Episode 162: Lou Blaser and the Performative Nature of High Functioning Anxiety - Part 1
In this episode, I’m going to go deep into the performative nature of high functioning anxiety and talk with Lou Blaser from the Second Breaks Podcast.
Well, we made it to 2021! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. I know I’m excited to be back at the podcast after a short break.
One of the most challenging aspects of High Functioning Anxiety is the Catch-22 of the positive affirmations you receive for being so on-it and accomplishing so much versus the overwhelm and exhaustion you feel under the surface.
Does this sound familiar?
This Catch-22 causes those of us with HFA to be extremely performative in how we approach our lives. The never-let-them-see-you-sweat idea permeates everything we do.
On today’s episode, I’m going to go deep into the performative nature of high functioning anxiety and talk with Lou Blaser from the Second Breaks Podcast. Lou was kind enough to agree to come on and talk about her experience with anxiety and depression.
Lou and I refer to that Catch-22 as The Swan Effect: you look beautiful and calm on the outside but underneath the surface you are paddling like crazy. I am so excited for you to hear this interview.
This is part one of this conversation with Lou. Check back next week for part two!
Listen to the full episode to find out:
When Lou realized she needed help
What therapy taught her about anxiety and depression
The signs for Lou when she needs to step up her self-care practices
How both our larger culture and the culture of the corporate world keep us stuck in performing.
Resources mentioned:
+ Read the Transcript
Lou: I'm able to now catch it before it happens. I'm able to recognize the triggers or sometimes it's not even the trigger. It's just like the change in my past change, thinking the change in my patterns or thoughts. And then I go, oh, okay. He's getting closer again. The man in the black hat until let me just double down himself.
Nancy: We made it to 2021. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and I'm excited to be back at the podcast. One of the more challenging aspects of high functioning anxiety is the catch 22 of the positive affirmations you receive for being so honest and accomplishing so much versus the overwhelm and exhaustion you feel under the surface.
This catch 22 causes those of us with high functioning anxiety to be extremely performative and how we approach our lives. The never let them see you. Sweat idea, permeates everything we do. You're listening to the happier approach. The show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships.
I'm your host, Nancy Jane Smith. On today's podcast. I'm talking with Lou blazer from the second breaks podcast. Lou was kind enough to agree to come on and talk about her experience with anxiety and depression, Lou and I refer to that catch 22 as the Swan effect, you look beautiful and calm on the outside, but underneath the surface you are paddling like crazy.
I am so excited for you to hear this interview. This episode has a part. Yeah. And a part two will be released next week. Keep listening to hear when Lou realized she needed help, what therapy taught her about anxiety and depression, the signs for Lou when she needs to step up her self-care practices, how both our larger culture and the culture of the corporate world keep us stuck in performance.
I'm so excited today to introduce Lou blazer from the second brakes podcast, she is here to talk to us about her experience with high-functioning anxiety. I just can't say enough, Lou. I know this is hard and requires a ton of vulnerability. And so I really appreciate you being here. And sharing your story because I think any time we can hear someone else's story, it helps us, it just makes it less lonely,
Lou: yes. Yeah. And as I mentioned to you before we hit record, it's not something that I normally talk about in the grand scheme of things, but I will do it with you because you, and I'm comfortable talking about it with you.
Nancy: So how would you say let's just dive right in. How would you say your high functioning anxiety shows up?.
Lou: Okay. So whenever I think about anxiety or depression or any kind of mental wellbeing sort of topic, I always think in terms of before and after. So I call it before awareness. It was a long period of time when I didn't know what was going on. I didn't understand what was going on. So there was that before awareness and then after awareness, I call it.
And unfortunately, most of my life I was in the, before away,
Nancy: I was just going to say, what was the timeframe? What was, when would you say the awareness came in?
Lou: I know exactly the year it happened. It was 2008. So it was about 12 years ago now. And the reason is because I just felt like. I finally had to talk to someone.
So before that I was not talking to anyone. I was not seeing a therapist. I wasn't telling anybody about anything. Not my friends, not my family. I just felt like it was something that. You don't talk about Lou, cause that's maybe a defect there. And also a couple of things I grew up in an environment where you don't talk about these things.
and it's drama. You don't want drama. Do other people say, that kind of environment. So that was one. And then two, I was working in a very competitive as a lot of people of your listeners as well. I'm sure I was working a very competitive industry where the mantra was. I don't know if it's still the mantra now, but when I was there, it was awkward.
