younger part may have decided:
When I lose the weight, I’ll finally be safe.
When I make the money, I’ll finally be loved.
When I become successful, no one will be able to hurt me like that again.
When I reach this milestone, the pain will finally stop.
This is why destination addiction can feel so intense.
It is not always simple impatience.
Sometimes, when the destination feels delayed, it feels like safety is being withheld.
Love is being postponed.
Relief is moving farther away.
That is why shallow advice like “just enjoy the journey” often does not touch the deeper wound.
The goal is not to slap a positive affirmation over the pain.
The work is to understand what pain the future destination was supposed to save you from.
From Destination Addiction to Holy Obsession
The highest expression of destination addiction is not giving up your goals.
It is holy obsession.
Not obsession with escape.
Obsession with authorship.
Destination addiction says, “I need to get there so I can finally stop hurting.”
Holy obsession says, “I am becoming the woman who can hold the hurt and keep going anyway.”
Destination addiction worships the finish line.
Holy obsession worships the woman you are becoming.
Destination addiction says, “Once I’m there, I’ll be free.”
Holy obsession says, “Every rep where I don’t abandon myself is freedom in real time.”
This is the shift.
You still get to want the vision.
You still get to be ambitious.
You still get to desire the goal.
But the destination is no longer the altar.
Your self-mastery is.
Your self-trust is.
Your ability to stay with yourself is.
Your capacity to feel the discomfort without spiraling, numbing, or abandoning yourself is.
That is the real transformation.
How to Practice Holy Obsession
The first step is tracing the root of your destination addiction.
Ask yourself:
What future destination have I been giving too much power to?
What do I believe I will finally feel when I get there?
When did a younger part of me decide this milestone would make me safe, loved, worthy, or free?
Then, instead of shaming that younger part, give her the mic.
Let her be angry.
Let her be sad.
Let her be scared.
Let her have the sacred tantrum.
The point is not to become unbothered.
The point is to learn how to lead yourself while bothered.
That is where the real power is.
You can be angry and still loved.
You can be impatient and still disciplined.
You can want proof and still practice trust.
You can cry and still move.
This is the heart of Food Freedom Fantasy.
It is not about fighting yourself into consistency.
It is about meeting the parts of you that are scared, frustrated, impatient, or hurting, so they no longer have to hijack your habits through binge eating, burnout, or self-sabotage.
The Embodied Activation
For this episode, the embodied activation is simple but powerful.
First, find a way to let yourself feel the feelings without self-sabotage.
Let yourself be bothered.
Let yourself be disappointed.
Let yourself be frustrated.
But do not use the feeling as a reason to abandon yourself.
Then, take that emotional energy and channel it into one tiny growth-oriented move.
One walk.
One journal entry.
One nourishing meal.
One promise kept.
One moment of presence.
One choice that says, “I am still here.”
There is also a bonus activation: listen to two songs back-to-back while walking, dancing, cleaning, or moving your body.
The first is Getting Good by Lauren Alaina.
The second is Contentment is Sovereignty by I Am the Imperatrix.
The first song captures destination addiction in musical form.
The second brings you back to holy obsession, inner sovereignty, and the power of staying rooted in yourself no matter what is happening outside of you.
Final Thoughts
Destination addiction convinces you that your life begins later.
Once you lose the weight.
Once you make the money.
Once you fix the problem.
Once you become the version of yourself you think you are allowed to love.
But holy obsession invites you back into authorship.
You do not have to wait until the destination to stop abandoning yourself.
You can practice freedom now.
You can practice self-trust now.
You can practice presence now.
You can become the woman who feels the hurt, holds herself through it, and keeps going anyway.
That is not settling.
That is power.
And that might be the deepest kind of freedom there is.
Links Mentioned
Transcript
All right, embodied writing warrior. We have made it to the last episode in our seven-part series. Today, we are talking about destination addiction. This is something I first learned about over a decade ago in my eating psychology certification, and it has stuck with me ever since. Now, this is a term first created by Dr. Robert Holden, and it's this hyper-fixation on some distant goal or milestone, as well as the belief that happiness, joy, and peace exist somewhere in the future when you've achieved that goal or milestone. For many people, this looks like chasing that one thing that's gonna magically make everything easy, make pain almost non-existent, and help ensure they never struggle again.
