Wolverhampton executive coach who quit top career launches new book for those feeling successful but stuck

An executive coach who quit a six-figure corporate career in finance after questioning her own definition of success has launched a new book exploring why so many high-achievers feel stuck despite seemingly having everything they want.

Angela Cox, founder of PasedaCoach and PasedaLeader, launched The Silent Middle on Wednesday November 4, introducing a concept she believes explains why people can appear successful, capable and in control while privately feeling exhausted, dissatisfied and unfulfilled.

Drawing on more than 8,500 hours of coaching experience, Angela believes many people become so accomplished at coping with life's demands that they stop recognising the difference between simply getting through the day and genuinely thriving.

She has branded this The Silent Middle - the space between surviving and thriving, where life isn't necessarily bad but doesn't feel as good as it looks from the outside.

Angela, a mum-of-four who moved to the Midlands from the south of England and now lives in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton, said: "We tend to think that if someone has a successful career, a loving family and a comfortable life, they must be happy. But I've coached countless people who have all those things and still feel that something isn't quite right.

"They're not necessarily in crisis. They're functioning, achieving and often doing an extraordinary job of holding everything together. The problem is they've become so good at coping that they've stopped asking themselves whether they're actually happy.

"That's what I call the Silent Middle. It's a place where you can spend years, even decades, without realising that surviving and thriving are two very different things."

Angela's interest in the subject stems from personal experience. Having carved out a successful corporate career, she was spending much of her working week away from home and missing important moments with her children so she bravely decided to walk away from her career and began to question her beliefs about achievement, self-worth and what it meant to be successful.

The experiences have since informed her work as an executive coach. She said she has repeatedly encountered similar patterns among business owners, senior leaders and other high-performing professionals.

One of the central ideas in the book is Angela's Pretender Masks Model, which identifies four protective behaviours people can adopt to feel accepted, valued or safe. They include the Perfectionist, who feels compelled to get everything right; the People Pleaser, who struggles to put their own needs first, the Persecutor of others, who directs criticism outwards and the Persecutor of self, whose harshest criticism is reserved for themselves.

Speaking at the launch of what is now her third book at the Fairlawns Hotel & Spa in Walsall, Angela said: "If you believe your worth depends on being useful, successful, perfect or the person everyone can rely on, it's incredibly difficult to switch off.

"The question isn't simply how we help people cope better. It's whether we've become so focused on coping that we've forgotten what we're actually trying to achieve."

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She stressed The Silent Middle is not a call for people to abandon their careers, relationships or responsibilities. Instead, Angela encourages readers to examine the roles they have learned to play and their beliefs - and she hopes the book will resonate with people who struggle to explain why they feel dissatisfied when, by conventional measures, their lives are going well.

"This isn't about telling everyone to quit their job and start again,” she said.

“It's about giving people permission to question whether the life they're living reflects what they actually want, rather than what they've spent years believing they should want.”