The work of addressing anxiety is a paradigm shift.

It is unlearning patterns that have become automatic and creating intentional responses to replace them.

This work may be a paradigm shift for you, the supporter, as well.

Therapy can be a hard thing for everyone involved, because mental health struggles are a hard thing for everyone involved. Today’s article focuses on some things you need to know about the process of therapy. I hope to shed light on some of the ways someone in therapy for anxiety or trauma may need your support.

Most people think of empathy as just good listening, but I see five components of empathy: listening, curiosity, communication, support, and focus on the other person.

When someone is working on their mental health struggles in therapy and they can go home to someone who effectively supports their efforts it can make a huge difference in the progress they can make. It allows them to focus on their issues, without trying to hide their process from their closest people and frees them up to work on the underlying stuff instead of your reaction to their underlying stuff.

Work/life balance can be particularly elusive when someone in the family has a demanding job. When that job is also a calling, like the military or the ministry, it can loom even more demanding. Those types of jobs carry the weight of helping others, making the world a better place. To do them well, the balance gets off kilter and it is not easy to make time to adequately readjust.

It’s so frustrating to feel anxious, especially when we are aware that what we are anxious about is probably irrational. We can know this in our brain, but our bodies betray us by staying on edge, restless. We get stuck in a cycle of telling our brain, “That’s never going to happen. Stop it.” And then the Brain replies with, “Yes, but what if…?”

It’d be nice to be able to just bottle it up and send it away in the ocean, never to be seen again.

But we need it.

Anxiety is part of life, and actually, it helps us deal with the unpredictable challenges life throws at us.

People often do not know where to start with journaling, what to write about. Usually they think it is about documenting what they did that day. It can be about that, but the kind of journaling I am talking about gets at the thoughts running amok in my brain and sorting out the feelings that respond to those thoughts. It’s about allowing myself to try out new ways of thinking, articulate dreams, solve problems, and send a message to my brain, “I’m working on it! Stop bugging me!”

Perfectionism shows up in a host of behaviors such as people-pleasing, difficulty with boundaries, time management issues, stress, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, overthinking, and overwhelm. In my work as a counselor I have seen that at the very core of perfectionism there is a limiting belief of “I am not good enough.”

Something (or many things) happened in our early lives to spark that belief.

Once that belief begins as a hypothesis in our young brains, we look for ways to prove that it’s true.

Time management is often a huge issue for perfectionists. The person who has high expectations of themselves often does not set realistic timelines for getting work done. We not only want to do the thing perfectly, we think we need perfect conditions (to include the amount of knowledge in our heads) to do the thing. The person who perceives that others have high expectations of her is often paralyzed by the prospect of failure. The person who places high expectations on others often finds themselves in a crunch because someone else didn’t do something to their standards. Or because someone walked out of their life because they were tired of never measuring up to that person’s ideals.

It’s hard to catch ourselves being perfectionists because perfectionism feels normal and the beliefs that drive it are often far below the surface of our awareness.

Perfectionism, like high-functioning anxiety can actually help us achieve things. We think it’s a good thing and we strive harder.

It is one of those “humble brags.” When that interviewer asks you to name your strengths and weaknesses, perfectionism is an acceptable weakness because, in theory, it will benefit your employer.

But does it?

It actually can get in the way of productivity, and it definitely gets in the way of life satisfaction.

Setting boundaries can feel overwhelming when you are new to it. It gets easier over time, but it can still be anxiety-producing, depending on the relationship and what might be at stake. They can feel more do-able when we remember that not all boundaries need to be overtly communicated. Those that do need to be communicated can go better when you put intentionality into how you have that conversation.

We want to make sure our boundaries are as effective as possible, otherwise they are just empty threats or requests. We want to make sure they serve the purpose of improving our life satisfaction or helping us live authentically. To do this, we need to be very intentional about the boundaries we set.

As a consumer of social media, I am prone to think of dramatic actions that people often use to avoid dealing with someone in their life or to control them. However, as a therapist, I have a much deeper understanding of what healthy boundaries really are about, why they are necessary and good, and how they help relationships.

Today I am unpacking 5 myths we tend to believe about boundaries.

When we have years of experience bending and flexing to match our perceptions of what others want us to be, it’s hard to even know where to begin figuring out who we are, what we like and don’t like.

Often, as women, we leave those gates and doors wide open. We let our early experiences, significant relationships, and even culture decorate that internal house until one day, we look around and think, “This is my house? This isn’t me.” We look at the people lounging on the sofa, looking through our old photo albums, criticizing our cooking and we just want to kick them all out but instead we offer them a drink and try harder to make them happy.

So. How do we set boundaries with ourselves?

The email says she wants to talk to you after lunch. Gah! What? She hates me. She has found out that I am not actually good enough to do this job. Here it comes. I’m fired. Maybe I should just quit, then she can’t fire me.

Turns out she just wanted to let you know that the job you just finished turned out well. Whew.

Why did my brain have to make such a big thing out of this? Ugh. I am so ridiculous. I know these thoughts are not accurate, but I can’t seem to stop them from coming, and I can’t seem to stop myself from believing them. I am a hot mess. No wonder she wants to fire me. Oh…wait.. she doesn’t, that’s right.

Welcome to the brain that struggles with imposter syndrome.

A lot of people do not realize that “high functioning anxiety” is a thing. Even people who experience it do not realize it is anxiety. We think it is stress. We experience overthinking, shaking, 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 can let our ambition run away with us, especially in January when we have a clean calendar stretching out in front of us. We think we have so much time! When we think of everything we want to do, surely 12 months will get us there.

When we crash into the hard reality that life quite often gets in the way of doing all of these things, it makes us want to give up on all of it. If we can’t do these things perfectly, we don’t want to do them at all.

The act of creating guiding principles addresses so many needs of my clients. Guiding principles help us connect to our values, because our values inform our guiding principles. They give us a layer of security when we want to waffle in indecision, overthinking, people pleasing, or perfectionism. Once we catch ourselves lacking a sense of peace about a decision, it’s time to revisit the guiding principles. Then, the decision becomes clear and so do any boundaries that may need to accompany the decision. It may still be hard to walk it forward, but you can feel solid and authentic in knowing why you are doing (or not doing) something.

First of all, yes, “decision fatigue” is a real thing. It happens when your brain is just tuckered out from having to make so many decisions. They don’t even need to be hard decisions. Just relentless, repetitive, and constantly tasking. Add hard decisions or anxiety-producing situations into the mix and your decision muscle is a gooey-mess.