Do you have High Functioning Anxiety? With Dr Lalitaa Suglani 

0:04Hello and welcome to The Slowdown, your time to redefine success and growth on your own terms with a little inspiration from others. Too often we externally present ourselves as put together, successful and hyperproductive, but internally we're living in high functioning anxiety. and few people know more about this subject than Dr Lalita Soglani, an award-winning psychologist, renowned speaker and the author of High Functioning Anxiety. Her work sits at the intersection of psychology, somatic practice and mindfulness, helping her clients unlock self-trust and inner peace. She's a sought-after voice on burnout, workaholism and overcoming anxiety and her holistic approach combines science-backed strategies with practical tools for personal growth.

0:53As a recovering workaholic myself, I learned so much from this conversation and I hope that you do too. Please enjoy this episode recorded here at Brazen Studios with Dr. Lalita. Well, Dr. Lalita, I'm so happy to have you here. I'm excited to be here. As a psychologist, you help people who are constantly in motion, the high achievers, the overthinkers, the ones carrying invisible pressure. You help them build self-trust, dissolve burnout and reconnect with intention. But I wanted to start with you and the moment you first became aware of the idea of success. So how and where were you raised and how was success modelled for you when you were growing up.

1:41Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:I come from a family, my dad was born in India, so I'm a second generation here in the UK and I've always seen my dad work really hard for money. He's always just been this go, go, go, been very high functioning and very much in survival mode of I need to perform or need to present in a certain way for my family. So his values have always been doing it for the family, doing it for everyone else and making sure everyone is okay. So because of his sacrifices, we have been able to educate ourselves we've been able to go on to higher education and go to university get a degree get into education so for me success has always been working and trying to strive but with that I also learned my the hard way what high functioning was also about because you can be high functioning and you're trying to show up and be successful in the version you think is success but that also doesn't make you happy so my own journey and my own experiences have taught me yes you can do a degree but do you really align with it do you really connect with it so I started off studying computer science and I didn't like it I hated it and I was afraid to do psychology because it was seen as like a Mickey Mouse course it was seen as a something that you don't strive towards that's not success but I've always been a interested in people interested in supporting people helping people and I followed my intuition and that's when I started the psychology degree went on to further education with that and for me it's about learning what does success mean to you but also understanding what does success or how we model success from a young age and that how does that show up with the choices that we make in life and what about your mother what kind of example did she set for you mom and dad got married very early mom was 17 when she got married.

3:29Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:There's five of us, one of five, so I'm one of five. And she's always been supportive of my dad, supporting my dad with pushing him in his business, in coming to the UK and just making a real life of their life in the UK. But also growing up, I was a female and being, well, not I am a female, I'm still a female. But growing up, being a female meant that we were trained or we were shown that, okay, you're going to get married and this is what life is going to look like when you're with your in-laws and you need to not bring shame on the family because we've taught you good values we've taught you this and over time that's changed because my parents have changed my parents have understood a different way of being um whereas when we were younger it's almost like right cooking the females do um this is what you like the men will eat first females eat second but that's all changed now but growing up these were the values that were instilled so even like as um someone who wanted to open up a business it was never really sort of like yep you can open up a business you can do this it was more of my own feeling that this is what I want to do and I knew I wanted to do something more and that opened up all these doors for me but also just the choices my parents made to allow that to happen as well but my mum modelled very much being at home being the carer being the supportive one being the one who's supporting my dad and you grow up with that in mind and dad being more of the provider but they worked as a team and working as a team of looking after the kids dad being the main provider but mom supporting dad as well which was very beautiful to see I know from your work that you use a lot of somatic tools did you find that that was something that came up in your degree or is that something that you learned elsewhere because I'm curious the academic course of psychology kind of is learn from a book you know um quite old school model whereas somatics is quite different so I'm curious at what point in your life you discovered those tools so I started off in psychology as an undergrad and then I moved on to do my master's in counseling psychology and then I did my doctorate in counseling psychology and my research was focused on how self-awareness impacts on our interpersonal relationships because there was a lot around how self-awareness impacts romantic relationships but not enough that I found around interpersonal relationships so that's what I focused on then I obviously started as a psychologist on my career path but I always felt like we can intellectualize we can talk through things and even through my own experience being a client in therapy what I realized was I was talking through things but I was still feeling things my nervous system was still dysregulated and then I've always been interested in yoga and then I trained as a yoga teacher and that just took me very very deep into understanding how our organs impact emotions how just different postures as well impact on how we show up day to day and then I went down the breath work route because I felt like the breath as well is so powerful so if we're high functioning we're very much shallow breathing and it's like what's that about what is going on for us and how do we learn how to breathe again how do we learn how to reconnect with back with our body because our breath is connected with our nervous system which is connected with our emotions which is connected with our thoughts everything's aligned and everything's connected so I can be sitting as a psychologist talking to someone about things but we also need to feel into things so my own experiences have taught me that if you're dysregulated and say it's like through evolution it feels like you're being chased by a lion and someone's asking you how are you feeling you don't want to talk about how you're feeling in that moment it's about safety in that moment it's about how do I come back to myself and feel present again and I feel safe enough being where I am not then thinking that there's a real threat and someone asking you how you feel it doesn't work so for me it was there's more to this and I've just been delving deeper and deeper and deeper into that and I know my journey still continues with research and courses and learning more about how we work.

