The Mindset Mentor - Dealing With High Functioning Anxiety

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, you would also 100% love my new book, what is called Level Up, How to Get Focused, Stop Procrastinating, and Upgrade Your Life. It is a book that is based on the psychology of how to take action to create the life that you want. And I developed it to be a manual to understand the most complex piece of machinery in the entire world, which is your brain and your mind, how to get past holding yourself back so that you can actually create the life that you want. So if you're interested in checking it out, once again, it's called Level Up, and it is sold everywhere where you can buy books.

Starting point is 00:00:47 Today, we're going to be talking about high functioning anxiety. We're going to talk about what it is, and we're also going to talk about how to use it for good. And so when you look at something like high functioning anxiety, it's something that is extremely prevalent in our society nowadays. And the term high-functioning anxiety, the term itself can actually be very misleading because we tend to think of the word anxiety as something that is bad. Anxiety is not good or bad. It is just something that exists. And it can be used when you need it.

Starting point is 00:01:22 But if you don't turn it off whenever you don't need it, then it can start to create you need it, but if you don't turn it off whenever you don't need it, then it can start to create a little bit of a problem. And so when people have high functioning anxiety, usually they have a really big drive to succeed, and that can be a good thing. But they also really want to avoid mistakes. They can often have an underlying fear of judgment or a deep-seated belief that they're not good enough in some sort of way. And so some of the most common characteristics of someone who

Starting point is 00:01:51 has high functioning anxiety can be something like overthinking, you know, constantly replaying scenarios over and over again in the mind and analyzing past events and seeing, oh my gosh, maybe I said this the wrong way. Maybe they took it the wrong way. Or maybe they're worrying too much about the future events that might be coming, and they're overthinking all of the negative things that could possibly happen. I always say that overthinking isn't a problem, but overthinking the negative is a problem. And you would not want to stop overthinking if you were just constantly overthinking about how amazing your future is or how amazing your life could be or overthinking about how grateful you are. What happens to where it really starts to become something that seems quote-unquote negative

Starting point is 00:02:33 is where you're overthinking all of the negative things in your past and ruminating over them or overthinking all of the possible things to fear in your future. So that could be part of it. Another thing that pops up with high- high functioning anxiety tends to be perfectionism. The need to try to make every single thing perfect and to try to make sure that you don't mess up in any sort of way. And usually what that's driven from is some sort of fear of other people's judgments or other people's opinions or criticism or making mistakes in some sort of way. Another way that high functioning anxiety can kind of pop up in people's lives is this feeling of like restlessness. It's the feeling of constantly being on edge and never really being able to relax into just like even when you're done

Starting point is 00:03:21 working, it's still there. And you're like, man, I finished work three hours ago, but it's still this on edge feeling. That can be something that pops up with high functioning anxiety. Another thing that pops up with people who sometimes who have high functioning anxiety is over committing, taking on way too many tasks, way too many responsibilities. And often if they go down that road, it can lead to a lot of fear of saying no to people or letting other people down or not being trusted by other people. These are really common, but they can show up in many different ways. And high functioning anxiety doesn't have to just be these. They can be other things as well. And on the surface, someone who has high

Starting point is 00:04:03 functioning anxiety, just so you know, usually what it is, the reason why it's called high-functioning is because they're able to function in the world really well, but there's just this constant feeling of stress and anxiety and being on edge all the time. And so on the surface, these people tend to look like they have everything together. They can be successful. They can be organized. They can be very meticulous in their work. They can be organized. They could be very meticulous in their work. But beneath all of that, beneath the, I have my shit together exterior, there's this constant feeling of nervousness, energy of restlessness, energy of stressed out, anxious energy. And if you've ever felt like you're really driven, a really driven person, you have this internal motor that can just keep

Starting point is 00:04:45 going, going, going, but you don't shut it off, you don't know how to shut it off, or if you found yourself overthinking every single decision, or if you can take action but you can't seem to turn your mind off at 7 p.m. at night, or you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to turn your mind off, you might be familiar with high-functioning anxiety. And so what we're going to talk about today is not necessarily curing or getting rid of this anxiety. It's about harnessing the energy in a positive way to make sure that it doesn't become overwhelming.

