Through a candid and revealing conversation, Michelle Grosser shares her deeply personal journey of navigating anxiety, touching on her experiences as a high achiever and the eldest of five children. She delves into the dissonance between outward success and inner turmoil, illustrating how high-functioning anxiety can often go unnoticed.
Michelle provides practical, somatic techniques for calming the mind and body, emphasizing the importance of nervous system regulation. She explains how discharging energy through movement and addressing physiological signs can create a profound impact on mental well-being. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone looking to understand and manage high-functioning anxiety, offering hope and guidance toward a balanced and fulfilling life.
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica Packer: Michelle Grosser. Welcome to about progress.
Michelle Grosser: Hey, thanks so much for having me. It’s good to be here.
Monica Packer: I’m really eager to learn from you and I know you have so much to teach, not just me, but my whole community. I wanted to Just dive right into this whole concept of high functioning anxiety.
It’s very intriguing to me and it’s not something I know that much about, but I automatically had a visceral reaction to that whole phrase thinking, Oh, I get that.
Michelle Grosser: Yeah.
Monica Packer: know what it feels like, but I don’t really understand what’s happening there. So
what is it? And what are some signs that women like me who are like high functioning anxiety, is that me? What can they look for to help them understand if they’re in that camp or not?
Michelle Grosser: Yeah. I love how you asked that question because I think I had the same reaction. I’m like, I don’t really know a lot about this initially, but I was like, but there’s something that feels really true to me about this also at the same time. Right. And I think, so high functioning anxiety isn’t something that you would go out and get.
You know, a diagnosis for but it’s more so the way I like to think about it is this dissonance between our outside world and how everything seems to others, right, and how we can show up and what’s actually going on the inside for us and our own subjective experience. Right. So a lot of times how it tends to show up is that on the outside and I’ll, unlike the case in point, like raising my hand, all of these things, right.
You’re high achieving, you get a lot of stuff done. You have all the degrees on the wall, right? You have a great job. You can make good money. You have a nice house. People look at you and you hear them chatter and they’re like, man, how does she. Do it all right. Or like her kids are, you know, this way or another way.
And you just kind of look like you have your stuff all together. And in a lot of ways you do. But under the surface, there’s kind of this constant bubbling, this simmering, if you will, of anxiety, that’s driving a lot of that. So you get home and you’re just depleted at the end of the day and exhausted.
You’re irritable. You’re kind of stuck in these patterns of. A lot of the things that you talk about and teach about, right? The perfectionism, maybe you’re stuck in these cycles of procrastinating and then you have to overwork in order to catch up. Maybe it’s just a restlessness and it’s really hard for you to like, you know, turn the wheels off in your mind at the end of the day and really just sit and be present with your people.
Cause you know, that the idea of relaxing or actually trying to do it is so foreign to you. So you’re kind of always on. You’re always going, the hamster wheels always turning, and it’s really hard to find peace. It’s really hard to feel grounded. It’s really hard, to feel like you are operating and making decisions from a place of just being really grounded and you’re always kind of scattered.
And when I think of high functioning anxiety, I think that kind of encapsulates it. We look, it looks really nice and shiny on the outside, but on the inside there’s a lot of discomfort.
Monica Packer: Yeah, I think a lot of times when we think of someone who is anxious, we think of someone who’s almost in like the proverbial corner, just
sitting there and chewing their nails down, which
I think could be valid for many people. But I think for a lot of us, it’s what you just described. It’s not looking anxious,
Michelle Grosser: Yeah.
Monica Packer: cause you’re over functioning, right?
You’re like, oh, yeah. Overdoing things in order to quash that. I just said that. I think I just made that word up.
Michelle Grosser: No, you didn’t.
Monica Packer: Is that a real word?
Michelle Grosser: As a lawyer for 15 years, I have asked judges to quash many things. So
Monica Packer: Okay.
Michelle Grosser: totally good.
Monica Packer: I should go to law school. Okay. It’s a
side.
Michelle Grosser: was brilliant. It was brilliant.
Monica Packer: so sign. Okay. Can you paint a more personal picture of what this can look like for yourself and, or with people that you have worked with so that women can better see what this can look like?
