Ep. 142 The Hidden Anxiety of Midlife Overachievers and 3 Coping Skills to Finally Enjoy Your Success

Do you feel like you're constantly running, as if a boulder is chasing you downhill?

You can be successful and driven without the fear and exhaustion.

In this episode you’ll discover:

1. What truly fuels your success—it’s not your anxiety.
2. Learn how to update your self-image and move through life with less urgency and more ease.
3. Reframe your daily mindset by shifting from "I have to" to "I get to"—a small change that makes a huge difference. 

Listen now to overcome high-functioning anxiety and move through your days with calm, confidence, and ease.

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (2): 0:05

​In this episode, you'll discover how to transform your anxiety into calm confidence, allowing you to fully enjoy your success. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. welcome to the podcast. Today we're talking about high functioning anxiety, the kind that makes you highly competent, reliable, and successful on the outside, but constantly on the edge on the inside. If you find it hard to unplug, if your mind is always churning with the next thing on your to-do list, you're not alone. In today's episode, I'll define high functioning anxiety and share three, easy to do coping skills to help you make your anxiety work for you, not against you, let's be honest. Who wouldn't wanna be both successful and able to relax and unwind? As always, I'll end with an Inner Challenge. Something you can start today to help ease your anxiety. High functioning anxiety is common in midlife as you juggle work, family, friendships, and community responsibilities. A few years ago, a midlife client walked into my office and I immediately felt her can-do energy. She sat down and she described exactly what many of you experienced daily. She pushes herself hard at work. She's masterfully creating her children's summer schedule. She's redecorating one of the rooms in her house and she's coordinating care for her elderly mother. I looked at her and I said, whoa, you are really wound up today. She laughed and responded, oh no, I was born this way, type A all the way. I get shit done and I love it. We both laughed and then I asked her, I want you to take your focus off your to-do list for a second. What does it actually feel like to be living at this pace? She paused, thought for a moment and then said something fascinating, exhilarating and frightening. Her exhilaration, made sense. She was successful, admired, and had a strong sense of capability. But the fear surprised both of us because trust me, she looked anything but fearful. I asked her to describe her fear with an image without hesitation. She said, I feel like I'm running down a mountain, being chased by a boulder. You know that scene in Indiana Jones? This is what makes high functioning anxiety different from other forms of anxiety. She's not climbing a mountain. She's running down one. For many people with high functioning anxiety, their energy levels are high. Their anxiety doesn't paralyze them. It fuels them. But internally, they feel like they're running for their lives. And I'm here to say today, it doesn't need to be this way. I want to reassure you, you can get things done without feeling the constant crush of a boulder behind you. Let's look at the science High functioning anxiety is driven by an overactive amygdala, the Brains Fear Center, which constantly signals potential threats, even in non-threatening situations. Even though nothing she was doing was remotely dangerous, this chronic activation of her stress response floods the body with excess cortisol and adrenaline, which causes restlessness, muscle tension, headaches, and difficulty relaxing. I ask my client. Can you create a new image, one that keeps the exhilaration, but removes the fear? She looked puzzled and said, no. If I'm not plugged in, I wouldn't get everything done. If I'm not running down the hill being chased by a boulder, I wouldn't be successful. This is a common fear. Many high achievers have. They believe that their anxiety is what keeps them successful, but in reality, it's not your anxiety that gets things done, it's you. Which leads me to coping skill number one: face the truth. And the truth is this, high functioning anxiety isn't why you get things done. It's what keeps you from enjoying getting things done. Think about it. There's nothing about anxiety that can help you be successful at work. There's nothing about anxiety that makes you a parent that offers guidance and nurturance. There's nothing about anxiety that helps you figure out how to be a leader in your community. Those are all skills that throughout your life you have cultivated, developed, and worked hard to create. It took my client 20 minutes of conversation with me before she would even consider looking at her high functioning anxiety in a different way. Finally, in a moment of desperation, I said, would you just trust me for 10 minutes? ground your feet. Stop talking and see what image comes up, when I ask you to reimagine how you could move through your life, being the type A person you are, but not running from a boulder. After a few seconds she smiled and said, I'm on one of those flat escalators at a airport moving gracefully. What a beautiful response. Facing the truth that you can be successful and competent without being fear-driven may be a completely new idea for you. Take a moment and take that idea, that concept in ask yourself. How often is fear driving you? Fear to