More Time for Mom

Why You Always Feel Behind: Procrastination & High-Functioning Anxiety with Dr. Hayden Finch

• Dr. Amber Curtis • Episode 34

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If you’ve got it all together on the outside but are running on fumes, constantly feel like a failure, and seem to only get things done under pressure…this episode will completely change your perspective on life.

Dr. Hayden Finch (licensed clinical psychologist, behavior change expert, and founder of the Finch Center for High Functioning Anxiety) and I delve into the roots of procrastination, high functioning anxiety, mom guilt, burnout, and so much more. Make sure to share this with all the other high-achieving moms you know!


BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

  • Why procrastination ISN’T a time management problem, laziness, or lack of discipline; it’s an emotional regulation problem
  • The vicious condition driving productivity for so many women that flies completely under the radar because it gets PRAISED by our hyper-success-driven society 
  • How high functioning anxiety differs from regular anxiety, is naturally masked, and goes hand-in-hand with mom guilt
  • Why smiling through the stress, pushing through, and pretending you’re okay when you’re not only hurts your kids
  • Why exhaustion isn’t a weakness and a tiny, doable change you can implement TODAY to slow down and start repairing your nervous system

 

FOR MORE:

Get Dr. Finch’s books:

Connect with Dr. Finch on her website.

  

HOMEWORK:

Email me or DM me on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity to let me know if this episode resonated with you. Your homework for today is to practice doing everything 5% slower; name your feelings the next time you catch yourself procrastinating; do a daily nervous-system check-in; and really model for your kids how good it is to rest, laugh off mistakes, and leave some things undone.

  

COMING UP NEXT:

Join me back next episode to dive even deeper into what high-functioning anxiety is, its telltale signs & symptoms, and more of my personal journey.

Loving this podcast? Please help it get found by more listeners by taking quick minute to leave a rating & review in Apple Podcasts. Take a screenshot of your text review before you submit it, then email that to help@solutionsforsimplicity.com and I'll send you my powerful Happy Mom Protocol™ (a $297 value) FOR FREE!


CONNECT WITH AMBER: Website | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn

Ready to finally get to the root of your problems and change your life FOR GOOD? Book your free 60-minute consult to learn more about working 1:1 with Dr. Amber.