So it's either you're moving up the ladder or you're outta here. So talking about anxiety and mental wellbeing, something we normally talk about. And so those are the kinds of things that you or I hit. And then, like I said, around 2008, I just felt okay, Lou it's over and above. I just felt like I need to talk to someone.
And so I find the, on my own, it wasn't like somebody told me is that I had to seek help. It was just, I just felt like overwhelmingly, like the water is up to my nose already. The kind of thing.
Nancy: There wasn't like a breaking point oh my gosh, like it I can’t get out of bed, or I can't function in the world.
It was just your own like whoa this is too much,
Lou: This is such a cliche and people talk about this all the time, but it's the clearest analogy, that Swan that's like smooth sailing to the surface, but frantically paddling, that is the, I know it's a cliche, but that is the visual representation of what was happening to me.
And there was, there just came a point where the paddling. That was happening beneath the surface was just too much. And I said, okay, I need to just talk to someone. And I looked up my insurance service providers and I picked someone whose name sounded like, Ooh, seems like I know I liked this person's name.
I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't ask for a recommendation because if you ask for recommendations, that means you're looking for someone, right? Exactly. Fortunately for me, Nancy Remi. Thank goodness for this. The person I went to talk to was very helpful. I glad it was her. And that was. The beginning of cracking that wall of awareness that I began to understand things.
Now, having said that it's not, and I'm sure this is not your case either, or the people that you talk to. It's not like it talked to a therapist and woo
Nancy: I wish that was the case. That would be awesome. It
Lou: It was still a struggle For many, many years, after awareness.
Nancy: Yeah. Cause I, one of my messages is I still struggle with this.
This is still a thing. It just is now I have coping skills around it that I didn't have in the past. My goal is always. Th the closing the gap of when I notice that I'm in anxiety and when I take an action and sometimes that's quick, sometimes that's days, a couple weeks ago, it was a couple of weeks that I was stuck in it and I couldn't get out of it, but sometimes it's like the straight jacket of anxiety and depression come over us and we can't get out of it.
Lou: Yeah exactly. That's it. And I think that is that gap that you're talking from the catching it, before you go into a spiral, that is the number one things that I learned from just being aware, because before I, I didn't know, I was. Catching anything I didn't know what to be aware of anything.
It just happens. And I know, and I'm in a spiral,
Nancy: you talked about anxiety and depression. Tell me how those play out for you.
Lou: So for the record, when I went to see a therapist in 2008 and we do. Questionnaires and examining and talking and dogging. And that's when I was first diagnosed was clinical depression.
I've heard of people having depression, but I didn't really understand what that meant or that, and this is going to sound very sad, but my impression of people who have. Anxiety disorders or depression is that they're catatonic
Nancy: talk about it more because that is common
Lou: That is my impression of people who are not able to be successful. Productive citizens. And then when I'm beginning to understand this, I'm like, oh my God, there's probably more of us who are experiencing it, but we're just not talking about it. Or we don't have the vocabulary or we just don't know how to talk about it safely.
That's when I began to understand these different things, I don't know necessarily how. Differentiate between am I going into a depression cycle? Or if this is a, an anxiety sort of moment, shorter moment, I just know the feelings that occur. Or the feelings that I begin to pay attention to. And I also have this is going to sound probably funny, but I have this visualization of my anxiety or my depression, and maybe it's wrong to interchange towards Nancy.
Nancy: But let me just say, I don't think it is. I love how you said that we get so caught up in what's the label. Like you said, I recognize these feelings. They're sending me down a spiral, whether that's a spiral of anxiety or depression, I just know something's off. And I got to take action and close that gap.
That's why I asked you to talk about it. Cause I think labeling it doesn’t Matter. It's just recognizing something's off and it isn't. Okay. And let me do something
Lou: Thank you exactly. Cause that's just another layer of anxiety.
So I have this I learned this when I was out regularly seeing a therapist where. I have this man in a black suit with a black hat. And I always say that this man is always with me. He is always in the room. It's just the most of the time he's far away, but sometimes I can feel, I can see him coming closer.
And that's when I knew. This is my acne anxiety flare. My depression is flaring up and I have to keep him at bay. He has to be out there in a corner out there where I can see him and he's out there saying it that way, but that is how it comes across in my head.
Nancy: Yeah. I love that because that's what I love about my characters is they give for me that same idea of, oh, I, it takes me. It takes out the personalization that there's something wrong with me. It's like that guy and he's getting closer and I got in here.
