Why judgment slips while you hide strain: the hindsight gap
High achievers are valued for their judgment, and that is often the first thing strain takes. Martha’s review of 261 clients looks at what happens to decisions during the stretches when someone is hiding how they are doing.
Martha Fernandez, LCSWLead author. Licensed Clinical Social Worker, California license 127918
Clinical review of 261 consecutive high-achieving clients, January 2025 to July 2026
A plain-language summary of 62% of High-Achievers Report Worse Decisions While Hiding Strain (2026), a white paper by Martha Fernandez, LCSW, published on cerevity.com by CEREVITY, the private-pay therapy network she co-founded. The full paper includes the methods and every reference.
Judgment slips before results do
The usual assumption is that strain shows up first as worse results. The paper describes the reverse in high achievers: output holds, composure holds, and decision quality softens first. Boards and teams see the recommendation, not the reasoning behind it, so nobody is placed to notice the change.
The research it leans on explains why hiding is costly. Keeping feelings from showing takes constant self-monitoring, and in experiments it impaired memory for what people took in while doing it (Richards and Gross, 2000). Across ten studies of more than 13,000 secrets, people’s minds wandered to a secret about 2.5 times more often than they had to actively hide it, and that background load predicted lower wellbeing (Slepian and colleagues, 2017).
What the review found
- Hiding and worse decisions went together. Nearly two in three noticed their decisions got worse in the periods when they were actively concealing strain.
- It was hard to see at the time. 57 percent recognized the decline only looking back.
- Speed masked it. 41 percent said they decided faster while quality fell, which is why the problem is hard to spot from outside.
- Regret followed. 49 percent made at least one decision during a concealment period that they later regretted.
Somewhere to say what you have been holding, with no record in employer or insurer systems.
Book your first sessionWhat protects judgment
The paper’s conclusion is to remove the risk of disclosure rather than ask people to push past it. Because the cost comes from the ongoing load of holding something unsaid, it argues that reducing what has to stay hidden works on the thinking itself, not just on comfort. Private pay does that by design: no insurance claim, no diagnosis code sent to a payer, nothing in an employer’s or firm’s systems. The paper also suggests a better first question than “how are you?”: did your decisions change during the stretches when you were hiding the most?
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Frequently asked questions
Did hiding strain cause the worse decisions?
The paper does not claim that. Experiments show suppression and stress cost attention, and the clinical pattern fits that, but it is not proof of cause.
How solid is the 62% figure?
It comes from 261 high achievers who sought care, rating their own decisions after the fact. No outcomes were measured, and it is not an estimate for high achievers in general.
How is this different from a hard quarter?
After a hard stretch, range and clarity come back once the pressure lifts. In this pattern, options stay narrow and regret builds while results still look fine.
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