7:30Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:Yeah, I think it's super important to use as many modalities and tools as possible. We've already mentioned high functioning anxiety. So let's get right into it. How do you define it? And how did you first come across it? Did it enter your clinic? You've sort of self-diagnosed. So was it something you were learning about and realized that you had? What was your first interaction with it as a term? So high function anxiety, first of all, it was really interesting because the way that I describe it is a bit like a swan analogy. So the swan is like it's sort of like gliding along the water and it looks really calm, composed, collected, and it looks like it's got it all together.

8:09Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:But underneath it's sort of paddling along, but no one sees the paddling underneath. Everyone sees this swan looks so beautiful, so graceful, but underneath it might be catastrophizing. well we're using it as an analogy here but it might be that we are catastrophizing we're ruminating we're daydreaming we're think about all the worst case scenario we're lonely we're disconnected we're trying to keep everything together but no one sees that part everyone just sees that you're you made it to a social you're happy you're smiling you meet all your deadlines um that you're so very social when you do connect with people but that might not be what what's really going on so there's a real disconnection with self so my own journey and working with clients kept showing me over and over again that people are masking and trying to show up being as they feel like they should be but there's so much more that's going on but there's so much shame embarrassment humiliation and it's also about being vulnerable with others that people struggle so they feel that they have to perform they have to people please they have to be this perfectionist they have to show up um meeting everyone where they feel the person wants to meet them and I'm like what is this about why do we keep presenting in this way and my own journey took me through in a child work and trying to understand well actually where did we learn to show up in this way so if you grew up learning that it was never about your needs it was about everyone else making sure everyone else was okay then what ends up happening is you keep presenting with this thinking you're too much thinking you're not good enough so for me um I was asked I was approached to um write a book and I was just I didn't understand what I wanted to write a book on like I knew the context of it I knew what I was talking to my clients about I just couldn't figure out what the name was going to be and then I was like but this is what it is it's high functioning and it comes from a place of anxiety and the way that I work with individuals is we end up in a in a space where you don't lose the high functioning it becomes high functioning intentional so you come from a very a beautiful space of being intentional being grounded being connected feeling that peace but you'll still can present with being high functioning and but it doesn't come from that fear that threat um feeling unsafe so for me the high functioning anxiety that's where it sort of developed and it um it created where you're just understanding more of like it is what it is high functioning anxiety you're functioning from a place of anxiety and when you see it in your clients and i suppose in yourself too what are the negative side effects of that because you would think that's i mean it's not so bad you know capitalism creates a world where these people are you know working very hard achieving various goals why does it matter that we have this disconnect with ourselves but isn't that so sad that we we live in that way where we're so focused on the next thing the next thing and next thing because we're disconnected from ourselves so the truth is we don't know how to sit with ourselves and we end up in exhaustion burnout stressed anxiety loneliness and all of these different things which have a toll on the body.

11:04Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:So because we're so focused on I have to be all of these different things, you're not then looking after yourself, you've learned that my needs don't matter. And you're so focused on everyone else. But really, it's me versus me. Really, it's there's a battle with self, you don't know how to sit and regulate certain emotions that come up. So you keep avoiding and ignoring and are so focused on being high functioning. But you can have the high functioning, but without the anxiety without it coming from a place of survival. And what tends to happen on the body do you find in the somatics work when with someone with high functioning anxiety how does that present?

11:40Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:Yeah there's so many different ways it can present it depends on people what their job is how they're showing up as well so often people are tense they're carrying so much they feel heavy they feel exhausted they feel tired they feel fatigued they they may have memory loss they may have because it shows up in different ways where people aren't looking after themselves and that will then take a toll it might be that they're not looking after themselves in terms of having water and having the right food for themselves um giving themselves the like the right movement as well because they're stuck on their laptop working all day then going home caring for family needs and then they're in bed not able to sleep because before they're trying to sleep the mind's just like oh why did this person look at us like this or why did this happen and why and then you're you're spiraling in these thoughts and then you don't get a good night's sleep and you start the day all over again so that then has a fatigue and a knock-on effect on how you're showing up in your body that then makes me think is there a subsection of people that this affects more because i would think of myself i would think of millennials i would think of women um do you find in clinic and in your research of this that there is a sort of type of person in our culture that is affected more by it?

