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Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Owning It, the Anxiety podcast with me, your host and author, Caroline Forn. This week on the series, I am rejoined by Dr. Soph. As you all know, we're on Instagram, but she's Dr. Sophie Mort. She has been an expert guest on with me. I think this is her third or maybe even fourth time to join me. It's always a pleasure to have her. She explains everything in such a brilliant way.
And this time we're talking about not only her new book, Unstuck, which is all about habits and motivation, and goes a little bit further than I think other books have maybe gone before on that subject but we're also diving into something which I've been meaning to talk about for a long time and that is highly functioning anxiety Sophie's new book Unstuck is widely available now it's already
been published and I encourage you to get your hands on a copy and in the meantime enjoy our chat and I certainly learned a thing or two that I had not heard before about highly functioning anxiety. Dr. Sophie Morris, thank you for returning again to owning it. I'm just so delighted to have you back. You are one of my favorite people to follow on Instagram because you just, you just explain everything so well. You're nailing the digestible content that I'm like.
okay, I can actually take this and implement this today. And that's so important and so powerful in a world like social media can be such a source of anxiety and you're there disrupting that. So thank you for that. Gosh, what a lovely introduction. And thank you so much for inviting me back on. I love seeing your billboard. Who's killing it? I know. Very exciting. I mean, just a few steps away from Times Square, I reckon.
100% or actually like a full blown statue. Maybe. Yeah. Let's see if I can get that going. But tell me about your, this is your second book. Yes. Oh my goodness. You've been a busy bee. Tell me everything about it. What makes this different? What are you excited about? Who is this book for? Okay. So this book is called Unstuck Five Steps to Break Bad Habits and Get Out of Your Own Way.
How would I describe it? It's so different from the first one. I mean, for me, it feels kind of night and day. And what I mean by that is when people come to therapy. Often in the beginning, they come with acute symptoms, you know, something very specific they want to get over. Let's say, for example, it's anxiety, but it could also be OCD, low self-esteem. There's a myriad of reasons that people come to therapy.
And often in the beginning, we spend time really doing psychoeducation as well as teaching strategies that will help people get through whatever it is that they're there for. most people wonderfully get to a point where they feel so much better. Now at this point, there's this Often this lease of life, this kind of feeling of, oh my goodness, now I'm kind of free from what felt like a prison. I'm so excited to get back into my life. I want to make sure that I don't squander this newfound energy.
And it's a really exciting time. And normally people rush out of therapy like, oh, I've got all these things to do. I know what I want to do. And then more often than not, they come back a week later or maybe a few months down the line and they're like, so.
I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted hobbies. I knew I wanted to kind of do this for my job. I wanted to learn this language. I wanted to travel. But I tried to put it into practice and I seemed to be back in my old ways. And that's because... Kind of this kind of courageous believing that I can have a different life is the first step. And then what happens, I'm sure lots of people recognize this, is we think willpower.
And the decision to change our life is enough. But actually... Over 40% of our actions every day are habitual. That means you don't choose them at all. You may believe you do because part of habit is a craving and urge, but they're just happening simply because you've been cued to do it. The second part of therapy, if people choose to come back, is often around, okay, let's nail down what the barriers are to you living that life you choose. And this often means teaching the science of habit.
It means teaching about heuristics, so these cognitive biases that make us make decisions that aren't often in our best interests. It means identifying and overcoming self-sabotage. The drama triangle, these kind of conflictual patterns that keep us living life on repeat in our relationships and then intergenerational patterns too.
When I say it's like night and day from the first book, whilst the second book absolutely draws on real life examples, it's got all of the up-to-date science that will help you understand why you're stuck and how to move forward. The difference is it's not really focusing on mental health per se, but it's focusing on living a good life, living more to the point, getting back in the driver's seat of your life. I think the psychoeducation part is so important. And I feel like.
that's the part we kind of nail and we get and because like we can do our homework and we can understand we can wrap our head around these theories and it's so widely available now and so accessible but then putting things into place and like I'm so guilty of it myself or like you know
i i know all the things that i should be doing and when it comes to habits i need this book so bad in my life i am honestly i was having a chat with my husband last night like i think i actually like suffer with laziness like i I'm like, he's like, well, cause I'm having all this chronic back pain. He's like, well, you know, you just need to do your exercises every day for it. I'm like, yeah, I know. But then I just don't like, it's just like, oh no, I just.
