High Functioning Anxiety
When You Have Done Everything Right and Things Still Suck
When other people look at you they may see someone who is always on time, who gets good grades, excels in their career, is always planning ahead, and is super helpful. In fact, many turn to you for support in times of stress and chaos. You are reliable, intelligent, and capable. What they don’t see is that you often feel intense distress and worry. You experience a pressure to always be in control, to be prepared for the worst case scenario, and feel an unshakable fear of messing up. You feel like you will be criticized, judged, or punished if you drop the ball. So you keep it all together, keep it all bottled up, but you like if one bad thing happens, it might just send you over the edge into a total spiral. The voice of your inner critic grows louder each day.
You are exhausted from living like this, from the nonstop thinking, the endless to-do lists, and the need for control. You’ve tried meditating, exercising, eating better, taking medication. Maybe you have even tried talking to a therapist, but your anxiety is still there, and still getting worse. So what do you do if you have already tried everything?
If you have high functioning anxiety, you may need a unique approach to achieve long-lasting treatment. The good news is high functioning anxiety is treatable and manageable. Rather than focusing on coping skills, which you are already quite adept in, your therapist will work with you to get to the root of your anxiety and stop the cycle of overthinking and overanalyzing. The first step will be focusing on understanding your anxiety triggers and the physiological response of your mind and body. Gaining knowledge on how your body and mind function under anxiety will give you insight into how you cope and whether or not your coping style is truly serving you. The next step is to explore strategies for nervous system regulation. This means, not pushing your anxiety away, but allowing yourself to truly sit with your anxious feelings and unearth any underlying emotional needs that the anxiety may be covering up.