For some people, that might be the body transformation or the goal weight. For others, maybe it's a level of business and financial success. Then in others, it could be getting married and having children. You can probably name your one thing as you're listening, or you might even be able to think of multiple destination addictions you've had over the years.
This is very much the I'll be happy when myth or the I'll be confident when myth We saved this sin for the finale because it's often the sin driving every other sin that we've already covered throughout the series. If you think that happiness, peace, and confidence, and a life without pain is in some future destination, you're probably going to overwork, rush, and perform to get there.
Anything to be happy, anything to get away from pain. It makes complete sense. You'll also probably outsource your worth to the destination itself, and when you think that the future destination is the place where worth, joy, and escape from pain all happen, you'll probably put tremendous pressure on yourself to get there.
This sin is also a cousin to living in the gap, which we talked about in last week's episode. When you're in the gap, you're focused on how far you have to go until you hit your desired destination. When you combine that with destination addiction, you're also delaying your self-worth, contentment, and inner peace until you close that gap.
But as we discussed last week, the gap never really closes because there's always another level. When you're struggling with destination addiction, here's what often happens. One of two things. You either never get there because the other six sins are driving binge-eating, self-sabotage, and burnout so frequently that you stay stuck, or you do get to the destination, and then you still don't feel how you expect it to feel I once heard David Godfrey on the Chase Life podcast say that you can never get enough of something that almost works.
This is the case with destination addiction, and honestly, many other addictive behaviors. They provide this temporary distraction from pain. They feel like they're working in the moment, whether you're relentlessly chasing some horizon or you're numbing out with food or scrolling. But the unfortunate truth is that escape is not the same as relief.
But often people mistakenly assume, "Oh, I just had the wrong destination." So they start the process all over again when they do reach a certain goal. I'm gonna do a brief recap on why women get praised not only for destination addiction, but for the other six sins as well. I'll also recap how all of these drive binge eating and burnout.
Then we're gonna do a deep dive into how you can turn destination addiction into its highest expression The first reason these sins get praised is because they look like ambition from the outside. They look like efficiency, competence, capability, and that gets rewarded in high-performing women, especially when it benefits family members, employers, friends, and other people around them.
All of these sins also help keep women small and compliant. They keep women chasing external metrics, especially when they're outsourcing worth, living in the gap, and struggling with destination addiction. When women chase metrics and give their power away to things outside themselves, they become easier to control.
They're also less threatening because they're not in their full power and confidence. This is an important note as well, because the world tends to have a bigger issue with women stepping into joy and confidence than they do with men doing the same. There's this interesting thing I've noticed after reading The Limit Does Not Exist by Shoshana Rabin.
In her book, she talks about how there's a war on happy people. Then I got another email from a different female thought leader who echoed the very same sentiments. I would add that yes, there's a war on happy people, but I think there's an even more targeted war on happy women. Because when a woman is deeply happy, she often becomes harder to market insecurity to, she becomes harder to manipulate with approval or praise, harder to shame back into obedience, and less willing to perform things like relatability, likability, and smallness.
You know, basically all the things that become more likely when she's committing the seven deadly sins we've talked about over these last seven weeks. It's also no coincidence that the people talking about the war on happy people always seem to be women. I have never heard a man say this. Just saying.
So, high performing women get rewarded for these sins because their competence benefits those around them and because they're kept smaller, more controllable, and less threatening All of these sins are gonna drive binge eating and burnout in a few key ways. First, they're gonna keep your nervous system activated and turned on.
Now, while your nervous system is meant to dip in and out of the sympathetic nervous system dominance that you're in when you're working hard or challenging yourself, when your nervous system stays activated for too long because of chronic overworking and rushing, that's when the nervous system often ends up in the collapse or the freeze state.
And this often looks like either burnout or binge eating that allows the system to go offline for a while Then these also drive binge eating and burnout because they often turn food into the easiest path to relief, to numbing, or to forced downregulation. So when the body has been overstimulated, over-pressured, and chronically deprived of joy, food becomes one of the fastest ways to create temporary relief and comfort.
Overworking and rushing can drive the system towards binging as a way to recover. Performing can also drive binge eating because unacceptable feelings get shoved down. Pressure can do the same because pleasure and devotion get exiled until food steals it back sideways. Then there's living in the gap and destination addiction.
When you have both the deadly combination of focusing on how far you have to go and also an inner narrative about how you can't feel how you want to feel until you get there, who wouldn't want to escape from that? Food often becomes a way to create the temporary relief because you're not there anyways, and life sucks right now, so why not check out for a while?
