The Dark Side of High-Functioning Anxiety (It’s Not What You Think) | Ep. 443

In this episode, Kimberley Quinlan explores the hidden emotional, physical, and psychological costs of high functioning anxiety—and offers powerful, practical tools to help you break free from the pressure to constantly perform.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The five hidden struggles of high functioning anxiety that most people overlook
• Why perfectionism and chronic self-doubt often mask deeper emotional pain
• How to begin resting without guilt—even when your brain tells you it’s not allowed
• The real reason your to-do list keeps expanding and what to do about it

The Hidden Cost of High Functioning Anxiety—and How to Heal

From the outside, everything seems fine. You’re succeeding at work, staying on top of responsibilities, and maybe even being praised for how “together” you seem. But inside, you’re exhausted, overwhelmed, and anxious all the time.

This is the reality of high functioning anxiety. In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit, Kimberley Quinlan explores the lesser-known struggles of high functioning anxiety—and offers practical strategies to break the cycle.

What Is High Functioning Anxiety?

High functioning anxiety is a form of anxiety where you’re still able to meet external expectations—getting out of bed, performing well, staying productive—but internally, you’re in a state of constant distress. You may feel like everything could fall apart if you stop pushing so hard.

You might even believe that if you let go, the whole facade will collapse.

The Dark Side of High Functioning Anxiety

Kimberley outlines five hidden struggles that commonly accompany high functioning anxiety:

1. Perfectionism and the Fear of Losing Control

You may walk a tightrope of perfectionism, fearing that if you stop performing at the highest level, everything will come undone. Achieving success only creates more pressure to maintain it.

2. Chronic Self-Doubt Masked as Ambition

Even as you excel, you may doubt your worth. High achievers often strive to prove themselves—not out of confidence, but from deep insecurities and fears of not being “enough.”

3. Physical Symptoms and Burnout

The stress doesn’t just stay in your head. High functioning anxiety can manifest physically—headaches, stomach issues, insomnia, fatigue. Many people seek medical care before realizing anxiety is the root cause.

4. Fear of Failure

The fear of falling short fuels relentless effort, even at the cost of your mental and physical health. This pressure can lead to coexisting conditions like OCD, eating disorders, or depression.

5. Resistance to Asking for Help

Those with high functioning anxiety often feel ashamed to need help or rest. Admitting you’re not okay can feel like failure—especially when others see you as the one who always has it together.

Why High Achievers Often Stay Stuck

Our culture reinforces high functioning anxiety. Society applauds productivity, celebrates overachievement, and equates worth with output. This makes it harder to raise your hand and say, “I’m not okay.”

The First Step: Honest Self-Assessment

According to Kimberley, the first step in treatment is acknowledging the toll that high functioning anxiety is taking—emotionally, mentally, and physically. Many clients, by the time they seek therapy, are already burned out, depressed, or even experiencing panic attacks or suicidal thoughts.

Step-by-Step Strategies for Healing

1. Ask for Help—Even If It’s Uncomfortable

Recovery begins with honesty. You deserve rest, support, and care. High performance is not a requirement for worthiness.

2. Reframe Harmful Beliefs

Work with a therapist (or use structured tools like CBT) to identify and challenge the beliefs keeping you stuck. These might include:

• “I’m only valuable when I’m productive”
• “Rest is lazy”
• “People will think less of me if I slow down”

3. Break the Anxiety Cycle

Use cognitive behavioral tools to identify and interrupt the behaviors that reinforce your anxiety. Kimberley refers to these as “safety behaviors.” Examples include overworking, saying yes to everything, or avoiding rest.

Intervention strategies may include:

• Cognitive restructuring
• Exposure and response prevention (ERP)
• Mindfulness practices
• Self-compassion exercises

4. Learn How to Rest Without Guilt

Rest is a skill that often requires exposure. If slowing down triggers guilt or anxiety, start small. Kimberley shares her own story of gradually building tolerance for rest through short sessions of slower movement and mindful relaxation.

The goal? Learn to rest without catastrophizing or self-criticism.

5. Set and Enforce Boundaries

Those with high functioning anxiety often feel overwhelmed by the needs of others. Learning to say no—and tolerate the discomfort of saying no—is essential. Roleplay and planning ahead can help.

