Do you find yourself grappling with anxiety in the workplace, affecting your decision-making, productivity, and relationships?

In this thought-provoking podcast episode, host Aoife O'Brien engages in an insightful conversation with Morra Aarons-Mele, author of "Hiding in the Bathroom" and host of "The Anxious Achiever" podcast. They dive deep into the topic of anxiety in the workplace, exploring its impact on individuals and organisations. Morra shares valuable insights on recognising anxiety triggers, understanding default behaviours, and the concept of over and under-functioning in family systems theory. The discussion sheds light on how anxiety influences decision-making, work relationships, and personal well-being, offering practical tips for self-awareness and coping mechanisms.

The main points throughout this podcast include:

- Recognising anxiety triggers and understanding how they affect behaviours and decision-making.

- Exploring the concept of over and under-functioning in family systems theory.

- Navigating perfectionism and its connection to anxiety in the workplace.

- Addressing anxiety in a systemic context and the role of organisations in supporting mental health.

- Encouraging self-awareness and mindful behaviours to cope with anxiety.

"If you're feeling like your anxiety is at a place where you're avoiding things that you used to like to do, or you show up at work and you can't concentrate and you just stare into space or scroll Instagram for hours. Please get help. Because the good thing is that anxiety is really common. It's the most common mental illness in the world and it's part of the human condition. And so there's wonderful treatments."

Connect with Morra Aarons-Mele:

Website: https://www.morraaaronsmele.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morraaaronsmele/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/morraam

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/morraam/

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

https://happieratwork.ie

https://www.impostersyndrome.ie/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aoifemobrien

Twitter - https://twitter.com/HappierAtWorkHQ

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/happieratwork.ie/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/happieratwork.ie

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0FKS19I5qSlFFmkx1YGqA

I have a question for you. What are you doing to support women to leadership positions in your organization? From all of the work I have done with both individuals and organizations, I have compiled my learnings on this issue in my new guide, 15 Ways to Support Women in Leadership. You can download it for free at happieratwork. Ie resources. The guide address us not only the individual responsibility of us as women looking to get to those leadership positions, but also the challenge of creating a supportive environment. A reminder of that, address happieratwork. Ie forward slash resources you're listening to the Happier at Work podcast, and I'm your host, IFA O'Brien. Through a combination of solo episodes and interviews with some incredible guests, we bring you the insights and practical tips to create happier working environments for you and your teams. If you enjoyed today's episode, consider sharing it with a friend or a colleague and leaving a rating or review on your favorite platform.

If you're feeling like your anxiety is at a place where you're avoiding things that you used to like to do, or you show up at work and you can't concentrate and you just stare into space or scroll instagram for hours, please get help. Because the good thing is that anxiety is really common. It's the most common mental illness in the world, and it's part of the human condition, and so there's wonderful treatment.

My guest on the podcast today is Maura Erins Mealy, and she is the author of a new book called The Anxious Achiever, which I'm in the middle of reading at the moment, and also a podcast of the same name. Now, as you may have gathered from the title, we are talking about being anxious. And while I don't consider myself an anxious person, I can absolutely relate to a lot of what Maura talks about, both in her book and on today's podcast episode. So we're talking about things relating to overachieving, although we haven't necessarily explicitly said that. But the Anxious Achiever people who are really driven to do stuff, they're just internally driven. As always, I'll be doing a summary at the end of some of the key points that we talked about today and maybe some things that you may do differently as a result of listening to today's episode. So do stay tuned for that, and I'd love to hear if you have done anything different, if you can relate to any of the topics that we talk about today on the episode. And all of my social links are on my website, happieratwork. Ie. Maura, you're so welcome to the Happier at Work podcast. I know we've had this planned for a few months at this stage, and I've been really, really looking forward to speaking to you as my guest today. Do you want to let people know a little bit about your background, who you are and a bit of your career history?

Sure.

Thanks.

YEEBA, it's great to be here. So I wrote this book because I have been an anxious achiever for decades. At this point, I am sort of a person whose baseline is very high, anxiety for whatever reason, nature, nurture, chemistry, who knows, and have had to manage my own mental health very intensely. I have bipolar two disorder, and so I've had periods of intense creative hypomania and then deep depression as well. But throughout it all, I have a kind of very highly anxious baseline. And through managing this and talking to lots of other people and studying that, I have really learned to integrate mental health into my showing up every day and my leadership. And I think it's really, really important that we do that. We're really scared of talking about mental illness, certainly, but mental health in general in the context of work. And yet we all have it, and almost 90% of us at some point in our life will be mentally ill. And so it's really, really important that instead of fighting it, ignoring it, working it away, drinking it away, all the things we do to try to not feel uncomfortable feelings that we get in touch with it. And I hope that that's what my work with the Anxious Achiever does. My goal is really to present both tools and strategies, but stories of successful, passionate people who manage both mental illness and being neurodivergent in a world that expects a typical brain, whatever that is.

