More Than Anxiety

Ep 126 - How Anxiety Hurts Your Relationships (and What to Do About It)

• Megan Devito • Episode 126

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Stress and Anxiety Effect All Areas of Your Life 

They impact your relationships, your job, and your confidence. 

Whether it’s snapping at your partner, overthinking at work, or zoning out when you're trying to have fun with your kids or friends, the more anxious or stressed you feel, the more it sneaks into your relationships.

In this episode of More Than Anxiety, meet Sarah, a high-achieving woman who looks like she has it all together but feels like she’s falling apart inside. 

Learn the sneaky ways anxiety shows up, why common coping strategies like overworking or avoiding conflict backfire, and how to break the cycle so you can feel calm, confident, and present.

If you’re ready to set boundaries, stop people-pleasing, and feel calm and confident in your relationships, this episode is for you.

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You know you're overwhelmed, burned out, sick to death of work but also trying to do everyting for everyone at home. TAKE THIS QUIZ to find out why you're so overwhelmed and what to do about it.

Megan Devito:

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Devito and I help ambitious women break out of the anxiety cycle that keeps them frustrated and stuck. Get ready for a lighthearted approach that will change what you think, how you feel and what you believe about yourself. This podcast is full of simple steps, a lot of truth, talk and inspiration to take action so you walk away feeling confident, calm and ready to live. Let's get to it.

Megan Devito:

Hey there, welcome to episode 126 of the More Than Anxiety podcast. My name is Megan. I'm a life coach. I help high-achieving women who are anxious and stressed and overwhelmed learn how to calm their bodies so they can think clearly, have more confidence and a lot more fun and success in their lives. So if you're joining me today and it's your first time, I'm so glad that you found your way here and if you are back for more, welcome back. It's always great to have you. I've got a really important episode for you today.

Megan Devito:

A lot of times when we're feeling anxious and stressed, we think it's all about us. We think it's about how we feel and what we do and what's happening in our jobs. But I'm just here to tell you that that is absolutely not true, because when you feel anxious, when you feel stressed, that stress and anxiety goes into all the different areas of your life, so that your spirituality is affected, how you eat is affected, how you sleep is affected, and today we're going to talk about how your relationships are affected. This is a super important topic that is going to change the way you relate to your coworkers, to your family, to your friends, to the people in your community. It's a game changer, and we're going to do this through a character that I created. She's not a former client, she's actually a collection of former clients.

Megan Devito:

Lots of the women that I speak with talk about their anxiety about what's happening at work, what's happening with their families, and they tend to think it's contained. But they also tell me that they're arguing with their spouse, they're snappy with their kids, they're impatient with their co-workers. Everything's kind of falling apart. Forget even seeing their friends, they don't even do that anymore. So let's talk about all of this.

Megan Devito:

This character's name is going to be Sarah. She's not a real person. She's a lot of people. So when I talk about Sarah, keep that in mind and understand that if you see yourself in Sarah, which I'm sure you will, I also see myself in Sarah. This is a really common theme for lots of women who are out there doing amazing things. So let's talk about Sarah.

Megan Devito:

I'm going to say for today, for this episode's purpose, that Sarah is a marketing director. She could be anything, whatever you are, make her be you, okay. So maybe she is a corporate exec, maybe she's the head of HR, maybe she's an entrepreneur and she has her own business. Maybe she's a teacher, maybe she is working from home and balancing a lot of jobs, but Sarah is brilliant. She's working at this really fast-paced company. She's also the mom of two teenagers this sounds really familiar to me already and she volunteers in her community, maybe at her church, maybe at her kid's school, maybe at the shelter, whatever it is that she does. And she looks like she has got it together, like she's always dressed well, she's got her makeup and her hair done. She's friendly, she is giving, she is willing to help anybody. She's always got a smile and on the inside she's screaming and she's tired and she's about to cry, and she might cry, but she has to keep it together.

Megan Devito:

But what happened last week was that Sarah was in a work meeting and she snapped on a coworker and instantly she felt like she was going to die. Her heart sped up and she started sweating a lot and she noticed that she was getting kind of blotchy on her neck. And before she knew it she was tearing up, and she apologized again and again and again because she was embarrassed that she had lost her mind on her coworker. And when I say lost her mind, it wasn't even that big of a deal, but in her head it was monstrous. What she said was I just can't right now. And what she thought she said was, "h my God, you're driving me crazy. Just quit asking me for things. None of that happened, but in her mind it was so much worse. She was terrified. She was gonna get reprimanded or she was gonna get fired. This is all swirling around in her head.