I find any excuse I'm like what is wrong with me like even when there's some like real negative downside to something like I can't seem to just do the right thing for me for the long term like I'm so short term. um I think so short-term and I think I've kind of been letting myself off the hook about it in a way I think like I've been diving into so much self-compassion that I'm like
Actually, I'm giving myself too much of a free pass here. I need to get my shit together. You've just said so many absolutely brilliant, brilliant things in here. And what I mean by that is, firstly, all of us tend to... Oh, no, no. Most of us assume that if we can't get our habits into check, it's because of laziness. It's because there's something within us that is kind of wrong, weak, vulnerable somehow, flawed somehow.
Actually, one of the reasons we simply don't start new habits is that constantly throughout the day, we are being cued to do our old habits. right you know people often say oh I got so distracted today it's not that your attention wandered off it's that something else in your environment cued you to do another task does that make sense so the first thing is
Not being able to change your habits isn't generally laziness. It's purely the fact that we haven't set up our environment in order to support the new habits. That's the first thing. The second thing is I really loved what you said about compassion because.
I've noticed this in the social media space. Now we're talking about mental health. It was almost like when people got out on social media, they started off with the basics, right? So they were sharing, it's not your fault. Don't be critical to yourself. bring in self-compassion because this is the first layer that we all need and hopefully we learn it in childhood but unfortunately you know because of the way society rolls often it's more flog yourself until you're exhausted and burnt out
Learn compassion, be kind to yourself. Criticism isn't going to get you anywhere. But the next layer, and I'm hoping this is reflected in how people are sharing now in social media in the public space, it's certainly the way that I'm thinking, is, well, compassion actually can. be too much sometimes right if you're never taking responsibility that's the vital next step we end up we do end up getting stuck so um one of the things that i wrote about in this new book is
The kind of secret to change is often compassion plus responsibility. It's the bit where we say, you know what, it makes total sense that I'm doing this. What am I going to do about it next time? So I hear you. I'm often having that conversation with me like, is this really a moment I need more kindness or do I need to get out of bed and get shit done? Excuse my language.
No, I think it's such a fine balance. And I think we've probably gone. We were so well, I certainly was so hard on myself and so critical. And it was just such a like penny drop moment for me when I learned about. not just the idea of that, but like actually the impact on your, the neuroscience of like self-criticism, just sort of keeping you stuck in the anxiety space of like, you know, triggering those stress hormones and how self-compassion can.
just sort of interrupt that and be like, no, like, what do I need right now? But if I really ask myself, what do I need right now? All the time, like I'm going to choose the bit, the thing that seems easiest. And what I feel like I need all the time is to lie down. and watch reality tv and i have chocolate and tea like i don't ever feel like i want to go for a run ever i hear you over the last week because i'm so um Luckily and happily it's stretched with the amount of work I have to do.
All I want to do is work from lying down. It's really interesting. But also motivation often follows action. And I think that's the thing that if we kind of look across our past experiences, we do know that deep down. Right. Often it's the things that. we've kind of been forced to do. So let's say you had a work goal. Let's say in school you were taught a new subject. Let's say, for example, maybe you decided to learn how to run. Or for me, it would have been go to yoga.
At first, often you start your new habits, not necessarily under duress, but you're kind of acting like a robot. Like, I know I should go to yoga, so I go to yoga. Or in school, you're like, I know I should learn this lesson. But once you start noticing... that it feels good, it feels rewarding, or you're gaining some kind of skill. That is when the motivation happens.