Well, this is it. What is typical anymore? And I love this because it is this idea of mental health, and I think it's one of the taboos that still exists at work. So we're talking about diversity and inclusion, we're talking about bringing in diverse minds and things like that. But still people are afraid, I think, to open up and to share about what's going on for them from a mental health perspective. And exactly as we say, we all have mental health, and maybe that mental health goes into the mental illness stage or it kind of goes more on the perceived negative side of things and it's just not something that people are as open about. And I'm in the middle of reading your book. I haven't finished it just yet. But you're so right in the stories of all of these amazing people who've had incredible achievements, despite this perception of like, wow, that person has really high anxiety or something. So I'd love to kind of take that as a jumping off point for our conversation, this idea that anxiety can be used or can be seen as a superpower rather than something that's debilitating.

Yeah, I mean, I don't want to sugarcoat things ever. Mental illness is awful and terrible and scary. Anxiety can be both. Anxiety exists along a spectrum. We're all anxious at times because it's a very natural human emotion and it's actually helped keep us alive for millennia. So it's normal to feel anxious and certainly anybody who is pushing themselves for achievement or just human is going to feel anxious, right? So we have to accept that anxiety is part of life. And sometimes anxiety is very motivating, right? It's the anxiety that we feel before we're about to take the stage or meet a deadline or do something we care about. Anxiety is problematic when it's chronic, when it gets in the way of our day to day life, when we start avoiding things. And anxiety can slip into illness territory, disorder territory, when we do find ourselves feeling like, you know what, I'm going to avoid going to that event because I'm too anxious about it or I can't sleep because my brain feels like it's literally on fire, that's when we need help. So anxiety runs along a spectrum. And the brilliant thing about learning to understand how your own anxiety shows up for you is that you can manage it, right? Anxiety is malleable. You can't control it and maybe you can't cure it, but you can manage it and learn from it. And that's really what I want to help people do.

Yeah. To really understand. And that was another thing that I picked up on, is really growing in self awareness. So what is this trying to tell me? And do you have any examples that you'd like to share in relation to that? Like, how can we use what's going on for us to learn about ourselves?

I think that's the quest of leadership, right? We know that the best leaders are self aware leaders.

Yes.

And a huge piece of that is how our brain and our emotions show up every single day. Right? I mean, that's the essence of who we are. And so anxiety is a key piece of that. And I think what's really important is that you may never be able to control what triggers you because life is hard and uncontrollable and we are all triggered by different things and we can't stop that, right? We can't control other people, we can't control a global pandemic, we can't control scary things, but we can learn to manage how we react. And I find that really know, I think that understanding how we react to anxiety. I love to tell the story of Harley Finkelstein, who is president of Shopify, which is a multi billion dollar e commerce platform that probably you've used whenever you've bought some of your favorite things on the know. And Harley is an anxious achiever. He said that to me when we, you know, for many years, anxiety really powered his entrepreneurship. He had experiences as a child and in his family of origin that led him to always be pushing to start new businesses, to trying to achieve financial freedom and push through. And for years, as a young man, he acknowledges that it was difficult to be around him because of that. He was so driven. And when we're anxious, sometimes we don't react in the best ways, right? We lash out, we become angry, we try to control things. But when he got in touch with it, when he went to therapy, when he learned techniques and skills and began taking care of himself and for him, meditation was very powerful. He learned that anxiety for him is a key part of who he is. He can't change that, but it also makes him the incredible entrepreneur that he is. But he also needed to tell his team, hey, listen, when I get anxious, I get in the weeds a little bit. This is what I tend to do and you need to know that and you need to talk to me about it. Don't be afraid to push back, right? Because I might get micromanagey or I might be more controlling or I just might be like really intense, right? We can all relate to that. And I want this to be a conversation and I think that that's incredible. Like who doesn't want to work for a leader who can say, listen, I have great qualities and I have some not so great qualities and here's how they show up and I want you to know that. And can we dialogue about this? Because that then opens people up to be their own selves as well.