Megan Devito:

By the time she got home it was obvious that she was really upset. Her husband said, "ey, babe, what's wrong? Don't talk to me, I'm fine. And she slams the door and she goes into her bedroom and then she loses it again. Like sounds familiar, right? So today we're going to follow Sarah's story and we're going to talk about how stress and anxiety show up in high achieving women and why the things that we do to try to help us feel better, all of those band-aids that we're putting on the bullet holes are actually keeping us stuck, and how coaching can transform not just your stress and your anxiety and your overwhelm, but your entire life, because your life is not compartmentalized like that. When you are emotional, when you are stressed and when you are anxious, it overflows into everything which is awful. So let's take care of it.

Megan Devito:

So let's start with what stress and anxiety actually look like for high achieving women and really just kind of, we're going to do this always through the lens of this Sarah's life.

Megan Devito:

Okay, so at work, Sarah is a double checker right? Like she's good. She's a perfectionist at this. She double checks every single email, Slack message, and text message to make sure that there are no typos and that she doesn't sound too aggressive or stupid, because she's telling herself that she's aggressive and stupid and that she makes a lot of mistakes. None of those things may actually be true, but she thinks they are. She stays late to redo presentations and refuses to delegate to her team because she's afraid that it won't be done right and it will reflect on her, or she's afraid that her team will think that she's not a team player or holding her own weight or pulling her own weight. However, you say that if she doesn't do it all. Again, just thoughts that she has about herself. Not that her team thinks it, she's afraid that they think it.

Megan Devito:

She takes a ton of pride on being reliable and she knows that everybody counts on her and inside she is exhausted. At home, when she gets home she keeps everything running, like her entire house right? Like she's planning dinner, which is a nightmare, let me just tell you like planning a meal every single night is really hard, but she's doing it. She's making dinner every night, she's managing her kids' schedules, she's making sure everything goes smoothly. But when her daughter forgot her gym uniform last week, she panicked and she felt like she was a failure for not reminding her daughter to take her gym clothes to school. And that spiraled into blaming herself for her kid's detention that she was afraid would happen but it never actually happened. She was just kind of projecting into the future to make sure that she could handle it now, even though her kid didn't even get a detention and she took her the clothes anyway.

Megan Devito:

Sarah's friends keep telling her she needs a break because they don't even see her anymore. And when they do, she's like distant and grouchy and she only wants to talk about work. And her friends are like "Sarah, really, we don't even know you anymore, and they've actually kind of stopped asking her to hang out anyway. So she feels like she did something wrong and now they're upset with her Again. None of that's true, but that's what she's afraid is happening.

Megan Devito:

So let's look at the broader pattern of what's happening here. The first thing that's happening is that she's a perfectionist and she's trying to make everything perfect. She's also people pleasing. She's making sure that her coworkers aren't upset with her, or that her kids aren't upset with her, or that her husband's not, or that her friends aren't, or that her church isn't whoever else she's volunteering for. She's trying to make everybody happy. She's also overthinking everything.

Megan Devito:

So this happened to me last night. I hate long menus, you guys. I hate them because it's like I told the waitress last night. She said is everybody ready to order? And I'm like you just tell me when, because if you don't. I will just think about this in circles forever and that might sound familiar to you, and maybe you overthink menues, but maybe you overthink everything. I'm not pointing fingers because I'm telling you as I'm recording this podcast episode, I can see myself fitting into these categories.

Megan Devito:

That's a benefit, right? I have the benefit of hindsight to be able to say I know what I'm doing, I know it's a problem. Now I need to back out and like correct the problem. But if you are seeing yourself and you're like, oh, I didn't even like realize that's what was going on or I don't know how to back out of it, we need to talk about that because this leads to chronic stress and tension in your body, in your life and in your relationships. Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Megan Devito:

Now let's talk about what Sarah's doing to fix these problems. Remember I talked about Band-Aids over bullet holes. That's not what we want here. You're going to bleed out. You can't keep putting Band-Aids on the problems.

Megan Devito:

So what Sarah does to cope that might sound a lot like what you're doing to cope is she's working late at night because she's convinced if she can just get ahead of the problem, everything will be fine. So she comes home, figures out dinner, makes dinner, cleans up dinner, gets things around for the next day. The kids go to bed. Her husband's like, "hey, babe, come over here and watch TV. And she's like I can't, I have to get this email and this project done. So she's like, just you know, as soon as I get this done, everything will be fine. But the next day at work there's always another email and another project that's not fixing it. She distracts herself once the project's done by grabbing her phone and checking out Instagram, because there's some funny things on there, but that's not what she sees.