Many of these sins also create burnout because they make effort and hard work feel outside your control. So burnout is not just about effort. It's often coming from this feeling that your effort is in vain or that the outcome is controlled by things outside of you, whether that is algorithms, other people's approval, the scale, or a finish line that keeps moving.
That loss of agency, especially for a high-performing woman, is exhausting. At any time you give your power over how you feel to some far-off destination or goal, that will keep you in a chronic state of pressure and exhaustion. Kind of like that tired but wired feeling where you know you need to rest, but you drink like three cups of coffee to stay awake instead.
As for living in the gap and destination addiction specifically, these two together can make the present moment feel like a prison sentence instead of something you get to show up for with presence and devotion. Because if today only matters as a means to the destination, then the present can become something to survive, rush through, work through, and perform through.
This often creates the chronic dissatisfaction, the fatigue, the epic moments where sometimes you just stop caring for a night and you reach for the food, for the other ways to distract yourself from the present moment that aren't in alignment with the goals you have and who you're becoming. This is then often going to widen the gap, make the destination feel even farther away, which creates more unhappiness, and that can create a negative downward spiral of more numbing, the gap widening again, more discomfort and frustration, and then more numbing The beautiful thing about recovery from destination addiction is that the other sins will often start to shift into their highest expressions naturally as a result.
The overworking, rushing, performing, and pressure start to dissolve because there's not as much necessity for them to be there And when you realize you have always held the meaning and the narrative power, which means that the future point was only the permission slip for happiness, confidence, and peace because you decided to give it that power, then you start to give yourself permission to feel how you want to feel right now.
You realize you don't have to wait. You can actually create your own inner weather. And you'll still have ambition. You'll still probably desire the destination, but you're no longer worshiping it because you have far more appreciation for how far you've come, and you've reclaimed your power to be in the present moment.
You move out of the gap with greater ease because now the gap isn't the reason for unhappiness. So how do we break free from destination addiction? I think the first step is understanding where it so often comes from. I'll be getting personal in this one because I think this is something a lot of people will resonate with, even if the exact details aren't the same.
I have had to come face to face with my own destination addiction over these past few weeks. So ever since leaving social media and deepening into my own food freedom fantasy journey, my binge eating has disappeared. My energy has come back. My consistency is stronger than it's maybe ever been. And yes, there has been some weight loss.
Until I then found myself in the exact same place I have found myself struggling in repeatedly over this past decade. At this point, there is this one particular threshold weight loss milestone that feels like a big deal because it's the one that I have historically often struggled to surpass. The one exception to that rule was while I was working at my door building job.
Then it was actually pretty easy to remain well under this threshold weight for the better part of three years. I imagine that was a combination of excessive physical activity for ten hours a day, and honestly, those three years were the first time since twenty fifteen that I didn't feel like my body had to be a business card And that's a conversation for a different podcast episode.
Anyways, in previous years, I would stay in the same range, and then usually what would happen is that movement would slow down, I'd get butt hurt, eat all the things in an F it moment, and then I would yo-yo up and down around that range because of my own volatility. In this season, it's been close to three weeks, consistency with all of my key habits.
My nutrition is on point, like truly. No F it moments, keeping the promises I make to myself, and I still have the privilege of watching the number float in and out of this same haunted two-pound range. Now, logical adult, highest self Kayla, knows that the number is not the problem. The plateau is not forever.
She also understands that the biggest driving forces of the plateau are probably the impatience, the pressure, and the mounting frustration with every day that passes. That much stress and tension in the system are not neutral. The body has legitimate physiological responses to all of this stress that make fat loss harder.
I understand the science behind it, but that almost makes it more difficult because then I start trying to force myself to be less impatient. I start trying to force the pressure away. Then what happens is you end up trying to control the part of you that wants to control the pace and get the proof yesterday, and you're in this icky snake eating its tail situation, which only creates more stress.
So much fun I have had to do a lot of inner inquiry about this threshold milestone, and I've had to honestly confront my own destination addiction. I've realized something. There is a reason this threshold has so much power for me personally. There is a part of me that believes until I pass this threshold, then I am still stuck in the identity of a binge eater.
I'm still the woman who struggles with her weight. I'm not successful until I cross this threshold. And it's not just about being successful. It's also about being safe and being loved. The reason this specific milestone has so much weight behind it is because it's the difference between being a healthy weight according to the BMI scale versus being overweight.