If you've ever avoided doing something you need to get done, criticized yourself for being lazy, or wondered why you just can't get it together. If other people think you are crushing it, but you're running on fumes and always feel like a failure inside. If you put everyone else's needs first, but constantly wrestle with mom guilt and worry you're not doing enough. What you're about to hear will change everything. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. If you're a high-achieving, perfectionist, people-pleaser like me, this episode could fundamentally change your life and put things in perspective that you had no idea might be going on under the surface. You're about to meet Dr. Hayden Finch, a licensed clinical psychologist, behavior change expert, and founder of the Finch Center for High Functioning Anxiety, an online therapy clinic that helps anxious and overwhelmed high achievers learn actionable, research-proven skills to turn self-doubt into self-confidence. In this conversation, we cover why procrastination isn't a time management problem, laziness, or lack of discipline, the vicious condition driving productivity for so many women, yet flies completely under the radar because it gets praised by our hyper-success-driven society? How high-functioning anxiety differs from regular anxiety and goes hand-in-hand with mom guilt? Why smiling through the stress, pushing through, and pretending you're okay when you're not only hurts your kids? Why exhaustion isn't a weakness? How to avoid burnout? a tiny doable change you can implement today to slow down and start repairing your nervous system, and so much more. Take a listen. Based on your years of research and client work, what is really behind procrastination? Well, a lot of people that come into my clinic will talk about, well, I'm just, I guess I'm just lazy or I need some help with my time management skills. And I almost always disagree with that, especially on the the laziness part, of course, but like even the time management skills, I think most people have pretty good time management skills. So at its core, I think procrastination is really an emotion regulation strategy that people are using right so people start delaying tasks because. of creates this uncomfortable feeling. Maybe they feel overwhelmed or they're bored or they're resentful or something. And so when they avoid the task, they get this temporary relief from that discomfort, right? Which is why it's so powerful. But of course, long-term, it's backfiring. So when I look at procrastination, I'm not asking like, well, how do you get more disciplined or how do you manage your time better? I'm asking like, well, what's the feeling that you're avoiding and How do we find a different strategy to regulate, to tolerate, or work through that feeling? It's so important because just as we were talking a moment ago, you have a way of doing things before you have kids, and it seems that there is quite a bit more time to check things off your to-do list or procrastinate if you wanted or needed to, and then all of a sudden, once kids are in the picture and your time is really more finite, as it always was, but feels even more in demand, I find it so easy to procrastinate and then I wasn't aware of what you're saying that there were big emotions that were taking my attention and focus away from what was most important in that moment. And then I would beat myself up about it and feel bad about procrastinating. So it's a really vicious cycle. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, motherhood is, is so many competing demands, right? And guilt and pressure. And so when a mom procrastinates, it's often because the task is emotionally loaded, right? Like maybe it symbolizes I'm not doing enough, or it feels unfair because of all the responsibilities falling on us. And sometimes, sometimes our brain will even resist a task because it's just starved for rest, right? Like it's just, it's just tired, right? So procrastination becomes our nervous system's way of saying like, I can't do one more thing right now, right? So it's not that like our willpower is failing, right? It's just a signal that we've got feelings that we need to tend to. It's so huge. And yet we feel so busy that we don't have time to acknowledge, let alone process the feelings. Do you find that women then turn to these maybe unhelpful coping mechanisms or bad habits that are further sabotaging their productivity and prioritization? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Right. You get the a lot of the women in my clinic are going to talk about I spend too much time scrolling on my phone or Occasionally we'll hear the, you know, the wine night sort of things. Yeah, right? Because like, we're just tired. And in part, we're too tired to acknowledge the emotional work that we've got to do, right? So if we're going to overcome procrastination, we have to get really good at knowing what we're feeling and being able to regulate those feelings without procrastinating, without avoiding. And In the on the front end, it's it's a lot of labor. It's more work. And like, who's got time for that? It's just more work. Do you find with your clients that on top of it being a time issue, a lot of us I'm going to throw myself out there, but, you know, it wasn't safe to express emotions as a child. And as I've been doing all of this inner work and unpacking the things that have led to my high-functioning anxiety and other things that we will get into more, so much of it does come down to that root nervous system level and feeling unsafe or at risk of being unloved, kicked out of the tribe, whatever it is, if my emotions make others uncomfortable. So I learned to repress those over the years and then to perform as a way to compensate and get