Explore high-functioning anxiety with Dr. Jodi Aman and guest Thom. Learn causes, effects, and tools like mindful self-talk to break the cycle of overthinking and guilt. Discover hope and practical solutions!
Welcome to Ask Dr. Jodi Aman! High-functioning anxiety is today's topic. We'll discuss what it means, how it shows up, and why it’s often misunderstood. Dr. Jodi explores the invisible struggles behind a high-performance exterior and shares actionable strategies to navigate the challenges. Plus, we’re joined by Thom, a teacher who shares his firsthand experience with newfound anxiety after a traumatic event.
Episode Summary:
High-functioning anxiety is not a diagnosis but a term that describes people who appear highly successful and composed on the outside while battling internal pressures, perfectionism, and worry. Dr. Jodi breaks down the biology of anxiety, the role of adrenaline, and how the mystery surrounding these feelings can make them more overwhelming. Thom joins the conversation to discuss his journey managing anxiety after an unexpected fire at his workplace, including the guilt and emotional toll it took. This candid discussion is packed with tips for reducing anxiety and reclaiming peace.
Key Takeaways:
Thank you so much for listening to Ask Dr. Jodi! If you enjoyed today’s episode, please take a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and share it with someone who needs inspiration or help to heal!
Key Terms: high-functioning anxiety, anxiety symptoms, managing anxiety, anxiety causes, overcoming perfectionism, mental health tips, trauma-informed care, stress management, emotional health, anxiety in high achievers, signs of anxiety, coping with anxiety, burnout prevention,
[00:00:00] Dr. Jodi A: Hey everyone, it's Jodi here. We're talking about high functioning anxiety. Is that something that is going on in your life? And maybe you don't know what it means, or maybe you never heard of it. It's a term. It's not an actual diagnosis. It's not like some disease that people, some people have.
[00:00:15] Dr. Jodi A: It's just a way of describing a certain kind of anxiety. that some people have, and it's not this, if you have this kind of anxiety, this is the only kind of anxiety you have. You might have different kinds of anxiety, but it's usually this term, high functioning anxiety, is usually used to describe someone who is functioning in their daily life.
[00:00:40] Dr. Jodi A: They may be very successful people, very high performing people, but there's this underlying pressure. that they have to perform high, pressure that they have maybe to be perfect, or pressure to succeed. They have these very high expectations to, for themselves, and that puts a lot of pressure on them to work really hard, effort a lot, get things right, be very detail oriented.
[00:01:08] Dr. Jodi A: Maybe these people are, it's another word for workaholics, what we used to call workaholics back in the day. High functioning anxiety. And they look calm, they look confident, they look like they have everything going for them because they're outgoing, they're social, they do stuff all day. And you'd be surprised that they have anxiety.
[00:01:28] Dr. Jodi A: And some of them maybe Like our guest who's coming on tonight, Thom has never had anxiety before before an event he's been functioning. He's never experienced it before. Everything's, he's always never had trouble doing stuff or working or. achieving his goals. But after a certain circumstance or after a certain event his anxiety came up.
[00:01:52] Dr. Jodi A: And so we're going to talk to him about that, but let's talk more about high functioning anxiety. So this is very internal for people, this high functioning anxiety. They, like I said, on the outside, they look fine and actually most people with anxiety on the outside, they look fine, right? We'd never know it.
[00:02:10] Dr. Jodi A: Anxiety is so invisible and I think that's a very painful aspect of anxiety that it's so pain, so invisible because we're very invalidated by it. People don't necessarily understand. Even though most people have anxiety, we don't tend to understand each other's anxiety. We have different triggers, we have different, way it manifests.
[00:02:30] Dr. Jodi A: And so high functioning anxiety, I want you to know if you have this, if you experience this, if you're high functioning during the day, you're very functional and you're like, why do I have anxiety in the evening or in the morning? Or why do I have this underlying pressure all the time? And then what happens is when you have this pressure for some of us, if you have this pressure and you try to resist That pressure and that gets in the way of performance.
