The Happier Approach: Quieting your High Functioning Anxiety

I can talk about the Voices In Your Head all day long. I work with clients every day living with High Functioning Anxiety. I live and breathe this language and these techniques. The Monger, the BFF, Your Biggest Fan–I literally wrote the book.  But today I wanted to share the experience of living with High Functioning Anxiety from the perspective of one of my clients. Michelle Steinhour came to me a few years ago consumed with self-doubt, insecurity and constant questioning. It was showing up in her marriage and in her work. She was looking for practical strategies that would help her feel less doubtful about herself. I introduced her to my Coach in Your Pocket and Michelle has seen a big shift in her anxiety. But, as she reminds us in today’s episode, it’s a life-long process. Michelle is in the trenches. She’s making the shifts and doing the work. She’s walking the path of the Happier Approach every day by listening in to the Voices In Her Head and reminding them who’s really in charge.  In today’s episode: How Michelle manages her BFF and Monger. What she has done to encourage the voice of her Biggest Fan Some of the biggest changes she has seen since hearing from her Biggest Fan more often How the support from her spouse has made a big difference Why planning to have kids has made her love this work even more Links: The Feelings List PDF The Happier Approach Book I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor. I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier. The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life. Know someone who has High Functioning Anxiety and a VERY LOUD Monger, the Happier Approach makes a great gift.  Find The Happier Approach on Amazon, Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.comLearn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com

There is a voice in your head.  She is the voice of kindness, generosity, and wisdom and I call her the Biggest Fan. Of the 3 characters that are at the core of the Happier Approach, she is the best of all worlds.  She holds the goals of your Monger (to be safe and secure) without shaming and belittling you. She provides the support and encouragement of your BFF (“you are awesome”) without giving you a free pass to do whatever you want. Your Biggest Fan always has your back, acknowledges your feelings, can see options, is wise about the struggle, and uses your values as guiding principles.  Your Biggest Fan is the how.  She is the one who will help you achieve your goals and be happier.  All this month we have been talking about the voices that carry on in your head. If you haven’t already, go back and take a listen: In Episode 110 we talked about how the Monger, that mean voice that shames and belittles you, telling you that you’re not good enough. In Episode 111 we talked about how the BFF has an amazing talent of always being able to justify any behavior and how she shames and belittles other people in your defense. In today’s episode: How to identify the kind voice of the Biggest Fan even when you don't think you have one inside you What steps you can take to access the voice of your Biggest Fan Acknowledge what you are feeling Slow down and get into your body Kindly pull back to see the bigger picture What some of the challenges of accessing our Biggest Fan can be How the voice of your Biggest Fan has been silenced for a long time and how she will become louder as you listen to her more and more How to be gentle with yourself and identify that the success you want is a learning process The Happier Approach Book I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor. I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier. The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that askVisit: https://NancyJaneSmith.comLearn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com

This Month we are talking about the 3 characters that chat at us throughout the day and are at the core of The Happier Approach.  Last week we talked about the Monger–the mean voice tells us we’re not good enough. Today, we are going to talk about the voice we most often use to counter our Monger: the BFF Our BFF enables us to rebel against the voice of our Monger. When we get tired of our Monger criticizing us, we bring in our BFF for a little self-compassion. Our BFF is the one who always has our back. She is the type of BFF who is always willing to risk getting into trouble and is always there to defend us. But she is not about holding our feet to the fire or keeping us accountable.  She is very good at finding us justification and someone else to blame. She is all about helping us feel special. She is kind and wants us to feel good about ourselves. In her mind, responsibility, accountability, and restraint do not apply.  Listening to our BFF can be risky. Our BFF loves false self-compassion and uses it as a way to give us an excuse to just do whatever we want. Our BFF can make us feel awesome, but she can lead to trouble. In today’s episode: Where our BFF shows up in our lives What Self-Compassion means to our BFF How the BFF isn’t really helping the situation or looking out for our best interests by stirring up drama with our Monger How to find the middle ground between “soldiering on” through the cruelty of our Monger and the false self-compassion of our BFF Links: The Happier Approach Episode 110: The Voices In Your Head–The Monger The Happier Approach Book I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor. I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier. The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life. Know someone who has High Functioning Anxiety and a VERY LOUD Monger, the Happier Approach makes a great gift.  Find The Happier Approach on Amazon, Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.comLearn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com