Megan Devito:

She ends up feeling worse because she sees what everybody else is doing in their perfect little lives, or what she thinks is perfect. Because it's Instagram. She's comparing herself to what everyone's doing. So she's resentful, first of all, that they can go on vacation and go out for wine with their friends. Why is their house so clean? Why are they getting a promotion? And she starts judging herself and it gets really mean really quickly. So then her thoughts are surrounding about everything she doesn't have and everything that she wants that she's working so hard for. And when her husband suggests the next day that maybe she should take the weekend off and they could go somewhere for a fun weekend. She says she couldn't possibly do that. Maybe some other time because there's so much going on in her life. What if her daughter forgets her gym uniform? What if there's a project at work?

Megan Devito:

So she works more and everything she's doing to try to get ahead, to try to feel better, is making her feel worse. When she's overworking, she feels depleted, she's more exhausted and now she's resentful of her friends, and that's not what she wants. She's avoiding conversations that she needs to have with her co-workers and with her boss and maybe with her kids about taking their gym clothes, and with her husband about why she doesn't really want to hang out with him right now. That is creating distance. It's creating tension in her teamwork at work. It's creating distance in her relationships. It's creating kids who aren't doing things that they could do themselves, like remembering to pack their gym clothes the night before, and all she really wants is support.

Megan Devito:

But she's not asking for support, she's just continuing to do it herself, and she's looking for validation from her coworkers, from her friends, from people online and other people in her life to tell her that she's doing well and that everything's right, instead of learning to trust herself and to be resilient. And, on top of that, it's making her more tired because she's staying up scrolling, so she's overthinking more instead of getting the sleep that she needs. All of that feels like it should help. It feels like a break to scroll on your phone. It feels important to know that other people think you're doing okay. It feels good to think that you could be ahead of the game. It feels easier a lot of times to avoid conversations about how you're feeling, to try to fix problems than it does to just try and fix them yourself by doing more.

Megan Devito:

None of that's working. It's all keeping her stuck. It's keeping you stuck too, and, honestly, when I find myself doing these things, I have to remember that, what am I doing? This is not going to work and I have to do the hard thing. These solutions are keeping her stuck because overworking reinforces her belief that her worth is tied to how much she does and I want to hit pause there for a second because Sarah landed a marketing job at a high-performing corporation, or you started a business because you started another business and made it super successful. Or you got your position in this place as a creative director because you are creative and you know how to lead people. So your value isn't based on the productivity that you put out. It's because you are who you are, but when you think that you have to do more to prove it, you're going to stay stuck.

Megan Devito:

She's avoiding her emotions and she's missing opportunities to connect deeply with the people she needs to connect with. She wants to be present with her husband. She wants to have fun with him again, but she didn't have time. She wants to be present with her kids. She wants to be able to go out and play soccer with them in the yard, but that is a waste of time when there is a project tomorrow. And her colleagues they have no idea why she's so grouchy. She's not telling them I just really need to ask you guys to be able to help me out. She's not telling them what she needs and she keeps chasing perfection. She absolutely is setting herself up for failure every single time because nobody not her, not my clients, not you and not me can ever meet these impossible standards.

Megan Devito:

And one of the questions I end up asking most of my clients when they say I just want it to be perfect. Who's perfect? I used to call this Martha Stewart syndrome, where you know you get like a Restoration Hardware or a Pottery Barn catalog if they even send those out anymore or you get on their website, or you get on The Spruce and you look at this perfect house with this perfect setup, where they're not raising kids, they just set this up for a photo shoot. Or you look at somebody else's work and you're like, wow, that is perfect. But what you don't know is that somebody else told them it sucked and they had to redo it. Perfection is just made up thing and we know that logically. But when we keep striving for it, we are setting ourself up for disappointment and more work every single time.

Megan Devito:

So what are you doing right now to fix that bullet hole, that stress that you've got, and is it actually helping you, or is it keeping you stuck, like it's keeping Sarah or my clients stuck and sometimes me? What are you doing to fix it? Because if the answer is I'm doing those things you just said, you got to stop With all the love. You have to stop because it's not helping. So let's talk about what can help. I am a coach. I help people with this. There are lots of coaches out there that can help you with this, but let's talk about how this helps the clients that I've worked with through this character that we're working with today. So let's go back to Sarah.

Megan Devito:

After a really bad day at work and a really tense dinner at home, Sarah comes home and she's like hey, I wanted to tell you that I cannot keep living like this. And her husband sort of panics this time right, because, oh God, she's going to ask for a divorce. But that's not it. She just wants to tell him that she reached out to a coach to ask for help, but she's kind of asking for his permission. Like, "ey, you think this is okay. So she tells him that she reached out for a coach and even though she's doing that reassurance thing, she's already kind of made up her mind. And this is a new thing for her, because it feels really good to ask somebody if it's okay, because it gives you an out. And I'm going to be real honest with you here Hiring a coach can feel terrifying, especially when it surrounds your mental and emotional health and what you think about yourself, because your brain is going to tell you it's too busy, you don't time, you don't have time, it's too expensive, it's probably not the right thing for you.

