In my late 20s, while in graduate school, I took a full-time job at a local university. I had two different responsibilities working in the Career Services Office, helping students with their careers, and living in and managing the upper-class apartment complex. The job was a mix of apartment manager, rule enforcer, and big sister. […]
Throughout my life, one of my go-to strategies for dealing with my anxiety is through people-pleasing. My Monger tells me, that if everyone around me was happy, I will feel less anxiety. As part of this belief, I convince myself that everyone else’s needs are more important because if their needs are met, they won’t […]
Over the past few weeks, I have been in a bit of a mood. In addition to being extra kind to myself, I have been challenging myself to: Show Up. Notice. Appreciate. Here is what I mean: Reaching out to an old friend to say hi, and I am thinking of you. Emailing someone who […]
Last week I wrote about the High Functioning Anxiety Wrestling Match and gave a common scenario I see all the time between the Monger and BFF. My goal for this week was to talk about how to bring in your Biggest Fan, how to handle the Monger-BFF wrestling match in that particular scenario. But in light of […]
The common wisdom is to do what you love, find your zone of genius, and do it as much as you can. This idea sounds fantastic, find what you are naturally good at and do more of it. For those of us with High Functioning Anxiety, this idea is problematic because we keep our anxiety […]
I remember as a kid playing the hand wrestling game Mercy with my older brother. Inevitably I would cry “mercy! mercy!” as he twisted my hands, and he would taunt me in that special brotherly way, “New rules! We changed the name of the game, the new password it isn’t mercy, start guessing!” That is […]
Recently I have been OBSESSED with the Great British Baking Show on Netflix. No politics, no mask debates, no yelling, just amateur bakers who are competing in what they love. It is wonderfully relaxing. Each episode has a theme, and there are three challenges, two the bakers can prepare for and one technical challenge in […]
A few weeks ago, a client reached out to me over Voxer to share how anxious she was about a virtual work event she was hosting. I responded to her and said, of course, she would feel anxious and offered some tricks for reducing that anxiety, including acknowledging your feelings, remembering the power of AND, […]
“What would you say to watching a movie tonight?” my husband asked on a random Tuesday evening. My first thought was no; we can’t watch a movie — it is a weeknight, and we have “shows” to watch on the DVR. But I said, “I don’t want to watch a movie. Why don’t we […]
The turn of the new year was clunky for me. Clunkier than usual. We had a crazy few weeks leading up to the holidays and, of course, the holidays are always crazy (in a fun, seeing family, lots of together time, still overwhelming kind of way), so we took the last week of the year […]