You seem fine, you're doing so well, and you're holding everything together.

But on the inside, you are exhausted.

You are constantly on edge.

You have all of these struggles that nobody knows you're going through.

This is the hidden cost of high functioning anxiety. and today we are going to talk about it,

and we're going to get to the bottom of how you can break out of this cycle of constantly going

all the time, taking on everything, but suffering with overwhelming anxiety along the way.

My name is Kimberly Quinlan.

I'm an anxiety specialist and today we are going to talk about a topic that hits people so much.

We don't talk about it enough and that is the dark side of high functioning anxiety. Whether you've been praised for

always being the strong one, the dependable one, the one that's functioning so well and you're

like a poster child for the way other people experience and want to experience their life.

But again, internally, you feel like you can't slow down.

This episode is for you. So let's go.

Okay, so let's first talk about what is high functioning anxiety. High functioning anxiety is an experience of anxiety.

However, you're able to maintain your daily functioning. You're able to get out of bed. You're

achieving at work. You're achieving at school. You're functioning at a very high level.

Most likely, you're functioning away above the average level of functioning of a regular human being.

However, internally, you are overwhelmed with anxiety.

Everything feels scary. You feel like at any moment, the sky will fall

or something really bad is about to happen if you don't keep holding everything together.

That is the internal experience of someone with high functioning anxiety. From the outside looking in,

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