I think that's something that's really tricky for all of us is we assume we have to wait until we're motivated to start or we assume that we don't want to do something if we don't feel motivated. Motivation is very slippery. It's better to choose kind of who you want to be in the future, what your values are, what the pros of making a decision and creating a new habit that would get you towards that person. It's better to do that.
and make a plan of how you will create that habit and set rewards that aren't motivation, like some kind of treat intermittently. And then know that motivation will come eventually.
that's really interesting yeah so don't expect the motivation to come until until after it kind of reminds me this is a completely separate conversation but um I was reading a book what was it called it was about like the libidos between men and women the difference and how men can be like motivated to have sex at any time of the day like they're just they have spontaneous desire whereas women need to be made feel
good and then the desire comes like in the moment and I was like oh my god so interesting because like sometimes you're just not in the mood and you're like why don't I do this more often 100% 100% and you know going back to kind of conversation about anxiety as someone who had you know very intense panic attacks not sure that there is anything other than an intense panic attack but when I had panic attacks I remember
being taught like you're going to have to do these breathing exercises and I was taught exactly how to do them but at first because focusing on the the breathing exercise made me focus on the panic. All I felt was more fear. And so I couldn't get motivated to do it. And then I kind of hit rock bottom and my panic was bad enough. I was like, well, I have to do this now. So I would practice my breathing exercises constantly, almost 24 hours a day.
And I remember that first moment that the breathing exercise worked. I remember the first moment where the anxiety started to go down. And I felt so empowered. I mean, empowered is probably not elated. Anyone who's had panic attacks knows that the moment the anxiety decreases, you're like, oh my goodness.
I can't believe it. And that change, that small change in anxiety was rewarding enough for me to then go on to feel more motivated, probably than I've ever been in my entire life, to keep doing something. I then just practiced my breathing exercise.
like my life depended on it because it quite literally did so you know that's what I mean about if we look across areas of our life we often do have this kind of wisdom we know motivation often follows action it's just that in the moment we forget it and there's one thing i wanted to say as well which pertains to what you were saying which is you know you said you'll always kind of choose the thing that's in front of you or the easiest option there's um
these cognitive biases right our brain uses mental shortcuts to make decisions and to make sense of the information in the world one of them is this thing called temporal discounting or hyperbolic discounting which is just fancy speak for your brain will always choose the thing in front of you even if waiting for something else down the line would give you a bigger payoff so your our brain is literally wired to say this thing here this is more valuable
than that thing in the future. So again, the things you're describing, they're not laziness. It's purely our brain is wired in ways that get us really stuck. And that's, I guess, to conserve our energy to get us through the day.
yeah it is and also if you think about our ancestors this is pretty cool like almost everything we do makes sense in terms of evolution yeah It makes more sense that they went for the scrawny little deer that kind of walked across their path, ate it straight away, rather than waited a few weeks for it to fatten up and grow up because they may not be alive then.
So that kind of decision of the thing that's in front of me right now is more valuable than the long term will have just kept us alive as a species. And it's really interesting as well, because I think sometimes we learn, oh, well, our brains are set up. to do these things that don't help us. And it can be tempting them to say, well, in that case, there's nothing I can do about it. I'll just give myself compassion, kind of going full circle. Compassion is the first step.
then saying right now i'm going to learn the solution that's the second that's the responsibility So there are a lot of books out there and it's been a lot of talk around habits and habit stacking and atomic habits and the different components of habits and motivation. What do you feel like in writing this book and in your own?
experience with your own um do you call them patients or clients clients clients and what you've read and what you've studied like what do you think people are missing or what's the missing ingredient or the thing that you think is going to make the difference for people or the learning that's kind of stuck with you about all this talk of habits and motivation?
Yes, it's a really great question. If I thought that learning about habits was enough, as in the science of habit, I wouldn't have written this book. As you say, I mean, atomic habits is life changing. I really think it's one of the best books I've ever read. But as a psychologist, as someone with clients, like you say, actually, habits is the foundation.
The next bit is finding out what specifically for you is now getting in the way of you making change. So for me, it's about identifying generally different versions. of your own kind of self-sabotage. And now this is again slightly, there's lots of books written about self-sabotage, right? And often they talk about fear of failure.
Fear of rejection, fear of success, kind of upper limit theory, the idea that you can only allow yourself to be so successful or so happy before you have to undermine your own chances. But actually, everyone has their own thing. There's this really kind of surprising form of kind of sabotage in terms of things we do to get in our own way, but totally without intention, which is overcorrection.
Right. So often people say, so I don't want to do this anymore. And then they go full steam ahead to the other side and they're like, I'll never do this anymore. And often never doing something again. creates a situation in which you fail, right? Because the cycle of change involves going through a period of maintenance and then often relapse. And so then they swing back to their first habit.