positive attention. It's really wrapped up. And so it's one thing, I think, to say we have emotions at the root of the problem, but then to be OK with allowing those emotions in ourself. There's a lot of deep work for women to do. Absolutely. Yeah. I think a lot of us grew up getting the message that, you know, we had big feelings. And so, like, don't feel that whatever you're like, don't be that mad. Don't be that sad. But weren't given the skills about what to do with the feeling. So yes, like as children, we just figure out how to just shut the feelings down. But I noticed this even, you know, as a parent, when I'm working with my four year old and he's got big feelings and I'm like, it's OK to be mad, but it's not OK to hit. You know, I'm doing that thing. Right. But then I'm like, but wait, wait, wait. But if I'm teaching him affirmatively what to do with his anger, I find myself feeling stumped. Right. And I'm a psychologist. This is what I do. But if I'm trying to teach him, OK, well, you're feeling angry. What should you do with that anger? You shouldn't hit. But what what affirmatively should you do? I think when we we've probably all run into that circumstance where we're trying to teach our kid what to do with their feelings and we're like, wait a second. I don't know the answer to this question. I don't know what to do with these feelings. So yeah, I think we all have a lot of work to do on what are the healthy, effective strategies to regulate my feelings. I've learned a lot of things not to do, but I don't know what to do. we're going to get so much more into why this is so important for parenting. I love that so much because it's crucial work that we do on ourselves so we can model for our children what's possible for them and how to regulate their emotions. But I want to back up quickly because your expertise, in addition to procrastination, is on this thing called high-functioning anxiety. And as I was just telling you before we hit record, The first time I heard this term, I rolled my eyes, I felt a little triggered inside thinking, oh my goodness, they just come up with a diagnosis for everything. But I kept seeing the term pop up and then I finally Googled what is high functioning anxiety. I would love for you to tell us what it is and what some of the symptoms are, how does it develop, all the things, but I just have, I felt so, called out and yet it's been the most positive thing because once I became aware of how much I wrestle with this, I see it in all these other women. It is so prevalent. So please help us unpack what is high-functioning anxiety. Yeah, well you're right that high functioning anxiety isn't an official diagnosis right you're not going to have a doctor kind of rubber stamp that, but it's, it's a very real lived experience. And so the way I think about high functioning anxiety is it's when anxiety drives productivity, instead of the paralysis that's common with like Regular anxiety, if we think about it that way. Right. So on the outside, someone with high functioning anxiety is going to look successful and organized and capable. But on the inside, right, they're feeling restless and tense and never enough. They're having this like pressure to keep it all together. So the difference from other types of anxiety is that with other types of anxiety, we see people avoiding or freezing, whereas people with high functioning anxiety are the ones that cope by doing more, pushing harder. They're trying to outrun the anxiety. It is so me. And what I have become aware of is I'm just a lot more in tune with the flooding of cortisol and adrenaline in my body and the frenetic feeling that takes over that I hadn't even identified was anxiety. I used to think, oh, this is great. This is something to harness. And it kicked in when I procrastinated because then I was able to really focus and get things done. And I would always end up being so proud of what I had produced. But it didn't really feel good up to the finish line. It was, and still can be, very exhausting and just kind of a real tough battle. But then as a mother, it was one thing when I used to be able to stay up all night and could push myself to do these big projects. Didn't have little ones depending on me. It's a whole other ballgame once you become a parent. How do you find that your clients know, present with high functioning anxiety. What are some of the things they come to you wanting addressed and how do you see it affecting their home life? I think the biggest the biggest thing that people come to me complaining about is exhaustion. Right. They're burnt out and and usually their family starts complaining. And so it's like they're they're tired of how anxious they are or how how edgy they are, but they can sense it too. And truly a lot of the women that come to me realize that something is missing from their lives. So they've been ultra successful in a lot of ways, and then missing something entirely. So what I see a lot of is, Ultra successful in their career, but have no friends right because they just don't have time or space for that or their marriage right it's just sort of. is not as deep and connected as they'd like for it to be so that's very, very common that i'm seeing people complaining of burnout and exhaustion and loneliness. Even though they, again, are capable and have great connections at work and maybe lots of acquaintances, they just feel lonely. Do you think kids pick up on this? And how can it affect children if they do know or sense that a caregiver is feeling anxious? Oh, kids are are extraordinarily sensitive to like the emotional climate in your home right so even if you don't say you're anxious, even if kids like have never even heard that word right they feel they rushed pace that frenetic pace you were talking