Michelle Grosser: I think I’ve, I always kind of run this pattern or at least in like as far back as I can remember I’m the oldest of five children, the oldest daughter, right? So I think in a lot of ways I took on a personality of being the one who gets things done and keeps it all together and is well behaved and does what everyone expects.
And like I, I love that. You know, graduate from college and I’m like, well, I’m going to just go to law school because that’s what I think I should, other people think I should do is what I, is how I should say it. And then, especially in early motherhood I think the symptoms really became kind of obvious.
Like the red flag was waving. And I felt like. a shell of myself in so many different ways. I was, I think for me, a lot of the mental and emotional symptoms were alarming, right? A lot of the like irritability and edginess, like snapping at my husband or I’m just short with him. I’m like, I actually really liked this guy.
Like, what’s wrong with me? Why am I doing this? Just feeling like I can’t catch up, right? I’m awake in the morning and my feet haven’t even hit the floor yet. And I already feel behind on the day. Right. It’s just like, Oh man, like everything feels urgent. Right. I never have time. I’m stuck in this scarcity of time and help and energy.
And like, just nothing feels like enough. And then a lot of, you know. The mind body connection. Right. And I know we’re going to get into the somatics, but a lot of these things we’ve talked about so far, they don’t just stay in our head. There, there’s a physiological response in our body when these are our perceptions and those manifested for me in a lot of physical symptoms.
So then it’s like, Oh, where did all these gut issues. You know, start coming from, where did these headaches start coming from? Why am I not sleeping anymore? Right? Why do I always have pain in my neck and my shoulders that I can’t seem to take care of, even if I get massages or go to the chiropractor, what have you?
So, you know, those were a lot of the ways in which it manifested for me and how I see it manifest for a lot of women I work with.
Monica Packer: Speaking to someone whose jaw isn’t working at all today, it’s like a
half inch of capacity I’ve got right now. Yeah. So
it’s manifesting itself. Right. And so you
had this experience of it manifesting both internally in your brain. And I would say both internally and externally with your body. What changed?
Like what helped you get out of this? Or, and I’m sure it’s still a work in progress. So what helped and what is helping?
Michelle Grosser: Yeah. That’s so good. So I started working with my own coach and I started seeing a functional medicine practitioner. And what I learned after seeing, you know, I went to my regular doctor, I’m like, there’s no way this is, Normal, you know, I’m like, please tell me what’s wrong with me. Like, I just feel so sick and tired.
And you know, they did all the blood work and tests and everything came back within normal range. And they sent me on my way and they’re like, well, it’s just early motherhood, or it’s just like, you got a lot on your plate or, you know, not particularly helpful. But what I learned, from the people that I worked with and what I saw as a through line through all of the things that they were helping me is that the state of my nervous system was just so.
Disregulated. And the, these are, this is how it was showing up. So as I learned more about my nervous system, I actually took a whole year off from work and took a deep dive on the nervous system and became obsessed with it and how we can. Impact the state of our nervous system, how our nervous system does impacts the state of everything that we do.
Right. And as I learned how to heal my nervous system and ultimately grow the flexibility and the resilience of my nervous system. All of those symptoms started to shift and started to dissipate. And my energy came back and my clarity came back and sense of peace and a sense of ease. And then I was like, Holy moly.
Like I, I didn’t have to go out and buy a bunch of stuff. I didn’t have to like take a bunch of stuff. Like, My body knows what it needs. I’ve just been so disconnected from my body and so removed from the sensations of my body. And I had so many internal stories about my emotions. So just really. A lot of unlearning and a lot of unbecoming, I think, right.
And like stripping all of that back was really healing for me. And then I’m like, I just got to talk about this and teach people about this and share this because so many, I know I’m not alone. So many people experiencing similar things.
Monica Packer: So I joke that I’m like the Hermione Granger of podcasters where I’m like, okay, now let’s come up with like a step A to Z of how we work on this thing and surprise, nothing’s A to Z. But it does give us a path to follow, or at least
to begin to get on. And what I’m hearing you say, and what I think this path entails is starting with building some awareness of what the signs are in your body. That you need help
that you are struggling with anxiety or many other things with that, like perfectionism or possibly depression, or I was just going to say anxiousness. That’s anxiety you know, things like that, that we can recognize, okay, my body is showing me how my mental state is doing. And then you talked about unlearning.