[00:02:56] Dr. Jodi A: It gets in the way of productivity, right? There's a lot of nuances to high functioning anxiety. It doesn't work on everybody the same way. It depends on how we think about it and how we, what kind of coping skills we have. Are they coping skills that sabotage us? Are they coping skills that help us feel better?
[00:03:14] Dr. Jodi A: Are they coping skills that have us run away from the anxiety? Keep working because if you stop, then your brain's going to go into some negative thinking, right? Who's with me? Who has that kind of anxiety? That happens so much. It happens so much, right? It could go any way. When we feel anxiety, we could either Try to run away from it by distracting yourself with overworking or some kind of vices or some kind of addiction.
[00:03:43] Dr. Jodi A: Or we could be stuck in it. We can stay home with the covers of our head, metaphorically or literally and give all of our time and attention to the anxiety. Or we could Try to figure out how to get rid of it and be like, I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this in my life. I have to get rid of it and we could get rid of it.
[00:04:03] Dr. Jodi A: Or, we have this pressure under and under underneath it all and we're functioning on the outside but in the inside it doesn't feel very good. We are suffering. And sometimes when that suffering kind of starts to bubble over and then we start to have panic attacks, this is usually when somebody with high function and anxiety starts to get help because the rest of the time, most people who have anxiety wait to get help like one to 10 years.
[00:04:32] Dr. Jodi A: That's what the research says. People who have anxiety wait one to 10 years before they get any help. You're suffering. You deserve to have help getting better and feeling better. You don't have to have this. So many people who suffer from anxiety feel like, I just have to live with it. This is what I have.
[00:04:49] Dr. Jodi A: This is the way my brain's wired. I just have to live with it. And I'm here to tell you that is not true. Anxiety is a regular human response to our world. And I'm going to explain high functioning anxiety, probably how no one else has explained it to you before, but I want you to know that it is fixable.
[00:05:05] Dr. Jodi A: Just like all anxiety is fixable. Anxiety is our regular human response to the context of our life in our world. So you're not crazy if you have a high function anxiety. That's the good news. You are not crazy. This is not you. It's biological. Let me tell you the first and foremost reason why this is perpetuated.
[00:05:26] Dr. Jodi A: This kind of high function anxiety is perpetuated. It's because when we are moving all day, And we are leading people and we are doing a lot of things and multitasking all day. Our adrenaline is there, but it's serving us, right? It's helping us do all those things and multitask and get a lot of stuff done or get focused or be very productive, right?
[00:05:52] Dr. Jodi A: We're thriving on that adrenaline. We're using it. We're channeling it. We're getting stuff done. When we go home at night or in the middle of night, we're waking up in the middle of night because you're so stressed or in the morning, maybe you're having some anxiety. It's because you're not doing all those things, so a lot of times when people have high functioning anxiety, they're going all day, they're distracted, they're using it.
[00:06:16] Dr. Jodi A: It's being channeled into something positive, whatever they're doing for work, all the success is happening and then they go home and it's like time to relax. But when they go home and it's time to relax, their adrenaline is still going, but then they don't need it. So their mind is like, something's wrong because we're not working as fast as we're not protecting ourselves.
[00:06:37] Dr. Jodi A: We're not working as fast as we did all day. There's something wrong because that is what we need to do, right? To survive. It's not, but this is like what our brain thinks because it's a habit of doing that all day. So at night, it turns into panic and it turns into anxiety because it's that adrenaline's been high all day.
[00:06:59] Dr. Jodi A: And now it's wait, why do I have anxiety? Because the negative thoughts come in because you're trying your mind is trying to protect you. And so it tries to find something negative and the negative thoughts come in. And then we experience anxiety, like the leftover fear response, right?
[00:07:15] Dr. Jodi A: The leftover sympThoms of adrenaline when we don't need it. But it's a mystery now. Like why is this here? Why am I anxious right now? I've been fine all day. Why am I anxious right now? I'm supposed to be relaxed. This is my time with my family. I'm supposed to be relaxed. And the mystery of it perpetuates it because we get really freaked out.
[00:07:33] Dr. Jodi A: Then we're like something's wrong with us. And the next day What do we do? We work even harder because if something's wrong with us, then it will affect our sense of worth. And so we have to work harder the next day and harder the next day to make up for that loss of worth. Because we're weak or we have anxiety or we're stressed, whatever it is, it's not okay to have a perfectionist, of course, right?