about. They feel the tension in your body. They feel the way we hover, the way we correct them. And it makes them anxious too, or at least teaches them that performance matters, right? Or being fast, getting a lot done, being efficient, all of that matters. But I mean, the flip side is true too, right? That when we model slowing down, when we model breathing and laughing at our mistakes, when we model like hugging for a long time, right? Kids soak that up too. But yes, they're extraordinarily sensitive to what we've got going on. I'm thinking about many times in years past where I know I didn't show up as the mom I wanted to be. And it was because I was on such a short fuse. I was so tired, exhausted, stressed, didn't recognize the signs of burnout until it really took a toll on me. I didn't realize, again, how deep some of these root experiences and issues ran. And since working on them, it's just made the biggest difference. It's not that I'm over my high-functioning anxiety by any means, but being able to recognize it and be so intentional and really think about how I maybe developed these tendencies so I can model something very different in my parenting has been huge because, yeah, the little kids, their nervous systems are so attuned to us as their caregivers. And when they sense that we're upset, it makes them feel unsafe. So then they're trying to maybe overcompensate or blame themselves or take on responsibility to make their parents happy. And I'm really on a mission to help our awareness to that. so that mothers can show up as their best, most fulfilled, patient self in motherhood. And then the kids have this beautiful peace and freedom to be kids instead of a lot of the things that us perfectionists, type A, eldest daughters have developed over the years. Do you think there is a connection between high-functioning anxiety and mom guilt? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Right. Like they they feed each other in a loop. Right. So the anxiety is saying, well, you should always be doing more. And the mom guilt is saying you're failing your kids if you don't do more. Right. So together, they keep us in this overfunctioning space where we're always doing more and we're never resting. So the harder you push, the more exhausted you get. which then like you feel guilty about not being patient enough or not being present enough. And then it's just a cycle that runs on autopilot. Absolutely, right? The anxiety saying do more and the guilt saying you're failing, but you're too tired, right? Yes. Absolutely. It's so hard to know where to stop or where to start making simple changes when someone recognizes that they might wrestle with this, or at least they feel drawn to make improvements in their life. What are some small, simple things they can do after all these years of conditioning themselves to overfunction? One of maybe the, the simplest places to start is to just commit to doing everything 5% slower. Right. And so it's not a huge change right over an hour we're talking about three minutes difference. it's 5% slower, but just a little bit, right? And just challenging ourselves to slow down just the tiniest bit. And what that does is it already makes us mindful of what we're doing, because we have to intentionally do it just a little bit slower, but without changing it so much that we get worried about whether we're gonna get just as much done, because we're talking about 5%, right? Like this is not a huge change in how much we're actually going to accomplish, but it's just enough to make us mindful to do it just the tiniest bit differently. I love that. And you are so right. It takes a lot of intentionality, all the more because of how much noise we are bombarded with these days. I can't help but think that it was easier to live a more quiet, slow-paced life before smartphones, before all of these notifications, before AI, and I find myself even. wanting to fill extra time or extra silence, little as there is at my house with four young boys, but anytime there's not noise in the background, I'm like looking for that. I'm looking for a podcast I can put on my headphones so that I can be learning at the same time that I'm doing chores or I'm trying to listen to an audiobook or something that is It feels like it's a good use of my time. But you really are adamant that slowing down is a great use of our time and has a lot of benefits. Could you expand on that? I think we do have this pressure to fill every waking second with something productive. Like you're saying, it's not enough to just be cleaning, which is objectively productive, but I need to have an audio book on at the same time so that I'm learning something while I'm clean, why? It's like, we have gotten to this crazy level where just being one level of productive isn't good enough. We're like layering on top of it to make sure that we are being doubly productive everywhere. And it's like, why? Like what makes us believe that we need to accomplish that much in a day's time? Like where did we get the idea that just cleaning isn't enough? Or where did I get the idea that I need to be learning something all the time, that I need to be consuming new content all the time. Like, where did I get those ideas? My brain offers me two very different answers, right? One is the gender card, and I would love to dive a little bit more into whether you see anxiety and high-functioning anxiety present as much in men as in women, but then also the dopamine we get from the notifications or the scrolling or the new podcast alerts, like all of that really feeds our addiction. I wouldn't say that I have this intentional compulsion to be doubly productive, but it feels so good and rewarding in the moment, it's only afterwards that I realize that kind of took a toll