Episode Description: High Functioning Anxiety
Do you feel like you're constantly running on empty, despite your productivity? You might be caught in the high-functioning anxiety trap. In this episode, we'll uncover the hidden signs of high-functioning anxiety and explore how it can impact your life.
We'll discuss:
The characteristics of high-functioning anxiety
How it manifests in daily life
The emotional toll it takes
The power of coaching to break free
Enjoy the episode.
Podcast Transcript:
Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Devito, and I am the Life Coach for women and teenagers living with anxiety, who want more out of life. I'm here to help you create a life you love to live, where anxiety isn't holding you back. Get ready for a light hearted approach to managing anxiety through actionable steps, a lot of truth talk and inspiration to take action so you walk away feeling confident in your ability to live a life that sets your heart on fire. Let's do this.
Hey there. This is episode 24 Of the More Than Anxiety podcast being recorded at the beginning of February of 2023. If I sound a little weird, I'm recovering from a really awful cold so bear with me here.I have some really important and insightful stuff for you today that is going to help you find places where anxiety is sneaking into your day. So this episode is a combination of my old habits and habits my coaching clients have shared with me, as well as some really anxious behaviors that I've noticed in my family or my friends. And to be clear, I am not calling anyone out here, because honestly, we all have anxious habits and the more you notice them, the sooner you can swap them out for new habits that bring you one step closer to feeling great and having better days.
The biggest problem when you have high functioning anxiety is that you can sometimes just come to accept it as a normal part of what you have to experience to be successful or to be productive. High functioning anxiety is still anxiety though, and it still feels like shit. It makes you tired, but also not able to sleep well at night. It makes you feel like you have to run to the bathroom all the time and it impacts your relationships at work or at home. And most of all, it screws with your relationship with yourself. It's still anxiety, and it is completely fixable. And this is what makes coaching golden. So be sure to ask me how I can help you with this.
Here's what we're going to do today, I'm going to walk you through a typical day for someone who has high functioning anxiety. This is entirely made up but it's based on some really common feelings and behaviors. You'll probably notice that certain behaviors or thoughts that hit home for you are sprinkled in the story but not every thought or situation will be exactly the same issue. I'm making it up; just notice how you feel when you listen to this scenario, and get curious about what it's telling you. If it sounds like you, even if you don't like it, pay attention because this is your alarm going off and it is step one in learning how to not feel anxious and stressed out all the time. This is what I coach on. When I work with clients, you find where and how anxiety feels in your body, you notice the thought that's attached to the feeling, then you work through the scary and untruthful thoughts so that you can create new ways of moving through your day that don't leave you exhausted and stressed out and anxious.
So let's just imagine your own day while I walk you through this scenario and just be sure to swap out what's true for you. So if you work from home, as a mom, or in a home office, you can imagine yourself working there instead of a traditional office setting. If you don't have kids, leave them out of the scenario and imagine your own life. You understand, right? This is an imaginary walk so just use your imagination. Let's get started walking through a typical day.
Without you knowing or having to try, your body starts to wake you up with this big dose of cortisol even before your alarm goes off. It's biology. Cortisol is a stress hormone that your body naturally produces to wake you up. This is a really great thing, because you're waking up, but if you're already stressed out because of what's on your agenda for the day, you're getting out of bed one step behind. So you get up because your to do list isn't messing around, and you make your way to the coffee pot, grab your phone and you check your emails, and maybe jump on social media for a minute while it brews. Not only did you get no less than three emails from work while you were home, but the level of crazy on the internet throws you into instant anxiety. You question if you're doing a good enough job, you worry about the state of the world, and you get defensive over a comment that somebody posted on Facebook. By the time the coffee's done, your brain has taken your to do list and highlighted it with anxiety.
You go to take a quick shower because the clock is ticking and you can not be late. Everyone else seems to have everything together in the morning and you wonder why it is so easy for them. You think you're running late, even though you're still early. You check yourself in the mirror and you see the hot mess express looking back at you and remember your kids need lunch money and you forgot to sign that form for school because your mind was occupied last night with the look that you got from your coworker the day before.
Now you're worried that he's upset with you. You start to imagine scenarios about how you should behave now or how you can fix it as you get dressed. You put on no less than three different outfits because they they feel really uncomfortable, and kind of itchy and twisted or wrong but finally circle back to the first one. You've been up for only 45 minutes, and you're already on the verge of tears. So you take a slow, deep breath to calm yourself down, and you finish your routine. Once everyone is finally out the door and on their way to work, you have a chance to chill out and listen to music on their way to work.