6. Restructure Your Day Around Your Needs

Kimberley encourages clients to schedule pleasure, rest, sleep, and nourishment before filling in the rest of the day. Your well-being isn’t optional—it’s the foundation of sustainable productivity.

7. Practice Compassionate Productivity

There’s a difference between productivity driven by fear and productivity rooted in kindness. Aim to move at a pace that is sustainable and self-respecting, not frantic or punishing.

8. Build Compassionate Accountability

You can hold yourself accountable without being harsh. This involves checking in regularly and reminding yourself:

• “I deserve a life with space for healing.”
• “I can slow down without losing my worth.”
• “My mental health matters, even if I’m still high achieving.”

You’re Still Worthy on Your Least Productive Day

If you’re silently struggling with high functioning anxiety, Kimberley wants you to know: you’re not weak, and you’re not alone. You’re carrying a heavy burden, and you deserve support. Whether you’re performing at your peak or taking time to rest, your worth does not change.

The podcast is made possible by NOCD. NOCD offers effective, convenient therapy available in the US and outside the US. To find out more about NOCD, their therapy plans, and if they currently take your insurance, head over to https://learn.nocd.com/youranxietytoolkit

Transcription: The Dark Side of High-Functioning Anxiety (It’s Not What You Think)

You seem fine. You’re doing so well and you’re holding everything together, but on the inside you are exhausted. You are constantly on edge. You have all of these struggles that nobody knows you’re going through. This is the hidden cost of high functioning anxiety, and today we are going to talk about it and we’re gonna get to the bottom of how you can break.

 

Out of this cycle of constantly going all the time, taking on everything, but suffering with overwhelming anxiety along the way. My name is Kimberly Quinlan. I’m an anxiety specialist, and today we are going to talk about a topic that hits people so much we don’t talk about it enough, and that is the dark side of high functioning anxiety.

 

Whether you’ve been praised for always being the strong one, the dependable one, the one that’s functioning so well, and you’re like a poster child for the way other people experience and want to experience their life. But again, internally, you feel like you can’t slow down. This episode is for you, so let’s go.

 

Okay, so let’s first talk about what is high functioning anxiety. High functioning anxiety is as an experience of anxiety. However, you are able to maintain your daily functioning. You’re able to get out of bed. You’re achieving at work, you’re achieving at school. You’re functioning at a very high level, most likely you’re functioning at.

 

Way above the average level of functioning of a regular human being. However. Internally, you are overwhelmed with anxiety. Everything feels scary. You feel like at any moment the sky will fall or something really bad is about to happen if you don’t keep holding everything together. That is the internal experience of someone with high functioning anxiety.

 

From the outside looking in, you look like you have everything together, but. You know, as much as I know that is not the experience of someone with high functioning anxiety, so let’s talk about what it looks like and what it’s like to have this experience. Now there is a very dark side to having high functioning anxiety.

 

Chances are if you’re someone who struggles with this, you are a perfectionist. You are a high achiever. You’re probably more. Lined up with a type A personality. You get things done, and my guess is you get it done with a smile on your face when people are watching, but when you are on your own, when you’re experiencing your own internal experience.

 

You are suffering at such a high rate, and chances are you’re afraid to tell anybody you’re afraid that they won’t believe you. You’re afraid that they will brush you off because you appear to have everything going for you. You’re also afraid that they will judge you because you’ve built this whole persona around being a high achiever and someone who succeeds in.

 

A lot of what they do. It’s very scary to talk about this, and I want to first just honor and congratulate you for addressing this. It’s scary. I get it. I remember when I was starting to address my own high functioning anxiety and depression, it felt very vulnerable. I did not wanna let go of this facade that I had created, that I was doing well and everything was going well.

 

I didn’t want people to know that. Internally, I wasn’t doing well. I had built this story in my brain that it would be weak of me to do that, and I would feel an incredible degree of shame in admitting that I’m actually not okay. There is a devastating dark side to have high functioning anxiety. It is incredibly painful, and so I really wanna be here to validate you and acknowledge.