That even mean for someone who
doesn’t get, like, what do you mean unlearning?
Michelle Grosser: Yeah. I think I had picked up so many paradigms about the ways in which the world works. Paradigms around what makes someone successful. Paradigms around what’s going to give me a. I don’t know, a happy life, whatever it is that we’re after, right? Mindsets around, you know, what does it mean to be lazy and what does it mean to be hardworking and industrious?
You know, things like that, that I had to really take a look at and just kind of start questioning everything that I had just been doing automatically for decades and be like, wait a minute, one, like, where did that come from? Is that even true? Is that something that I believe, or did someone else or something else kind of put that on me and I just adopted it and ran with it and just getting really curious about a lot of my patterns and then starting to unlearn them and kind of push back against them and rethink them and be like, Hey, I can choose to be.
I don’t know, counterculture about this thing in this way, right? And like in my family and just be like, that’s not, I see how that isn’t serving me well. I’m going to choose a different path. But that took a lot of, yes, awareness, absolutely first, and then really starting to question and unlearn a lot of these things that I’d just been running, you know, running under the surface for so long.
Monica Packer: It sounds like a lot of identity work, you know, coupled with thought work, which I really love that you’re bringing to the table because there’s a really like there’s an either or paradigm out there. Like in
any kind of personal development world or even psychology world or coaching world, that it’s like all your thoughts
or. It’s like all your body, but really the answer is it’s both.
So how can both inform each other and I’m working on
both sides of it, heal the other side too. So
with that, you know, once they have more of that awareness of the physiological signs, they’re doing the deep work to unlearn the patterns of thought. That
are contributing to that dysregulation. Let’s talk about healing and this can feel overwhelming. I’m sure we could talk for maybe five hours about the work of
healing. Let’s focus more on how they can get started.
Michelle Grosser: Yeah, that’s
Monica Packer: to start with using some somatic techniques to work on healing both brain and body.
Michelle Grosser: Yeah. Okay. This is so good. And I just love what you said about incorporating both mindset and body based techniques, because the more that we learn about the nervous system, the research is showing us that about 80 percent of the nerves in our body. So 80 percent of the messaging that’s going on is actually originating in our body.
In the body and sending messages up to our brain. Right? So that’s why I do a lot of this body based work, but that still leaves 20 percent coming from our brain and forming our body. Right? So we want to make sure that there’s a cohesion there, that both sides are telling the same story. And that’s where we really see a lot of growth.
So when it comes to the body side. Our body does not speak, a verbal language, so we can’t tell ourselves, we can’t just convince ourselves or tell ourselves, what we know to be true. So for example, if I’m getting on this podcast with you and my heart’s, you know, starting to race a little bit and I feel that itchiness in my throat cause I’m a little nervous or you know, what have you, I can tell myself all day long, you got this, Michelle, you’ve done this.
Thanks. 400 times. You know, you’re prepared. Calm down. It’s okay. That can be helpful. Yes. But ultimately, if my body feels really unsafe here the messaging going up to my brain is going to override the nice things that I’m telling myself and my heart will continue to race and I’ll stumble over my words or what have you.
And you can, you know, put your own scenario into all of that. So we want to show our body. That it’s safe in ways that our body understands. So it’s not words. It’s not affirmations. It’s not all this mindset stuff helpful. Yes, but ultimately our body communicates through sensations emotions, right? It communicates through things like movement and sound and breath and touch and all of these different kind of like tactile things.
So, where do we start? I like to start with. Three kind of foundational big picture things, and we can talk about those two and then in the moment things. So, in the moment when you are noticing that you’re feeling dysregulated, however, that’s showing up for you. So if you’re feeling, you know, Edgy and irritable.