But that thing that you read on your phone this morning, pops back into your head. So you think you should check the news instead, to be sure everything is okay and instead of feeling better, you just start to worry about all the other news stories too. Once you finally frantically flip the dial back to music, you're almost to work.
Even though you're happy to be able to stop thinking about the state of the world, you remember that you have a meeting to present your new idea to your boss and your colleagues and the idea that you have is genius! You just know that they don't think you're professional enough and that look you saw yesterday is creeping back into your head. You decide the look you got was about the meeting, and that they don't like you. They don't even want to hear your pitch. You start to wonder what you did wrong and as you walk into the office, you intentionally slap on your biggest smile just like every other day and it's game on.
This is how you do your day; you smile, and you make sure everyone else is having a great day. You offer to pick up on any projects that they don't feel like they can finish in time even though you're already slammed, you say yes to the 5:30 meeting, even though you have dinner plans at six o'clock, then you feel bad for changing them. But you also feel like a bad employee if you say no and ask for a different meeting time, so you do all the things, and you do your best to keep it all hidden under that big bright smile.
By the time lunch rolls around, you take just a few bites of food but only where nobody can see you because you don't want them to see you eat. You should be working instead; or at least that's what you tell yourself. It doesn't matter anyway because your stomach's in knots because of that meeting that's just after lunch. And at this point, you're not worried about the person who gave you the look that you thought you saw yesterday, because now you're focused on your value as an employee. You decide that if this doesn't go well, they're all gonna laugh at you and you'll never have another opportunity to show them your brilliance again. An hour of trying to prepare for your meeting turned into an hour of you imagining all the ways you're going to fail, including forgetting everything that you know, sweating way too much, and even having to leave the room to pee. So when you take yourself into the meeting room, you're already shaking like a leaf and swallowing to keep from throwing up. But... you're still smiling and laughing and cracking jokes.
So you nail the presentation, and they love it. But you think that they're just saying that so that you don't feel bad. That's really nice of them to pretend that they liked it so much because you could have done so much better. You missed one of the points that you wanted to make and you truly think that they have to be completely confused. They're pitying you. The rest of the day, you keep your head down, and you sneak to the bathroom to compose yourself. It's almost time to go home and you can't wait to get there so that you can just finally let go and have a little break down. But you just remember that meeting you committed to and you also forgot to cancel that dinner plan that you had for six and now you're really stuck. Nobody's going to understand. You are letting everybody down and you can't remember anything! What is wrong with your brain?
You finally cancel the dinner plans. And your friend says that she totally understands but the guilt is killing you. How can you let your best friend down like that? You add her to the list of people who are probably already upset with you today and you go to the meeting. You do your best to focus and to stay engaged but your brain is going 10 different directions from the Chinese spy balloon that was on the news to wondering if people could tell you were sweating through your shirt in your previous meeting, and how you can make it up to your friend.
When you finally get out of the office and you go home at 6:30, you find out that dinner is already made. You smile but then you feel this wave of guilt, but also gratitude at the same time, because you think you should have been able to take care of your family and make dinner. Once you've wiped your nose in your eyes, you sit down and you relax. Your anxiety level is still through the roof even though there's nothing at all to be anxious about now. You're safe and you're loved. You're in your PJs and you just want to relax and anxiety finally starts to lose its grip on you as you head into bed.
You lay down and close your eyes and you're exhausted, but you can't get your brain to stop circling back to all the things that you think you should have done differently during the day and you start preparing for tomorrow. After two hours of tossing and turning, you finally fall asleep, and then the alarm goes off.
I wonder how much of this hits home for you nand where you might see yourself in this scenario. There are pieces of me sprinkled in this scenario and my guess is there are some pieces of you sprinkled in there as well. Everybody likes to be helpful and there's nothing wrong with that when you are doing it from a place that brings you joy, that is in line with what your passions are and what your gifts are. Everybody wants to do a great job. It's not a problem, to do your best, it's a problem to tell yourself that you're incapable. So when you're always on red alert, thinking the worst of yourself, judging yourself and imagining problems that don't even really exist, the normal everyday stress and distractions of life, take way too much time and way too much energy that you could be using to do what you want to do. You just get stuck in this cycle that you don't know how to break because of the thoughts you have about who you are, and what feels safe because your brain is showing you all the places that you think you failed, or you think you messed up, or you worry that someone doesn't like you or agree with you. You're always starting from behind, spending your entire day focused on what it is that you fear is showing you every tiny place that will confirm the thoughts.