Megan Devito:

It'll never work. All the things that you're doing wrong. It's just going to show you what a failure you are. None of those things are necessarily true for everybody or anybody. They might be one thing, might be true, or might not be true at all. It might just be an idea or a thought that you're coming up with to give you a reason to get the for an out. Does that make sense?

Megan Devito:

So she asks her husband. She said hey, I just want to let you know I reached out for a coach. And she said but I want to also let you know that I already said yes. And before you freak out, I just want you to know that I know it's kind of expensive, but it's okay, I'm going to pay for it. And she feels really good, but also really nervous about this. That's totally normal.

Megan Devito:

But what happened was that she made a decision for herself. It was that one decision that got the ball rolling. She hadn't even started working with whoever her coach was yet she hadn't even started. But that one decision to decide that she was going to do something for herself got the ball rolling. That's all it takes is one decision. And yes, I know some people really do have like questions and thoughts and things like that. That's why we have consultation calls, right, let's make sure it's the right thing. Let's say she did all that; she decides she's going to go. How does she benefit from this? So we're kind of fast forwarding through the whole coaching process thing which is really different for everybody.

Megan Devito:

You don't want somebody that does the same thing for every single person because you're not like the other person, right? It's sort of like the idea of perfectionism it should be different for everyone. So she goes through the process. What did she get out of it? Why was it so great for her? I think that's a fair question, especially if you've never worked with a coach before. Why, what is the big deal? That's fair. So here's how you benefit, or how Sarah benefited, or how my clients benefit, how you will benefit.

Megan Devito:

Sarah learned how to calm down her body so she could think clearly. She realized that when she was feeling all of these ways, she had to find a way to stop overthinking. Stop trying to people, please stop trying to. You know, work more to be more. She let go of guilt. So she started saying no and she started saying yes to what she wanted to do, and she started to feel really confident in her decisions because she realized that when she made the decision to do coaching, that was a good one. And then she made another decision at work to ask her coworkers for help, and it felt scary, but that was a good one. And then she made another decision. She started collecting all of this evidence that oh, wait a second, I really can do this and it's safe. She finally felt like she could take a deep breath again and calm her body down. Her shoulders weren't up around her ears. That's a big deal.

Megan Devito:

But she also had other benefits. It wasn't just in that. She learned how to express what she needed, to say it to other people without bottling it all up inside and without feeling selfish. She wasn't feeling like it was selfish for her to ask her team to work with her. It seems obvious, doesn't it? When it's just us on the outside looking at someone else, it seems so obvious. But when it feels threatening, when you have thoughts about what that means about you as a person, it can be really hard to do. But she learned how to do it.

Megan Devito:

She and her husband started having honest conversations about the relationship and all of a sudden they kind of feel like they're dating again, like it's fun, they're going out and going to like movies or hanging with their friends. Her friends started asking her if she wanted to meet them again, because she was making the effort to connect with them. She felt like she had the time and she knew she needed to repair that relationship. She said hey guys, sorry I've been so distant, I really want to hang out with you. She's having fun and at work she's practiced saying no without feeling guilty and she built trust with her team and she's starting to delegate things. And because she's delegating, she has a creative think tank behind her and her boss is starting to notice that I don't know what changed with you, but you're in a better mood and you are doing some amazing work. So she starts moving up at work. I've seen this happen over and over again, but it's even more than that. It's even bigger, because she gets benefits right. Like.

Megan Devito:

This is about her and her decision to change how she deals with, how she feels. So she started setting boundaries around her time, which gave her space to do things she wanted to do. She could read a book, like a trashy romance novel, all day on a Saturday if she wanted - zero guilt, because she deserved time to rest. She was able to go out and play soccer in the backyard with her kids because she used to love to play soccer and she made time for it and she was present with them. Like she was out there just screwing around laughing and having fun with her kids. She hadn't done that since they were in middle school. That's a big deal. And she started planning that weekend getaway with her husband, which they desperately needed, and they're not arguing as much and they're communicating with each other. That's a big deal too. And she stopped chasing perfection. This is amazing when you realize that you can leave the mail on the counter when your mother-in-law comes over for dinner and if your mother-in-law thinks something about it, you do not care. That is a big deal. She knew that she was good enough and she was great for her family and great for her job and anybody else. That was fine. They could think what they want. That is freeing. That's what she got from coaching.