on me and actually cost me some energy too. So we'll dive in separately if you don't mind to both of those, like maybe first the gender piece. How do you see this play out across men and women? Yeah, I think you're right that, you know, if we're looking at kind of stereotypical gender roles and we're looking at, you know, maybe our typical heterosexual marriages. Yes, like I think it can manifest a little bit differently. So a lot of the examples we've talked about today apply to moms and especially working moms, but also stay at home moms that have you know, their own challenges. But with men, like especially the men in my clinic, I see it manifesting a little bit differently, where often the high-functioning anxiety keeps them away from the home, right? So they are doing more at work, they're climbing the ladder a little bit more, they're saying yes to too many projects or too many extra things at work. I think moms often, again, for stereotyping, end up in the position where they're having to say no to some opportunities at work to be able to get all of this stuff done at home and fulfill all of their domestic responsibilities. But I do see a similar outcome in the high-functioning anxiety in terms of what it feels like, but a different manifestation in terms of what the behaviors are in men versus women. That's so fascinating. I wonder if you see that women are all the more likely to put themselves on the back burner and that if they are trying to be extra productive, that then they just continue to sacrifice themselves. Like, I will perform at work. I will perform in the home and make sure my kids are squared away. But the person who suffers is me. It's my health. That was me for a long, long time. Thankfully not anymore, but yeah, it's really hard. So how do you begin to help women realize the importance of taking care of themselves? Well, it's, it's so hard, right? Cause I think it's something that we know kind of intellectually is like, I know that I'm doing too much or I know that whatever, whatever. Um, but our minds, our feelings, especially don't respond very well to the, you know, the come to Jesus or the pep talk. Our feelings really need to see it. They learn from experience. So we cannot really emotionally believe, internalize that it is okay to slow down or it is okay to take care of myself until we actually do it. And it's the doing it, the seeing it in existence that will help us really believe that it's OK. But otherwise, we're stuck with this idea that my self-worth is attached to how productive I am. At the end of the day, I feel better about myself. I feel like I can pat myself on the back when I got everything done. And we will continue to believe that as long as we keep doing that. We have to do something different to be able to believe like, oh, no, no, no. I actually can feel good about myself even when there were still things on my to-do list at the end of the day, right? Because I spent extra time snuggling with my children or because I, you know, went to the zoo and even though my house is a mess or whatever it is, right? We have to live it. Yes, which is such a chicken and egg problem because as I and many of my clients all experience the thought of slowing down. feels subconsciously so threatening. So I'd love to come back to that in a second, but quickly to go back and pick up on how we tend to overfunction because of the dopamine hits we get. Do you have any thoughts on that? It is intoxicating, right? To be productive feels so good, right? To check things off of a list, oh, that just feels so good. I do think we have to retrain ourselves there a little bit. And some of this is the cliche stuff about rest is productive. It doesn't feel quite as good to check that off a list. And it's probably antithetical to take a nap on my to-do list and then cross it off. But yeah, I think it is something about retraining ourselves about what is productivity what role do I want it to play in my life? What do I believe I'm getting from that? Kind of challenging ourselves on some of these beliefs that we have. So then we can adopt some behaviors that are going to be more aligned with our values and the person that we want to be. You and I are so aligned in our desire to help women in this area. I love that. So when a mom is scared to do less because she worries that then she will be worthless if she's not producing as much or she she just is used to going going going for so long how does she begin We've covered a little bit, but what are some more practical tips for slowing down throughout her day and realizing that the world doesn't end when she misses a deadline or leaves dishes in the sink or drops the kids off five minutes late to school? These markers that we have built our identity around and we have prided ourselves on having that perfect facade. How do we build that inner sense of safety? So we can slow down and combat the anxiety. I think you have to start by reminding ourselves. I'm going to say by realizing but like reminding ourselves because we know this reminding ourselves that our worth was never in the productivity or the perfection to begin with our worth isn't tied to getting our children to school on time or to having a perfectly clean house. Our anxiety convinces us that the frenetic pace that you're talking about, the edginess, the stress is what keeps the house running or the family running, right? Anxiety tells us that that feeling is what keeps this going. But in reality, we know it drains more energy than it gives us. When you can calm your anxiety, you don't lose your drive. All of your listeners are driven women. That doesn't go away when you're calm. You just get more clarity. You get more efficiency. You get more presence. The laundry still gets done. The children still get to