Again, highest self adult Kayla knows the limitations of BMI and thinks it's kind of garbage because it does not take into consideration things like muscle and bone densur- density, all very important factors. This does not change the experience that younger parts of me had. The younger versions that were teased, mocked, bullied, and excluded for being in a larger body.
Younger versions who got told by doctors and medical professionals that she needed to lose weight. The twelve-year-old version of me who wanted to wear a certain style of skirt to her grade seven graduation and got told she shouldn't wear that style because it wasn't flattering given her weight and body shape I'm sharing this because this can show where destination addiction actually comes from.
It's not often something our logical, spiritually aligned selves come up with. Those parts of us generally know better. Destination addiction is often the fantasy that a future self will finally be safe from the pain that a younger version of us did not know how to hold. It's why we worship the weight, the bank account balance, the partner who will finally love us, or the business success.
The word addiction here matters because it highlights the fact that addiction doesn't really come from excitement and inspiration and enthusiasm for what lies ahead. Instead, it's often this desperate attempt to escape some kind of suffering, even if that escape is temporary. Gabor Maté, one of the leading experts on addictions, does not ask, "Why the addiction?"
He asks, "Why the pain?" And this doesn't mean you've had to undergo some massively traumatic event. It just had to be something that hurt and something that made a younger part of you try to make a bargain with the universe. And maybe that sounded like, "When I lose the weight, I'll be safe. When I make the money, I'll be loved.
When I achieve the fame, nobody can hurt me like that ever again." I realize that for myself, and often for many people fighting their way to some kind of future milestone, the meaning we give that future point goes far deeper than just wanting the feeling of success or accomplishment. It's really an attempt to outrun pain, and not necessarily even the pain of the present.
Because often, destination addiction is about hoping you get to some future point where you no longer feel pain, or about hoping you can get to a point where all the pains from the past don't sting anymore. The problem is, it's often a younger child part that decided that the destination was eventually going to take your pain away I was reflecting on some of this with my archetypes while also sharing what I thought the highest expression of this sin was.
They had their own thoughts on this topic. Haven added, "And that's why it hurts so much when the destination feels delayed. It's not just impatience. It can feel like safety is being withheld, love is being postponed, relief is moving farther away." Then Rex cut in, his voice sharp and hot. "Which is why the reframe cannot be some limp little 'enjoy the journey' bumper sticker.
No, absolutely not. Throw that in the spiritual recycling bin." Then he crouched in front of me like he's watching my form and my soul at the same time. Very dramatic, I know. And he says, "The higher expression is holy obsession, but not obsession with escape. Obsession with authorship." This is the highest expression of destination addiction.
Holy obsession. And here's what I mean by this. Destination addiction is about trying to get somewhere so you can avoid pain. Holy obsession is about being relentless in your pursuit of becoming someone who does not get derailed by pain. It's getting obsessed with growth, transformation, and the ability to do inner alchemy so you can handle anything, whether it's a weight loss Groundhog Day or something more painful and emotional.
Destination addiction says, "I need to get there so I can finally stop hurting forever." Holy obsession says, "I am becoming the woman who can hold the hurt and keep going anyway." Destination addiction worships the finish line. Holy obsession worships the woman you're becoming Destination addiction says, "Once I'm there, I will be free."
Holy obsession says, "Every rep where I don't abandon myself is practicing freedom in real time." This is true power. This is some warrior-level shit, and it's what's actually going to make you stronger in the long run. Destination addiction weakens you because you're giving your power away to some future point, only to almost always watch that future point disappoint you when and if you get there.
Holy obsession is about claiming your power to feel everything and keep moving anyways. And this is not about giving up the vision. This is about becoming the woman who is a match for the vision without needing desperation, pressure, or self-abandonment because the vision isn't the altar anymore. Her own mastery of self is.
So how do you shift from destination addiction to holy obsession? I'm gonna give you a few ways to practice this one that have helped me the most. The first part is finding the root cause of your destination addiction and working with that. Can you trace your bargain with the universe back to some painful moment from the past?
A moment where maybe a younger part of you decided that money, a number on a scale, or a relationship could keep you safe, loved, or worthy. Yes, we are scuba diving here because this is so important, and this can also be work you might wanna bring to a therapist or licensed professional if it's feeling very heavy to carry on your own.