There is a voice in your head. It is a horrible voice that tells you that you are a slow, stupid loser who will never succeed. It tells you that everyone but you has it figured out and that at any moment you are going to be found out for the fraud that you are. That voice in your head? That is the voice of the Monger. Everyone has a Monger, but those of us with High Functioning Anxiety have an exceptionally loud and nasty Monger. Many of us aren't even aware of how much the Monger is talking to us. We know that we are feeling anxious or stressed, but are unaware that it is coming from an internal voice–a voice of belittling, name-calling, and just plain nastiness.  This voice can viciously chatter at us all day, every day, and we just push through. There are other voices in your head–the BFF and the Biggest Fan–but of the 3 characters that are at the core of The Happier Approach, the Monger is the loudest of them all.  That is why we are starting this month series about the voices in our head by talking at length about the Monger and about how she is such an important part of understanding and managing our High Functioning Anxiety. In today’s episode: Where does the Monger come from? How the Monger is like a first responder whose mission is to keep us safe and how she uses shame, belittling, guilt, and negativity to complete that mission How despite what we think, we don’t need the Monger’s shame and belittling to be successful How the feeling of “enoughness” that we crave will never be found as long as we keep listing to the voice of the Monger Why fighting back against the Monger on her terms doesn’t work and what to do instead And how admitting that we don’t need the Monger’s shame is an important step toward moving past it Links: The Happier Approach Episode 101: Positive Thinking vs. Radical Acceptance The Happier Approach Book I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor. I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier. The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life. Know someone who has High Functioning Anxiety and a VERY LOUD Monger, the Happier Approach makes a great gift.  Find The Happier ApproachVisit: https://NancyJaneSmith.comLearn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com

I come from a long, proud line of women dealing with High Functioning Anxiety. And never is this more apparent than during the holidays. Take my mom, for instance. She loves the holidays and wants to make them as fantastic and magical as possible. But, as those of us with High Functioning Anxiety will understand, she has a tendency to overperform and over function during the holiday season. And, as a result, the expectations and responsibilities of the festivities can be overwhelming.  This is why I thought it would be appropriate to conclude this month’s conversation around High Functioning Anxiety in our everyday lives by taking a closer look at how High Functioning Anxiety reveals itself during the holidays. In the spirit of the season, I am going to explore 4 holiday landmines that can take your High Functioning Anxiety through the roof and offer some tips to help you ease your anxiety and enjoy yourself.  In today’s episode:   4 Holiday Landmines:     Quietly meeting or exceeding everyone else’s expectations of perfect gift-giving traditions   Desperately trying to recreate the perfect holiday get-together even when you’re missing loved ones Single-handedly balancing conflicting needs and expectations while you share space with friends and family Anxiously attempting to follow through on unnecessarily high expectations for holiday preparations      Live Happier Through The Holidays This holiday season, I want you to find real strategies for building more connections, having more peace, and soaking up everything you love about the holidays. So I started Live Happier Through The Holidays, a daily note delivered to your inbox each day of the holiday season.  Here is how it works: Each morning from the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (November 21st) through Christmas, you will receive a note from me in your inbox. Think of it as a daily message from your Biggest Fan. My gift to you.  30 days of wisdom and grace delivered to your inbox so we can remember why we love the holidays so much. Join me so you don't have to white-knuckle your way through the holiday season we can do this with more grace and calm.  Visit live-happier.com/holidays to sign up. And  Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.comLearn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com