It does. It creates that safe environment not only to have that conversation and as someone on the receiving end of being micromanaged and being your boss is in the weeds with you and you're like, how do I feel about this? But he set the scene to say, listen, if I get like that, this is why. And you can feel free to push back to me and say, hey, you're doing it again, you're in the weeds with me and you don't need to be everything's under control or whatever it might be, but to have that level of self awareness. But then exactly, as you say, the kind of secondary part of that is creating that safe environment for other people to say, and this is how I am, and this is what triggers me, and this is how I show up in the workplace. And maybe this is where I need some support or, you'll know, that I'm anxious because I'm doing X, Y and Z.

One of the areas in which I wish I had been able to say that but wasn't is. And I've talked about this before, but I don't think I talk about it in the book know, I have a real anxiety around blizzards, violent snowstorms that we get here in the East Coast of America because of a traumatic experience. When I was younger and when I was a consultant and I would travel for clients, sometimes this would really impact me. And there was one time where I was in Washington DC for a very important event with a very important client and there were reports that a blizzard, a huge blizzard was going to hit my home in Boston, and I had little babies at the time. And I became so anxious, I booked a plane and left the event in the middle of it when I was supposed to be working. And I wish I could have said to my client, even before I traveled, I can't do this. I could have set boundaries. I could have sent someone else.

Yeah.

But instead I just panicked and left, which was not a good look. And so it's your choice. Like, maybe I wouldn't have said in the middle of the event, my anxiety is spiking because I have had a traumatic experience with a blizzard and I have PTSD, but I could have figured out a solution if I had had that self awareness.

Yeah, it didn't have to be so extreme. Or, like you say, this idea of boundaries. And something that springs to my mind even before the event is it a people pleasing thing that you don't want to come across as being someone who lets other people down. So you say yes, and then you get yourself into this difficult situation that you need to then get yourself out of because you haven't created those boundaries, essentially, yes.

I'm sure many of your listeners will be understanding that and nodding their heads.

Yes, absolutely. Myself included. You say yes to things, and typically I'll say yes, and I follow through, and I just go. If I say yes to something, then you know it's definitely going to happen. But yeah, it's hard, I think, sometimes to get out of those types of situations. You brought up something important there that I know that you raise in the book, and that's dealing with our younger selves, essentially. So anything that we're facing, whether that's triggers in the workplace or triggers kind of in our day to day lives, they're typically from something that has happened to us in childhood. Whether you consider that to be a major trauma or not, it could be just something that happens, and it's something that you're afraid of or something that brings up this feeling of anxiety in you. And I know certainly I have at least two that I can think of top of mind in relation to that. So do you want to talk a little bit about that? How do we address those issues? So how do we start looking at, well, what happened to actually drive this feeling or drive this behavior? Yeah.

Triggers is such a complicated word and concept. It's an uncomfortable word because a trigger is a gun. And so in the field, you'll hear people talking more about being activated, activators. I still often use triggers because everyone knows what it means. It's also a word that's been weaponized in politics in the US. Because there's a sense that if you're triggered, you're weak.

Okay. Yeah.

You aren't strong.

You can't show up. You're beholden by your emotions or whatever it might be. Exactly.

And that's not true. Everybody has triggered triggers. We're triggered all the time. And we have to learn to deal with them. As I said earlier, we can't stop them, we can't avoid them, we can't hide in our bedrooms and just shut the world out. Right? Everyone has vulnerabilities and they're different for everyone. What makes me anxious is probably not what makes you anxious. Right? They're very individual, based on our life experience, who we are.

Right.

A lot of us are sensitive, and so we're triggered by light and noise and activity or space, physical changes. And so we have to accept that we have to understand them and we have to develop tools to move through them, right? So I really don't want people to think, oh gosh, I'm triggered, I can't it's, oh gosh, I'm triggered. How do I deal with this and manage it? Right? Let's create a more strength based approach. And so work triggers us because people are jerks and work is hard and it's overwhelming and all the things I'm.

Glad you said it, I'm glad you said it.

And money is a huge trigger for most of us. For whatever reason, we are very anxious in the presence of thinking about money, its scarcity, its value, what it says about us, right? We're triggered by other people. Do they like us, do they hate us, do they respect us? All those things? And so I really encourage people to sort of play detective, as my friend Rebecca Harley says, who's at Mass General, really understand what is individual to me and what are my triggers and how do I know they're showing up? Like, what's my radar for them? Right? Oftentimes it shows up in our body. We get really tense, our stomach starts to rumble and jump, or our heart beats really fast, or we feel like we have to go take a nap, or we reach for a glass of wine, or we reach for that Snickers bar, or we shut our laptop and avoid right. Start paying attention to your body, your thoughts, and your behaviors, because then you really understand, wow, issa triggers me when she comes at me at 08:00 A.m. With six emails in a row.