Megan Devito:

It wasn't just like this idea that like, okay, well, I can calm down and keep doing more. It was the idea that I can calm down and trust myself. I can feel really confident about my work and be successful without working until the middle of the night. She found ways to deal with her stress and anxiety without scrolling on social media, without overeating, without staying up all night thinking about what she needs to do better and what she needs to do differently. All of that stopped.

Megan Devito:

So if this sounds, if like you're like ah, Sarah, you're in my head, yeah, she's all of us, isn't she? At some point in time, she is all of us. And if you feel like this sounds like your day-to-day, we need to talk. We need to start talking about how you can change your relationship with the story you're telling about your life. We need to start talking about how you can lower your stress levels so that you can sleep. You deserve to sleep. You deserve to sleep, you deserve to feel good, you deserve to have time with your kids, you deserve to be successful and you really can have all of that.

Megan Devito:

And coaching helps you build the tools and the mindset and the habits that you need not to just be in survival mode all the time, because when you're in survival mode, you can't think clearly, you can't think creatively, you can't make decisions that benefit you, because you're just trying to put out fires that don't exist, and that's a lot, guys. Studies show that women in leadership roles have 50% higher stress rates than their male counterparts, because we're always trying to prove everything and be everything for everyone, and coaching can be the difference between feeling burned out and finding the balance you need to be successful. That is a big deal. 50% higher stress rates. We don't need that. We have enough on our plates and you can still be an amazing mom and an amazing partner and an amazing coworker without having to be stressed out all the time.

Megan Devito:

All right, let's talk about Sarah. Six months down the road, she's finished coaching right. Six months later, she's like a new person. Her team is killing it. She got offered a promotion because, of course, she did. She's a mastermind at this right. She's no longer micromanaging everyone and they actually like working with her now because she's not hovering over them all the time. Her marriage feels like a partnership again and her kids aren't afraid to come to her for help because she knows how to help them too. And their F on a test doesn't mean she failed as a mom. It just means they need to figure out how to do algebra. That's all it means and it doesn't mean that they're never going to graduate from college. It just means they had a bad test and it's not her fault. And for the first time in years, she's sleeping through the night and she's not waking up to eat Pop-Tarts and like chocolate first thing in the morning. She gets up, she works out, she has a great morning routine and she goes out and hangs out with her friends on the weekend. She's got relationships and a social life. This is real. This isn't a made-up story. It's a made-up character who's living real stories of clients that I've worked with.

Megan Devito:

Sarah's transformation wasn't about working harder or being perfect. It was just about learning how to prioritize herself, how to set boundaries and how to build the confidence and resilience she needed to be the person that she's always been. That's it. So I want you to think about your own Sarah moments here. Okay, because my guess is that you saw yourself in her. A lot of women do Most women do so.

Megan Devito:

What would your life look like if you weren't constantly stressed and overwhelmed? How would your relationships improve? What would happen if you felt calm and confident at work and at home and with your friends? What would be different? Just take time to like chew on that today, right when you're driving, when you're sitting in the bathroom, when you're doing whatever.

Megan Devito:

I wonder what Sarah's life like. What would my life be like if I could do that? It can, because I want to help you create that life and get those relationships because you deserve them just like this fake character. She is the people who I've helped and she is people who I continue to help. So stress and anxiety do not have to run your life. They don't. You have the power to take control right now, and remember, this started for Sarah with the decision to go all in on herself, and it's the same starting point for you. You just have to decide that you're going to do it.

Megan Devito:

No more Band-Aids, guys. No more Band-Aids. They don't fix anything, they just cover it up and eventually they get gross and they fall off. All right, if this sounds like something that you're like, all right, I'm in, I'm ready. It's really, really easy to talk to me. You can go to my website. It is www. megandevito. com. There's a "ork with me tab. Click that. You have two options. You can schedule a consultation, call on the calendar that's there to talk more with me about what I do and to see if I'm the right coach for you. That's a good idea.

Megan Devito:

If you feel like you've listened to enough of these podcasts or you know me, or we've met on LinkedIn or on Facebook and you're like no, I feel like I've already talked and I just need to say yes, finally, you can actually purchase your coaching right on there and we can get started right away. All you have to do is decide.

Megan Devito:

All right, you guys, this is about your time, your energy, your mental health and your relationships. It's about every single part of your life. So if I do not talk to you this week, I will be back again next week for another episode. Take care.

Megan Devito:

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast. Before you go, be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And, of course, if you're ready to feel calm, to stop overthinking and have a lot more fun, you can go to the show notes, click the link and talk to me about coaching. I'll talk to you soon.