Shame is at the root of all anxiety. Everyone who struggles with anxiety has an underlying belief that they are unworthy, unqualified, a fraud. This belief causes them to worry and anxiously ruminate over feelings of shame and unworthiness.  We expect people with generalized anxiety, the kind of anxiety we've come to know through TV and memes – hiding out, not engaging, numbing – to respond to these feelings by disappearing into themselves. This reaction is triggered by their shame. But not you. High Functioning Anxiety sends you down a different path.   No, your response is to over function. Your High Functioning Anxiety has you convinced that the way through the shame is to push yourself more, to accomplish more, to people please, hustle, and polish it all to perfection. All of this in the hope that you can relieve the feelings of shame and anxiety.  This month on The Happier Approach we’ve been talking about how High Functioning Anxiety plays out in your everyday life. And no conversation about High Functioning Anxiety would be complete without talking about shame.  Listen to today’s episode to learn: How shame plays out in the everyday lives of people with High Functioning Anxiety What the difference is between shame and guilt How to know when you are acting out of shame by learning to identify Three Strategies of Disconnection: Moving away from your shame Moving against your shame And moving toward your shame And practical approaches to building shame resilience Acknowledge the shame and ask for real empathy for what you are feeling Give yourself kindness and compassion around your feelings And start paying attention to your rules and then lovingly remind yourself to let it go References & Resources: Psychologist Linda Hartling’s Strategy of Disconnection. Brene Brown Daring Way Her video on empathy Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.comLearn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com

You are leading a double life. On the outside, you appear to be the most “with it” woman anyone is ever going to meet–calm, cool, and collected. But on the inside, you are an over-analyzing storm of self-doubt, stress, and anxiety.  Those of us with High Functioning Anxiety have developed coping skills and have become so good at hiding our anxiety, even our friends and family would never guess what lay under the surface.  But these coping skills have left us feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and still full of anxiety. And what makes it worse, everyone around us sees us as being able to handle anything and just keeps piling on more and more.  The coping mechanisms that use to help, are now hurting us but we feel we can’t stop because they are all we know.  “Okay okay,” you say. “But what am I supposed to do with that?” It starts with recognizing when your High Functioning Anxiety is running the show. Once we start learning to recognize the signs of High Functioning Anxiety and developing the coping skills to deal with our anxiety, we can start calming the storm and finding the ease that we are looking for.  Listen to the full episode to learn about: The 10 Symptoms of High Functioning Anxiety. Procrastination Seeking constant reassurance, AKA Praise me, please! Control freak Busy busy busy Lots of negative self-talk Fear of letting people down Lack of sleep Numbing  Physical symptoms Everything is “fine!” And some tips on what to do about it. Be kind to yourself. Remind yourself that you are human and that this doesn’t mean that you are broken or flawed Be curious about how you are feeling and make checking in with yourself a habit Make the time throughout the day to regularly get out of your head and into your body References & Resources:   The Feeling List PDF   The DSM Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.comLearn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com

To your family, friends, and coworkers, you’re the one who always has it together.  You look out for all the details, attend all the meetings, make sure the bills get paid and plan the next vacation to Disney. On the inside, you’re wondering if you're the only one who cares or is even capable of getting things done.  If you don't do this, no one else will.  Everything you have, you have because you were willing to be the one who went the extra mile.  Except... Living and thinking this way isn't sustainable. This level of control and anxiety is negatively affecting your relationships and your health, both mentally and physically. And it doesn't have to be this way.  Yes, we are the ones taking care of business and yes on the outside, those of us with High Functioning Anxiety appear calm, focused, and on top of it.  But this isn’t what’s going on in the inside. Inside we are stressed, angry, and resentful that no one else cares as much as we do. The challenge is that we are hooked. The benefits of High Functioning Anxiety are the things you’ve accomplished, the accolades you’ve won, and the praise you receive from the outside world for being so with it. We live off of this.  This can’t last. While we appear to have everything under control at the end of the day, what we really crave––a sense of calm and ease––is still painfully out of reach.  In today’s episode of the Happier Approach, I discuss: Making time to center ourselves so we are prepared for the chaos of the day Creating boundaries so that work doesn’t encroach upon our personal lives How to slow down and be present so we can more thoroughly engage and enjoy our daily lives A.S.K.: Acknowledging what you are feeling Slowing down and getting into your body And Kindly pulling back to see the bigger picture And how learning to know our values and live with intention while being kind to ourselves can help our anxiety from taking over. The solutions the personal growth industry sells leave women living with hidden anxiety--women like you--with more stuff to be anxious about. Even worse, it can turn you off from getting help completely. I want to help you dial back the overwhelm and overthinking with a set of tools designed just for people like you. It’s not woo-woo. It’s not trying to positively think your challenges away. And I’m certainly not going to tell you to start living yourVisit: https://NancyJaneSmith.comLearn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com