Yeah. I love that. I love that two things. I want to go back to first. I want to go back to the Swan analogy and you were like, ah, that's, it's overdone and any, all of that. Things that are over done. They're over done for a reason, because it is so common. And I think that it's so unfortunate how our society, we still really value the Swan.
Oh, we don't want to see what's underneath. And so it gets reinforced. Yes. Keep being okay. Keep being okay. Because so many people have to have a. A moment of breakdown, like everything comes crashing down before they will recognize AF problem. And that's why I love that you were able to recognize it ahead of that.
And I think that's important. And then the other thing I wanted to say was how you said. Just to draw attention to the idea that people don't have the vocabulary, or they don't have a place to talk about it safely, because I think that is so important. And that's one reason I love your analogy of the man with the black hat and the idea of the monger and the BFF, because it's giving us a language that isn't emotional as anxiety and depression, we have stigmatize those. And I know there's a lot of work in trying to de-stigmatize them, but I also think there's some help in changing the language.
Lou: I think there's also a sexist element of it. So there's this story. This was actually the time when I finally saw the therapist.
That's why this story was one of the first things I told her. We had this very intense project and with lots of problems and lots of headaches, but it was very visible to the company and the CEO and the board of directors. They were all eyes on this project that I was leaked to. My boss was leading and I was in the team.
And then. At the end of the day, he would call me in his office and he would tell me how nervous he is about this project, how anxious he feels about this project, how you know, he's worried about what is going to do to his career. If this project goes, Hey, why are all these kinds of things? And I am there to listen to dally.
Don't worry. Everything's going to be okay. We are working hard. We are meeting the milestones. Don't worry. We have a plan for attack. I am not. I'm going to say aloud, although that may be unfair, but I couldn't reflect the same thing. First of all, I felt like my role is I have to be absorbing it. And also a woman sending those things will be described.
Oldest stuff that we are described as when we are pulling those things. And so all the more I have to be more like in control and we have a plan and don't you worry, and I got your back and that's why you have me here. And meanwhile, I go home and I have the exact same feelings he was talking to me about.
So I think there's also that layer to it that as women we have to be, or I had to be speaking for myself, I felt like I had to be careful about how it comes across to other people so that they won't label me as emotional or drama queen or not being able to handle stress or see, she's not up to the leadership, those things.
Nancy: Ah, If the listeners could see me, I am nodding emphatically over here. But no, that is an awesome point because I think know it's both sides of the coin. It's I have to be supportive in my life who are flipping out and I can't flip out. It's a double whammy. And I think that sexism definitely plays a role there.
I think that a big part of how this plays out is that we swallow these lies without ever having anyone be like, think of it a different way. And so that's a little bit, what I want the podcast to be is a way for people to be like, oh, it doesn't have to be like, yeah, this is not something I need to swallow all the time.
Lou: I wish that I could say that if I was a little bit braver. That I could have poked about it more that I could have been more transparent about it. But I say I wish because to be honest, I am not sure if I had been bravery, if I had been integrated, been received well, or if it would have been a safe environment.
So I think that. For me, one of the most important things that happened was seeking a therapist because that was the safe environment to be able to talk about it. And then as I learn more about it, I read more about it. Then I said, oh, there are other people. And then meeting other people who like you in our community that we both belong in that weekend.
Talk about this things and it's safe and nobody's going to judge you and nobody's going to say, oh, Nancy is flipping out. And so that's safe environment. I don't know. I'm not in corporate America anymore. So 2014 I stepped away. I would hope that these days it's a little bit more open for example, I say that because pick Harvard business review, like when I was climbing the ladder, there, weren't a lot of mental wellbeing articles written in Harvard business.
I read those articles now. So maybe there's more openness. Now, maybe there's more awareness now about these things, that these are things that need to be getting discussed or managed in the workplace.
Nancy: But I'm glad you said that because I think our tendency is to, when we. See a different way of doing it, then we're like, oh, I need to tell everyone about this, or I'm not being brave, as you said.
And I think being brave is recognizing where is it safe to talk about this? It's recognizing, going into the corporate, going to my boss and being like, Hey, I'm in therapy and I'm learning this and this. Not safe, not a good plant, not smart. So that idea, we go to that black and white thinking of, oh, I'm gonna, I learned this, so I need to be brave and share it with everyone.