I know your question about what's the one main thing, but for me, there's kind of four main things. And that is exactly what I was saying. So heuristics, the fact that your brain will just make you make bad decisions. Right. It will status quo bias is the fact that our brain has evolved to basically favor.
doing exactly what you already do and not making change. Because for our ancestors, deciding to live a new life might have put them in peril, right? Because you don't know what that new choice is. For each of us, you could learn about habits, but then status quo bias may just before you're about to make that change say, yeah, it's quite comfy here.
yeah stay here right or the sunk cost fallacy might say but you've been doing this quite a while we've already poured in time and energy yeah don't waste that by going somewhere else Or it could be something more traditionally self-sabotage-y, or it could be that you're in these drama games with your friends and family, taking on roles that you've just been taking on your whole life.
Living this kind of familial pattern, this script that you don't really know about. Because when we talk about habits, we don't normally think in that way. And like I say, this form of overcorrection linked to intergenerational beliefs. So it's four things. And those four things are.
four different kinds of ways that we get in our own way when trying to make habitual change. Sorry, I realized that wasn't succinct. For now, I would love to switch gears slightly, ever so slightly. And I've been wanting to talk about this for a while. And it's highly functioning anxiety. And it's kind of a term that I keep hearing. And I'm like, aren't all humans just people with highly functioning anxiety? Like, isn't that how we're still alive?
I would love to just sort of pack this a bit with you. Like what, how would you, what do you think of when you think of highly functioning anxiety? So it's, you make a really good point. I think it's a term that's bandied about quite often. And when I think about the state of the world right now, I would almost certainly agree with what you're saying, right? I think that almost every person on this planet, if they're aware of what's happening in the news, right?
Unless you're lucky enough to be able to have your head in the sand or you just have this unbelievable psychological resilience, because, you know, some people genuinely, I really mean this, don't have that kind of temperament trait.
of feeling that anxious you can be very low in neuroticism neuroticism is one of the traits that's kind of partially her um partially heritable but yeah so Generally, high functioning anxiety when kind of talked in clinical settings means someone who is still living their life at their kind of.
optimum level so that could not mean anything for anyone right as in they're still going to work if that's what they do they're still socializing on the surface no one might realize that they're struggling underneath And that's the high functioning. It just means they're functioning at their highest level whilst also really struggling with anxiety. Does that make sense? And is it something, I mean, if you're still highly functioning?
And you're able to, it's not actually stopping you in your tracks or stopping you in your day. And it's not impacting, well, I don't know, I'm assuming it's not if you're highly functioning, it's, you know, you're going under the radar. Is it something that you need to look at then? Yes, because it certainly doesn't have any reflection on how bad the anxiety is. So all it means is that other people may not notice and you're still able to work.
So I often in the clinic work with very, what we would call this exactly, this very anxious, but very high functioning person. So the anxiety may be as high as someone who... I mean, it's interesting because it's a term I sometimes often think is quite classist, quite judgmental, is often is often, to be honest.
In my experience, the reason I question it is I often hear it when it's talking about someone who's like a CEO, someone who is in the kind of position in business that society tells us we should revere. So it is a title I don't love, I have to say, because the way it's often used, it should be used in more like if you're still able to function and you have anxiety, you're highly functioning anxiety.
glamorizes anxiety in a way it's like okay like we know we're all talking about anxiety but it's like take your anxiety and just bring it with you to work and get on with it and like when you mentioned like the ceo and that kind of thing like maybe it's like okay, we're beyond the point where we pretend like we don't experience anxiety, especially at that upper level of management and, you know, corporate life. So it's kind of like making it seem like just get on with it.
you don't have to do anything about it well connotations well it may very possibly i hadn't thought about it like this before because i um uh i often most of the people i know have high functioning anxiety like you're saying you know what i do think i don't know if it necessarily says kind of just get on with it i think for people who experience it they may minimize their anxiety because they're like look i'm able to do all of these other things
I suppose one thing I do worry about is that it leads to this value judgment of, so if this person and this person has anxiety, but this person got high functioning anxiety, they're somehow better. yeah if we don't have high function anxiety we're somehow like doing much worse you know i mean we're somehow less than so I don't really love terminology. That's an understatement. Terminology that puts a value judgment on how people are living and how they're experiencing as someone who had.
