How Does Therapy Help High-Functioning Anxiety?
I don’t have anxiety! I am a successful professional! And I rock at managing all the mom stuff. It would seriously make your head spin to see all the things I track and manage every day. Sure, I feel stressed all the time. Doesn’t everyone? I snap at people when they aren’t moving fast enough. I am 5 steps ahead of everyone else in my life, so no, I can’t be spontaneous and change plans on a dime. That’s just being organized, though, right? Not…anxiety. Right?
When you think of someone who struggles with anxiety, what comes up for you? Many people think of someone who has a phobia of some type or experiences anxiety that is so debilitating that they take extreme measures to avoid anxiety-provoking situations. Someone who is visibly jittery or talks very fast.
Or doesn’t talk at all.
Let’s discard the stereotypes. Anxiety shows up in other, less obvious ways.
A lot of people do not realize that “high functioning anxiety” is a thing.
Even people who experience it do not always recognize it as anxiety. We think it is stress. We think we have had too much coffee. Or not enough. We experience overthinking, shakiness, headaches, sleep issues, burnout, and fatigue. We find that we worry a lot about what people think, which drives impeccable attention to diet, nutrition, exercise, fashion, education, achievement, striving, perfectionism.
We are consumed by details of things that most people never think twice about.
We dwell on mistakes we have made and beat ourselves up about them.
We know (logically) we are capable of things, but we don’t really believe in ourselves.
Before our feet hit the floor in the morning we are aware of 17 things we have to do right away.
We are experts at projecting worst case scenarios for every situation.
We might freeze up when we have the floor at work, even if we know we have a great idea.
We read lists like this and start freaking out a little bit, because we recognize ourselves.
Women with high functioning anxiety might be aware that we are getting in our own way, and this usually leads to more distress. We might get a critical part of ourselves that constantly nags us, Get ahold of yourself! What’s wrong with you? Other people don’t freak out inside like you do! It zaps our energy to fight with that internal critical part. And it is exhausting to try and hide the fact that we feel anxious.
On the other hand, we might think that the way we are responding is the way everyone should respond. It’s just life. We have lived with it so long we can’t imagine another way. We may even recognize that our success is due, at least in part, to our anxious behaviors. Anxiety is a normal emotion, and it actually helps us function. People with anxiety are always prepared, because we have already been busy overthinking every possible outcome.
So, what do you do if you recognize yourself in what I have written so far?
I promise I won’t tell you to calm down (when people do that it usually just makes everything worse). But I will tell you that you are not alone. There are strategies that are very helpful in reducing the impact of high functioning anxiety, and if you fall into that high-functioning category, you will probably be awesome at implementing these strategies!
There is a lot of free information out there about strategies for anxiety.
You can do some research and find some great things to try. I have posted quite a bit on my blog, or on my social media accounts (facebook, instagram) with tips pertaining to deep breathing, journaling, grounding, managing your thoughts and feelings, etc. Free resources abound on mindfulness if you give that a google.
It gets trickier when you start getting down to the root beliefs that keep the anxiety going. It can also be overwhelming and time-consuming to sort through all of that and try to figure out what will work for you. Therapy can help you get down to what will specifically help you.
How do therapists work with high functioning anxiety?
We consider your unique cluster of beliefs that perpetuates your anxiety as well as your individual preferences and lifestyle.
We will spend some time listening to the story of your life so we know what factors into how you have adapted anxiety as a coping strategy.
We explore your other coping skills so we can maximize them.
We explore things you’ve tried that didn’t work for you so we don’t waste time trying those again.
We also teach new coping strategies, and help you tweak them to fit your lifestyle.
We get a good understanding of how anxiety helps you, because it’s not all bad. It’s probably one of the reasons you are so successful. We figure out how we can put parameters around it so you get the benefits but not so much the stress.
We explore the deep values and beliefs that you have probably attached to your very identity that keeps the anxiety spinning for you. Often these are formed early in life. Something made a traumatic impression on you, and you decided you would never be unprepared again. Or you had to be the one to do everything so you could be in control of it. You learned that if you were just perfect, nobody could criticize you.
We challenge those deep thoughts, learn other perspectives. Sometimes this involves Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which shines light on unhelpful ways of thinking. I love to use EMDR Therapy, which works on a physical level to get those traumatic memories moving through your body in a way your brain can make better sense of them. EMDR Therapy actually helps you take a look at your memories through a new lens of all of the wonderful skills you have that make you so successful. The traumatic memory may have been stuck in your brain somewhere that does not connect with those great things you can do as a successful adult. You logically know how to deal with your anxiety, but something keeps getting in the way of feeling competent to overcome it. EMDR Therapy has a way of getting rid of that disconnect.
We work on adjusting to the experience of not feeling anxious. It can feel a little weird at first. The other people in your life who benefit from your anxiety will have to learn to do things for themselves, and you will have to learn to let them.
All the while we support you, without judgement. We cheer you on and celebrate the little wins that you are afraid nobody will understand. We remind you that it makes sense that you feel this way, your struggle is real and it is also very normal.
We keep loaning you our hope that it is possible to live without feeling held back by anxiety.
I hope you’ll give me a call if you are a woman in Pennsylvania who is ready to get out of your own way.
I can’t wait to see you become more of yourself!
Jennie Sheffe is a National Certified Counselor ™ who helps women find freedom from anxiety and peace in their chaos. She sees clients virtually in the state of Pennsylvania, or in her downtown Carlisle, PA office. She offers Christian counseling and EMDR Therapy.