Starting point is 00:05:19 To use it when you need to, but to turn it off when you don't need it. Because anxiety is not a bad thing. It exists in the human system for a reason. It's not a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's just a thing. But when it goes from good to bad is usually when you can't turn it off. And so we're going to talk about how to use it, but we're also going to talk about how to turn it off. I'm going to give you some strategies to actually turn it off as well. And high-functioning anxiety is really a double-edged sword. There's pros to it, but there's also cons to it. It can help you with driving, it can help you with motivation, it can help you really get shit done, it can help you be more detailed, and it can help you plan your days and your work. It can give you

Starting point is 00:05:58 a really, really strong work ethic. It can make you more creative, but it becomes a bad thing when it's something that just is always going. And the way that I like to see it is it's like a tool for your tool belt. You know, if you see a nail and you have to have to get a nail into a wall, what's the best tool for that tool belt for that task? I guess what you would do is take the tool out of your tool belt and you would try to use a hammer. A hammer would be the best one for it. Now, if I had a screw and I was trying to screw something in, I could maybe use a hammer or I could use a screwdriver for that. And it's good. And it's a tool that you can use when you want to use it. It's a good thing when you're sitting down and

Starting point is 00:06:40 you're going to crank out work. It's a bad thing when you're trying to unwind and be present with your children and you can't seem to turn your phone off because you're constantly thinking about what's going on and what you should have done earlier today. Or it's really bad when it gets in the way of your sleep, when you sit down to lay down and you're constantly thinking about today and ruminating on what you might have done wrong, or you're constantly thinking about tomorrow. So let's talk about really how to use it and how to control it. The number one thing out of all of the research that I've done that helps people who have high functioning anxiety. And what I'll tell you is that I found is that a lot of people nowadays have high functioning anxiety. And one of the reasons why is because technology is omnipresent in our lives. If you think back to the 1980s, I would say that there

Starting point is 00:07:27 was a whole lot, and there's actually proof of it, that there was a whole lot less high-functioning anxiety. And the reason why is because in the 80s, people could leave work and be done with work. Like you could leave the office and you didn't have emails back then. And you didn't have people texting you because there were no emails that people really used in the 80s. And there were no text messaging back then. And people are not going to call your house line and try to tell you something that you need to do for work. And so nowadays, we basically carry work with us. We carry our life with us everywhere that we go. You are, unless you have the correct boundary set up, you are available all of the time. And so really what we want to do is we want to be able to figure

Starting point is 00:08:04 out a way to use it. And that the thing that I found that works the best with high functioning anxiety is to be really, really good at creating routines, creating routines in your life so that you can, it can be a really, really great anchor with people who have high functioning anxiety. And the reason why is because when you create a routine, you create something where there is certainty to it. A lot of times high functioning anxiety comes from the uncertainty of life, the uncertainty of what's coming up tomorrow and what we have to do. And so when you create a routine in your life or multiple routines in your life,

Starting point is 00:08:37 you know what to expect. It removes a lot of uncertainty and it can alleviate a lot of that uncertainty. And that uncertainty is actually what tends to fuel anxious thoughts. And so there's been a lot of studies on this. One of them was by Charles Duhigg and his study was called the power of habit. Why we do what we do in life and business. And in this study, Duhigg explains how routines can actually reshape our brains. And by establishing routines in your life, you can create a sense of predictability and control, which can be especially beneficial for people who have high function anxiety because the predictability of the routines reduce the

Starting point is 00:09:17 uncertainty that fuels your anxiety. So when we're going through today, I want you to think, how can I create more routines to create more certainty in my life to lessen the load of the uncertainty? And that's where the high functioning anxiety, the anxiety tends to creep in there. Another study that was done in 2013 was called the Relationship Between Daily Activities and Quantitative EEG in the patients with panic disorder. And that was in the neuropsychiatric disease and treatment. So long name, but I'll tell you basically in a short synopsis of basically what the study was.