Yeah, I have an answer for that. I was watching I don't often go onto TikTok, but occasionally I do. And I went onto TikTok and it was all of these different descriptions for if people do certain things that are triggering, let's say, in the workplace, and one of them was sending multiple emails throughout the day and how to respond to that. So I got a laugh out of that. Now, if you wouldn't mind consolidating all of your emails into one email, it would help me to keep track and make sure I don't miss anything I think was real formal language instead of saying, why the hell are you sending me six emails in a row? But I just thought having those approaches or having that language to use when people do that, I think is really helpful as well.

I think it's really helpful. And look, sometimes that language is going to backfire like, I'm a realist. I think that work is work. And so if all those emails are triggering you but it's your boss, maybe you can't say that to them. But the knowledge that this is triggering you and that okay, I got this. Maybe it's not even about me. The boss is sending them because they're anxious, they're under pressure. That's very liberating.

Yeah. So thinking about it from the other person's perspective, what is the intention behind what's going on there as well? And I love this idea of noticing your body, your thoughts and your behaviors. And I suppose to share a personal example, I think things in relation to other people that trigger me. I'm very aware or very conscious of being excluded from things. Having been excluded as a young girl from, you know, if I notice I'm not included in a WhatsApp group, or if I'm not included in a night out or a weekend away or something like that, that's very triggering for me. And it's something I have noticed. I love what you say as well about what's the behavior associated with that. Then. So are we completely avoiding it? So we're not reading the emails at all because it's triggering us? Are we reaching for the Snickers bar? Are we reaching for the wine? Are we drinking our way through it to avoid it? Are we working our way through stuff to avoid how we feel? Essentially, it's what we do. We have our default modes, I suppose. And again, I know it's something that you talk about in the book, this default behavior and noticing what that is and showing some self compassion when you are behaving in that way and knowing why you're doing it.

Absolutely. We cope. Our brain doesn't want us to feel upset. So our brain learns that when we take a drink of wine, we don't feel upset. So then our brain says, oh, okay, well next time I feel this way, let's take a drink of wine because then we won't feel upset. Right?

Exactly.

Until you don't. So then a habit forms. And so part of it is I made a deal with myself for many years back to my consultant, traveling woes and anxiety that flying for me made me very anxious, especially when my kids were very little, that I was just going to take Xanax when I flew. It was sort of a deal I made. I said, this is a coping mechanism. I don't know how healthy it is. But you know what? This is okay for me. I'm going to accept it because I just have to get through the day. And sometimes we have our coping mechanisms and we think, okay, I'm going to do this. One of our coping mechanisms might be overwork. It might be staying at the office too late or always being on our email. And there are some times where we might say, you know what, I know this is an anxious behavior, but I'm okay with that right now, what I got to do to get through.

Yeah.

And then sometimes we look at our behavior and we think, this isn't serving me, this isn't healthy for me and we want to change it.

Yeah, because I was going to say, on the one hand, you have your coping mechanisms. And I'm diving into work right now because I don't want to feel these feelings and I need to kind of get this out of my system or I need to move through it, whatever it might be, versus the total and utter avoidance of what it is that we're feeling. So maybe striking the balance between that self compassion and saying, okay, this is what I need to do for myself right now to help me feel better, versus, okay, this is not going to serve me in the long term. So how do I create maybe very reluctant to use the words kind of bad or better, but how do I create a coping mechanism that better serves me?

I mean, it's all about mindfulness, right? It's about the intention and it's about really taking back the moment between the stimulus and response. That's what it's about. And in the book I do have a chapter about bad habits and unhelpful reactions. And I think that like with me and my Xanax and my flying, I sort of said this is a bad habit, but right now, as a working mom running a business with three little kids who has to be on a plane every week, I'm accepting this habit. I don't have time to take a fear of flying course and work through this. I'm just going to pop a Xanax. And I don't say this to be like, oh, I'm so great. I say this to say sometimes, even if we're mindful about an unhelpful reaction, at least we're a little bit more in control.

Yeah, it's that sense of control, but it's also the intention and the awareness around it as well, isn't it? It's not just default mode. I have no idea what's going on. I just feel terrible and I'm going to take a Xanax because I want to make myself feel better. I have this awareness, I know what's going on and I'm very deliberately taking this so that I can manage better, so that I can cope better. Absolutely. One of the things that has intrigued me in the book is this concept of over and under functioning. Do you want to kind of let people know a little bit more about the background associated with that and what they actually mean?