I think if we could just start talking about it in the areas where we're safe. And practice building up that resilience around it then potentially maybe with a capital M we can head out into the world and start talking about it differently. Exactly. Because there are a lot of messages around it. Not doing it.
Lou: Yeah, but sometimes I feel on defense because there is this message or sentiment out there that for those of us who understand that we should speak out and speak up about these things and advocate these kinds of conversations. But there's also recognizing that it could be harmful if you are just having discussions, Willy nilly about it.
Things are not paying attention to where you're having these discussions. Yeah. Let's talk about it openly all the time.
Nancy: Yeah. I agree with you. You're not going to go to someone who is completely closed down about these topics and start talking about it, but to be open to recognizing others a window here, let me share, ah, I was a Swan.
Yeah.
Lou: For example, I'm just being perfectly candid, like back in 2004, 2005. If you walked up to me, Nancy, and tell me, can you talk about your anxiety? I'll be like, Nancy, what are you talking about?
Nancy: Yeah.
Yes. I'm not going there because I would even agree. I would agree. I agree with you. I would feel the same way and I'm a freaking thing. No, I would have been like, I don't have anxiety. I help people with anxiety. It's not my thing. I'm a Swan ruined through. There's no paddling underneath, even I am just together.
Lou: Yeah. I love that word. I am together. Yes,
Nancy: because that's the biggest challenge, I think, with all of this, but specifically with the high functioning piece. That we get so much praise for being a Swan to admit that we're paddling so hard underneath is a point of shame. And to admit that we're struggling with paddling underneath is a point of shame.
I was a major off for me when I realized with food where I want to be with food is to eat whatever I want and not have any ramifications. It's not that I want to get my eating under control. I went to magically be able to eat whatever I want because I value people that can eat whatever they want and not gain weight.
I think they're way cooler than me. They figured something out and it's just fricking metabolism, but the same is true that I want to be able to do all the stuff and be on top of it and be a Swan. But it's a negative that I'm paddling so hard underneath.
Lou: Yeah exactly. Talk about that paddling thing. The funny thing for me, so I started seeing a therapist in 2008, then I was regularly seeing her for years.
And so that was obviously helpful and I was starting to read things a bit more. So my awareness, my understanding of it. But the thing is that really what's helped me is when I stepped away from corporate America. So let me just make sure I clarify that it's not that stepping away from corporate America is this illusion.
It is this because as soon as I stepped away from corporate America, I no longer had to perform they in day out for other people. Together image before when I was going to the office every day, Monday to Friday, or sometimes when they just Saturday, whatever it was, I was all on, but then I stepped away and I started doing things for myself and start my own business, this pressure to perform for others, to look together all the time disappeared overnight.
Yeah. And then I started to feel like, okay, I can allow myself to feel this way and all those other pressure disappeared over that, that to me was very helpful. And then I began to be able to be more. Aware of when it's happening that catching it because I'm allowing myself to feel it, whereas before it was like, it's always there's always this defenses up mechanism so that I'm not even really feeling because I'm fighting it all the time.
Nancy: Because it wasn’t safe to feel it
Lou: Its wasn't, right? But as soon as that thing where I'm allowing myself to feel it, so then I'm able to now catch it before it happens. I'm able to recognize the triggers or sometimes it's not even the trigger. It's just like the change in my past to change thinking the change in my patterns or thoughts.
And then I go, oh, okay. He's getting closer again. The man in the black hat until let me just double down himself.
Nancy: That totally makes sense. Cause I think that it is that idea, which is first the chicken or the egg because society, culture, corporate America is broken in this belief that we all need to be beautiful swans and to be mentally healthier and to be better human beings that we can't have that image.
And so it doesn't fit in. With what the larger culture wants us to be. As you said, I'm not advocating that everyone leave corporate America, right? It's a lot harder. The change, the behavior. If you are immersed in, you have to be a Swan. You have to be a Swan. You have to be a Swan. You have to be a Swan.
Yeah. I also wanted to comment on you catching yourself. You said it's not a trigger. And I think that is important to recognize too. That it's not like it gets triggered it's sometimes it does, but sometimes it just comes on. Sometimes it just the anxiety and the thoughts and the, it just overwhelms us, so I will say sometimes my inner critic, just as louder than other days, the monger is louder. And so on those days she can come in and it's like a straight jacket that she puts on me. It just happens.
A huge, thank you to Lou. It takes a lot of courage to be willing, to be so vulnerable.