12:51Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:I feel like it comes from a deeper belief of not feeling good enough. So what happens is because somewhere along the line, we might be carrying this belief system of I don't feel good enough. That then creates the behaviours of people pleasing, perfectionism, I need to keep going, going, going. What we see on like social media of other people doing all these different things, what we see through capitalism of we need this now and we need this, adverts, all of these different things, they keep showing us that we need more, we need more. So we're always striving for more more more we're not taught to sit with ourselves and look after ourselves because we often then feel guilty we feel bad we feel like shameful we feel like we're um we're dysregulated if we just stop and rest so for me it's it's fueled from a belief system of not feeling good enough so that can go back into like early childhood it can go back from the things that you've witnessed from growing up from society around you so it's not just like a type of person I feel like it's your experiences and why you've learned to show up the way that you do um because there's many males as well that I have in clinic that come in they're professionals they're business owners they're again very much go go go but they're deep down they have a belief system that they're not good enough so that's why they can't stop and rest and look after themselves because they don't know how to and you mentioned that inner child work I did one kind of inner child thing with a therapist once I found it really interesting so I'd love for you to kind of define what that is what is in a child work and place an example of some sort of exercise you might do with someone who has high functioning anxiety to try to find the place that where that comes from yeah so this is everything i share and this is why i wrote the book in the way that i did because for me it is about first of all understanding and identifying our patterns understanding why they show up the way that they do but then going deeper into that like where do they come from why were they formed in the way that they they have so for me the inner child is very much the blueprint of how we live life day to day it's the values of how we see the world around us how we feel about ourselves and how we feel or we see others um so if for example you've grown up in a environment where it was very unpredictable you may have learned to stay safe i need to feel very much in control so you would have learned people's tones you would have learned that this mom or dad or another caregiver is coming in with a certain type of the way that they're stepping on the floor you're like okay there's a shift in their energy there's something changed you're noticing all these little things because you're trying to keep yourself safe so then as an adult that can then manifest in you're in a room in a social setting but you notice everything you feel things so deeply and you're starting to notice like okay that person's not okay that person's not okay and you feel like you end up then trying to go in to fix it because what you've learned from a young age is that you're in order for you to feel safe you have to be responsible for other people's emotions because they weren't able to regulate themselves so for me in a child is growing up and learning about why or how you learn to show up as a child and how that then develops this pattern of how you show up in the world and how that still impacts on your everyday life even simple things like when I work with professionals they might say well I I can't say no to people my calendar is full I'm working full time and then people need me so I have to keep showing up for them and it's like but you're also exhausted but they can't say no because they feel guilty because they've never learned to sit with their emotions it's always been about other people's emotions until it gets to a point where they're burnt out they're exhausted and they feel like everything's just collapsing around them and that's when people tend to come into a therapy space or wanting to understand like what is it that's going on because the same pattern of being there for everyone else is no longer working and they feel like a failure they feel like they're not good enough all of these emotions that they've been running away from they resurface and you can't run away from that you have to sit and understand like what is this and what's going on here and what's an exercise that you might give them to access their inner child like what is the and what is the goal of that exercise what are you trying to make them do so i've got a sheet people will work through and initially on the sheet they write down their trigger then from the trigger it's like okay where else have you felt like this before where else does this show up where else have you noticed this feeling then they'll write down other experiences where they felt it then it's like trying to understand well what were your thoughts at the time when someone looks at you in this way or someone's asking you this what are your thoughts what thoughts are coming up for you are you feeling like oh like this is really overwhelming then we look at emotions what emotions are coming up because these are the things that we're avoiding often it's um shame because we're feeling like there's this shame that's coming up i shouldn't be taking up this space it shouldn't be about me but where else have we felt that like where does that come from so then we go deeper into like the belief system so this trigger can help us go all the way deeper into the belief of but I'm not good enough it shouldn't be about me it should be about everyone else but where did you learn that because you weren't born in that way where you felt like you're not good enough there's been experiences where you have learned it's not about me I shouldn't be taking up space I don't want to be a burden I don't want to upset other people because that's where you may have learned that if it becomes about me I don't receive love so when we go back into the deeper inner child and the core beliefs that we have developed from a young age it might be a pattern that's showing up that I feel like it's never been about me and when it was about me I never received the love that I needed so it's going back all the way there and making sense of that because often people carry this belief that it was I was the problem I was the one who was the problem and it's I'm broken or I'm not good enough and I'm not lovable I'm not deserving and that becomes how then people show up where they feel invisible they feel like they shouldn't be about them and that's the work that we have to do in the here and now of how do we regulate that with the nervous system how do we regulate and sit in that emotion and people will say I understand what happens but how how do I do it and I'm like we need to learn to sit like well what does that mean tell me what to do and I'm like this is the part where it's not about me giving you instructions it's also about learning to self-trust because i can give you all the rules i can tell you what to do and do this and do this but then again you're not learning to self-trust you're learning to again listen to me but that's not the journey and the way i always describe it is a bit like um the jedis in uh the the want to become masters from star wars they want to become these masters and they keep going to yoda and like what do i need to do to become this master and then they actually go through the war and it's only through the war they learn more about themselves the wisdom that they carry and that's where they learn true value and it's even through us it's we have to go through life in order to reflect back and understand this is the way I want to show up yeah and I found that inner child work super interesting because I was then the the exercise I had was okay take that when were you originally triggered in that way if you can remember that time then go back to that little girl version of yourself and effectively like tell her you know the way that you were treated in that moment wasn't okay and you're you're fine as you are and you are loved and you're safe and you try and retrain your body out of that moment um I also was wondering what you think the difference is between healthy ambition and toxic productivity because I think so much of high functioning anxiety comes from a place of we're trying to achieve society's goals and so if society's goals were a little bit less right we wouldn't be having these experiences but the truth is that there is a level of toxic productivity but there is also good ambition so where do you how do you help clients delineate those two things it's really interesting because i think it depends also on where you are in the world what culture you're in and who you're around and that defines what success is what productivity is and how to feel like at peace with yourself so often there's people that will keep going into life and feeling like they need to be successful but why so my work that I do with people is what's the intention pausing and learning to sit with what is the intention of you doing what you're doing like where does it come from are you doing it because you're trying to prove validation or you're trying to show people that you can do this or are you doing it because it really resonates with where you're at and that's also part of the work is because you've been for so long trying to do things because you feel like it's you're rediscovering yourself and through rediscovering yourself you're learning what your values are and how you want to show up in the world and that's all part of the journey of understanding self-trust but learning to understand what are your needs so if we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs at the bottom we have like the safety but as we're getting higher and higher we end up in like the self-actualization at the top but before even there we're in the sense of like we want to belong to people but when we then come out of the belonging we end up in a space of self-esteem and that's the bit where you're now not feeling like I need to belong to people but I want to learn to understand myself before we get into this space of self actualization so for me there's a journey of for a long time you've been trying to keep yourself safe then you're trying to understand how do I belong in the world but then you're moving into a space of now I'm trying to understand like who am I within this world and how do I want to show up and learning to be okay with showing up as you are I feel like that is definitely a shift I'm having between my 20s and my 30s I felt like my 20s were prove myself externally but now it kind of makes sense like that is what that is how you make sense of the world and now in my 30s I'm very much trying to figure out what is it that I want for me as opposed to what everybody else's expectations were of me um and what are the other than we've talked about looking at your trigger and maybe doing some inner child work, looking at this process of self-actualization and what it is that you want versus what everybody else wants from you.