 

Just how difficult it is, even though you might have the things that everybody you know wants to get in their life. Often people with high functioning anxiety, they feel guilty for having anxiety. They feel guilty for having to raise their hand and say, I’m actually not okay, because when they look around, maybe they have all the things going for them that things are going really well and they feel like they don’t deserve to complain.

 

But. The honest truth is they are undergoing massive degrees of stress and pressure and anxiety every single day, and we wanna make sure we honor that and help those situations help you when you’re going through that. So let’s talk about what are some of the dark sides of having high functioning anxiety?

 

Number one is going to be. High levels of perfectionism, you probably feel like you are walking a tightrope of perfectionism and you cannot fall off. Sometimes. I will often say to clients, when you’re a perfectionist, yes, you may be at the top of your game or doing very well, and you would assume that that means you’re not anxious.

 

But the truth is, once you’re doing really well, now you have this hidden anxiety that you will. Lose what you’ve got, and that will create a massive degree of stress on your nervous system. You’re constantly afraid that once you’ve gotten the A or the B, that you’ll now lose the A or the B if you don’t keep pushing at this rapid, high intensity rate.

 

Often there’s this. Massive fear of not being productive and massive shame about not being productive, feeling lazy or weak when you’re not constantly pushing yourself, adding all the things to the list. I always think about the fact that once I was told, if you want something done, ask the busiest person in the room.

 

And when I heard that, I laughed until I stopped laughing and thought, wait. That’s me. I’m the busiest person in the room, which means people are going to ask me to get more things done. That’s not fair, but that is a function of being someone with high functioning anxiety. And when we get to recognize that, it means that, okay, something has to change.

 

Because if I keep. Being the busiest person in the room, I’m most likely going to be the one who constantly be, is asked to do things. That was a huge revelation that I had for myself. Now, the second dark side of high functioning anxiety is this chronic self-doubt, and this is often masked as ambition, right?

 

So you’re constantly striving, you’re constantly wanting to grow, you’re constantly going to the next level and the next level and the next level. And that isn’t because. You believe in yourself. Often, it’s quite the opposite. It’s because you have such a sense of self that is riddled with shame. You constantly doubt yourself.

 

You doubt your worth, that you feel like you have to be constantly achieving more, to prove your worth to yourself and to others, to feel worthy, to feel valid, to feel deserving. And so you’re constantly pushing, pushing, pushing. But underneath that is this. Deep fear that you are not good enough, that something is wrong with you, that you won’t be loved if you’re not constantly doing all the things for all the people.

 

Often there’s a lot of insecurities under this high functioning anxiety, and we have to take a look at each one of those and explore, where did you learn this? Where did this come from? How is it being reinforced? How are you responding to it and reinforcing it within our own behaviors. This is a crucial part of the work that we will discuss here very soon.

 

Now, the third part of the dark side of high functioning anxiety is physical symptoms. Nearly always when I see a client with high functioning anxiety, they are first not in the mental health. Area. They’re not seeking mental health expertise. They are going to the doctor. They’re showing up with rashes, eczema, stomach issues, headaches, migraines, insomnia, massive degrees of.

 

Irritability, they feel on edge all the time, and often those physical symptoms are the sort of, what do they say? The straw that broke the camel’s back in revealing this high functioning anxiety. Often people with high functioning anxiety, they are going and they’re not telling anybody and no one would know, but it’s not until they start to suffer with again, massive.

 

Migraines that they are forced to go to the doctor and they’re forced to share what’s going on. Often again, when someone comes to me, by the time they see me in my mental health office, they are have been cleared by the doctor. Nothing is medically specifically wrong and they’ve chalked it up to someone who’s under immense degrees of stress.

 

Immense degrees of overwhelm. They’ve ruled out all of the medical issues and we’ve come to learn that this is a person who is deeply suffering inside. Now there’s another part of high functioning anxiety that we’re not talking about that, and that’s number four, which is an overwhelming fear of failure.

 

The fear of failing is so strong that it fuels you into pushing your body beyond what it can actually healthfully achieve. Again, always high achieving a high degree of perfectionism. There’s often a very large overlap here with folks with OCD eating disorders, um, depression. We will talk about this more a little bit later.

 

There is a massive overlap with other conditions because of this fear of, again, walking a tight rope and fearing failure. Now the last part of the dark side of having high functioning anxiety is a deep rejection and shame and difficulty of receiving help and taking rest, taking respite, right there is very little.