Yes. So this is a concept from family systems theory or boweenian theory, which is fascinating and I think very helpful for anyone who has a family who has parents and who has come from a family. And there's a woman, Dr. Kathleen Smith, who I love her work, and she's a Bowenian psychologist. And so we delve into this in the book because when you think about it, we live in systems of people, of organizations, of hierarchy, of status. And families are systems, right? They're closed systems. You might have a parent or two parents, you might have siblings, you might have cousins, grandparents, whatever. And in the system for it to function, we all have a role. We don't always choose that role. That role isn't always healthy for us. But we play a role to keep the system functioning as a kind of closed loop. And many of us who become anxious achievers, who are very driven, very ambitious, successful, but almost powered by anxiety, by a sense of, if I don't keep achieving, the world will stop. People won't love me, I'll be a failure. All the labels we put on ourselves come from a family system in which we learned our role was to overperform, was to protect, was to dive in and solve things, was to take care of mom and dad, was to grow up before our time. And we become what is called over functioners, which I think a lot of people might be nodding their heads and thinking, oh my gosh, this is me. Over functioners are people who literally sort of swoop it in and make sure that things get taken care of. But for you to be an over functioner, there has to be an under functioner. And that's where it gets tricky, right? And this plays out a lot in work because those of us who have over functioned and I am 100%, I grew up with a single mom, oldest sister, really sort of learned at a young age to take care of things, help my mom also keep an eye out for what I perceived as threats. A lot of children who grow up in alcoholic families will relate to this, where a parent feels like they're not so stable, so the kid swoops in and takes care. They're over functioning. And it's a role we learn to play. And when we learn to play it, we often get rewarded for it. And at work, people, they reward it. The problem is you're over functioning. Who's under functioning? Is it your team? Is it your direct reports? You're exhausted because you're over functioning, you're controlling, you're anxious, and they learn to underperform. Yeah, well, she's going to rewrite it anyway, so why should I take the time? She's going to tell me what to do, so why should I decide what to do? Yeah, that's not good leadership. That's just being stuck. And so we dive into that in the book. And I have to tell you, for myself, I overfunction in my relationships, over function at work. And it's been a lot of therapy and a lot of work to try to learn to cool down and let other people take space.

Yeah, I can absolutely relate to that. And just in a work context, no one likes to be thought of, or no one likes to think of themselves as the micromanager who's stepping in. And I'm trying to think of some solid examples where that might have happened when I worked in my corporate career. There's one particular example, but it was more frustration from me that maybe an under, I was going to say under before an under functioner was constantly questioning whether or not something was okay and I had to constantly check, which was quite frustrating for me. I'm kind of like just get on with it already. But definitely in my own business, I've seen examples of this where if something isn't the way I like it, I'm just going to change it anyway instead of giving it back to the person and having that sense of trust that they know what they're doing, that they have the responsibility. And so I definitely see it playing out there and also in my relationships. If I think of friendships in particular, and it took me a while to realize this, I was always the person doing the reaching out, doing the organizing, making sure that we were kind of connected and staying connected. And for one reason or another, this is a number of years ago now, I just stopped texting. I just stopped texting people and I saw then who were the people who are reaching out to me. So it's kind of really enlightening, I think, when you take the foot off the pedal a little bit in relationships or even in the work context as well, what actually happens and what comes to kind of fall as a result of that.

I'm really obsessed with perfectionism and I just did a LinkedIn learning course, actually, on navigating your perfectionism in the workplace. Perfectionism and over functioning really go together, but it's all driven by anxiety and it's all driven by habit. Like most of us have been behaving this way for years and we exhaust ourselves and the people around us. We can change.

Yes, that was my next question. If someone is listening to this. And let's have a think about the over functioners first, because it might be easier to recognize if you're an over functioner. And maybe you even think this is a brilliant thing because you have everything under control and you're on top of absolutely everything and you jump in when people need help and you're there to support everyone. And exactly like you said earlier, maura, you're getting rewarded for these behaviors. So you think it's something really brilliant. So maybe let's start with those. And maybe the first part usually is awareness and recognizing yourself in that description. But what steps can people take to kind of move beyond that?