I didn’t want to experience life–I wanted to master it. I was too caught up in my goals to enjoy what was right in front of me. I figured that when I checked all the boxes on my goal list, then I would finally be happy: WHEN I have a life partner THEN this experience will be awesome WHEN I am thinner THEN I will be happier WHEN I am less busy THEN life will be more peaceful WHEN I am more present THEN I will be content And because I wasn’t present in the moment, not living in the moment was holding me back   We live our lives in When Then statements. We spend too much of our time waiting, hoping, wishing for our broken selves to be fixed so THEN we can be happy.  What if you aren’t doing anything wrong? What is happiness isn’t something you attain permanently? What if you are thinking about it wrong? All this month we are looking at how the self-help isn’t doing us any favors and is leading us astray, particularly those of us with High Functioning Anxiety who love looking outside of ourselves for the answers. In today’s episode, I examine howl When-Then thinking is keeping us stuck. How it is preventing us from accepting ourselves, living in the moment, and seeking solutions from within. Listen to the full episode to hear: How to start accepting ourselves as we are so we can start living the moment How we can have happiness without devaluing the daily experience 3 Myths of When-Then thinking And recognizing life’s daily opportunities so we can experience life more deeply and fully Some of the research and resources mentioned in this episode: Psychologist and researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky My books on living with High Functioning Anxiety And how you can work with me one-on-one  The solutions the personal growth industry sells leave women living with hidden anxiety--women like you--with more stuff to be anxious about. Even worse, it can turn you off from getting help completely. I want to help you dial back the overwhelm and overthinking with a set of tools designed just for people like you. It’s not woo-woo. It’s not trying to positively think your challenges away. And I’m certainly not going to tell you to start liviVisit: https://NancyJaneSmith.comLearn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com

Recently my husband had an extended hospital stay.  The number one question I received from my well-meaning friends and family was: How are you going to take care of yourself while he is in the hospital?  “The best I can,” I told them. But this just did not satisfy their curiosity.  They wanted to hear about all the bubble baths, yoga, and meditation I had planned for this stressful time. But I knew better. There wasn’t a bubble bath in the world that was going to make this easier.  My husband was in the hospital. It was going to be stressful. I didn’t know what to expect. The self-help industry’s’ idea of self-care wasn’t going to be any help.  I was simply going to do the best I can. All this month we are looking at how the self-help industry has sold us a bunch of toxic information. And for those of us with High Functioning Anxiety who love looking outside of ourselves for the answers, this toxicity is especially troubling. In today’s episode, I take a closer look at self-care and how it isn’t just yoga, bubble baths and breathing apps. Self-care done well is the ultimate in self-loyalty.   Listen to the full episode to find out: How the idea of self-care has gotten out of control What I believe the 3 main issues of self-care are for people with HFA How we associate busyness and stress with prestige and status How we have made self-care synonymous with self-indulgence How we wrongly believe that we are undeserving of self-care How we can go about building self-loyalty And what we can do to define self-care for ourselves Some of the research and resources mentioned in this episode: The Journal of Consumer Research on busyness and lack of leisure as a status symbol My books on living with High Functioning Anxiety And how you can work with me one-on-one  The solutions the personal growth industry sells leave women living with hidden anxiety--women like you--with more stuff to be anxious about. Even worse, it can turn you off from getting help completely. I want to help you dial back the overwhelm and overthinking with a set of tools desiVisit: https://NancyJaneSmith.comLearn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com