 

Often people with high functioning anxiety are the last people to ask for help. They are the ones who feel a lot of shame around reaching out and asking for help, asking for support, asking for rest, saying no to things. This is a very common piece of this work and once we have identified, and the reason I go through these, once we have identified sort of these hidden symptoms of high functioning anxiety.

 

Then we get to go to work and actually help them make some pivots. It doesn’t have to be drastic, but make some pivots so that they’re not feeling so much pressure, they’re not feeling like they’re un in a pressure cooker about to explode. That is the work we wanna move on to next. Now, one quick thing to think about here, which is there are so many ways that high functioning anxiety is applauded in our society.

 

We actually applaud and celebrate people who are very, very high functioning. We admire them. We give them awards, we give them raises, we give them promotions, we encourage it. We encourage the person who is so diligent and so effective in their work. You know, again, we will admire them and even speak our admiration.

 

I, oh my gosh, I wish I was more like you. I wish I could get what you get done. And what happens here is the outside society reinforce this. They reinforce this idea that you are being measured for your output. Your worth does equal your output, and these are the messages that people with high functioning anxiety are getting, making it so much harder to raise your hand and say.

 

I actually can’t do this anymore. I’m at my edge. I can’t do it. I’m going to break. That’s a very scary place because the society and the culture around you has reinforced that this is what we have built you up on a pedestal for, and that makes it incredibly difficult to acknowledge, admit to yourself, share with others that you are struggling in a very, very deep way.

 

Now let’s talk about treatment. When it comes to high functioning anxiety, we first always, if someone comes into me, they’re looking, they’ve had, they’ve had to admit that they’re not doing okay. They’ve had to admit that this has gotten to be too much and that they are deeply. Deeply suffering with this high, high level of anxiety and stress all the time.

 

The first thing I’m going to do is assess them for how this has impacted them. Often, as I’ve mentioned before, folks with high functioning anxiety, they’re not just suffering with anxiety. It’s not a matter of just fixing their anxiety. Often, by the time they’ve hit this level, they are so depressed and high functioning.

 

Depression is absolutely a thing. I think when we think about depression, we think of someone who can’t get outta bed. There are lots of folks out here who have high functioning depression. Are so hopeless to the point where they’re suicidal. They don’t feel like they can let people know. They don’t feel like they can step down from this pedestal, holding them in this sort of checkmate position of, I can’t step down, I can’t share how I’m doing, but I also cannot continue to live like this.

 

So we wanna assess for depression. Well, again, we wanted to assess for whether there is perfectionism, OCD or eating disorders. Playing into this experience that they’re having with high achieving anxiety. We have people who have high achieving OCD, high achieving eating disorders, and to the point where they are suffering just like everybody else, but they have found a way to mask it and outperform it, but still be completely overwhelmed and caught by these conditions.

 

Most of the time. In addition. By the time they get to my office, they are incredibly burnt out, or as I’ve mentioned, they have been diagnosed with some other medical condition that has, you know, been ruled out or they’ve been referred to us for mental health care because they can see the amount of anxiety that this person is masking and trying to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

 

Now there are are two other things that often are happening often by the time they get to us, they may not have a medical condition, but they’ve started to experience out of the blue repetitive, overwhelming panic attacks. They’ve got panic disorder because to some point they have continued to push themselves to the point, and now they’re just having.

 

Fairly frequent panic attacks. Now, one that is less concerning, but equally in the terms of suffering is a lot of folks with high functioning anxiety have an extreme degree of resentment. They’re resentful of their boss, their children, their partner, their friends, their colleagues, because they feel like they’re constantly being bombarded, taking care of everybody, taking charge of everything.

 

To their own detriment. So we also wanna rule out whether they’re experiencing this very valid feeling of resentment as well. And then we can talk there about what we can do to help reduce those symptoms. Now. Let’s talk about skills, ’cause that’s what I know you guys are here for. Okay? So when you have been identified as having a high functioning anxiety, maybe this is your first day of identifying that it’s true for you, or maybe you’ve known this for a while.