[00:08:02] Dr. Jodi A: And so we have to work harder and we work harder and we get more detailed, we get more organized, more perfectionist try to be as more successful as we can, thinking that we could beat it out, beat out this anxiety. I want to tell you that there's hope and we're going to bring Thom on and Thom is a unique kind of anxiety, but it is, he is high functioning.
[00:08:20] Dr. Jodi A: And so it's, so he wanted to come on and get some help with what's going on in his life. But I want you to know that it, there is hope, right? Even if it's that biological thing that I described to you. And that happens for a lot of us, right? We're going, we use it all day. And then when we're trying to rest, our mind goes like this.
[00:08:40] Dr. Jodi A: This happens after a really hard event. Did you ever care for somebody who's really sick and you were really worried, but you always had work to do, like you cared for them and cared for them. And you always were checking everything and you, there was so much to do. to research and think about and plan and take care of and fix and clean and whatever, right?
[00:08:59] Dr. Jodi A: And they were going through a crisis, like a health crisis or something, and you did all of this work. Many times after it's all over, when the person's well again and everyone can calm down, then the panic attacks start. People are like, what? I wasn't panicked when it happened, but I'm panicked now afterwards.
[00:09:16] Dr. Jodi A: That doesn't make sense. It totally makes sense because overall your adrenaline rose during that crisis, during that time just like a high functioning anxiety, right? Your overall adrenaline has grown. And so when you didn't have that stuff to do to channel it through. The panic attacks came. It's a regular human response to the context of our life.
[00:09:39] Dr. Jodi A: This is a regular human response to what happened because your adrenaline is high, but there's nothing to do. So your brain's something's wrong. Then you're, then you start to, panic as something's wrong. What's wrong is the anxiety and it doesn't feel very good. So it is a very bad wrong thing to be going on is if that makes sense, but it's fixable because if you know what it is, it takes a mystery out of it.
[00:10:00] Dr. Jodi A: And the mystery is what makes it feel so power, so Powerless it feels powerful. You feel powerless to the anxiety when it's mysterious, but when you understand what's going on and that it's just adrenaline and extra adrenaline because you're going, and now it's time to turn off, then you are able to, you don't have that mystery and that powerlessness about it.
[00:10:23] Dr. Jodi A: You're like, oh yeah, this makes sense. So you're empowered. And then your positive self talk, talking yourself down I'm okay. I understand this is anxiety, this is adrenaline and it's time to rest and I'm okay. I am very safe. These, you'll believe them now. You didn't believe them when you didn't know why you had anxiety, but if you know that it's the adrenaline high because of that, because of your high performance all day, then it's easier to talk yourself out of having that in the evening and you're able to calm yourself down.
[00:10:55] Dr. Jodi A: And then your brain starts to learn because it's learned like I have to be this high on adrenaline all the time to keep this person safe. And so it's a habit to do that. What you want to do is now train the brain that in the evening. We don't need that adrenaline, we're safe, we can relax with our partners, and we can relax with our kids, and we can relax with a good book or a good show on TV.
[00:11:20] Dr. Jodi A: So so there you have it. And I want you to keep in mind the context. So let's bring Thom on,
[00:11:25] Dr. Jodi A: Hi, Thom. Welcome to the show.
[00:11:27] Thom: Thank you very much. Much appreciated.
[00:11:30] Dr. Jodi A: Thank you. Why don't, is it okay to start by just telling us what's going on?
[00:11:34] Thom: Yeah, I can do that. As stated previously a little bit by you even.
[00:11:40] Thom: I actually normally do not feel anxiety. Never have. Although I should say irrational anxiety. Anxiety, when you're trying to go ahead and pass teaching exams or something like that, that, I've had a little bit of that. Okay. But honestly, even then it's rare. In
[00:11:55] Thom: Now to state some of the setting conditions, I also I teach emotionally damaged children. So I'm used to high tension events all the time. However, in the spring this year, we had an electrical fire in my room that ended up destroying a part of the school that was my that was where I teach.
