Shots:
- High performers often operate under a hidden layer of chronic stress, where sustained pressure subtly erodes decision-making, creativity, and emotional regulation, as subconscious patterns and past experiences continuously trigger a low-grade fight-or-flight response that impacts both performance and overall wellbeing
- Lasting stress management requires going beyond surface-level techniques to address deep-rooted subconscious programming, where beliefs around identity, success, and safety shape recurring stress cycles, and integrating tailored mind-body approaches enables individuals to regulate effectively, unlock clarity, and sustain peak performance
- PharmaShots welcomes Jena Sophia for an insightful and thought-provoking conversation on subconscious transformation, mind-body alignment, and redefining high performance by breaking stress cycles to drive long-term resilience, leadership effectiveness, and holistic wellbeing
Saurabh: With growing global conversations around mental health and performance, how do you see stress affecting high performers and leaders in today’s fastpaced professional environment?
Jena: Thank you for having me Stress among high performers is one of the most under-addressed issues in professional environments today The very traits that make someone a high performer, the drive, the ambition, the relentless push forward, are often the same traits that mask a chronic stress response running quietly underneath everything. High performers are exceptional at functioning under pressure. But functioning under pressure and thriving are two very different things. What I see consistently in my work is that stress doesn’t just show up as burnout or anxiety. It shows up as subtle erosion in decision making, emotional regulation, in creativity, in relationships, in their ability to show up in their zone of genius. The nervous system gets stuck in a state of low-grade fight-or-flight, and over time, that becomes the normal functioning baseline. People stop recognizing it as stress because it just feels normal. Science however show us that chronic stress rewires the brain. It shrinks the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for rational thought, focus, and emotional control, while amplifying the amygdala, our threat-detection centre. So the higher the stress, the less access one has to the very cognitive functions needed most to thrive in high performing environments.
Saurabh: With your experience working with individuals across 50+ countries, what are some of the most common stress patterns you observe among executives and high-performing professionals?
Jena: From working with a range of high performers, there are really universal patterns, regardless of industry, culture or levels of success. The first is what I call high-functioning stress. These are people delivering exceptional results on the outside while running on empty underneath. They’ve become so skilled at performing through stress that they’ve lost the ability to recognize it. The second is the ambition identity. When your sense of self becomes inseparable from your output, slowing down feels existentially threatening. The ‘stress’ feels useful as it the thing pushing them constantly towards their goals. This is quite a dangerous mindset because they never see rest as a requirement for their success. They perceive it as a threat to it. The third, and the one that underlies everything else, is subconscious programming. Beneath every stress pattern is a belief system quietly driving it. Beliefs around worthiness, safety, control, and what it means to be success, these were formed long before they reached their levels of success. And in most cases is what is continuously driving their high performance. Until those patterns are identified and shifted at the root, you cannot truly overcome stress. You have to understand what is driving the identity before you can change it.
Saurabh: Stress is often discussed as a mindset issue, yet you highlight the role of the subconscious mind in shaping stress patterns. Could you explain how subconscious programming influences recurring stress cycles?
Jena: Most stress management approaches operate at the conscious level such as breathe differently, try to think differently about it, maybe even journal. While these tools have their place, they miss something fundamental. The conscious mind accounts for roughly 5% of our performance activity. The other 95% is subconscious. So if you’re only working with the 5%, you’re leaving your entire operating system out. This is how subconscious programming influences stress. When we experience a moment of significant emotional intensity, a betrayal, a failure, a moment of deep shame or fear, the subconscious doesn’t just register it and moves on. It takes that experiences and filters the information into beliefs, perceptions and understanding of what threat could occur in the future. It does this by design to prevent that experience from happening again. Since the subconscious doesn’t operate in linear time, it doesn’t distinguish between something that has happened five years ago vs something happening right now. If you went through something stressful in the past and you haven’t dealt with it subconscious, your system will believe you are constantly under ‘attack.’ Here is an example of how prolonged stress impacts high performers in real life. I worked with a Forbes 30 Under 30 founder whose cofounder stole everything — the money, the business, her reputation. Five years later, despite therapy and consciously knowing the event was over, she would walk into rooms she once commanded and completely shrink. She hadn’t raised a single dollar since this stressful event. This is what unaddressed subconscious stress does. It follows you forward, into every decision, every opportunity, every room, until the root is cleared. When we rewired her perception of that stressful time and transformed subconscious beliefs installed in that moment of trauma, such as “people will betray me” and “there’s no point trying” everything shifted. After just 2 sessions she said: “I’m raising another round and have been inundated with interested parties. The amount I’m asking for they don’t even bat their eyelids.”
Saurabh: You emphasize that stress does not only affect the mind but also manifests in the body. How does stress manifest physiologically and impact overall health and wellbeing?
Jena: Stress is both a mindset and a full body physiological experience. When the brain perceives a threat, whether a looming deadline, a difficult meeting, or a traumatic experience, it floods the body with cortisol and adrenaline, elevating heart rate, and suppressing both digestion and the immune system. In a genuine emergency, this response is helpful. The problem is that for most high performers, it never switches off. Chronically elevated cortisol disrupts sleep, impairs memory, accelerates cellular ageing, and drives systemic inflammation. This is now widely recognized as an underlying factor in everything from cardiovascular disease to autoimmune conditions. What I observe consistently is that the body is always communicating. Chronic fatigue, digestive issues, hormonal disruption, and recurring illnesses, these are not separate health problems. They are the body’s signal that the nervous system is not able to regulate and return to a healthy baseline. Stress in the mind will always show up in the body. This is why managing the stress before it manifests in the body is key.