This is what your brain does, you focus on something and your brain finds more of it. This is why gratitude works and this is also why if I say don't think about a pink elephant, you will think about a pink elephant and probably see one on a billboard later today. What your brain is doing is just keeping you safe from feeling rejected or from getting hurt or from failing. It sees all of those things as dangerous. It's lying to you and it works so well because of the thoughts you have about who you are as a mom, or as a colleague, or as a wife or a partner. It's also is looking at how you think about your value outside of whatever it is that you do. Are you just good enough? Are you smart enough? It looks out for you and your ability to be successful. And just your ability to be loved, and even tries to keep you safe from like Chinese spy balloons and the big problems the world has. Your brain solves for all of those things, in the most craptastic ways so to stop this cycle, you have to change what you think about who you are. This kind of anxiety... and I'm not talking about postpartum anxiety, or anxiety that comes from intense trauma... high functioning anxiety is a thinking problem about you, about your value, and about your safety. When you think that you have to be all the things for all the people, you feel anxious, and you're stuck doing everything frantically for everybody else. You get more tired, and you get more stressed out, and then you get more anxious, and it just keeps growing. But when you choose to think differently, and to look for proof for why you're doing a great job, proof that people really like you and you start showing yourself that you can be flexible, you start to feel really good. And your confidence starts to grow. You can think more clearly and make decisions instead of rushing around and reacting and losing your mind all the time. You have to change the way you think about yourself, and the way you think about how your body feels.
So there's several places in the scenario that I went over with you that could help you get your mind together on a daily basis. Things like meditating as part of your morning routine, or you could put a sticky note on the car radio that says 'only listen to music, no exceptions', you could take a walk after lunch to clear your head. These are all really great ways to handle anxiety. But to get to the root of the problem, you have to get to know yourself and your thoughts better. You can treat the symptoms easily. this is why people take medication, but it's not getting to what the real problem is.
So when I work with women, not only do they learn about how anxiety specifically feels in their body, they learn what that feeling is telling them. Sometimes you take any emotion that doesn't feel good, and I'm totally guilty of this too, and you call it anxiety because it feels bad. What I do is I help you get clear on what you really and truly feel. Maybe you feel sadness, or maybe you feel powerless, or guilty. Maybe you think you're stupid. All of those feelings or those thoughts can cause you to feel anxious. And when you get clear on what you actually feel you can deal with it. It's so simple. Once you finally figure out what's going on. You take the truth about how you feel and you come up with the solution to the problem that feels really good that makes you want to take action and the cycle breaks.
The reason I keep saying anxieties a thinking problem is because you've probably seen other people go through the same situations that you go through that make you feel really anxious and it isn't even a blip on their screen. I've heard it over and over, 'I don't know how you can do that; it makes me so anxious'. It's because of how you think about a situation, and nothing more.. Coaching is all about looking at your thoughts, finding the truth and choosing better thoughts. When you choose better thoughts, you choose better responses. I've had so many clients told me that they weren't sure coaching would work. Like they were afraid to even try it because they had tried so many other things. They felt horribly anxious, and they were blown away at how different they felt. They learned to notice where they felt it, how they felt it. They learned to change the way they thought and they are doing things that they never imagined doing. Things like starting businesses, things like going for big pay raises, things like trying out these new interests that they had hidden from people for a really long time. It's freaking fun! This is how It's done and this is why coaching is so powerful. Not only will you not feel like you can't eat your lunch, and you deserve lunch, come on... but you have more energy that doesn't come from adrenaline. You have more time to enjoy the things that you want to do because you're able to say yes to what's important to you and no to the stuff that doesn't light you up. You aren't completely drained when you get home, so you get quality time instead of time that you're just there but not mentally there for your spouse or your partner or your kids or your friends. You sleep better because you're not running over every conversation and side-eyed look that you got during the day.
Coaching finds the anxiety that hides out in the nooks and crannies of your life. We pick it all out and we work through the real emotions and the real thoughts. My friends, I know that squeezing one more thing into your schedule might feel impossible right now but that is only because your time is consumed by all the things that you're doing because you're anxious. Working on yourself for an hour a week, opens up time that you didn't even know was available and when you stop doing all the things for all the people, and you stop over serving out of fear, you create more time for the people and the things that make your life beautiful.
You can schedule a time to talk with me about how I can help you and how you can get started by going to www.megandevito.com/workwithme. I'll be back next week. Until then, take care, and I'll talk to you soon.
I hope you've enjoyed this episode of The More Than Anxiety podcast Be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And of course when you're ready to explore coaching with me, jump to the show notes, click the link and scheduled time for us to talk. See you soon.
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