Starting point is 00:09:55 The study, what it did is they investigated the relationship between daily routines and brain activity in patients who had panic disorder, which panic disorder is a severe form of anxiety. And the results showed that daily regular activities actually associated more stable brain activity patterns, proving that the routines that you create in your life can have a direct and positive impact on the brain's functioning of people who had extreme amounts of anxiety. And so what you want to do is you want to start to develop some routines in your life. And so that routine will get rid of uncertainty and less uncertainty means there's going to be less anxiety. And so what you want to do is you want

Starting point is 00:10:35 to start to establish morning routines and evening routines as well. I was reading a study earlier today that's kind of a side note, but they were saying that the study found out that people who were millionaires have way more routines than people who are not millionaires. And one of the things that they found is that people who are millionaires on average wake up three hours before they need to actually get their work started. People who are not usually wake up within an hour of needing to get their day started. And so it just shows a routine that people tend to have as soon as they wake up in the morning to say, hey, I'm going to give myself two or three hours to myself, to my life, to my personal development so that I can fill my own cup before I actually go and fill other people's cups. And so when you create a morning routine and you create a wind down in an evening routine, it creates this sense of stability in your life.

Starting point is 00:11:24 And when you have the morning routine, you feel your own cup. You feel like you have some winds under your belt. You feel like you have control versus waking up and just immediately trying to put out as many fires as you possibly can. When you develop a evening wind down routine, it allows you to start to wind down your nervous system versus watching Netflix and being on your phone up until the moment that you need to brush your teeth. And so you want to try to give yourself at least 30 minutes to an hour to have a morning routine and 30 minutes to an hour to have an evening routine as well. If you don't want to give yourself that much time, it can be as simple as 10 minutes.

Starting point is 00:12:00 But the important part is to start developing routines in your life another really important thing that i think everybody should do is if you're if you have your own business or if you're constantly if you have your own business you're constantly thinking about work all the time as soon as you get quote unquote done because if you have your own business you can always be on work if you really want to or if you work for someone else and it's a can be a high stress job and it requires you to work a little bit later, or sometimes your manager is emailing you at nine o'clock at night, what you want to do is you want to develop an end of day routine. This is super important to kind of close out your mind and close the chapter of your mind out so that you don't have to continue to worry

Starting point is 00:12:40 with you and have your brain feel like it's not closed. And so what you do is you want to take 10 minutes to close out your workday. So let's say you say, okay, I'm going to develop a routine where I'm done with work by 6 p.m. 99% of days. Now, will there be days where you work a little bit earlier, get off work a little bit earlier, get off work a little bit later? Sure. But what you're trying to do in this closeout routine is you're trying to signal to your brain that work is done for the day. We're done. I'm closing out. I'm moving on to another chapter of my life for the rest of the day. Don't bother me, brain, with anything else after this. And this is what a typical end of day routine looks like. If you don't do this in your life right now, please do this. It will help you so much with any anxiety that you feel or any of that where if you just don't feel

Starting point is 00:13:30 like you could turn your brain off. The first thing that you're going to do is take just a couple minutes and you're going to tidy up your workspace. You're going to clean up a little bit. You're going to clear up any clutter that you have, anything that might be on the desk, anything that needs to be thrown away. Make your space look a little bit cleaner. Put away your tools, put away your equipment, organize your desk, whatever you need to do. Make it look at least a little bit prettier. It's a routine to close out. And once again, you're trying to signal to your brain, we're done here, brain. We're done. Then what you're going to do is you're going to shut off all of your electronics, turn off your computer, close out all of the work-related apps that you might have. I would consider setting the do not disturb hours on your phone and the do not

Starting point is 00:14:08 disturb hours on your computer as well. And you're going to close all of that down. Then what you're going to do is you're going to take a few minutes, you're going to take a pen and paper, and you're going to review, and then you're going to plan. So you're going to reflect on the day, and you're going to take a few minutes to review what you've accomplished and celebrate your achievements of what you got done today, no matter how big or how small. What did I get done today? How am I proud of myself today? What went well? And then what you're going to do is after you look back on how today went, we're going to look, so it's called look back, look forward. We're going to look back on how today went, figure out my accomplishments, celebrate myself. Damn, you got a lot done today. I'm really proud of you.