Saurabh: Your work integrates more than 20 modalities to create rapid and lasting results. How do these approaches help individuals regulate stress and unlock clarity and peak performance?
Jena: After two decades in this field, one thing I know with certainty is that there is no onesize-fits-all approach to stress and personal transformation. Having over 20 modalities at my disposal means I can meet each person exactly where they are. Some clients need a deeper subconscious approach, working directly with the beliefs and programs running underneath the surface. Others need a more body-based, somatic practice to release stress that has been stored physically for years. Most need a combination of both. The majority of the modalities I work with access the subconscious directly, that 95% of the mind that is driving every action, choice, and identity. This is where real regulation happens. When the right approach meets the right person, that is when you unlock peak performance. But I want to be clear about something. I’m not here to change people. My role is to create the conditions and provide the tools. They are the ones who want the shift, choose to shift, and ultimately make it happen. That’s what makes the results lasting. No one can make you change more than yourself.
Saurabh: Burnout and workplace stress continue to rise globally. What preventive strategies can organizations adopt to better support workplace mental health and resilience?
Jena: Address the stress culture, most organizations treat burnout as an individual problem when it’s often a systemic one. The beliefs backed into company culture such as overworking is dedication or that mental health is not as serious as physical health, these need to be identified and actively dismantled at a leadership level. Regulation from the top down — Leaders set the nervous system tone of an entire organization. A dysregulated leader creates a dysregulated team. Investing in the mental and subconscious regulation in leadership is key to better mental health and resilience in the workplace. It’s one of the most high leverage investments an organization can make. If the leadership is regulated, then the rest of the company can operate at a high level of performance. Proactive vs Reactive Support — Stress is an ongoing problem. While I love that conversations like this one happen during UK Stress Awareness Month, the conversation cannot only happen once a year. Real prevention means equipping people with tools to regulate in real time, before they hit their burnout stage.
Saurabh: You also explore epigenetics and the mind–body connection. How do thoughts, beliefs, and emotional patterns influence gene expression and longterm health outcomes?
Jena: Epigenetics is one of the most exciting frontiers in science. For a long time, we believed our genetics were fixed. That we were essentially dealt a hand at birth and that was that. What epigenetics shows us is that genes are more like switches, and our internal environment determines whether those switches get turned on or off. The signals our cells receive from our thoughts, emotions, and nervous system state are constantly influencing our biological process. When we live in chronic stress, or operate from deep subconscious beliefs rooted in fear, shame, or panic, we are sending a constant stream of stress signals through the body. Over time, those signals influence everything from inflammation and hormone levels to immune function and cellular ageing. But the reverse is equally true, and this is what I find most powerful! When we shift the subconscious patterns driving those emotional states, the internal environment changes and the biology responds accordingly. I have seen clients reverse conditions doctors told them were ‘permanent’, and experience profound physical transformations simply because we addressed the subconscious patterns. The mind and body are not separate systems. When you change what is happening at the subconscious level, you are not just changing how someone thinks or feels. You are changing the conditions in which their entire biology operates. That to me is true empowerment from within.
Saurabh: Having facilitated over 10,000+ transformations, what practical tools or mindset shifts would you recommend for professionals looking to break stress cycles and sustain high performance?
Jena: Everything starts in the mind. Every perception we carry influences how we see and experience the world. If you want to eliminate stress, changing your perception on how you interpret the world is key. When you change the lens of how you see life, you change how you experience it. This determines whether something you experience will register as stressful in the first place. The second is to pause before you respond. Curbing reactivity is one of the most powerful tools for any high performer. The moment you pause, you interrupt the stress response before it takes hold. Cortisol begins rising within minutes of an emotional trigger and can take hours to fully clear in the body. A single moment of conscious pause can prevent that entire cycle from being set in motion. Not only benefitting you mentally but physically too. And the third is to invest in clearing and upgrading your subconscious. The patterns running underneath your conscious awareness are the ones determining your mental and physical health, performance, decision making, resilience and more. To have ongoing subconscious support is key to overcoming stress and preventing sabotaging patterns from taking form in the long term.
Saurabh: During UK Stress Awareness Month, you are hosting “Break the Stress Cycles: A High Performers Reset” in London. What insights or practical takeaways can participants expect from this initiative?
Jena: Yes, I’m really excited about this! Considering that 91% of UK adults identify with being stressed, this is one of the most important workshops I’ve done. This workshop is designed to help high performers regulate in real time. We will be diving into the mind- body connection, the impacts of chronic stress on mental clarity, and how stress impacts performance, energy, and potential. Through various practical tips and tools, attendees will leave equipped to better manage and hopefully eliminate some of their stress responses altogether!
About Jena Sophia
Jena Sophia is the founder of Beyond the Belief Consultancy, where she works with high-performing leaders, founders, and executives to unlock deeper levels of growth and impact. Trusted by billionaires, Fortune 500 CEOs, and global innovators, her work focuses on addressing subconscious patterns that influence decision-making and leadership. She is the creator of The Upgrade™, a remote subconscious reprogramming modality with 5,000+ results across 50+ countries, integrating insights from neuroscience, consciousness practices, and behavioral science.
To learn more about Jena Sophia and her services: Email – jena@beyondthebelief.com Website – www.beyondthebelief.com
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