[00:12:15] Thom: Since then I've been feeling yeah, anxious, like things won't shut off. How should I say it? I've always had trouble sleeping, so that, that doesn't fit in there. But yeah, an underlying tension and occasionally flares up.
[00:12:31] Dr. Jodi A: Okay.
[00:12:32] Thom: Fear of losing work even though there's no real rational reason to leave
[00:12:36] Dr. Jodi A: that.
[00:12:37] Dr. Jodi A: Like them letting you go or closing the school or?
[00:12:40] Thom: Yeah. More like letting me go. It didn't destroy enough of the school for it to close the whole school. Okay.
[00:12:45] Dr. Jodi A: So tell us a little bit more about the fire and you're mean, you mean emotionally challenged.
[00:12:50] Thom: Kids no emotionally damaged children.
[00:12:53] Dr. Jodi A: I just, I'm sorry. I think that maybe some people might have a may maybe just because, yeah, that, that's like a label, a hard label on, on somebody, so it makes me a bit uncomfortable. I know, I think I know what you mean, but they have had but it's.
[00:13:09] Thom: Traumatized.
[00:13:11] Dr. Jodi A: Yeah, they've they're children who've experienced trauma and have the effects of trauma.
[00:13:15] Dr. Jodi A: But when we call a kid damaged, it's like there's a no limit to that. There's a limit to that, right? It's like they can't get better. Yeah. And I'm, I, and did this staff at school use that term?
[00:13:29] Thom: No. It's okay. I was just trying to find a way to get this.
[00:13:32] Dr. Jodi A: Oh, okay. Describe that.
[00:13:33] Dr. Jodi A: All right. Let's call them, let's call them challenged.
[00:13:36] Thom: Okay. Because
[00:13:36] Dr. Jodi A: when they're challenged, they could, they, there's still hope people could get better.
[00:13:40] Thom: That's the reason why we work.
[00:13:42] Dr. Jodi A: Yes. Okay. Good. Okay. So tell me about the fire. Like how, what was it? Was it in your classroom, in the school?
[00:13:50] Dr. Jodi A: Like where, tell me your experience with it.
[00:13:53] Thom: In my classroom directly behind my desk. Oh my. Yeah. We got a call at, I think it was 3 30 in the morning. Something like that from the superintendent asking whether everything was all right and explaining what had happened. Yeah. And then I spent the next probably 12 hours.
[00:14:12] Thom: Going into the school and trying to help fire, firefighters and fire investigators and so on and so forth.
[00:14:18] Dr. Jodi A: Okay. So you weren't there when the fire was in the fire was out by the time you got there?
[00:14:22] Thom: Yeah, correct.
[00:14:23] Dr. Jodi A: Okay. And how did tell me your first reactions then. So you went in the next day, you were helping them try to figure out what happened, how did it start and that kind of stuff.
[00:14:35] Dr. Jodi A: So they determined it was electrical. At first, did you feel like. It was you, or what was your emotions going in the beginning there?
[00:14:42] Dr. Jodi A: I was in shock. Did I, of course, I, like every other person, I had things plugged in, pencil sharpener, that type of stuff. And so I, I didn't know at the time that it was an electrical fire, but I kept thinking maybe I left something on or anything like that, but in, in the meantime, while I was working with them, I was on autopilot.
[00:15:02] Dr. Jodi A: There was no there really wasn't any emotions at the time, I would say, probably not for another two or three days.
[00:15:08] Dr. Jodi A: Yeah. Okay. So the, yeah, so that, that would make sense, right? In that context, I just be in shock. Sometimes when we have so much adrenaline, it floods and it's hard for us to think.
[00:15:18] Dr. Jodi A: So that happens people don't know that is a sympThom of high adrenaline also, like when you're not. When you're a little bit what do you call it? Like frozen or. Frozen, phased out. Yeah. Good way to describe it because it was in your classroom. You were like the other staff weren't doing the same thing as you.
[00:15:35] Dr. Jodi A: You were trying to help them figure that out and was mostly focused on you. Yeah,
[00:15:40] Thom: correct. Yeah. And honestly. My room was separated from the rest of the building, so that helped a lot,
[00:15:48] Dr. Jodi A: but it's still in the room. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So those first couple of days you thought might've been you were you thinking where you might, you weren't thinking too much, but maybe part of you went through your mind like, what if this happened during the day? Or what if this, what if this was worse?