uh the exact opposite of that you know 18 the reason I'm a psychologist and kind of came this way is I couldn't leave the house for three months because my panic was so bad I already felt great levels of shame like huge levels of shame that I had allowed in inverted commas this thing to happen to me obviously I hadn't allowed it to happen I just didn't have the scoop like you know the tools to manage it and there was kind of things happening in my life but
You know, if you've really been at rock bottom and you're unable to do anything, that's not because you're kind of weak somehow. And so the idea, I think if someone told me, well, oh, well, this person has high functioning anxiety, I'd be like, oh, it's even more proof that I'm a failure.
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I think there's such a proliferation of these labels and, you know, it's just makes it easier, I guess, for people to contextualize or to make to make sense of things like, you know, the amount of times that people have referred to me as someone like with.
like generalized anxiety disorder for example which I know is like a real thing and I've never been told I have that and I don't know I just sort of feel like if you latch on to a label like something that's kind of a bit more vague like anxiety like I know something like bipolar is kind of it's very definable I think but like with anxiety if I sort of say oh well I have this anxiety condition it kind of make motivates me to
believe I'll never feel any better or I won't or I you know I'll always live like this and I can't whereas I just think of myself as like a human being who experiences anxiety and that just the linguistics of that for me has made a huge difference as instead of like I'm an anxious person and like that's going to be the case regardless of what I go through because there are times in my life where
And again, I'm only speaking for myself, like where anxiety really isn't a feature, like that chronic anxiety that you were describing, like I had the same where I couldn't leave my house and the panic attacks were just constant and severe. That was a real moment in time for me that.
also led me to where I am now but and maybe at the time it would have been like oh you've you know you've got this condition that condition and like you're ticking all these boxes of all this this this framework this terminology but I don't I don't personally, I wonder the psychology, the impact of those, that framework on people, like that's an interesting study in itself, isn't it? Yeah. And it's really interesting. I think people do tend to fall into multiple camps. So, for example.
When I was experiencing panic, I remember at the time hearing about GAD and it being very clear that once you had kind of generalized anxiety disorder, that was something you had for life. Now, I'm really pleased to say that kind of belief has changed. it really is a case um and certainly i you know got over my anxiety as in i don't have panic attacks anymore i go through periods where it's you know i'm very anxious but it's a very different thing um
I do think that people are now more and more of the last kind of however long, maybe decade, realizing that anxiety is something you experience and then go through large periods, maybe the rest of your life without having panic attacks. And I think.
Labels can be very important purely for ensuring that people... get the right treatment so for example when i had panic attacks i was told i was depressed i wasn't depressed i was presenting as without hope because the panic was so bad but it was really important for me to realize this was anxiety in order to get anxiety treatment
So I think there is utility in labels from that sense. I think there's utility in the sense that sometimes, you know, when you're feeling just absolutely terrible and then someone tells you it's because of this thing, you're like, oh my goodness, there's a word for it. I can conceptualize it. I'm not, you know. um kind of this unusual person that will never find out what's wrong with me it's not heart attacks it's anxiety for example i totally agree with you though that if we
cling too tightly to a label or if we believe a label is unshiftable, that it'll stay with us for life, it can feel disempowering. So different people, like different strokes for different folks, but I think always... To anyone listening, always hold out the hope that things can change and that labels will shift. Yeah, that's so interesting. I mean, I feel like we had such a similar experience you say about.
presenting with anxiety but being diagnosed as having depression and I was the very same and it was I remember sitting across from a therapist at the time who like you know did the tick box thing of like is she fitting into all of this criteria of like having no hope and you know not getting any joy from anything and I was like yeah I'm all of those things but I remember being told okay well like you're suffering with depression I was like but like
I really I really want to be here like I'm really I'm just so miserable at how I feel so low because of how anxious I am because of how limited my life is like all I want is to feel better and it was yeah it was weird it was like two sides of the same coin and I think it's this is another conversation entirely but like the kind of interplay between when you get to that really chronic
acute anxiety that depression can be very much a part of it but you're so right because like what I needed to treat and what I did treat with you know many different approaches was the anxiety and then as a result of that the depression kind of lifted but I remember being really rocked by being told I was depressed at the time.