22:30Are there any other practical first steps that someone can take to A, recognize that they have this and B, how to sort of treat themselves as it were?

22:40Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:Yeah, I would again say, look around you, like look at your friendships, look at people around you and also what are you saying yes to? What are you saying no to? Because every time you say yes to something, you're also saying a no to you and say for example you want to go to the gym or you want some time for you in the evening and one of your friends has said oh look I'm really um I'm not in a good place I really want support and then you feel obliged to be like okay fine I'll come I'll leave everything I'll um sacrifice my own needs because this is what I need to do start noticing where are you saying um yes to things that actually are really impacting on you and it does take a toll on you but you're so used to carrying everything you're so used to trusting that you'll be able to get on with it and not trusting other people's emotions so if someone else is dysregulated you feel like I need to go in there because I know what to do I know how to manage it I know how to support them but in doing so as well you're also stopping that person from perhaps even growing as well because they become dependent on you and they become there's that dependency where they feel like oh you're the one that supports them but actually sometimes you saying no to someone can actually support them because it allows them to really sit with themselves as well so again I would say start looking around at your life start understanding where are you saying yes where are you going into spaces that actually don't serve you and where are you going into spaces that may drain you exhaust you make you feel really like down within yourself and where are the spaces that you go where they uplift you they make you feel really good so start noticing just the world around you i made a commitment to being transparent about the making of this podcast right from the start So here's a quick update of the financial side.

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24:54If you're not already, hit subscribe, share this episode with a friend, drop a comment on Spotify, and a review on Apple. It really does make a difference and continues to inspire the change that we're hoping to make in slowing down. Thank you so much for your support. and in terms of how to maintain that long term firstly what tends to derail people's progress and set them back and then what are ways that you help clients to build that sustainable balance of self-care even when life gets really busy again because i think the reality

25:26Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:for people with this is that they live very busy lives yeah so the reason or the thing that i always find and I'm smiling because this is all my research that's coming out which I researched when I was doing my doctorate and it still like shows up in the work that I'm doing now where when you start changing people around you will then start giving you the words of like you're changing you're not who you used to be what's wrong with you and in that moment you have a choice you have a choice to retreat back into a space because you feel guilty you feel shameful you feel bad that you're not supporting them and they're saying these things and there could be a potential that you lose these connections.

26:08Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:So out of fear now you can go back into being and these patterns that makes everyone else okay and it's like oh okay everyone else is around me okay. But by doing that you're not okay so you go back into patterns. So in that moment you have a choice do I fall back into patterns or do I actually stand my ground, stand my truth and sometimes you might need to keep you might fall back into patterns and that's okay because you learn from that no one's perfect and there will be times where we can fall back into patterns but again it's learning what what happened why did I fall back into this what was going on for me why why did I present in this way and then learning to it just makes you stronger it makes you more aware of why you are the way that you are and I was wondering you know you support a lot of people with this but you also have a very busy job research writing a book you have a huge social media following you do public speaking have you personally experienced anxiety burnout or overwhelm in your own journey and how did that show up for you people who i think this is another thing social media shows that we're very busy actually my life is not busy the way sometimes social media shows and presents it can seem like we're busy so again we can look at social media we can see that oh this person's doing this this person's doing this but it's having a balance and finding that balance and for my own journey I have really struggled with anxiety with depression with low mood and for me uneven burnout where you're just doing and saying yes to everything and you're just being that scattered headless chicken that's running from here to here to here to here to here but you're not being intentional and one thing I've learned on my own journey is how do you pause and be intentional to the things but also notice okay what are my red flags as well so if I notice that I'm becoming a little bit more like tired or I'm noticing that I might be a little bit more like like eggy what is that about what's going on and it's then having the moment to self-reflect and be like what do I need to change to give myself what I need it might be a weekend where I'm just in nature and I need to just regulate myself back again feel grounded and have that time away from people because you sometimes you just need that and the more you understand what your needs are I feel the better you are at regulating and supporting yourself but it doesn't mean that just because I've had anxiety, I've had these things before, doesn't mean that it's not going to come back because life happens and things become busy.