I mean, I think there's two options, right? The first step would be to realize it and go to psychotherapy and. Dig in, right? To my family, to the roots of this. And that's really awesome. I recommend that everyone do it. But maybe you don't have time to do that. Maybe that's not an option for you. The other option is to take a more sort of cognitive behavioral approach and say I'm doing know. And often there's a person we do it with and that's really know. I'm doing this with Margaret who works for me. Every time she hands me something, I rewrite it automatically. How does that make her feel? Like, why do I do this? And literally then saying I'm not going to rewrite it next time or I'm going to schedule a meeting with her and go over it with her and give her my feedback. Sometimes I ask people to just do little experiments, right? Like, what if I didn't dive in and schedule the meeting first? What if I was late? What if I didn't proofread before it went to the client? Now that might feel too scary to you.

Yeah.

So is there something a little bit smaller? But ultimately it all comes down to a question, which is who told me I had to be perfect all the time?

Who told me I had to be.

Special all the time? Who told me it was my job to fix things? Because we get rewarded for this behavior until we don't. Ultimately, we're going to hit a wall because if we truly want to grow and delegate and lead, obviously this sounds silly, like we can't do it all ourselves and just control and grit our teeth through things and so at some point going to bite you.

Yeah. And I suppose I'm thinking from the organization perspective, you can't be in a senior position and be on top of absolutely everything that's under you, that's within your control. You have to let it go. You have to trust people and trust that they are going to take care of things and that they are going to step up and that they're capable to do that as well. Yeah.

And the other thing that's a truism that is really hard for us to understand is that we can't be equally emotionally invested in every single outcome every day. That is again, a habit that overfunctioners get into because the stakes feel very high if things go wrong. And again, I think a lot of you could can see a direct line back to our past.

Yeah.

But when every single outcome has us literally, I want people to think about like their muscles being tight and they're, oh, I'm so much invested. This has to happen. This is going to burn us out, it's going to burn everyone out. It's not realistic. And so we have to learn to be okay with some things getting out of what we feel like is our control. We just have to be okay with that.

Does that link then, from what you're saying? For me, there's a strong link between that and prioritization. So if you're saying I'm emotionally invested in all of these outcomes equally, all at the same time, it makes it so much more difficult to prioritize and say, well, actually, if some of these can slip through the net, or if some of these don't have to be as perfect as I would like them to be, which ones are they? It makes it much more difficult to choose.

Oh, yeah, 100%. That's such a great point. I really appreciate that because also it's the emotional investment that's about us. This is why this anxiety is all a little bit narcissistic, right? Because we think that everything is about us. We think that if that spreadsheet has an error in it, it's a direct judgment on us, and we forget about the maybe hundreds of other people who are involved.

Yeah.

And again, if it's always about us and our own achievement and what we see as a judgment on us, well, we're not really a great manager. We're not really a great leader. We're sort of just a very intense, worried, controlling person.

Yeah. Intense, worried.

And I say that as one myself.

No, I can totally relate. And I suppose the interesting thing I'd love to talk about the underfunctioners in a second, but I think the interesting thing for me throughout this is I would never have used the term anxiety to describe maybe bouts of, like, oh, yeah, I feel really intense feelings, and maybe I'm feeling a bit anxious about something. But the behaviors that you're describing, I can absolutely relate to. But at the same time, I would never have described myself as anxious. And I'm wondering if there's other people who are listening, maybe who exhibit those behaviors and they can't make that connection between anxiety and their behaviors. Essentially. Yeah.

I mean, it feels weird to a lot of us. Right, again, because a lot of these behaviors are habits. So, I mean, to me, then, the question I would ask people to think about is what's the feeling that accompanies these behaviors? Like, if I could tap into the feeling and the motivation, is it a sense of worry? Is it a sense of feeling like, if I don't do this, things will be bad? Really drill down to the essential feeling? Because a lot of what motivates us to do what we think might be our best work is anxiety, is a feeling that if we don't do this, the outcome will be bad. Whatever that bad means.

Yeah. Not only bad, but then we'll be judged on that bad outcome, and we'll be taught to be this bad person who can't perform or things like that. So I'd love to kind of come back to the under functioners then, and that being the kind of the flip side of the over functioners. Like, we can't have one without the other. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that and maybe where that stems from, what that behavior looks like in the workplace, and maybe what we can do about it. Yeah.

I will say I know a lot less about under functioning because of my focus on sort of anxious achiever. But here's the truth. Under functioning is driven by anxiety, too, okay? A lot of perfectionists are under functioners, okay? Because when we're so worried about an outcome and what it says about us, we might avoid it, we might procrastinate it. So a lot of underfunctioners are equally anxious. They just learned a behavior that says, well, if I pretend like this doesn't exist, maura is going to come and fix it, so that's fine.

