Healing High Functioning Anxiety
Compassionate Coaching for the Self-Critical Achiever
You’re successful. A “natural” achiever. You’re intelligent, thoughtful, hardworking, organized and flexible. Or at least you’ve been told, right?
From your perspective, it feels quite different. You consider yourself ambitious but find yourself over thinking, over-working, over-apologizing, and over-analyzing every action. Privately, you’re anxious, self-critical, perfectionistic, lonely and exhausted.
You feel stuck, depleted and rarely satisfied or fulfilled.
If this sounds familiar, you may be experiencing high functioning anxiety.
What is high functioning anxiety?
High functioning anxiety is not an official mental health diagnosis but a term used to describe people who live with a form of anxiety - from generalized anxiety to panic disorder - that continue to function reasonably well in most aspects of their life.
High functioning anxiety is usually well hidden and may even be a source of shame for those who suffer from it.
A woman with high functioning anxiety might continue a presentation regardless of having a full-blown panic attack, telling herself to “get it together”. She may be revered as a confident leader while internally feeling completely inadequate. Or, appears to handle challenging situations with a level of ease others covet, only to be sacrificing so much behind the scenes. It’s not uncommon for those with high functioning anxiety to be faced with a unique internal dilemma; a part of them desperately wants their anxiety to go away, while another part — feeling apprehensive about who they may be, and how they may function, without it — prefers to keep it around.
How can Anxiety Coaching Help?
If you’re experiencing high functioning anxiety, you may be so consumed by managing your anxiety day-to-day, that you’ve lost touch with life outside your anxiety.
Anxiety coaching can help guide you toward taking aligned and calculated risks in the direction of your goals and dreams; shifting your primary focus from avoiding failure and anxiety, toward creating meaningful and enjoyable experiences.
Together, I’ll help you become more in touch with, and committed to, what brings you joy, pleasure and ease on a day-to-day basis, and experience what it feels like to truly be proud of who you ARE, outside of what you DO.
Through releasing pain from the past and accepting uncertainty of the future, you will learn to embrace the beauty, connection, peace and success that is already around you in the here and now. Not only is this work rewarding, believe it or not, it actually can be FUN! A truly fulfilling life is closer than you may imagine.
My Approach:
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Validate
By the time clients find their way to work with me, many of them have been consciously, or subconsciously, struggling and/or suppressing for quite some time. Often, layers of grief and shame are attached to their suffering, to the people, experiences and opportunities anxiety has stolen from them, and maybe even attached to their decision to seek outside support.
I understand choosing to do the healing work isn’t an easy decision. I find meeting my clients where they’re at, and holding some space for how hard life has been, sets a solid foundation of trust and accelerates our overall healing work together.
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Educate
It’s no surprise that most clients with anxiety come to me with the hope of getting rid of it! Yet, my goal is to set my clients up for self-sustaining healing success; not get rid of their anxiety.
Anxiety is a healthy, protective, and fundamental part of being human. Anxiety itself is not the problem; it’s the power clients have handed over to anxiety that often becomes problematic. I help them understand how anxiety works at a psychological and physiological level, how it can both serve, and restrict, them, and most importantly, how to harness it to keep it working for them, while limiting the ways it works against them.
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Motivate
I’ll say it again - choosing to do the healing work is not easy! Knowing something and doing something are two very different things. My clients are intelligent, driven and successful people. If they could’ve worked through it on their own, they absolutely would have already! Our work together is solutions focused and action-oriented. Together, we come up with a plan that moves clients out of perpetual planning, preparing, and procrastination, and into taking direct, aligned action!
I serve as a supportive, encouraging and motivating teammate, compassionately guiding them to lean into fear and anxiety where it serves them, and release the fear and anxiety where it holds them back.
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Celebrate
Most of my clients are used to being successful, getting recognition, and hitting big goals. In fact, most thrive on external validation. However, since this healing work is more about internal validation, the successes may seem more subtle than clients are used to at first.
I assure clients that small shifts lead to BIG shifts really quickly, and I help them recognize, and celebrate, both the big and small. Through cultivating a practice of genuine celebration, clients learn to view their successes through a new lens, and often leave our healing container feeling prouder and more accomplished than they ever have before!