[00:16:01] Dr. Jodi A: Those kinds of things. Yeah. And I
[00:16:03] Thom: would say more than a couple of days in terms of worrying about whether it was me, probably a couple of weeks maybe.
[00:16:08] Dr. Jodi A: Oh, before they determined it. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:10] Thom: Oh, yeah. Even after they determined it, there's always that part of the back of your brain that says, I don't
[00:16:15] Dr. Jodi A: know
[00:16:16] Thom: if it was
[00:16:17] Dr. Jodi A: me.
[00:16:17] Dr. Jodi A: Where are you at with that now, Thom?
[00:16:19] Thom: Off and on, still feeling the same.
[00:16:22] Dr. Jodi A: Okay, so you're still like, you're still psychic guessing, or your mind's still questioning?
[00:16:27] Thom: Especially when it comes to electrical stuff.
[00:16:30] Dr. Jodi A: Okay. What's it at home, like every time, cause we plug stuff in all day and we turn stuff on that are plugged in.
[00:16:36] Dr. Jodi A: Like, how are you responding to, regular everyday plugging stuff in and turning stuff on?
[00:16:42] Thom: I worry about extension cords and making sure things are unplugged. I make sure the wife's curling iron is unplugged every day. So on and so forth.
[00:16:53] Dr. Jodi A: And that wasn't you before, you weren't like a checker?
[00:16:56] Thom: No, I, yeah, I.
[00:16:58] Thom: I pretty much let things assume that everything was fine until it wasn't.
[00:17:03] Dr. Jodi A: Yeah. Okay. So yeah so one of the things, and you, would you call that irrational? Use this word before irrational, but would you call that irrational? Checking the curling iron? Or would you call it like you learned a lesson and you are careful?
[00:17:19] Thom: That's that's yeah. I learned a lesson. I'm being careful. I think the irrational part is overdoing it. So I recognize that I'm doing that at the time that I'm doing it.
[00:17:30] Dr. Jodi A: Okay. Give me an example of when you've been overdoing checking those things. Oh,
[00:17:35] Thom: We have right next to me here, there's a small extension cord thing, making sure that everything that isn't presently being used is on the plug on that.
[00:17:44] Thom: I do that pretty much every day when I get home.
[00:17:47] Dr. Jodi A: So you feel like that's overchecking?
[00:17:49] Thom: Yeah, I would think so.
[00:17:51] Dr. Jodi A: Okay. Tell me other, the other ways that anxiety is manifesting, that this new anxiety, you say sometimes it goes over. What is it, what else does it look like for you?
[00:18:02] Thom: When dealing with students, I worry about making sure that I, that I'm doing enough, not thinking that I am the, my success level in terms of lessons is probably, I don't know, 40%, but the type of kids that I work with has a lot to do with that.
[00:18:18] Thom: It's always been about that.
[00:18:20] Dr. Jodi A: Okay. So it didn't change.
[00:18:22] Thom: Yeah. But I worry a lot more about, about making sure I get it done.
[00:18:27] Dr. Jodi A: Okay. So this is really, it's really. Affected your sense of yourself? Correct. And your sense of your, if you're successful or not, this worry that you might lose your job if you're doing enough for the kids, if the rates that your, the, of the kids success is affect you or if someone's going to notice and what would be the bad, worst thing that could happen?
[00:18:50] Thom: Oh yeah, losing my job would probably
[00:18:54] Dr. Jodi A: be the worst thing. Tell me if it affects you are you thinking about it in the evening, in the morning before you
[00:19:00] Thom: go in? I would say usually if I'm heading into work, I don't usually feel it until I'm at work and the kids are just about to arrive. Okay. Or yeah, in the evening, off and on, I'm either not thinking about it or I am thinking about it.