And I was it was kind of like, you know, you go into like a corridor and it's like, OK, you're depressed. Turn left for this way. You know, I was like, oh, I don't know if I'm supposed to go this way. Yeah, I couldn't resonate more. I couldn't resonate more. And I think we're in a really interesting time as well now that, as you say, there's so much. brilliantly there's so much information available now for free for example on social media the
The upside is now people don't have to wait till they're at rock bottom like, you know, it sounds like you and I did to get the information they need. But we're kind of facing this new era of issues, which is lots of terms are being oversimplified. So, for example.
almost everything now is being broken down into anxiety and depression but actually there's a lot of nuance in the way that we feel so let's say for example you're feeling So when you're really hungry, for example, your body releases adrenaline in order to get glucose out of your cells. This means that you have the similar experience to anxiety. Now, if you kind of label everything anxiety, when you have that feeling like, oh, my goodness, it's anxiety.
Right. You kind of think, well, I need to treat it as if there's something emotionally wrong with me rather than I just need to go and eat. Or, for example. If you're feeling tense or if you're feeling stressed, that's not that's not quite the same as anxiety. And if you say anxiety, then you might kind of have this meaning making that causes anxiety to arise. I worry that we're losing some of the granularity. Does that make sense?
So I choose to use the word stretched now when it's that I'm kind of challenged but not worried about it. And stress is when that tension kind of rises. And then anxiety is when I start to kind of. think uh-oh something is wrong but when we're able to label our emotions we don't even have to have a word for it you could just say my heart is pounding we can they call it name it to tame it when we label our emotions
it changes the activity in our brain, dampening the experiences. So that feeling of, I feel this way, turn left.
so prevalent particularly in the past I do worry it still sometimes happens now but more and more I think we're getting an understanding of different emotions different treatment pathways and finding whatever you think works for you is really helpful yeah absolutely to go back to the highly functioning anxiety um i feel like i would always sort of caveat when talking about things like medication or you know my experience of going on medication or different therapies and
And like I would always say, like, you know, if you feel like you're at the point where anxiety is affecting your day or interrupting your day or you can't, you know, you can't maintain your relationships or you can't get to work or go to a meeting, you know, then it's something to address. But. It's.
also something to address if you're still functioning at all that level do you think that we're kind of disregarding it then i think i think um it may be that okay we always need really good benchmarks don't we to say okay when x and y happens do that so like you're saying like if you can't go to work if it's affecting your social skills i think the things that we might miss is
We need another layer, which is something like, even if you can do X, Y, and Z, if your internal experience is unbearable. right or is put let's say let's lower that down is pervasively painful right because you know when you have high function anxiety you're kind of constantly showing up for other people often putting on a brave face doing everything and on the inside you feel over revved
Right. You feel absolutely like you're kind of second guessing everything. If you have that internal experience. You still, well, you still, I was going to say you still deserve support. Everyone deserves support irrespective of what they're going through. Right. But it's really.
really important if you have that internal experience you do look for support because I promise you there is a point where you may not have to feel like that anymore and I think that's the next thing is often if you have any form of anxiety But you've lived with it for long enough. You just think, well, this is who I am. Yeah. And you then kind of undermine your experience and think, well, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm also just imagining like being in a workplace situation where.
You know, it's really, like you say there, like you still deserve support. Obviously everyone does, but a manager might look at someone and say, oh, well, like she's, you know, she's still doing all things like.