school basically on time most of the time, but you're not running on fumes anymore. You're not running on resentment because it wasn't the anxiety that made you productive. It was your skills and managing your time. and being able to prioritize. It's those things. And they're going to be there whether you're anxious or not. That's what we want. It sounds so good. And I feel, again, like I've made huge strides in this. But a very common refrain I hear from my clients is who's going to do it if I don't, right? That we have set these expectations and exceedingly high standards, not just for ourselves, but for others and for what our life should look like. A lot of women, I find, really struggle with lowering those standards or accepting that things might not get done. And so if we recognize that we need to slow down and that this is taking a toll on us, okay, that's one thing. I can get on board with that. But I still want the things to be done. And yet, we know women carry the overwhelming majority of the mental load. We know that a lot of us have hopes of how a job would be performed, whether it's unloading the dishwasher or helping a kid with homework or whatever else. Even if you're delegating business and work tasks, that difference in standards makes it feel, I think, really physically and emotionally uncomfortable for high performers, high functioning, anxious women to settle. It feels like settling. It feels bad in our body to think that things are not getting done the way we know we are capable of. I'm always trying to raise awareness of that distinction between capability and capacity and intentionally choosing to do things that really, like you're saying, align with your values, lean into your fluctuating capacity, but that delegating piece is so hard. Yeah, it takes practice, right? Like that's the thing here is to practice behaviors that we aren't used to doing. So delegating might be one, or we might practice leaving dishes in the sink, or we might practice not packing the children's lunch, or we might practice delegating that to the children, like pack your own lunch. But we can practice having a lower standard, right, or lower expectations. We can practice doing things differently. And at the end of that practice, I think of it as an experiment. I might conclude that, you know what, like the way I was doing it was working better for me, so I'm going to go back to the way I was doing it. Or I might conclude that in an ideal situation, maybe this wouldn't be my preference. But for right now, maybe this is OK. Maybe it's OK that, you know, my clean clothes are sitting in a hamper for a few days instead of folded neatly in the drawers. Maybe that's OK in this season of life. I think about that a lot, too, is like in the season where you have young children, which I think a lot of your listeners do. It is just our expectations of ourselves can be different than they were before we had children. And they can be different than they'll be in 10 years when our children are more independent or maybe even grown. It is okay for life to look a little bit messier today. That's not a reflection of me. It's just a reflection of, I have some different priorities today than I had 10 years ago. And then I will have 10 years from now. And so maybe in this season of my life, it's OK if the laundry doesn't get folded, or the floors are a little dirtier than I'd like, or if I hire a housekeeper, or whatever it looks like for a person. Totally. It just feels so messy inside. And it is such an identity change. It really is initially threatening, but so incredibly freeing to find who you are apart from all these outcomes, all this performance, all of these high standards that used to govern your life. I really want that for other women. May I turn us back to some of the maybe negative consequences that children could experience if a mother doesn't address some of her tendencies to be a high-functioning anxious person? Do you see any of that? Do you have any evidence that suggests this can harm our parenting and our children? Yeah, I mean, I think we're in a really tough nature-nurture like dilemma here because those of us who are wired to be the high functioning anxiety types tend to give birth to children who are also wired to kind of gravitate in that direction. So I think the onus is on us to be especially mindful because we've got children that are wired to be fairly sensitive. they're going to be especially tuned in to what's going on with us. And so that's not to fear monger, right? We don't need like more of that. We're going to do the best we can, but it is like partly to give us some empathy that are, you know, those of us who are anxious, give birth to more anxious children. And the way I think about it is just learning alongside them. Right. And I tell my child all the time, Here's something I'm trying to get better at. And here's how I'm doing it. And he's absorbing that along with me. He needs the same skills that I'm trying to learn. He's just watching me learn them in my 30s. And hopefully he's learning them, you know, as a child. And so I think that it's okay. to be the test case for your child, right? And let them see you be anxious and let them see you work through it. I was grinning when you mentioned that we tend to have anxious children because, again, whether it's the environment of the womb where they're just flooded with cortisol pumping through our veins while pregnant, or whether it is the nurture side of they pick up on all of our anxious energy in our presence, probably, undoubtedly, combination of both. It's never a bad thing, right? There are good sides to each of these traits or tendencies. I guess where I really want parents to think intentionally is that element of safety. How safe do they feel in their own