[00:19:18] Thom: 50 50. Maybe more like 80. I'm not spending 80 percent of my time thinking
[00:19:24] Dr. Jodi A: about it. When you think about it, that 20 percent of the time, how does it affect your evening,
[00:19:29] Thom: like home
[00:19:29] Dr. Jodi A: with your family,
[00:19:30] Thom: badly, I would say. We're not doing anything drastically different but that part I wouldn't prefer to change, I like coming home to a nice, quiet life, watching TV just enjoying life.
[00:19:43] Dr. Jodi A: But you're not 20 percent of the time you're, it's not as good as it was. And what is that when you said it's not going well, is it like, cause there's some like conflict or you're pacing or you're just uncomfortable and stressed in your head? What?
[00:20:00] Thom: Correct. Uncomfortable. Mentally pacing off center worrying about things where, I shouldn't need to worry about anything until the next morning.
[00:20:11] Dr. Jodi A: You, so I, you watched the beginning of this episode when I was introducing high functioning anxiety and talking about if you were if you knew what it was, did you do, does any of that resonate with you?
[00:20:24] Thom: Oh yeah, it did actually. Especially the adrenaline not turning off part.
[00:20:30] Dr. Jodi A: Yeah. I was wondering if that would be actually helpful at home because I you're if you knew this overthinking about, the stress of the day or the job and that kind of stuff, if you knew that was adrenaline causing it and not your inadequacy causing it, which is what like your mind's telling you, right?
[00:20:50] Thom: Exactly.
[00:20:51] Dr. Jodi A: If you knew that it was adrenaline causing it because you're still recovering from this event and it wasn't like, it's interesting. Cause you're like it wasn't really a trauma. I wasn't there. But the guilt that you felt that you could have caused something horrible I think there, there was trauma in the overwhelm of that guilt and the constant thinking about the guilt and what the consequences might have been if it were different, right?
[00:21:17] Dr. Jodi A: So the you're responding to that. So first of all, I want you to have tons of compassion for yourself. Because it means you care about them and you care about your job and you care about, not hurting anybody, of course you do. But they have a lot of compassion for that guilt.
[00:21:32] Dr. Jodi A: And maybe we need to talk also about how to put that guilt down, but if you knew that guilt has caused this adrenaline. And you knew that these thoughts, these 20 percent of the time in the evening, that's now taken with the stress that used to not be. If you knew that was adrenaline and you could do positive self talk instead of trying to figure it out, if you're okay or not, or going to be fired or not, or how to prevent it or, like we get caught in the content of those thoughts.
[00:22:01] Dr. Jodi A: The thoughts came from the adrenaline, but we get stuck in the content and we perpetuate it. Does that make sense?
[00:22:06] Thom: That entirely makes sense, yeah, it feels like going in a, constantly going in a circle.
[00:22:11] Dr. Jodi A: Yeah, so we're feeding it, and then you feel worse about yourself so it's just the whole thing is like perpetuating and perpetuating.
[00:22:19] Dr. Jodi A: And several levels. So if you were to do it, if you were to be like, okay, that guilt caused this huge raise in adrenaline in general, more than I've had in my life, because luckily you haven't had anxiety. So it makes sense. It came from a context. Of the guilt and the, we can have a context of our life, the thing that happened, but then we have a context of our mind, like how we thought about it or how we responded and the context of what happened and the guilt that you felt afterwards created this high adrenaline.
[00:22:52] Dr. Jodi A: Because it stressed your body out and stressed your mind out. It's Oh my gosh, this is, I can't survive in a community if I, blow up the classroom. Yeah. So like the guilt was so intense. So now we know why the adrenaline came. It's biological. We understand it from the context and you could talk yourself out of that 20 percent and probably heal and get that anxiety down in the evening.
[00:23:17] Dr. Jodi A: And maybe then, maybe overall, it will spill into the day time too. If you were at school and the kids are about to come in and you're like, Oh yeah, that's adrenaline. Now, because it's happened every time, right before the students came in, your brain remembers that as a trigger. So it's Oh, this is when we get stressed.
[00:23:36] Dr. Jodi A: So it's created that as a habit to when you're waiting for the kids to come in your amygdala, which releases, which signals the release of the adrenaline is now's the time to help Thom and it releases your adrenaline. And so I want you to, again, at that time be like, Oh, thanks amygdala.