 

The first step is to ask for support. We have to be able to be honest with ourselves and others that we are not. Okay. Now, the truth of the matter here is. The rate in which you are performing. Is not healthy. It is not compassionate, and it’s not realistic. It’s not fair. You don’t deserve to have to live like this.

 

You don’t have to continue to be this way in order to be loved and worthy, and respected, and celebrated, and cheat on by your loved ones you deserve. To rest. You deserve to be a human being. With human being needs. You get to sleep. You deserve to sleep. Um, you deserve to nourish your body. You deserve to have downtime.

 

And a lot of the first part of treatment when I am with someone with high functioning anxiety is to look at. Who’s reinforcing these beliefs? Where did you learn them? And reframing these beliefs so that they can start to see themselves as a whole human being, worthy of resting, worthy of not having to achieve.

 

So much all the time. We wanna sort of bring the bar down. We’re not raising the bar, we’re bringing the bar down and, and talking them through the shame that they might anticipate if they were to rest and slow down. Talking them through the guilt, the hyper responsibility then that they may feel working through that from a cognitive lens and reframing and restructuring the beliefs that they have.

 

Now, this might take some time, you’re, it’s not like one session with a therapist is going to have them be like, oh, you’re right. I shouldn’t be pushing myself. I should just, okay, I’m good now. It, it’s not gonna be simple like that. It’s gonna be deconstructing. All of these cultural and environmental messages that this person received, and also identifying if there are any coexisting conditions like eating disorders, OCD, perfectionism, panic attacks that are increasing and keeping them stuck.

 

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If you think you might have OCD or a struggling to manage symptoms, there is hope. Book a free call@nocd.com. You don’t have to struggle alone. Big hugs, and now let’s get back to the show. Now the next piece, and this is something that I go through extensively with my clients, is once we know what’s keeping them stuck in the cycle, and once we have identified specifically what’s got them stuck in this cycle, we then want to educate them on how we are going to break this cycle.

 

And it is actually a fairly like. Repetitive process, and it is very much consistent with many of the conditions that we treat. This is actually something that I teach all of my students in CBT school.com as well, is showing them how to identify the specific behaviors. We call them safety behaviors that we engage in and teaching them exactly at what point in the cycle.

 

We are going to intervene so that we are not reinforcing this cycle and making it stronger and stronger each time. If you’re interested, you don’t have access to a mental health professional. Head over to CBT school.com. We have an array of online courses, a whole library for different conditions that can help you identify those cycles that you’re in.

 

Identify how you’re reinforcing it, not that it’s your fault. Sometimes we do this just because we’re human beings. But so that you can break that cycle. Often the breaking of the cycle involves a cognitive behavioral therapy. It might involve exposure and response prevention. It might involve self-compassion skills and mindfulness skills, which are crucial at breaking those cycles.

 

And what I mean by that is, and let me talk a little bit about that, is most of the time people with high functioning anxiety, I have found. Are pretty hard on themselves. They criticize themselves, they beat themselves out, they punish themselves, and we wanna identify these behaviors and see that while they feel helpful, they feel warranted.

 

They’re actually increasing your anxiety, they’re actually increasing the release of cortisol in your body, and we can work then at getting skills to manage that. The mindfulness component is really, really important, and we talk about that in therapy with clients and in our courses, which is identifying what specific response do they have when they have this anxiety, when they have the anxiety.

 

Are they mindful about it? Do they resist it, or are they nonjudgmental and accepting of it? Um, when they have the thought that you have to do this, otherwise everyone will hate you or you’re not good enough, are they able to obs. Observe that thought and see it as simply that, just a thought. Or do they take that thought and personalize it and over identify with it and make it as if it is a fact.

 

They kind of fuse with the thought and believe the thought and act from a place that that thought is true, when in fact it is not true. It is a completely irrational belief or thought that that person is having. The next step we are going to address when it comes to overcoming this high functioning anxiety is learning.

 

How to rest, but it’s not just learning how to rest. I’ve given clients homework to go home and rest, and they said it was miserable. I had anxiety, I felt guilty, felt like everyone was looking at me. My husband even came and said, what’s wrong with you? You never lay on the couch. Right? And so in this situation, we can see that it’s not just a matter of resting, it’s learning how to rest without engaging in guilt.