28:24Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:And before you know it, it's like, it's Christmas and everyone's saying, can you come here? Can you do this? Can you do this? And it's just being mindful of, okay, what's your diary, planning around and making sure if you do have busy events, I know that I need to have like quiet time after busy events because I'm someone who does energetically feel quite drained after being around people. So I need that time to just recharge so the more you understand yourself the more you can give yourself what you need yeah i think it's important that distinction i kind of only realized this a couple of years ago this idea of do social interactions drain you or fill you up yeah yeah um i also think it's not quite so black and white right it can it can have shades of gray and can depend on the people that you're with yeah um and the kind of conversations that you're having and so on but i did find that a very interesting thing I have a very close friend and we're very different she finds them very draining yeah she needs a nap after any kind of social engagement whereas I often feel very energized and you know I also loved what you said there about like knowing yourself well enough to know if I'm about to have all of the social engagement I might need to pre-plan a break for myself sort of plan your week that way um what are for you the the early signs that your body shows that to tell you you're pushing too hard first thing that comes up is tiredness and i'm someone who i don't usually have a lot of sleep i have six hours and i'm happy i'm really happy if i have any more i wake up and i'm groggy and i'm tired so six hours i know is my my my amount um and anymore i will feel sluggish i feel like i'm drained but i will have them side effects um when i know that okay something's not right and that's when i'm like okay i'm tired i'm not waking up fresh what's going on and that's when I'll self-reflect and I'll be like okay what is actually happening here and then I'll look at what's my diary what what is it or where is it that I can just give myself some space and time just for me and I know that recharges me I know being in nature just recharges me going for a walk in the woods and finding that space just to be like I just need no music or even just breath work meditating there's so many little things that you can do and I think the more you understand yourself the more you're like right okay I know what I need and you just know you're just like I know what I need because you're self-soothing and you're self-regulating and in your mind the more you go deeper with yourself like I have daily practices that I will do that I know ground me and I know support me um and that's usually my check-in time as well with with self what are they because I'm always super curious on this podcast about tools to slow down especially in an anxious moment and I ask from from personal experience I definitely have anxiety and I have things that come up that can really put me in in a state of anxious panic.

31:11And so any tools that you can share.

31:14Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:One of the biggest things I know always helped me is the breath and it's coming back to the breath. So if that's yoga, if that's breath work and using the breath, because when we're anxious, we shallow breathe and we're not then diaphragm breathing. We're not deeply connected with our breath. And when we're in shallow breathing, the body works in a very different way. so we're in that fight or flight we're in survival and we're almost like expecting and anticipating something that's going to happen because the body's waiting for this lion to pop out of anywhere and it's like where's the lion where's the lion and we're waiting and then we're noticing every little thing and it's like but there is no lion and that's what we have to try and teach the brain so even now like i can get triggered by there's certain things that will come up and i'm like why i get curious with it now i'm like why is my body reacting in this way with this with this object that's coming up or this email that might be coming through or this person just saying this to me what is going on for me so it's allowing yourself to be curious with why is my body reacting this really interesting I'm noticing this is coming up why is my body reacting in this way and then through that you're then regulating and understanding and you just keep integrating but I don't feel like anyone in life is perfect I feel like there's always going to be triggers there's always going to be things that come up in life but that's also part of life's journey and even through business professionals growing in their careers for me it's like yes you're growing in your careers but you're also evolving as a human being because as your your business is growing as you're growing in your career you are also evolving as a person so who you once were you're not that person anymore so um is it that your career is giving you these triggers and these tools to help you evolve as a human being because ultimately we're a soul in a physical body experiencing that being a human being and we can get caught in being a human doing rather than a human being and the world that we're living in right now we're in this fast pace go go go we need to send this email we need to do this we have to be like this it's it's just really overwhelming so even like if i'm doing a breath work or a yoga session i'm like take your watches off we don't need notifications we don't need any of this because we get notifications that we have to get back instantly we have to do this and it's like what is this teaching us how is this um making us show up in the world and it's being intentional with how how are things around me impacting and influencing me as well what is your relationship with social media and responsiveness on texts and messages and emails I'm not one of them who can like stand in a queue be having a conversation with someone and then responding back like I've got friends who can do that and I'm like how do you do that like I can't do that so I have to set out time in the day to be like right okay this is my time to now respond back to all these messages um or even emails I have certain moments in the day where I will go to my emails.