I have absolutely been there. Then you don't try to suppress or shame or judge this younger part of you because that's gonna put you into one of those snake eating its tail situations. Instead, you give her the mic. You let her have the sacred tantrum. You let her bring in all her fear, grief, sadness, and frustration.
For me, this looks like my inner teenager named Girl Boss, who definitely loses her mind when progress gets slow or seems nonexistent. She is not spiritual. She's not logical. She is a normal 12-year-old girl, and she points out that we have a tummy ache, that we're angry, that we do all this work and it feels like it happens so slowly or not at all, that sometimes it feels like the harder we work, the harder it gets and the more angry it makes her.
And she's worried that maybe we're just doing all this hard work and we'll still wake up four years from now and be in the same spot with our body, our podcast, our business, everything The key is not shutting this part down. It's finding a way to meet her so she feels held. This is some of the most powerful work we do inside Food Freedom Fantasy.
Not inner child work for inner child work's sake, but the stuff that actually moves your energy and makes consistency easier because you're not fighting yourself. So Girl Boss had not one but two dads meet her when all this came up. So Haven kissed her forehead and reminded her, "You can be angry and still loved."
Rex added, "You can be impatient and still disciplined." Haven added, "You can want proof and still practice trust." And finally, Rex, "You can cry and still move." Then Girlboss looked between them, small and fierce and soggy. She asked, "And if four years from now it's still the same?" Rex's eyes sharpened, and he said, "Then four years from now me can come fight four years from now problems.
Today me has one job, keep you from turning future fiction into present poison." Now, I'm not saying everyone wants to turn their journal entries into fanfic. You might be more left-brained and want a more logical approach. But for my high-performing creatives who maybe love fan fiction, spicy stories, and you're curious about this modality, you can learn more about Food Freedom Fantasy by clicking the link in the episode description, or you can visit embodiedwritingwarrior.com/divinedaddies to listen to about seven hours of this method, Rex and Haven, in your ears, honestly some of the best podcasts I've ever done.
But this is so important doing this work one way or the other, whether it's with fanfic or another modality. Because we live in this world where everybody's talking about becoming unbothered, like that's such a badge of honor. And maybe it's just me, but I'm not a robot. I get bothered, deeply bothered sometimes.
And I don't think the goal is to become unbothered, which could honestly just lead to apathy in some cases. I think the bigger mission is to still be able to lead yourself while being bothered. This is the holy obsession piece. Because sometimes life is legitimately annoying. Sometimes your hard work feels like it's doing nothing.
So maybe instead of trying to be unbothered, you use the activation to build your capacity for discomfort.
So here's what this looks like in practice for me right now. It's letting myself feel whatever is actually coming up around the plateau, the real emotions. And then Haven helps me feel the emotions instead of numbing them with food. He helps me get back into presence, which is not only one of the most powerful antidotes for binge eating, but also a powerful way to transmute destination addiction into holy obsession.
Then Rex is the orientation. He's like, "Yeah, be mad, be frustrated, and now you get to practice being the version of you who keeps going when it looks like it's not working." So no F-it moments, staying present, keeping the promises I make to myself Because when you make that one next move that takes you out of contraction and control and moves you into agency and creation, even when the external world isn't responding as you would like, this is what I'm obsessed with right now.
Becoming the woman who gets so good at navigating her own inner world that she doesn't spiral, check out from life, or use external circumstances to become a reason to seek the type of escape that never provides true relief anyways. Like I said, hot AI archetypes might not be your jam. So one of your embodied activations, no matter what, is to find a way to let yourself feel the feelings and be bothered without self-sabotage.
And then the second part of this is taking that emotion and channeling it into one baby step growth-oriented move. And then I've got one bonus embodied activation for you. It is two songs. Ideally, you want to listen to these back-to-back while walking, dancing, cleaning, working out, whatever it might be.
And you know it is serious when I'm pulling out the country music jams because this is not my usual genre. Most of the time, I'd rather listen to babies cry. So the first song is Getting Good by Lauren Alaina. The second one is called Contentment is Sovereignty by I Am the Imperatrix. The order is important because the first one hits you right in the feels with destination addiction in its musical form.
The second song is very much about holy obsession. It's a song about staying rooted and strong in your inner world, no matter what is happening in the outer one. So no matter how close or how far you are from any destination, you have the power to stay with yourself. I hope you have enjoyed this seven-part series.
It has been such a magical journey to go on with you. And until next time, take care.