If you’re feeling kind of panicky, if you’re feeling a lot of that anxious energy, if you’re feeling like you want to procrastinate or if you’re, however, it’s showing up for you, keeping in mind, what are the ways that my body communicates safety or receives a communication of safety? So temperature is really helpful, right?
Grabbing, ice cubes, holding them in your hands, rubbing them on your wrist. Even like grabbing a bag of frozen vegetables and holding it on the back of your neck that can help activate your vagus nerve, your parasympathetic nervous system, which can help bring calm and safety to your body. Temperature the other way also helps too.
It’s why hot bath or hot shower can feel really soothing and regulating to our nervous system movement. is so important. I think a lot of times with anxiety in particular, When we are feeling a lot of anxious energy I think not the impulse, but I think what we’ve been learned or what we’ve learned, what we’ve been taught is that, you know, I need to calm down.
Right. I need to like take some deep breaths. I need to just like sit and meditate for a moment. I’m just feeling so anxious about something. And I think the opposite is actually true because when we’re feeling really anxious, Every cell in our being is primed. For fighter flight rights primed for movement.
So if we can, and I do this a lot, just stand up wherever we are. I do it in my office all the time and just start shaking out our body. Shake out your arms, shake out your legs, right? Let your body like follow the impulse of what your body wants to do. Put on your favorite dance song and dance for a minute and a half.
And then after that, introduce some of those calming practices, then do a couple of deep breaths, right? Then, you know, pull up a five minute meditation that you really love. And watch what happens to your nervous system. Once you can discharge a lot of that energy and then introduce safety, it’s helpful different breathing practices.
Some are really quick. You can probably regulate your nervous system and just a few different breaths. You can always go like on YouTube or something and, you know, five minute breathing practice and explore. But ultimately it’s a, it’s an exploration of what your nervous system responds to. So I have.
Full like list. You can probably even Google some of nervous system regulation resources. And what I like to teach my clients is that you want to get to a place where you’re kind of through trial and error, seeing what seems to resonate help for you and then have in your back pocket, you know, three or four resources that you’re like, Hey, when I’m feeling this way, this really helps to bring me back to center and feel grounded.
And then you can keep using those. But you don’t want to be. Feeling dysregulated and then have like 50 options to choose from because that’s overwhelming too.
Monica Packer: Okay. So I love those three big categories that can also be implemented in the small moments. So we had
temperature and movement, breathing. That’s all fantastic. You know, Talking to you is bringing up these memories of when I was talking to a therapist about one of my special needs kids in 2020.
And I had been to so many specialists for this child and nobody could figure out. What was going on, like what the problem was and how to help this child. And this was an amazing therapist who taught me all about regulation. And the first time she was like teaching this all to me, I thought, are you sure you’re like the licensed therapist or am I like doing something way different than I thought I was? So it felt really foreign at first. It felt like almost this woo thing, which I’m not opposed to woo at all. But in that moment with like a very needy. You know, like circumstances that had to have like practical help. It felt like what,
Michelle Grosser: Yeah.
Monica Packer: you already said this. And I just want to reaffirm it that she said, you know, working on the mind, the thought stuff. Is not going to help if the body is not calm, and I’m so glad because 1 she’s right. And 2, it did
Dramatically shift this child’s ability to show up as themselves over time. It took a great deal of time. So like, yeah, one, it definitely helped. But two is I’m so glad for how far we’ve come, you know, a society, but also professional world. Psychiatry coaching, like how we are better integrating the two and how this is what healing looks like. So can you paint a little picture for us of what healing does look like on the other side?
So women know
what they’re aspiring to because I’m sure the goal is not to always be 100 percent regulated because that’s not even possible. So what are they looking for? Mmm.
Michelle Grosser: that’s so good. Yeah, so my podcast is called the calm mom, like in the process of renaming it and I’m just like fought with it for the last two years. Because for that exact reason, like, I don’t want to be part of this perpetuation of this idea that if we have a healthy nervous system, we feel calm all the time, or that’s the expectation, right?
Because that’s just so unrealistic. So if you hold that and you’re listening to this podcast and you’re trying to be calm all the time, this is my. You know, permission slip to just throw that out the window and let that go. Because that’s just not going to happen. The goal is not calmness always.