33:48Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:I don't even have them as notifications on my phone because I'm just like, I don't want them to keep popping up. I will go. And if anything's urgent, someone will ring me or someone will let me know in that way. Even my WhatsApp. So I'm like, I'm really mindful of the groups I'm in. I mute all my groups because I'm just like, I don't need them constantly like showing up in that way. So I'm really mindful and energetically with how much I'm showing up on through my messages, through my emails, because I know it drains me as well. And I know that it takes a lot because you almost like I have to put your mind into that space of like okay let me get involved with this was the email I need to send let me respond back and trying to be intentional because otherwise you could just get caught in all these other spaces so I have to allow myself to be like this is my space to do this and even social media I'm not very active I will plan on my content I'll be very intentional with that and I'll make sure I know what's going on out on one what day but I won't sit there and I won't be scrolling because I'm like I don't want to fall into those patterns yeah I think it just it grabs time from you as everywhere that it can and when I think of tools and exercises that have helped me there's one that came to mind that I wanted to share because I also want to know if you have a writing exercise but Byron Katie has this three-point questioning system where if you're feeling anxious about something you basically write it down then you say is it true yeah like give me three reasons that prove that this is 100 % statistically true.

35:15And often you can't come up with those reasons. Yeah. Then it says, who am I when I believe that this is true? And it is often anxious, stressed, you know, I'm worried, I'm this, I'm that. Then you realize through that process, actually, I'm feeling all of these things and I'm behaving this way, but the thing itself might not even be true.

35:34Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you literally write down the opposite of the thing that you think so you say what if the opposite is the opposite of that fact so I don't know if it was you know I'm worried that this person is going to leave me if you write down actually this person is going to stay then you say write down three things that you think that now make this true this completely reversed idea is that more true than your original fear and you find that actually the reverse the kind of more positive outcome is probably far more likely in terms of the fact that you have to be true and I found that really interesting writing exercise I feel like that's a really beautiful way of doing things I also feel like a lot of individuals who do struggle with anxiety and are in this space of high functioning they also are very sensitive individuals so they can sense things in others that other people might not even realize themselves so you've gone into a room and you know someone's not okay and that's because your nervous system has learned from a young age that I need to be responsible for other people's emotions like I was on the train here coming today and there was one opposite me and she was just like every now and again she was reading her phone and she was just like and I was like there's something going on for her but she was just sighing and I really just wanted to go in and be like are you okay because you keep sighing like what is going on but I just had to put my earphones in and put music on because I was like nope this isn't my responsibility it's not mine to like um but again the world around you you can see and feel things that perhaps other people they don't even realize they're doing or they don't acknowledge that it's impacting on someone else so from a young age if you grow up with this idea of being sensitive you start noticing things that other people might not see so my work also goes into detail and helping people to understand how to regulate and manage that sensitivity and understanding where is my space to personalize it because I could have been like oh am I am I upsetting her am I and in the past that would have been the case where I would have then blamed myself thinking am I in her way or am I doing something I should be doing but actually no I realized this is her stuff she's obviously checking her phone something going on for her and I just found a way for me to help myself which was just put music on and come out of that so I feel like there's another layer to this as well which is you are a more of a sensitive being and how do you regulate and manage that sensitivity so then that doesn't overpower you and you don't end up personalizing other people's emotions as your own.

38:01I love the adage there's only ever my business, your business and God's business and you can only stay in your business. Like you have to get out of other people's business and like let God be God. The other thing I wanted to touch on was as a woman we obviously have cycles that then sometimes change the way that we can manage stress and work and anxiety and so I was wondering what your experience of that is personally or in clinic with how women can consider their cycles when it comes to anxiety yeah and I don't think we talk enough about how