Whereas they might look at someone who's like falling apart thinking, oh, they really need support. But the other person is feeling it as acutely on the inside and just hiding it better. So do you think that there's ever a case where highly someone with highly functioning anxiety doesn't even know that they're suffering with anxiety that they're just feeling that discomfort and that like like I love that phrase over revved that you said there yeah I absolutely believe that um
There's two things I want to say. If you've always lived a certain way, then how can you know? until you're shown or until someone else goes through an experience that teaches you that you don't have to feel this way and it's not kind of the common experience that's the first thing and the second thing i wanted to give you a kind of personal example um
And it was someone I know was really struggling with their low mood. And they were talking to another friend who'd recently been on antidepressants. And this conversation was so amazing because the other person said, so I took antidepressants for the first time in my life after my GP had said to me you know this feeling you have it's not you know not kind of within our expected realms of feelings and she said she took these antidepressants she'd been on them for a month and she
Honestly, her first thought when things started to lift was, oh my goodness, this is how everyone else feels. I had no idea. So I do think a lot of people will be living with this experience, having no idea. but the next kind of ethical question or interesting question is
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If they don't know, should we be making it clear to them? It's an interesting question because anxiety is really, it's a meaning making issue. So if you've kind of got this intense internal feeling, but you're like, this is normal and it doesn't spiral to greater worries. Should we go around labeling that and potentially stressing people out and tipping? Yes, exactly.
If it's not bothering them. Yes. If you have the resources in which to step into action immediately and give them the right kind of support, then great. But, you know, we're in a time right now where. There's so many barriers to accessing the right support. I know the information is freely available on social media, but it's piecemeal. You know, it's kind of bit by bit. It's not the same as having someone sit with you and tailor your treatment to you.
Yeah, interesting question. If someone was worrying about it, then absolutely we should step in. If you're listening to this and thinking, maybe I have this, but you're not worried about it. Maybe don't scratch that itch. I don't know. Anyway, but the final thing to that is actually going back to habits, you know. I say I wrote this book for when people are feeling better. Actually, that's also not really true. I also wrote this book because a lot of the things we learn that we need to do.
involves setting up new habits so you're talking about your back pain for example if you need to set up a breathing exercise for anxiety and you're struggling to do it you need to learn how you like you need to learn why you're kind of getting in your own way And you need to learn how to set up the science of habit so that you can do those breathing exercises. And I wonder if this is a pitfall that you've ever seen. When you're chronically anxious.
you don't have a choice, right? If your whole life is absolutely governed by panic attacks, you are not sitting around putting off doing that breathing exercise because you are literally... I used to imagine that I had like a life raft and I was in an ocean that was crashing around and I was gripping as tightly as I could to this life raft just to stay afloat. And my breathing exercises became my life raft.
Right. So when you're at rock bottom, you're doing those breathing exercises. But for people who are in this kind of more gray area. Right. So the anxiety is bad enough for them to think I need to do something. But sometimes it goes away.
Right. Maybe they have one good day and then three absolutely awful days. This is firstly the majority of people experiences who struggle with anxiety. But when you're this person, setting up a habit of breathing exercises can feel impossible because on a good day you think.
Yeah, I don't really want to do that. It's going to remind me of feeling terrible. And then on a bad day, because you start your breathing exercise from scratch, you're thinking, oh, my goodness, this doesn't work. And you get into this cycle of never quite nailing it. If, you know, I said, yeah, like I said, I wrote this book for people kind of when their heads above water, but actually I also wrote it because often the things we know we need to do and that will change our life.
A million other things get in the way of us doing it. And for people with high functioning anxiety who often have unbelievable to-do lists and pride themselves on being very busy and independent, the things they need to do often end up falling by the wayside. I completely, I mean, I 100% have experienced that feeling, especially, you know, in the first year or two of trying to get to a point of being okay, where if I had a good day, like.
no way did I want to sit down and do therapy no way did I want to do my guided meditations and lie there and think about it I was but I think when I was at that point it was like I was afraid that if I thought about it, I would like catch it again. I didn't, I didn't have the right understanding of it. Whereas now, like obviously I'm always having these conversations and I'm just so exposed to it that I'm like, I don't.
I can go off to this event now after we chat and without thinking, oh my God, he's going to bring it all back for me. So I think that's a huge part of it. I also think like just from chats with my friends who would maybe fall under the... highly functioning anxiety type they kind of like it like they kind of would be bored without that I don't know like is it is it kind of for some people like an optimal anxiety where they're kind of
over revved and frazzled and like running from one thing to another and maybe they feel exhausted and maybe it doesn't feel nice but like there's kind of comfort in the discomfort sometimes So this is really interesting. I think about this all the time. I'm going to talk about productivity and anxiety in a second, which I think ties into what you're talking about. The first thing I'm going to talk about, the three things. Okay, first thing is there is an optimal amount of stress.