Starting point is 00:14:47 Then we're going to make a list and a little bit of a plan for tomorrow. One of the reasons why we can't seem to turn our brains off is because we don't make our to-do list for tomorrow today. And so our to-do list is kind of bouncing around in our brain all day long. And so what you're going to do is you're going to look at tomorrow and you're going to jot down some of the key things that you want to accomplish tomorrow. And what you can do is this can help you kind of offload all of these lingering thoughts and pending tasks and give you kind of a clear starting point so that you can start the next morning that way. And then you're going to do a physical and mental transition. Once again, all this stuff only takes about 10 minutes,

Starting point is 00:15:22 a physical and mental transition. So you're going to try to get your brain and your physical body to know we're done for the day. This could involve something that's just really simple. It can involve just a simple stretch. You stretch, you move your body around. You can do tapping, which is literally taking your hands and tapping your entire body. Go from your feet up and you tap every single muscle that you possibly can. And it starts to get the blood flow back into your body because after hours and hours and hours of sitting and working, especially being sitting there on your computer, doing some light stretches or doing a quick walk signals to the brain and the body that, hey, we're doing something different, right?

Starting point is 00:15:58 I've been sitting all day. Now I'm going to actually move my body a little bit. I'm going to signal to my body, hey, something else is happening. We're going into a different phase. And also what it helps do when you do this, if you do tapping or if you do walking, you do stretching, it releases tension. And in that tension that it's now letting go of, it's signaling to the brain and your body, hey, we're done with the work. We're going to go into having some fun. We're going to go into hanging out, living our life. And then what you're going to go into having some fun. We're going to go into hanging out, living our life. And then what you're going to do, and I recommend this for everybody, not just at the

Starting point is 00:16:29 end of your day, but multiple times a day, is you're going to do this breathing technique. And I got this breathing technique from a friend of mine. His name is Steven Jaggers, and he owns a company. He's trained over a thousand breathwork facilitators in his company called Somatic Breathwork. And he gave this tip to me of how he starts his day, how he closes his day, and how he relieves anxiety throughout the day. When you have anxiety, it can create stress, right? Of course, anxiety creates stress. Stress stays in the body unless we discharge it. I really get what I'm saying here, because if you can understand this, it'll help you multiple times a day. Stress stays in the body unless we discharge it. I really get what I'm saying here because if you can understand this, it'll help you multiple times a day. Stress stays in the body unless we discharge it. And this breathing exercise is designed to discharge remaining stress and anxiety that you have

Starting point is 00:17:16 accumulated throughout your workday. And so there's two videos that you can actually watch on YouTube if you want to that shows this. One of them is if you go on YouTube and type in polar bear trauma, you can watch this video. It is of a polar bear. These researchers are in a helicopter, and they have to shoot a tranquilizer gun into a polar bear to do studies and to check on this polar bear. And what happens is because a polar bear is like an apex predator,

Starting point is 00:17:40 they never are under any stress because they are the ones who cause stress for every animal around right nobody tries to kill this this massive being and so what happens is it's kind of sad to see but it shows you how this this animal is built to offload stress and trauma and it does for about 10 seconds this crazy like shaking it's a crazy shaking thing so they're sitting front of it. These people are surrounding themselves with it and it's doing this crazy shaking. And the guy says, just watch. We've done this so many times. Once it's done with the shaking, it'll take deep breaths. And so it's literally shaking its body to move the stress and discharge the stress from its body. And he says, watch when it's done, it's going to take

Starting point is 00:18:20 a deep breath and then calm down. And immediately after he says that, it goes. it's going to take a deep breath and then calm down. And immediately after he says that, it goes, shaking stops. That shows that the animal has a specific thing that it does to remove stress and trauma from the body. There's also another video you should watch. It's called Impala Stress. It's an impala that gets attacked by a leopard, and then the leopard gets scared off by something else. And the impala does the same thing. It does this crazy shaking, this crazy moving, and it does the same thing. It removes and discharges all of the built-up stress from the body so it can go back into its normal life.