Yeah.

And so we attract each other, and I might underfunction with you IFA but not under function with someone else.

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Because for some reason, our dynamic, like, we see each other. There's a chemistry.

Yeah.

And I've learned that if I avoid something, you're just going to come fix it. And so it's a perfect fit for me.

Yeah. I'm just going to come pick it up, whatever it was that you didn't get done. And I could have someone at the other side who's doing exactly the same for me in a particular area. Maybe it's an area that I'm avoiding deliberately or that I'm not interested in or not good at, whatever that might be.

Some people are chronic underfunctioners, and they learn how to get by on other things. Right. I think there's, like, we all know the kid who's very funny and doesn't do well in such a stereotype, but it happens. Very funny, doesn't do well in school, is the class clown, is the family joker.

Yeah.

That person might have an over functioner who helps and takes care of logistics and solves things, while my role is to be charming and funny. We've all had that dynamic with someone at work who the clients love them. They're so fun, and they don't do any work, and we do all the work.

Yeah. I can think of a few examples, and I'm sure people listening can think of a few examples. You might call them the Loafers or the Coasters or whatever it might be.

But they have their role. People like them. And so that's really interesting. Like, do I keep finding myself with this dynamic in my life? Did I marry this person?

We've covered a lot of ground. Is there anything in particular or any of the key points you feel from the book that we haven't necessarily covered today or any other points that you'd like to kind of make people aware of?

I would just say that if any of this stuff is resonating for you, that's okay. It just means that you're human.

Yeah.

And I really, really would encourage people. If you're feeling like your anxiety is at a place where you're avoiding things that you used to like to do or you show up at work and you can't concentrate and you just stare into space or scroll instagram for hours. Please get help. Because the good thing is that anxiety is really common. It's the most common mental illness in the world and it's part of the human condition. And so there's wonderful treatments. So that's the first thing I want to say. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, wow, you know what? This is no good.

Yeah, get help. But you also might be thinking, again, going back to this idea of the default behaviors. Like now that I know this, I just don't want to deal with it because that's your default behavior is avoiding things. Or you're going to reach for the Snickers bar, you're going to get a glass of wine while you're listening to this podcast to help make you feel better.

Yeah, I hope this podcast hasn't triggered you too much, but if it has, that's data. And I think the really exciting thing and what I feel is so magical is that when we're willing to listen, anxiety can help us actually change. And then the last thing I want to say I think is very important from a workplace perspective, which is that we have a tendency in mental health and in self help to put the onus on an individual to change. And when it comes to feeling anxious at work, it's very easy to say, well, go get therapy, we have a license for telehealth. Go get therapy, things will be fine. That's not true anxiety. Mental health is intersectional. It's systemic.

Yeah.

And so everything that is bad about the systems that we work in, patriarchy bias, racism, classism inequality, all those things show up in the systems at work and make us anxious too. And so it's not just about us fixing ourselves. It's about organizations understanding the role they play. Because the data is very clear that work is not great for people's mental health at this point in time.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, going kind of full circle on this, what we talked about at the start, essentially, we're all trickery each other with our own stuff that we're bringing with our own emotions, with our own behaviors. And yeah, so it's not probably the best place to be around other people, but hopefully this episode has given people a taste of what they can do, a taste of maybe gaining a little bit of self awareness and what practical steps that they can take to address any issues that have come up because of listening. Or awareness that has come up because of listening. More the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, what does being happier at work mean to you?

I really do think it means not waking up with a sense of dread in the morning and not being afraid to be who you are.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't sound great, but at the same time, there's so many people who do wake up with a sense of dread. As in, it sounds like something that should be normal, not waking up with a sense of dread. But I think there are a lot of people out there who wake up with a sense of dread, or they.

I know there are the sense of.

Dread on the Sunday night before they go into work on the Monday or the whole weekend. And I've been there myself as well. So, yeah, I love that, just not having that. And I know you reference this pit in the stomach in the book as well. It's so visceral. I think that you can absolutely relate to that. If people want to find out more about you, if they want to get their hands on the book, what's the best place they can do that?

Well, you can buy the book wherever you get your books. I was just in London at Waterstones and I went to visit it, it was there. It's funny and I haven't been to Ireland recently, but I hope it's available. And please listen to the podcast, the Anxious Achiever. Wherever you get your podcast and if you have a question for me, you.