38:36Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:sometimes you can feel certain things because it's not of external things that are going on there might be internal things so yes your environment is one side of things then it's like obviously the patterns that we've learned but then it's how you're present in your body right now and where you are in your cycle and that also impacts on your mood it impacts on how you want to show up you might just have this inner rage and you don't know why and it's like okay again when you're starting your day and starting your morning practices even just having that moment just to check in where are you at right now because I feel like also our cycles will change depending on the seasons that we're in depending on where we might be at with cycles and how we feel in our body there's so many different elements that can influence on how we're feeling but sometimes coming back to self and knowing okay you know what today I don't really feel like good but sometimes it might be a simple thing of wearing I don't know wearing something comfortable that you feel is like protective and soothing you and supporting you rather than going in thinking no I have to present in a certain way listen to your body that's my like what I'm trying to say is listen to what you need listen to your mind listen to your body and try and give yourself what you need rather than thinking oh why am I feeling this way or if you are feeling um this in a rage or you're feeling uncomfortable about something asking yourself okay is it going to be wise if I go to this event today and if I do go to this event how do I perhaps I don't drink or perhaps I don't um mingle with um people that I know will trigger me so how do you manage it so you're just learning to give yourself what you need we've spoken about the micro and the things that we can do for ourselves but when we look at the macro and society why do you think our society finds slowing down so difficult it's something that we all clearly desperately need but we've gotten ourselves to this point of no return where we're developing stresses and anxieties and things that are entirely based on external factors um how do you think our broader culture so work culture social media culture feeds high functioning anxiety and um what do you think we can or should shift on a societal level i feel like in society again it depends on the country culture and people around you and how that impacts on you so if you're constantly and your algorithm will follow what you're what you're thinking what you're feeling so when we're thinking of like or we're looking at society as a whole we're looking at more of outward success we're looking at okay this person's doing this this person's doing this but again social media is can be like we're seeing it from our view and other people are sharing what they feel they need to share in order to get the business that they're looking for so like coaches will show like oh this is what i'm doing these are the people that i'm working with because they're trying to get business so i feel like you need to have the intention in your mind that where what are people's what are the people's intentions and what are my intentions um society is always going to be trying to push you into certain ways that they're trying to influence you so if someone's trying to be like we're in a capitalist world it's like buy this you need this you need this it's not saying that you already have everything within you it's saying that everything around you is you need more of this and that's why adverts work in the way that they do your algorithm will follow you and say right you're not good enough look at this look at this but I really do feel like that inner work is really powerful and noticing how things are influencing you the more grounded you are in yourself the more the less likely you are to get caught in the cycles of I have to be what everyone wants me to be and what I feel society wants me to be because yes you might get and often people like I see people in the therapy space they come in they've got all the things that they think are going to make them happy they're in a space where they feel like I've got the family I've got the house I've got the car I've got all of these things that society told me was going to make me happy but I'm not happy I'm actually quite I'm down in myself I'm lonely people don't really know who I am they see me by the things that I'm doing for them rather than who I am as an actual person but it's because they haven't worked on themselves because we're not taught to do that we go to school we're taught get your education keep pushing yourself you'd go to university get that to one get that keep pushing yourself get the first then you're like okay get the master's and you're getting going into a job do this you're constantly being pushed what's the next thing then for you what's the next thing for you rather than taught to learn to to be with yourself as well and learn this is okay with me being how I am yeah I think that's what one of the things I'm also realizing is I feel like I'm on this adult treadmill of goalposts especially with social media it's amplified and sped up feels like you need to get the promotion then get you know engaged and have a wedding and have a baby then buy a house and renovate you know there's there's all these things but yeah actually if you stack them it is way too much for somebody to do in such a short space of time and So actually saying, you know, I'm engaged, for example, but we have no plans to have a wedding anytime soon.

43:16So actually doing something that feels counterintuitive to the timeline of what is expected. Some people don't understand it, but it takes you saying, no, I refuse. I'm getting off the treadmill of expectations and doing things at my own pace.

43:33Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:and also being mindful because like you being engaged your algorithm might start showing you this person's getting married this person's gone on this honeymoon this person's done their wedding in this way this but and you start seeing things so it's like okay if you're scrolling and you're procrastinating or you're doing where are you at in your space and how are how is it what you're looking at is influencing your mind do you come off your phone feeling now stressed anxious worried whereas you came on just to like help you self-soothe because a lot of people use their phone to self-soothe and they'll pick up their phone and they'll just like be scrolling through but how is that influencing and impacting on the things that you see?

44:06Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:Because I've scrolled before and I'm like, oh my God, I've come out and I'm like, I don't feel like I'm good. And I'm like, hang on, where's this coming from? Because this isn't me and how I normally am. Like what's going on? And when I've looked at or thought about what I've been looking at, I'm like, this is not, this is not good for me. This is not good. And I'm being influenced and I'm being told I'm not good enough. But it's also looking at how are the things around you impacting on how you feel you should be because there is no should we're all on different journeys we're all in different like paths and it's understanding where are you in your path because someone who look at the guy who runs or owns KFC he's when did he like become I think it was like 80 or something he be he he that's when if someone finally listened to him for the the business to open up so everyone is on their own journey and it's learning to be like I'm okay where I am right now and even if the like someone else's or my friends are in other spaces you don't have to be in that space we just we're on different trains constantly through life you're not going to be with the same people throughout life and I think sometimes that's the the hard bit to to um work with as well because you're almost like grieving people leaving your life but then also you're evolving into different spaces you're growing in and it's like trying to find those right people that you connect with and whilst you're on this train journey yeah they say you should all over yourself um which i like as a concept i was just thinking the other day about how grateful i am to live in a big city because i can spend a lot of time on social media as you say just kind of aimlessly scrolling and then an hour has gone by and i've filled my brain with this idea of everybody else is doing all these amazing things and hitting all of these milestones and then i'll just go out into the world and i'll see normal people living normal lives and they're not the people I see on social media and then I'll go to a party and I will see that person on social media and they will not look like what they look like on social media they'll have their own problems you know I see people all the time they're telling me dramas going on in their lives all kinds of different things and I think it's so good to really interact in the real world with real people yeah what is your working definition of success right now in a work in a in a piece I would say is success it's not about what you have and I feel like it's trying to come back to your values and how you want to show up as a human being kindness is really important for me and not letting um like things like power of how you feel like you should be impact on how you are day to day and how you show up with people is that when you see someone smile if they don't smile back that's fine like you don't need to beat yourself up about that you're just showing up as you are in the world and I feel like that's my version of success right now is just the inner peace and being okay with where I'm at within myself and feeling cared for and loved for by myself and I feel like that's really important.