Right. There is a window in which once you're kind of in a certain level of fight or flight where actually your brain works faster, you get stuff done quicker. You're just simply more effective. So that's the first thing is a lot of people. feel kind of good when there's enough stress to get you off that sofa like we were talking about before and you feel like oh my god look at me look at me go I'm doing everything yeah so it's interesting
Secondly, anxiety. We can, anxiety and excitement are kind of similar. We can confuse them. You know, if you think about the fact that often it's the person you date that makes you really anxious that you confuse. with feeling really like lustful about, but it's actually just you're terrified. We just don't know how to separate out passion and anxiety. I think that that kind of overlap is common in more areas than just a kind of general life.
And the third thing is productivity anxiety. So often what we don't realize is that when we are kind of striving to do more and more. we are kind of covering up for this sense that our worth is based on our output. Yeah. So sometimes we feel good when we're anxious.
We feel good when we're getting things done, even though we're perhaps so over revved that we feel like, you know, we need to sleep for two months and could cry at any moment. Because that feeling of getting things done makes us feel like we're worthwhile as people.
It makes us forget that actually our identity is much bigger than, for example, our worth or our output, that there are other people and... important things in our lives that if we stopped, took a step back, allowed our nervous system to settle down, we would remember actually.
you know, who we are and what's important, and we'd feel more whole that way. So yes, I do think that some people really, including myself, quite enjoy certain levels of anxiety, as long as we're not tipping into that derealisation. depersonalization panic attack kind of state. Amazing and just on that note what do you mean when you say people ask me all the time do I experience derealization or depersonalization and I'm not sure what what do they mean? Okay so
It's awful, firstly. It is this state that's within the anxiety kind of set of experiences where you can start to feel... Like you are not real, like you're not in your body, like you're watching the world from the outside. It can feel one of the experiences some people talk about is almost like they've kind of sunk back into their face. It's a really strange, like gone into a sunken place. It can feel like you're living in a video, like everything around you isn't quite real. So, you know.
It doesn't have to be that you feel unreal. It could be literally that the world feels strange. It could feel like everything looks kind of weird. One thing that used to happen a lot when I first started having panic attacks is it would almost feel like...
the depth perception around me had disappeared. And the world was either right up in my face or were separate parts that would kind of almost feel like they were floating around. So depersonalization and derealization can come in many, many forms. And if you have it and you find it's frightening, I totally understand. But I promise you it's just another symptom. And it can also it can link to dissociation. It's kind of freeze part of the anxiety process.
Well, yeah, I think maybe at the time when things were bad, a lot of what you're saying there sounds familiar, like kind of feeling like you're watching your life happen in front of you, but you're not quite there. And Sophie, there's always so many different avenues we could go down and things we could unpack and explore. Like you've just got such an incredible way with words. And I so appreciate the way you articulate everything in such an easy tool.
wrap your head around way. I'm so happy for you with your new book. It sounds incredible. It sounds like a must read. It's going to be number one. It's going to be a Sunday Times bestseller. You can rest assured. And I can't thank you enough for coming back on and always sharing your wisdom with me. And I hope we'll find another angle to discuss sometime soon. Well, I'm pitching book three, so don't you worry. We'll be here. We'll talk about it. Fingers crossed. Amazing. Thank you so much.
Just think you are really changing people's lives with this podcast. So it's really impressive. Thank you so much. That means the world to me, especially coming from like such an esteemed expert such as yourself. So thank you. Very, very kind of you to say. Did you order the new iPhone 17 Pro? Got it from Verizon, the best 5G network in America. I never looked so good. You look the same. But with this camera, everything looks better, especially me. You haven't changed your hair in 15 years.
Selfies? Check, please. With Verizon, new and existing customers can get the new iPhone 17 Pro, designed to be the most powerful iPhone ever, plus a new iPad and Apple one. With eligible phone trade-in and unlimited ultimate. Best 5G source, root metrics, data, United States, one, each, 20, 25, all rights reserved. Trade-in.
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