succeed, fear of how others perceive you. Fear of being left behind, fear of not being enough. If this resonates with you, you've already embraced coping skill. Number one, face the truth that fear has been fueling your success. And in that case, an update is needed, which leads us to coping skill number two, I want you to update your self image. Maybe in earlier years you didn't feel good enough, but look at yourself now. Wow. You have abilities. You have skills at work, home, and in your relationships. Look at everything you're doing right, not what you're doing wrong. Now, ask yourself, am I really under threat? Nope. It's time for an update. What will be your new image to move from fear to calm. My client pictured herself moving through her day on an airport escalator. Maybe for some of you it's riding a bike peacefully as you do the tasks and the responsibilities that you have in midlife for me, when I find myself getting wound up, I just put my mind on an image of a blue sky. Now, I want you to create your own image. Picture yourself moving through your day with that same Inner peace and calm you're moving forward, grounded in your abilities, grounded in yourself, getting things done without a sense of urgency, without a sense of fear. Doing this activates your parasympathetic nervous system. Which basically means you're relaxing yourself. Yes, you can get stuff done and be relaxed. Though, to do this, you actually have to decide you want to do this. It takes a bit of intention, a little bit of effort and desire. It's actually fun to move from being stressed to calm. Imagine yourself, in your car driving to pick your kids up from practice, and you feel this sense of urgency. But this time you notice it, you catch yourself and you remind yourself, oh, I'm not a firefighter. I'm a calm, middle aged, competent adult. I can take some breaths and I can drive my car with a sense of peace and calm. Maybe you put a song on that's relaxing. Maybe you choose a book or a podcast that really helps you get centered, Coping skill number two gives your mind a new image in which to tether your day. You're gently moving it to something that is calming and peaceful. And that leads me to coping skill number three, and that is downshifting your thoughts for my have to, to I get to. I have to, is a mantra for midlife people. You have a lot on your plate and yes, much of it is not optional. What I wanna encourage you to do is notice how you're approaching whatever it is that you're getting ready to do. A number of years ago when my mom was in her nineties, I had a lot of responsibility in helping care for her between work and kids, my podcast, all that I had going. I tried to get over to see her five or six days of the week. But sometimes the demands on my life were such that I couldn't get there, and that weight I carried in a really unhealthy way. But I used this coping skill number three one day when I was driving over to see her, and I caught my thought and I said, I have to go see her. And then I thought, do I. Do I have to go see her or do I get to go see her? In that moment when I changed the way I thought about visiting my mother, my heart melted because when your mother is 91, you know that eventually she will not be around and the have to really is much more of a get to I had created self-imposed pressure that I needed to go see her every day, when actually I wanted to go see her. And that's coping skill number three. One of the beautiful things that happens when you look at your thoughts and you ask yourself, do I really have to do this or do I get to do this? This is a really quick assessment tool of do you want to do this yes, there are some things that you have to do. Taxes, picking your kids up from school, but there's a lot of things that you can opt out of because you don't have to do them. Here's another example. Once I was driving to a workshop that I did once a year at night, I had done this workshop 15 times before and I was in a rush to get there, and I thought to myself, I have to do this workshop tonight. I noticed my thought and I changed it. I get to do this. Immediately a new thought followed. I'm so sick of doing this workshop, just paying attention to my thought. Help me realize that it was time for me to let this job go as much as I used to enjoy it. I had really outgrown wanting to do this experience. Coping skill number three is noticing what your thought is saying. I have to often drive fear and shifting to I get to can give you clarity with my mother. The clarity was a deep appreciation with the workshop. The clarity was, this is something I don't wanna do anymore. In this podcast, I'm encouraging you to not let your high functioning anxiety run your life. In this episode, I've defined high functioning anxiety, and I've given you three coping skills. Face the truth. Fear isn't what makes you successful. Update your self image. You are capable without anxiety and shift from, I have to to I get to this rewires your perspective this week, your Inner Challenge is to change your mindset when it comes to high functioning anxiety. Create your own calming image. Use it throughout the day to shift from fear to calm and catch yourself saying, I have to, and reframe it as I get to. Let's turn anxiety into a tool that works for you, not against you. I'll be back on Thursday to explore two unexpected ways that high functioning anxiety adds extra work to your daily life, and more importantly, how to break the cycle so you can carve out time to truly unwind. Thanks for listening to creating Midlife Calm.