Dr. Lalitaa Suglani: Breaking Free From High-Functioning Anxiety

You can feel like you're there for everyone else, but then who's there for you? Because no one really knows that you're struggling underneath. Hi everyone, it's Rosie here. Welcome back to "Radio Headspace." You know that feeling when everything you're presenting to the world seems totally fine, but inside you're absolutely filled with anxiety? It's annoying, it's difficult, and unfortunately, it's very common. But as always, I've found just the person to help. Today, my guest is Dr. Lalitaa Suglani. She's a psychologist and one of the world's leading experts on high-functioning anxiety. This one is gentle, honest, and so incredibly helpful. I really hope you enjoy it. So I'm really excited to have this conversation. I've been listening to a lot of interviews that you've done, and I think this idea of learning tools to navigate anxiety has become such a prevalent need in our society, especially right now. (Rosie laughing) It just feel, I mean, you know, we're in the United States, so it just feels like the numbers of depression and anxiety have been very progressively on the rise. And so I know that this is something that you speak to a lot, and so I guess I'd love to just start with asking you how you got interested in high-functioning anxiety? Thank you so much for that. And how did I get interested? Like, when I think I've lived the experience. So when I say I've lived the experience, from a young age, like my dad, he was born in India, he came to the UK when he was very young, and it was just to work. So he came with his own values, his own way of thinking about things and how he just wanted to give the best to his family. So he worked his entire life and he is still working and he just wanted to give the best life. So naturally I'm one of five, and seeing that I ended up becoming almost like the good girl, the one who was there, I'm the second oldest out of the five, so I was- I was gonna ask you, where did you fall in line? Okay, so you said- So I'm the second oldest. Okay. And yeah, naturally I took on the good girl role where I just started following the rules of what I thought was expected of me. And it's only until like I got into my 20s where I started studying more about psychology, I realized I didn't actually know who I was. So I was in this high functioning way of living, trying to do everything to please others, trying to live life because of what others wanted from me, and I didn't even know anything about me. I didn't know what my needs were. I didn't know who I was behind this high functioning, this achievement, this overcompensating for others. And it's only then when I entered therapy because of that, I started to unravel a lot more, and I...