 

Without engaging in self-criticism, self punishment, it’s learning how to rest. Without catastrophizing that bad things will happen because you’re resting. It’s also learning how to rest and be able to tolerate some anxiety. I will tell you a story. I remember when I was going through this process of my own and a therapist had said to me as an exposure, I had to rest for 20 minutes.

 

I personally had an eating disorder. I would engage in a lot of compulsive exercise. It was very hard for me to rest. She gave me 20 minutes, and I remember calling my mom and I remember saying to her, I would prefer to be in physical pain. 10 out of 10. Then to tolerate this anxiety I have right now of just sitting here doing nothing.

 

This is actually more painful than physical pain, and I was not being dramatic. I was being dead serious. It felt absolutely terrifying. It felt painful. Not physically painful, but it felt emotionally so painful. My brain just had such a hard time understanding why was I resting? It was saying like, I can imagine my brain saying, why are you resting?

 

You’ve literally told me your whole life that you don’t deserve it. That bad things will happen if you rest that you’re only gonna get love if you keep achieving that. You have to keep going, that people will judge you if you don’t. That they, no one will love you. Like it just kept going and going and going.

 

So my brain was genuinely trying to convince me to get up and get going, right? To start exercising again. And so it took a long time for me to practice many, many repetitions of practicing rep rest, practicing rest. Can you believe we’re even saying this, but in many cases, for folks with high functioning anxiety, high functioning depression, high functioning OCD, eating disorders.

 

This is a part of their treatment, the exposure of rest and the response prevention of not engaging in safety behaviors to reduce or remove the discomfort that you’re having Now, what we will do instead of those safety behaviors is practice compassion, practice breathing, practice light movement. I remember we did this in a gradual way.

 

When I experienced such distress, I remember thinking, okay, this feels like a 10 out of a 10. What I might start with at the suggestion of my therapist was maybe you first start with walking slower instead of high-paced work. Walking. We worked at Slow walking, then we worked at Slow stretching. Then we worked at.

 

Watching TV so that you’re a little distracted. And then we worked at like actual rest, like actual soul fulfilling rest that feels restful and feels replenishing. So it was baby steps and maybe you feel like you need to take those baby steps and slowly dip your toe in rest as well. There’s no right way to do this.

 

Again, baby steps lead to massive changes and so that is an approach I always encourage people to take. Now the next thing we wanna address is boundary setting Again, remember, people who have high functioning anxiety tend to be very, very resentful by the time that they’ve raised their hand for help. We want to teach them how to say no.

 

And sometimes this is like learning a new language, literally because in their mind. They, they, they can’t fathom what would happen if they said no. They actually have a lot of anticipatory anxiety that people will be mad at them, that they will disrespect them, that they will judge them, that they will criticize them, that they will feel shame and ridicule.

 

And so in this circumstance, we wanna learn. What are appropriate boundaries? In some cases, we have to enforce appropriate boundaries and we have to learn the art of saying no. Saying no is a practice, it is an art form. And so what we wanna do is practice and maybe even role play ways in which you can say no.

 

Now we actually have an online course called Time Management for Optimum Mental Health. A part of the reason I created that course were for folks with high functioning anxiety. It wasn’t for the folks who, uh, couldn’t just, you know, like I said, could were have so anxious they couldn’t get out of bed or so depressed.

 

They couldn’t get out of bed. It was for those folks as well. But a lot of the time people look at their schedule and they’re like, oh my gosh. There’s literally no downtime here. And so in that course, I teach people how to prioritize scheduling pleasure. First I wipe the schedule and I say, okay, instead of putting in all the things you have to do, and then if you are lucky enough to have time to rest or you have time to, you have pleasure or time to sleep and eat well, then great.

 

It’s the opposite. We have to actually switch it. That you schedule your pleasure first, you schedule your sleep. First, those two things are the highest priority. You schedule your food and your nourishment first, and you schedule your therapy first. Then we build the schedule around that. Now we usually come across a predicament at that point because the person will say.

 

I literally do not have time to schedule, pleasure and sleep. If I scheduled the things I need to do, nothing will get done. And this is where I’ll go, aha number one, that’s a black and white thought because that’s not true. And number two. This is where you get stuck. You get stuck, prioritizing the to-do list over who you are, and we have to learn how to not do that otherwise.