Modalities to support your healing process may include:
Mindfulness Techniques
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Inner Child & Shadow Work
Self-Compassion Exercises
Hakomi Method
Somatic Experiencing
Homeopathic Medicine
Hydrotherapy
Herbs/Botanicals
Mental Health Supplementation
Anxiety coaching rooted in education and personal experience
I know what it’s like to prioritize achieving above all else.
I know what it’s like to minimize your strengths and magnify your weaknesses.
I know what it’s like to crave more mental freedom but fear what life would look like if you loosened your grip.
I know what it’s like to want to connect but feel alone.
I know what it’s like to feel like a failure despite having great successes.
I know what it it’s like to be living a life that doesn’t feel authentically your own.
I also know change is possible and you do not have to live this way!
It took me years to admit my own struggles with anxiety, body image and OCD to others. I understand that seeking help is not always easy, especially for someone as a self-sufficient, educated and resourceful as yourself. I also know that you do not have to, and are not meant to, go through this alone.
Choosing to lower my guard, lay down my pride, and admit to myself that I needed support was the BEST gift I ever gave myself. I’d love for you to give that gift to yourself, too. It is incredibly validating - and interestingly empowering - to honor yourself with outside support. Paradoxically, it’s often through letting down their guard and sharing their “weaknesses” that clients begin to feel stronger, more powerful and more self-sufficient than ever before.
My mission is to help women who have anxiety or OCD loosen that death grip of inner judgement and find freedom, enjoyment and connection in life again.
I know you’re capable. I know you’re a high achiever. I also know you’re hurting. You’re tired. Your successes don’t come as easily as they appear. You work harder than most, with your biggest accomplishments being the ones no one ever sees – navigating through the countless thoughts, doubts, fears and obsessions inside your head.
Give yourself the care you give to others
You may be hesitant to seek help. You may tell yourself that you “aren’t that sick” or can “toughen up” and deal with the anxiety, panic attacks, self doubt, or OCD yourself.
But, deep down, you know that your anxiety limits your life—even if you don't let on. Living with high functioning anxiety and depression can feel like you’re at war with yourself. And often, like you’re losing. If you are ready to stop the war and create peace, my integrative coaching may be for you.
You don’t have to go it alone. You give so much to so many… it is time to remember that YOU are worthy of being cared for and supported by someone else.
More Information & Resources
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You have a hard time making decisions and often ruminate on whether you’ve made “right” or “wrong” decision after the fact.
You keep the commitments you make to/for others, but struggle to stick the commitments you make to/for yourself.
You have a good life. You know there are many things in your life you “should” just be grateful for. Which only leads to feelings of guilt on top of everything else you’re feeling.
You are really good at coming across like you have it “all together”. You laugh, socialize, work, parent, exercise, travel, etc. And you excel at it! But you’re doing it all with an incredibly heavy, often invisible, burden of shame, fatigue, worry, panic and/or indifference every step of the way.
The positive, hopeful and/or successful moments you do have, are either short lived, minimized in your mind, or overshadowed by the dark, heavy, embarrassing or confusing thoughts and feelings you know are quick to return.
A part of you becomes terrified at the thought of people in your life learning about the “real you”, while another part desperately wants to shout from the rooftops how much you’re hurting.
One of your greatest desires is to be seen and loved deeply, but you have fear around letting people see you, and love you, deeply.
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High achieving
Outward success in work and life
Extremely neat and organized
Punctual
Proactive
Always willing to help others
Outgoing and seemingly happy
Creative and imaginative
Problem solvers
Ability to multitask
Detail Oriented
“Easy going”
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Difficulty saying no to others
Experiencing imposter syndrome
Nervous habits such as playing with your hair, nail biting, skin picking and nervous talking/laughing
Being told you’re “hard to read,” due to putting on a face in social situations (not being authentic)
Needing a high degree of reassurance
Refusing to call in sick or take vacation
Being obsessively early to meetings, work, and other appointments
Over-preparing for presentations, travel, etc
Being told by friends or family that you should “slow down” or “take a break”
Ruminating on negative encounters, wondering how you could have acted differently
Sleep problems including insomnia
Procrastination followed by staying up all night to get a project finished
Planning action vs taking action