[00:23:54] Dr. Jodi A: If I needed you right now, that'd be great, but I don't need you right now. Instead of trying to talk yourself out of all the thoughts, we want to stop them. We don't want to get into them in the first place. You know what I mean? They're just nonsense thoughts. Like you're not good enough. You're going to get fired.
[00:24:09] Dr. Jodi A: We know you're not going to get fired. We know that you're performing how you've always performed.
[00:24:16] Thom: Correct. Yeah.
[00:24:16] Dr. Jodi A: You've been there a long time. They love you there. You're not going anywhere. And and so if you could, so what would decrease this overall, this anxiety you're talking about would be way before the kids came in and be like, I know I'm big delay.
[00:24:30] Dr. Jodi A: You're going to, Trigger right now. Thank you so much. If I needed you, that would be great, but I don't need you. I'm totally safe. I don't need the adrenaline right now. And then the thoughts will come less because you're not as upset. But they'll still come because it's a habit. They'll still try to come and be like, what if you have a bad day?
[00:24:48] Dr. Jodi A: I don't know what they're gonna say. You want to not get caught in the content. You want to be like, oh, that's the self doubt thought. Generically name the thought without going into the content of maybe you'll get fired today or maybe a kid will get upset today or something like that.
[00:25:06] Dr. Jodi A: You know what I mean?
[00:25:07] Thom: I do.
[00:25:09] Dr. Jodi A: Okay. So I do want you to try that. I wish we could, I wish we could do a magic wand and see how it worked out, but maybe we'll have to have you come back in a couple of weeks and tell us if it's getting better. I don't know. I feel like that'll really get stuff better for you.
[00:25:21] Dr. Jodi A: What do you think?
[00:25:22] Thom: Of course. Sure. Love to.
[00:25:25] Dr. Jodi A: Yeah. Do you feel good about this plan?
[00:25:27] Thom: Yeah, so far. I have a general understanding. It's great. Talking to myself isn't something I usually do either. , I'll have to pick up the hat.
[00:25:35] Dr. Jodi A: Yeah. You probably are arguing against these negative thoughts.
[00:25:38] Dr. Jodi A: So instead of arguing the negative thoughts, 'cause that perpetuates them, you wanna not engage in them.
[00:25:45] Thom: Yeah. Observe, don't absorb.
[00:25:47] Dr. Jodi A: Yes. You're a meditator. You're a longtime meditator, aren't you?
[00:25:51] Thom: Yes, I am, actually. Yeah.
[00:25:54] Dr. Jodi A: So you, you get it. Yes. So you're observing. So it's self talk, but it's like an observe, observing self talk.
[00:26:00] Dr. Jodi A: Thanks, Amygdala. I see what you're doing. I don't need you, but thanks anyway. Like you're not like, I'm okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm not going to get fired. You're not like doing that kind of self talk because that's like kind of arguing against the anxiety, which is really just feeding it in a lot of ways, so it's definitely more like a mindfulness kind of self talk when you're, it's more an observation. So I'm glad that you noticed that. Yay. Okay. Yeah good luck. Let us know what happens. And I really appreciate you. I think that was really helpful to people to, to see an example. And I hope it really served a lot of people.
[00:26:38] Dr. Jodi A: So we'll say goodbye.
[00:26:39] Dr. Jodi A: Anything else you want to say before we let you go?
[00:26:41] Thom: No, but I will check in within a few weeks.
[00:26:43] Dr. Jodi A: Thanks, Thom. Thanks everyone for watching. I'm here live every Monday at 8 p. m. I got lots of good tapas coming up.
[00:26:51] Dr. Jodi A: Come on over to my website, https://jodiaman.com/live. You could sign up to be a caller like Thom tonight. You could sign up to be in my text messaging group. And you could just sign up to get on the, to get my calendar so you know what topics there are or get emails about my topics, all that stuff.
[00:27:14] Dr. Jodi A: I got everything on that page, jodi aman com slash live. You could binge the old recordings and all. So thank you so much. If you're watching, if you're listening on podcasts, come on over to YouTube if you want to see it see me in person, but watch me at 8 p. m. every Monday live and I will see you next week.