 

The alternative is you’re gonna be stuck in this cycle for a very, very long time, and let’s explore what lines up with your values. Do you want to be caught up in this cycle or. Are you willing to be uncomfortable and break this cycle and change the way you structure your day? Literally in the time management for Optimum Mental Health, I literally show you how I schedule in real time, like a screen share.

 

I’m showing you exactly how I would encourage other peoples, particularly folks with a mental health issue on how to schedule your day out if you’re interested. Again. Head on over to cbt school.com and you can learn more about that course there. Now the last two things we’re going to address are things that are dear to my heart, and the first one is compassionate productivity.

 

So there’s productivity. There’s productivity that is rushed and forced and pressured and cruel and mean. And then there’s compassionate productivity. Compassionate productivity is moving at a pace that is kind. It is talking to yourself and coaching yourself while you’re productive in a way that is kind.

 

It is doing it in a very mindful way, not in a rushed, urgent, pressured way. And the art of compassionate productivity is something again that you will have to practice, but with practice, you will get stronger and then you will learn how to engage in this way. And then the last one is compassionate accountability.

 

Now, a lot of this requires accountability. Often people say, great, no problem. I’ll reschedule it. I’ll take things off my list. But then within a couple weeks, their schedule is back as full as it ever was because again. Anxiety has a way of getting you back into old habits. That’s why we talk about breaking the cycle and really being an understanding of how you keep getting caught in this cycle.

 

And so compassionate accountability is you holding yourself accountable, not from a place of criticism or you know, not being kind, not from a place of pressure and meanness, but kind, compassionate accountability, which is ultimately you saying. I deserve to be treated well. I deserve to have a good life.

 

I deserve to have freedom in my life. I deserve not to be held under this high level of anxiety all the time. By pushing, pushing, pushing. I may need to slow down so that I can address my mental health so I can address the anxiety disorder that I have, um, so that I can manage my panic attacks. I can manage my.

 

Insomnia. My stomach aches and whatever it may be. Okay, so let’s really conclude here. Number one, high functioning anxiety is as painful, if not more painful than people who haven’t got a high level of functioning. I wanna make sure that you are not ranking yourself as undeserving of treatment just because you are struggling, you know, with these mental health conditions.

 

Number two, just because you’re performing well does not mean you are not suffering. You are suffering. This is incredibly painful for you. You are carrying the weight of the world, and I hope that you can hear me and saying, you deserve to have a life that is. A little slower that is, um, has has capacity or a margin to take care of you and to help you heal and manage the anxiety that you’re experiencing.

 

You deserve that. And if you slow down, you are not one scar less. Valuable or worthy. You’re worthy on your most productive day. You’re worthy on your least productive day. You’re worthy when you’re succeeding, you’re worthy when you’re struggling and not doing so well. So give yourself permission to acknowledge this, to get help, ask for help, and take time.

 

To work on this because it’s, this is your mental health. It’s important. It’s as important, if not more than your medical conditions and your medical health. The last thing I wanna remind you is you’re not weak. You’re not weak for needing help. You’re not weak for needing rest. You’re not less worthy when you honor what your needs are.

 

And even if your brain is shouting to you that that is not true, I want you just to give it a little. Elbow and say, listen, you can say all that, but just because I think that and believe that does not mean it’s true, and I’m working towards believing new things. So I’m going to leave you with one question, which is, how does high functioning anxiety show up for you and what is one area that you are willing to make a small baby change?

 

If you are listening here on YouTube, go ahead and leave it in the comments. If you’re here on the podcast, I want you to ponder this and really think about. What is one way in which I can reduce this cycle? What is one way that I can make a small baby change? To give myself a little bit of room to focus on my own needs, my own wellness, and my own self care?

 

If you’re new here to your anxiety toolkit, welcome. Please do follow along, subscribe. I would love to see you here every week when we release new episodes of your anxiety toolkit. We have resources coming out all the time. Thank you for being here. It is a complete honor, and as always, it is a beautiful day to do hard things.

 

I can’t wait to see you next week. Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbt school.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day, and thank you for supporting cbt school.com.