46:58That is so important and you know we've mentioned not comparing ourselves to other people and knowing that everybody else is on their own timeline but is there someone whose way of life you deeply admire or someone past present future or fictional that you you do think that is the right way to do things or there's some things that they do

47:20Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:that really inspire me I would say my parents yeah yeah just the way that they have come in into this world and from a very young age they've learned to navigate life and they've grown with us as kids like as kids growing up in the western world and we've taught them things but they've been open to it they've been open to want to learn and grow and they're learning from us we're learning from them but just the kindness the way that they show up in the world the amount of charity work that they're doing they're always giving back to others as well it's not like oh okay they're successful and then they've made it in this country it's like no they they're constantly just looking at how can they make the world a better place and for me that's really important.

47:59Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:I love that. In your book, you say your worth isn't determined by someone else's ability to appreciate it, which I think is a theme that we keep coming back to in this conversation. That line really struck me. I was wondering if you could expand on how you help people to really internalize that message, especially if their upbringing, education or career has taught them otherwise. How do you help clients to disentangle external validation from internal worth? Yeah, Yeah. So I can sit here and I can say to someone, just don't worry about what people think. And I feel like, no, no, no, you can't do that because I'm telling you and you're like, yeah, I don't care what people think.

48:35Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:But your body might be telling you something completely different. So, again, we can intellectualize things. We can know that, well, I don't really care. But actually, do you care? Because are you feeling these feelings? So for me, doing the inner work is also about coming back into how are you feeling when you're in a certain space or someone says something to you? or if you see someone, you're scrolling on Instagram or TikTok and you see someone else and you think that they're another version of success, how does that impact on you? Or someone might say something like, oh, the other person, they did the same degree as you and they're over here.

49:06Dr. Lalitaa Suglani:It's like, well, what's coming up for you when you're hearing this? Sit with the feeling. Learn to recognise the shame that might be coming up, the guilt that might be coming up, other emotions like sadness or rage or frustration. sit with all of them because every single emotion has something that it's trying to tell you and it's important to sit with it rather than trying to ignore it because it's trying to teach you something so even the like rage anger people think it's a bad thing it's not bad it's trying to communicate something to you that you've been holding on to so let's learn to sit with that so for me the work is all about learning to just be and sit with things that are coming up is there a myth about anxiety or success that you really want to dismantle in public consciousness yeah people thinking that they can't overcome their anxiety people thinking that they're always going to have anxiety which is really sad like people will then go suppress themselves they dim themselves they keep themselves invisible they avoid situations they're not living in a way where they're allowing themselves to shine because they're so worried about feeling anxiety but when you learn to understand why your anxiety shows up making sense of why your body's reacting in the way that you can you can overcome and it doesn't mean that anxiety goes away forever like I don't my anxiety is not gone forever but I can learn to manage it it's not sitting in my driver's seat taking me like down the road and over here and over here and over here it's sitting my passenger seat and I listen to it and I'm like right you're telling me to go right why do I need to go right what's that about um and I'm able to manage it and regulate it in that way rather than it taking control of me thank you so much for sharing all of this there's one question that I always ask everybody at the end which is if I had to read one book or listen to one piece of music or go to one place or have one kind of cultural experience that would help me to understand you better what might that be and why oh that's really interesting I would say to learn like there's there's something called kirtan and kirtan is this beautiful experience where people chant together and they sing together and you have so many different emotions that come up in that space where everyone's just singing they're chanting and we're just being in that moment and sometimes you just cry in joy and just peace in just the sense of being so if there's something that you want to try go to somewhere where they do kirtan just so you can be in that space and feel into just the there's so many layers of what happens in that space um but the the music and the the way it just hits your soul is and your heart is just really powerful what is the context in which that is performed i've grown up in a family where we are Sikh Punjabi but also we um carry practices of Hinduism so this originates from Hinduism and there's something around it's it's meant to or connects with meditation as well and there's a collective coming together so for me growing up I have experienced all of this but I didn't understand I didn't connect with it the way that I connect with it now so for me there's a when you're in this space and it can there's lots of different spaces that it shows up now especially in London there's so many like pop-ups that where people do it and there was a mind body festival as well they do it there so there's so many spaces that you can find people where they where they do kirtan there's also um i know like in london and they've opened up in birmingham as well om nom and they're a restaurant but they also do kirtan and it's a really beautiful experience of coming together love with food but then you also have like this beautiful music um that's just really connected to your soul there is something incredible about music i think song because we don't use our voices in that way often yeah we used to such a big part of indigenous cultures and native cultures of song and singing and community and expressing yourself and screaming we have kind of for the most part done away with that I mean we have choirs and things like this but it's all very manicured um so yeah I think that's a beautiful beautiful exercise is there anything on this topic of slowing down redefining success for yourself that we haven't covered that you'd like to mention oh um I feel like sometimes it's just coming back to I say with sense of being but being is like connected with mind body your heart space and connected back to your values of who you want to be in the world and just keep coming back to self in that way thank you so much thank you thank you so much for tuning in this episode has been hosted and created by me Tiana Tambridge, produced by Whitney Rosenthal, sound and video production and recorded at Brazen Studios, cover art design by Natalia Ruhe.

53:47Please subscribe to The Slowdown to be notified of upcoming episodes, tell a friend and leave a review. It really does help a new podcast like this get out in the world. And remember, we're all heading to the same destination and there is no prize for getting there early, so we might as well slow down.