The goal is resilience. The goal is that I want to experience the full. Like the full spectrum of human emotion and experiences and the ups and the downs, and I don’t want to get stuck in the ups and I don’t want to get stuck in the downs. I want to be able to experience what’s appropriate for my circumstance.
Right. And then I want to be able to be like, Hey, I have the resilience and the flexibility and the tools to bring myself back down when I need to, and then up when I need to. Right. So that’s ultimately the goal. That’s like, This big picture. How does that actually look in the moment that looks like a settling?
And that’s the best way I can describe it, right? That like settling, we feel with the exhale. It looks like, making decisions and operating day to day, not from a place of fear, which is ultimately where we’re at when we’re dysregulated. But from a place of presence and a place of groundedness and a place of confidence from a place of self trust, right?
That’s a huge place of growth for me and learning that has really helped my nervous system to settle. It looks like being able to be present. I think we all value that. I want to be present with my kids. I want to be present with my partner, with my friends. But I’m scattered and I’m always in a hundred places when our nervous system is settling.
We’ll be able to be in the moment. Our creativity will grow. Our compassion will grow. Our ability to connect with others and our social nervous system will feel more at ease. We’ll actually want to do that. Right. And feel more social. Our passions will return. I think that like spark that we.
Maybe remember having and haven’t felt for a long time. All of a sudden, I mean, I noticed it the other day. Our family has been through a huge transition in the last few months. And my husband walked up the stairs yesterday. We just moved into this new house a few weeks ago and I had music playing and I was And he’s like, it’s so nice to see you just like doing this again.
And I was like, I know it feels so good because it’s just been so much, but that’s the type of thing like that you’re going to see manifest is like, Oh yeah, I remember this feeling and I can get there again. And it just feels so good.
Monica Packer: that’s settling in to me is such a good way to describe, I think, feeling like yourself really.
And so that’s so realistic though, too. It’s not like, hey, you’re going to be this perfect person who never has anger or sadness or resentment or frustration. It’s like, no, you’re just going to be yourself.
Michelle Grosser: That’s right.
Yeah. And the more you resist those beautiful things, you just explain the anger or the sadness or the rate, like all of these things that will actually drive dysregulation. Right. So it’s like, yeah, it’s this beautiful circle of ultimately it’s like a radical acceptance of what is.
I can, I’ll deal with it.
I’ll hand, I got this. And welcoming all of it. Yeah, that’s beautiful.
Monica Packer: Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. I want to make sure we send them to the calm mom. Is there anywhere else you want them to go?
Michelle Grosser: Yeah. You can go to my website. It’s michelle Grosser. com. It’s just my name and you’ll find everything between the podcast and the website. You’ll find everything there. Yeah.
Monica Packer: We’ll make sure to link to that. We always like to end with this question and it’s, what is one small way women can take action on what they learned today?
Michelle Grosser: So awareness is so important and we touched on that and that will always come first, right? We can’t intervene in a world that we can’t See, awareness is first. But then second, I think the next step from there is how can you shift to a place of curiosity? So, okay. I have this awareness that it feels like this has to be really perfect before I let it go.
Or I have this awareness that I tend to procrastinate on something that might. Feel very vulnerable to me or whatever it is, the new awareness. And then instead of becoming judgmental toward ourselves about that awareness, which is how a lot of us tend to be patterned, right? We start to criticize ourselves and get frustrated.
How can we shift that to curiosity? Wow. I wonder what’s going on there, right? I wonder why that’s showing up for me. I wonder a time when I felt like this and now that’s coming back up or whatever it is, whatever comes up. I think that can be a really powerful shift. For ourselves, extend self compassion.
It’s the place in which we grow and for the people we love. Like the minute I started to get curious about my husband and my children I just brought this whole new energy to things that I didn’t previously understand. So I think if we can first start to practice that with ourselves, that’s a really beautiful place to start.
Monica Packer: Michelle, what amazing advice. Thank you for being willing to go both deep and practical with us today. I so enjoyed my time with you. Thanks for being on About Progress.
Michelle Grosser: Oh, it’s been such a joy. Thank you.
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