Anxiety, Responsibility, and Losing Who You Used to Be

Many high achieving professionals struggle with anxiety and begin to feel disconnected from themselves over time. Have you ever had a moment, maybe in the middle of doing something like washing the dishes, sitting in your car, strolling on your phone, when all of a sudden you realize that you no longer feel like yourself? You realize that you have been showing up for your life, but you have not really been present in it. 

On paper, on you’re a baddie. You handle your responsibilities, you take care of your people, and you make things happen the way you always do, but internally it feels like something has shifted and you cannot quite put your finger on what happened or how you got here. You want to tell your family and friends, but these are the people who see you as strong. These are the people who turn to you to handle their crisis. So in the midst of your own identity crisis, who do you turn to? The feeling of being disconnected or even dissociated is what a lot of people experience but never say out loud.

Not because they don’t want to, but because they believe that they can’t.

When Life Starts Requiring More of You Than You Ever  Planned 

Life has a way of adding weight to you slowly, so slow that you likely don’t notice it at first. One day you graduate from college and start a career. You meet your partner who becomes your spouse and you have a few kids. The kids need you; your job needs you; your spouse needs you; your friends need you; your extended family needs you, heck, the dog needs you!

One responsibility turns into five, then then, and before you know it, your days are no longer about what you want or how you feel, they are about what needs to get done and who is depending on you to get it done. You become the one that everybody leans on, the one who figures it out, and the one who does not have the luxury of falling apart because too much is riding on you to be okay. 

You don’t wake up one day and say I am losing myself. Instead, you adjust, like the soldier that you are. You push through and tell yourself that you will rest later or make time for yourself later. But later never happens, it just keeps getting pushed further back until one day you realize that you don’t even know what you like anymore. You can’t verbalize what excites you or brings you peace outside of getting things done. 

And it feels like you are living inside of a marble, like you can see your life, but you are not fully connected to it. 

How Anxiety Hides Inside of Being “The Strong One” 

What happens when your brain reaches its limitation of being the strong one? It starts to give you warning signs. Anxiety does not always look like panic or breaking down. For a lot of people, especially people who have been holding it down for years, anxiety shows up as always being on, always thinking, always planning, always anticipating what could go wrong so you can stay ten steps ahead. 

You become so used to functioning in that space that slowing down does not even feel natural anymore. I talk about high functioning anxiety in my blog, Why High Achieving Professionals Still Struggle with Anxiety. It can feel uncomfortable, almost like something is off when you are not doing something or fixing something. Because you present well, people call you strong and praise your resilience and tenacity. But they have no clue that you are two shakes away from having a breakdown. 

The Version of You That Got Lost Along the Way

I hold your hand through this part, because I can empathize with you as I help you understand that this version of you is tired. It’s exhausted and doesn’t feel adequate or understand its purpose outside of servitude towards others. Life doesn’t feel fun or free. There is a version of you that existed before life got this heavy and everything became about survival, responsibility, and making sure that everybody else is good. That version of you had space to feel, explore, laugh and just be carefree without thinking about what comes next. 

My dear reader, even if you cannot fully remember this version of yourself, you can feel it’s absence. It shows up in your thoughts where you catch yourself saying I just want to feel like myself again, even if you cannot fully explain what that means anymore. I help my clients understand that this is not them being ungrateful, it’s them recognizing that somewhere along the way, they stopped being the center of their own lives. 

Why Slowing Down Feels So Uncomfortable 

There’s a moment that happens in a session when clients have utilized tools to help them slow down and they realize that it doesn’t always bring them peace. They finally have a moment to breathe and report that it feels uncomfortable, like they do not know what to do with themselves. When you have been in survival mode for so long, sitting down somewhere (as the old folks used to say) forces you to sit with everything that you have been pushing to the side. To avoid facing the things that you suppressed, you keep busy.

Keeping busy is far easier than facing the discomfort of reconnecting with yourself, which is why the cycle continues. I help my clients understand that this is where the avoidance cycle comes in. You feel uncomfortable, you avoid it, and you get temporary relief. But because the relief does not last, you keep avoiding. The more you avoid, the more intense the need to avoid becomes. Before you know it, you are stuck in a cycle that keeps you disconnected from yourself. 

You Do Not Have to Lose Yourself to Be Responsible 

Listen, reconnecting with yourself does not mean that you stop showing up for your life. You don’t have to drop your responsibilities or become someone different. It means that you start making space for yourself within the life that you already have. Now, don’t get it twisted, some of those responsibilities you will drop. You know exactly which ones. 

Check in with yourself instead of automatically pushing through. Recognize when you are drained and allow yourself to rest without feeling like you have to earn it. Remember that you are more than what you do for other people. For goodness’ sake, give yourself permission to exist outside of those roles. 

You are exactly who you think you aren’t!

Finding Your Way Back to Yourself 

Take the pressure off yourself. This is not about reinventing who you are. It’s about reconnecting with what has always been there. I validate my clients by affirming to them that this process does not have to be big or overwhelming. Meet yourself where you are by starting in small intentional ways where you begin to listen to yourself again. Trust what you feel and make decisions that are not just about keeping everything afloat, but about honoring who you are. 

You are still there, friend. You did not disappear; you just got buried under everything that life placed on you. Once you start creating space for yourself again, you will begin to transition into a space where you are not just surviving your life, you are actually present in it. 

If you have been feeling like you are losing yourself while trying to hold everything together, you do not have to figure this out alone. Schedule a consultation and let’s start getting back to you.