body at the thought of not performing up to crazy high standards? Where do they think the feeling of threat or opposite of safety came from and can they can they recall experiences in their childhood where they received messages that they needed to. Perform and how did that play into their anxiety but then how can they. be that safe space for their children? How can they hold that proverbial space for not just their own emotions that are so many, right? And maybe only getting acknowledged and expressed for the first time in their life. to then recognizing in their children the tendencies that were so shut down in them during their childhood. It's a lot of deep work and I don't think people are really, not many people talk about how hard it is to do that inner work and try and stay emotionally regulated yourself when your nervous system feels threatened by your child's outburst because you were not allowed to express your emotions the way they are. though you want to handle things so differently, your body is screaming at you in that moment that something is wrong. I just want to pull back the curtain and help women understand that even if they've never had words to express this, they can probably identify with what you are describing and what it can feel like in their body. And the more attention and awareness we bring to it, the more we can validate that These are just feelings and they do come from lots of cumulative experiences and have been reinforced with our habits over the years, but it's not definitive. There are always things they can do to feel better and model different things for their kids. And one of the traits of folks with high functioning anxiety is that they mask it. And I think that's something that's really important to keep in mind With children, especially, but with anybody we know when someone is pretending like they're not anxious right, we can feel that we know when people are just like smiling through the anxiety and your children do too, and so. If you are feeling anxious, and you're trying to protect your children from absorbing that anxiety, it is not sufficient to just pretend like everything is okay, even if you are especially skilled at that, and people with high functioning anxiety are, they're especially skilled at this. but your children will see through that. They won't comment on it because they don't have the language for it, but they will feel it. And so we have to just acknowledge that it is not sufficient to pretend like everything's okay. We have to actually do the work to really feel okay, which I think most of us would sign up and say, well, yeah, I would much rather feel okay than just pretend like I'm okay. But we really do have to figure out, yes, where can I find that sense of safety? How can I actually calm my nervous system down? And that's what will help our children. But of course, it's going to help us. If you had to give a rough percentage of the population that you think wrestles with high functioning anxiety, do you have any latest read of the research or any anecdotes from all of your years of clinical experience? I don't know a specific number. I think about what is it, like 20 percent of people have some sort of mental health condition. And I think a lot of people with high functioning anxiety are flying under the radar, right? Because they're functioning well, right? They're getting by, there's nothing objectively wrong, certainly nothing on the outside that's wrong. You would look at their lives and they're gainfully employed and have relationships and their house looks fine, like everything looks fine. So I think it's very difficult to actually speculate how many people have high-functioning anxiety in particular because it is covered up so well. That's a really good point, yes. Out of my own curiosity, does this feel like it perfectly maps onto that eldest daughter stereotype or do you see it in different birth orders? Are there any other common characteristics that go along with or tend to go along with high-functioning anxiety? I don't know about the birth order thing, though I think it is kind of the stereotypical firstborn Though, of course, like, you know, you can have this, like, regardless of your birth order. I do see it overlapping a lot with OCD, kind of at its most extreme. People will sometimes have obsessive compulsive patterns. So obsessively cleaning or organizing or having those kind of stereotypical OCD things. So you can see that, and that will often bring people into the clinic. more quickly than people who have the high functioning anxiety without OCD. But you will see this among people that are high performers at their job. So a lot of my clients are you know, are management or above at work. They were very successful academically. These were your teacher's pet kinds of kids. These, you know, these are people who didn't get in trouble. They know how to do well everywhere, and they know how to keep the people around them happy. They have lots of skills socially that way, but have learned along the way to kind of put themselves last, to make everything else kind of go well. That people-pleasing dimension is really interesting, Ben. Yes. There's no official complex or diagnosis, like a condition for people-pleasing, is there? Right, right, right. But so many of us have it and at least get older and realize, oh yes, we've been very concerned with what other people have thought of. for way too long. And then we have this new chance to discover who we are and who we want to be and care less what anyone else thinks. But yet here you are with kids usually in the picture and little ones depending on you and bills to be paid and other things. So we can't just completely abandon our old sense of self. We wouldn't want to. But Dr. Finch, is there anything