Episode 159: A Weekend in the Life of High Functioning Anxiety

<span style='font-weight: 400;'>For many of us with High Functioning Anxiety, we have a hard time noticing when we are anxious. Our anxiety is usually swimming around in our heads WELL before we consciously notice it. </span> <span style='font-weight: 400;'>For me, I can say I’m fine, I’m not feeling anxious then</span> <em><span style='font-weight: 400;'>poof</span></em><span style='font-weight: 400;'>—I explode at my husband for leaving something out of place and realize how high my anxiety is and I didn’t even realize it. In a similar vein, my clients tell me their HFA shows up when they can’t sleep at night because of their racing thoughts.</span> <p><strong>The truth is: we all have default patterns we fall into.</strong></p> <p><span style='font-weight: 400;'>Many of us have “go-to” behaviors to express our anxiety that we either inherited genetically or that we learned from a young age: behaviors we engage in and beliefs that we get stuck on. Some of these patterns might be overeating, overthinking, people-pleasing, insomnia, over-analyzing, or assuming you are wrong.</span></p> <p><span style='font-weight: 400;'>HFA is sneaky—and it shows up in the most strange and uncomfortable ways. To illustrate, I decided to record the times when my anxiety was exceptionally high this past weekend. My goal was to share what was happening—and how I felt about it—so you could get a behind the scenes look at how HFA plays out in your life and what to do about it.</span></p> <p><strong>Listen to the full episode to hear:</strong></p> <ul> <li style='font-weight: 400;'><span style='font-weight: 400;'>The 6 situations that triggered my high functioning anxiety and my response to them</span></li> <li style='font-weight: 400;'><span style='font-weight: 400;'>Healthier ways to approach your HFA—and why practicing A.S.K. to quiet your Monger is important (</span><a href='https://live-happier.com/121-kindly-pulling-back/'><span style='font-weight: 400;'>listen to this episode to learn all about the 3 steps of A.S.K.</span></a><s