Starting point is 00:19:01 And what's really interesting is that children do this naturally through temper tantrums. They offload all of their stress. It is literally natural for a human to do. But at some point in time, we're taught that this is not good. We're taught that temper tantrums are not good. And so what do we do? We actually keep all of it inside of us. And so what you're going to want to understand is this. I'm going to explain the process and then I'm going to actually just really quickly show you what it seems like and what it is to do. So when you do an elongated inhale, a long inhale with a short exhale, it creates a more amplified state, aka a feeling of stress. So if you want to do it before a workout and you want to amp your body up like a pre-workout breathing, it would be long. and you want to amp your body up like a pre-workout breathing, it would be long.

Starting point is 00:19:51 And you do 30 of those, it actually creates a more amplified state in your body. And so then if you would do a elongated exhale, it creates a more relaxed state. So what you're going to do in this process is you're going to actually get yourself in a more stressed state to get the rest of the stress that's in your body out, and then you're going to calm your body back down. So you're going to do 30 breaths with an elongated inhale. You're going to get yourself into a heightened state, and then what you're going to do is you're going to completely flip it. You're going to do a normal breath with an elongated exhale. It's wild.

Starting point is 00:20:38 I've done this breath work. He taught it to myself and a bunch of people that we were on Zoom with. They were inside of the tribe that we have. And you go from a heightened state to a relaxed state. And it's basically allowing you to discharge any remaining stress and anxiety in your body so that you can go off into your day and be more relaxed. So it's 30 deep breaths with an elongated inhale, shorter exhale to get yourself into a stressed out state. And then 30

Starting point is 00:21:06 breaths with a normal inhale and an elongated exhale, like you're breathing out through a straw. And you do one or two rounds of this. And you're basically mentally relieving all of the stress that's in your body from the day. And then you're calming your body back down. And then what you're going to do is you're going to say this out loud to yourself at the end. And you're going to say verbally out loud to yourself, I'm done with work today. I give myself permission to disconnect until tomorrow. I'm done with work today, and I give myself permission to disconnect into tomorrow. And what you're doing is you're closing out the day and not allowing it to linger. And you need to set boundaries and have very specific unplugged times. When you're done with

Starting point is 00:21:49 this, you need to know that you're done with work. You need to talk with your coworkers or your employees or people that work with you or your managers. Hey, I don't check anything after 6pm. And I would appreciate if you'd respect my boundary so that I can have my life. And you communicate your availability to these people. And so what you're trying to do is you're trying to create routines in your body to create more certainty, to then show your brain and body at the end of the day, hey, I'm done for the day. I give myself permission to turn off work until tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:22:23 And so this is what it comes down to is it's not a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's just a thing. But when you can use this tool for your tool belt, it works really well. When your high functioning anxiety is using you, that's when it becomes a problem. And so the question I have for you is if uncertainty causes so much stress and anxiety, what can you do? What routines can you create to create more

Starting point is 00:22:46 certainty inside of your day? Don't be a slave to your phone. Don't be a slave to your technology. Don't just put out fires. Be more proactive in your life. What can you do to create more certainty into your day? How can you use high functioning anxiety when you need it to use that high functioning anxiety and to be able to use it to get stuff done. And then when you're done for the day and you don't want it anymore, how can you create routines based off of what I taught today and what you think intuitively that you need

Starting point is 00:23:11 to create more certainty in your day so that you can live a life that you actually enjoy. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. It's really important.

Starting point is 00:23:26 If you guys want to help this podcast grow and help support us, the more that you share it, the more people become aware of it, and we can start to impact other people who are out there that don't know that this podcast exists, because ultimately, we just want to help people with their lives to create the lives that they want, to remove themselves from suffering, and to understand who they are as humans. So if you would share it on your Instagram stories, share it with a friend, send it to a friend in email, whatever it might be, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody

Starting point is 00:23:55 else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - Dealing With High Functioning Anxiety

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