else that we have not yet covered that you would like overwhelmed, hardworking moms to know? We just need to realize that our exhaustion that we feel isn't a personal weakness right it's not because we're not tough enough right it's the cost of caring really deeply in a culture that is objectively demanding too much from others right, so the goal isn't to become. perfectly calm or endlessly productive, right? But it's to recognize that you're human, you deserve rest and to play and to support. But for our children, sometimes the most powerful gift isn't doing more for them, but just showing them what it looks like to know your limits. Yes, and to take care of yourself. Yes. Slow down to enjoy life. Goodness, that's so important. Would you give my listeners a brief backstory on who you are and how you came to do all that you do? More about you. They will be so fascinated. Yeah, so I am a clinical psychologist. I started my career actually studying and treating schizophrenia and the most severe mental illnesses. But along the way, I had to make a decision to continue to prioritize my career or to prioritize my life. And there was like a specific moment where I had to make that choice. And I chose to prioritize my life, which is not what I wanted to do, right? Like everything inside of me was like, go for the career girl. Um, but no, I, I chose my life. And so that took me away from schizophrenia and severe mental illness and more into this high functioning anxiety, um, kind of land, but it's worked out really well. So I work in, um, private practice now where I run a telehealth clinic and it allows me to have my own career, but it gives me a ton of flexibility to be able to be healthy. and to be able to take care of my family and do the things that are most valuable to me. And that's not the right answer for everybody, but I know for me, that was what was going to make me healthiest was to make that choice, that deliberate choice along the way to make sure that I was gonna have space in my life to be healthy. So that's sort of the professional and personal kind of coming together. I love that. And it is a choice that we all have at our disposal all the time. But I know I felt like I got down this path and it almost felt too far to turn back. And my own backstory, everything was like, oh, things lined up this way and then kind of felt stuck for a while. Now I see the grander purpose in it all and I wouldn't change it. But I think that it has taken a severe toll on me, especially did when I first became a mother. And I partly wish I could avoid that, but now it's what's motivated me to try and help other women be more aware, really unpacking it all at the level of the thoughts and the feelings, but then deeper into somatics and the nervous system. And it's been powerful for me. I just keep finding all these other women who are so like me. And it builds this little tribe of women who are like, one, they think they're the only ones struggling. And two, they still have such fear of letting anybody know how much they are struggling, let alone getting help. to struggle less. So we've got to have these conversations. We do need to let women know they have options. Again, all of these things we thought were our best traits have really come at a cost. And on the one hand, we want to pull back. But on the other, it's like a compulsion that when you've built this identity to be a certain way, It's not an overnight switch to just stop doing so much or to not feel like you should be doing more, even if you've given yourself permission to slow down. And in that sense, gosh, having kids is just the biggest blessing because I know without a doubt I would be the biggest workaholic, probably early death, if I didn't have kids to force me to prioritize and invite me to look at what I'm modeling for them and what I want for them. What a great journey that we all go through in life to figure out who we are and if we still want to be that way and how to change if not. Thank you so much. Where can my listeners find you or work with you or get more information on high-functioning anxiety? My website is Haydenfinch.com and everything is there. There's some links to the books I've written, articles that I've written years ago, and contact info there, of course. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you for the conversation. I told you this episode was powerful and I'm dying to know if you agree. Send me an email through the link in the show notes or DM me on Instagram at Solutions for Simplicity to let me know. Your homework is first, take the 5% challenge. This week Practice doing everything just 5% slower as Dr. Finch recommended. Walking, talking, cleaning, even thinking. Notice how it feels in your body. 2. Name the feeling, not the failure. The next time you catch yourself procrastinating, pause and instead of asking, what's wrong with me? Ask yourself, what am I feeling right now? Number three, do a nervous system check-in. At least once a day, take a deep breath, unclench your jaw, roll back your shoulders, and remind yourself, it's safe for me to slow down. I know that sounds so simple and trite, but it's really, really powerful and we need the reminder. Number four, model all of this for your kids. Let your children see you rest, laugh off a mistake, or leave a dish undone. They'll only learn emotional regulation from your calmness, not your chaos. If this episode resonated with you, don't miss the next one where I will dive even deeper into what High Functioning Anxiety is, break down the telltale signs of it, and share more of my personal journey. Until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is, so the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe, and if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.