Want to reach out to me, just.

Find me on LinkedIn and I'll write you back.

Brilliant. Thank you so much and thank you so much for your time today. I absolutely enjoyed this conversation. I'm sure we could have gone down lots and lots of different avenues and little laneways and things, but absolutely, really enjoyed this conversation and I think people listening today are going to take so much from it.

Thank you so much.

That was Maura errands, mealy of the Anxious Achiever podcast and the book of the same name and I absolutely loved that conversation. I took so much from it as well and I hope you did too. Now, before I go on to share some of the key points that I took away from today's episode, I wanted to remind you to get involved in the conversation. Do let me know what you thought of today's episode. You'll find all of my social links on the website happieratwork. Ie. So the first point that Moore made was in relation to mental illness generally, and sharing that 90% of people will be mentally ill at some point in their life, which it's a pretty shocking statistic. So this really should be, I suppose, relatable to people who've either been directly impacted by it or have been impacted through a family member or a friend or something like that. She talked about anxiety as a spectrum, so about finding that balance, about not being, I suppose, too anxious on the one end that it's really, really debilitating, but just using enough anxiety that kind of fuels you forward. So, like a lot of things in life, I think understanding it as a spectrum, I think is really important, and knowing when things are a little bit off the rails, maybe just understanding that about yourself. We talked about the fact that we are emotional creatures. So the best leaders are often the ones who are self aware. So they know what's going on with themselves, they know what triggers them, they know how their behavior impacts on other people. And we're all triggered all of the time, essentially. But we can't control what triggers us. What we can control is how we respond to what triggers us. And I love the example that she shared from Finkelstein in relation to being self aware. So he knows when he gets anxious and he gets into the weeds with the work that he's doing with his direct reports and he's getting into micromanaging territory there when he feels anxious because he feels he needs to control everything. So I think a really strong example that a lot of people can absolutely relate to, we talked about how triggers are from childhood, essentially. So something that's happened, and it may not have been even traumatic. It may have been traumatic, but it doesn't necessarily have to have been madly traumatic to be something that triggers us then, in adulthood. How we know we're being triggered is we can feel it in our body. We behave differently, and maybe our thoughts are racing as well. I know certainly for me, it's probably more the thoughts rather than anything else, the body a little bit, but absolutely the thoughts. We talked about having a strength based toolkit we didn't go into a huge amount of detail on. You know, one thing that did come up was this idea of mindfulness. And then I know, certainly for myself, exercise is really, really important as well for being able to manage that. And Moira does mention that in the book as well. We talked about coping mechanisms and I suppose maybe the good, the bad and the ugly. So reaching for the glass of wine or the Snickers bar when we're feeling a little bit triggered or when our emotions are running a little bit high versus doing something that maybe serves us a little bit better. But also with the recognition that we need to be self, compassionate, and whatever is working for us in that time is really, really important to do that. So thinking about what's serving us well in the moment, I loved the idea that she shared in relation to it being a systemic issue, so it's not an individual issue. There are things out there that will trigger us. And in terms of the way I talk about Imposter syndrome, I used to focus exclusively on the individual. Now I talk a lot more about the systems that we're in. That is perpetuating imposter syndrome, essentially, and the changes that we need to make at that organizational level in order to help. In my case, it's mostly women succeed in the workplace. So thinking about it from not just the individual interventions that we can use, from an anxiety perspective, but also the systemic. So how do we work all together to make sure that we can support people going through mental health difficulties? We talked about this and this really fascinated me as well as one of the parts that I was really interested in by the book because it was so relatable. If I'm honest, this idea of over functioning and under functioning. So over functioning is stepping in when things aren't done, maybe exactly as you would like, or you're just correcting something that people have done already. Very strong correlation with perfectionism as well, wanting to control things or wanting things to be done a very specific and certain way. So if you recognize those behaviors in yourself, whether it's over functioning, which is the stepping in, or the under functioning, which is basically leaving things for other people to pick up again, it's this idea of self awareness and recognizing that in yourself. Now, the final thought I wanted to leave you with was one of the quotes that I took from today's episode and that is when we're willing to listen, anxiety can help us change. That's it for today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed. Thank you for staying tuned for so long. Really, really appreciate you listening in today. That was another episode of the Happier at Work podcast and if you've made it this far, well done you. Thank you so much for taking the time out to listen to today's episode. If you did enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating, a review or share it with a friend. I would love for you to get involved in the conversation. And also if you'd like to know more about how can help you or your business, head on over to happieratwork. Ie.