The first time I walked into a psychotherapist’s office I was around twenty years old.
Coaching did not exist in Romania at the time, and change strategists certainly did not. Anxiety is what took me there. Except I did not know it was anxiety.
I felt pressure in the middle of my chest when I breathed, I had episodes of dizziness, and I had started to feel an almost constant fear that I understood was out of proportion with anything actually happening in my life. After ruling out the possible medical causes, it occurred to me to ask a psychologist as well. I told nobody. I went alone.
He asked me: are you stressed?
I said I did not know what to answer. There were things on my mind. At that age I was on my second attempt at making a business work, I already had two employees, I managed to pay myself a salary once every two or three months, and I told him I was not sure I would call the life I had stressful.
“I mean yes, it was a bit hard,” I said.
A bit more than that, if I am honest today. I just did not know whether I even had the right to call it “stress”. In my defence, again, I was twenty.
And anyway, even if I had been stressed, what did that have to do with anxiety? (If you have not read it yet, here is the article on how you recognise anxiety.)
I went to a few counselling sessions, then I did not go back for about a year. I liked the psychologist, the process of introspection itself was extremely interesting, but I did not “feel” that it could help me with my new problem. What did he call it again? Right. Functional anxiety.
It took eight years. Eight years from that moment until it became clear to me, for the first time, what the connection is between stress, anxiety, panic attacks and emotional triggers, and until I could explain it coherently.
For eight years I talked and worked with several therapists, and with about two of them I did hundreds of sessions. I even worked with a few from the US and the UK. It was a longer and harder road than it needed to be.
I do not want you to understand that it did not help, because it did. I made progress on managing my emotions, I learned a lot about myself, and it was extremely useful training for the change strategist role I would move towards years later.
It is just that, as often happens in therapy, I drifted left and right into other secondary subjects that felt more urgent in the moment and were easier to handle and discuss than the main problem: the anxiety and, later, the panic attacks that arrived “out of nowhere”, at the least convenient moments, and stopped me from living and enjoying my life.
Because that was the problem as I actually experienced it
That thing where everything is fine, I am having exactly the day I wanted, and then BOOM, out of nowhere, the darkest thoughts start crowding into my head.
First one slips in quietly. Then I only have to pay attention to it for ten seconds and it walks into the house uninvited, through the window I left open, unlocks the door from the inside, and suddenly it is throwing a party in my mind with all of its friends.
And I have to look after the new guests and make sure they all have a good time. When all I actually wanted was to enjoy my day off. Intrusive, negative thoughts, trying to take control. You know the ones.
And the reality is that this Andrei, with all of his analytical mind and his above average intelligence, did not have the tools to take control back. I felt like I was skidding, like I had too few handholds to grab. Something close to desperation would come over me sometimes.
Me. Desperation. Me, who by then was running businesses, winning awards, coordinating teams that ran events in twelve cities simultaneously, paying salaries, and running an NGO that donated truckloads of books to village libraries around Bucharest. Me, the one who performed. Desperate?
It made no sense in my head. I was functioning better than most twenty-something-year-olds I knew, was I not?
Looking back now, that was the biggest problem of all: the anxiety did not stop me from living my life. It looked like I was doing fine.
The reality is that it was not killing me, but it was not letting me live either.
Today, almost twenty years later, when I write about anxiety or mention how I work with my clients on it, what I am actually talking about is functional anxiety, not clinical or generalised anxiety as a diagnosis.
My change strategy clients are neither people who need specialist treatment, nor people whose anxiety affects their life so much that they cannot get through an ordinary day.
I work with high achievers who already operate at a very high level in what they do professionally, who make high stakes decisions daily, and who carry exhaustion, burnout and anxiety symptoms standing up.
Until they cannot carry them any more, or until they reach the conclusion that their own health and their own relationships are not a price they are willing to pay for performance.
And they start to wonder whether it might be possible to have both. It is.
Before that, give me two more minutes to make clear what clinical anxiety is and what functional anxiety is. It will help you work out whether what I write is about you, or about someone close to you.
Clinical anxiety vs functional anxiety: where the line is
You may be wondering what clinical anxiety means. Or when it is time to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist.
Over the course of our lives all of us experience various degrees of worry, negative thinking or anxiety. But the moment the symptoms become strong enough that they no longer allow us a functional life, we cross into clinical anxiety. And that is the domain of psychotherapists and psychiatrists.
What does it mean that the symptoms no longer allow a functional life?
It means there are one or more parts of our life so affected by anxiety that we cannot enjoy things that are normal for other people.
For example, when anxiety stops us for a longer period from entering a relationship or maintaining a stable one. Or when it stops us getting or keeping a job and earning a living. Or when because of anxiety we can no longer leave the house (agoraphobia), or can no longer travel anywhere because the anxiety is paralysing (fear of flying).
I think you get it. If your anxiety has reached a level where it already stops you doing things that for most people are normal and part of life, then you may have reached the level of clinical anxiety.
In those cases I am not the person to work with, a clinical psychologist, a psychotherapist or a psychiatrist is. If you want, I can recommend someone I trust.
What functional anxiety means and how you recognise it
People with functional anxiety often maintain a high level of functioning across different areas of their lives.
From the outside they can look high performing and in control of the situation. And they genuinely are, most of the time.
Most of them are successful in their career or in other important roles in their life, while internally they deal with constant stress, self doubt and the fear of failing or of not being good enough.
They have recurring negative thoughts, they feel worry and fear, high levels of stress, and the sense of being permanently at the edge of their energy and of their capacity to handle daily challenges in a healthy way. The anxiety does not block their life, but it makes it rigid and extremely expensive in energy terms.
What they experience is more of a parasite on daily life. As if they are constantly accompanied by emotions and thoughts that drain their energy and slow their progress.
How I work with clients on functional anxiety
Now, years later, when on a personal level anxiety is just an old acquaintance I have not seen in years but occasionally read about in the papers, I meet daily, in my work as a change strategist, managers, entrepreneurs and high achievers from various fields with a history similar to mine.
Except the anxiety is still tormenting them.
And do you know what I do when they choose to work with me? I set out to be for them the trustworthy specialist I wish I had found during those eight years when I drifted, lost somewhere in the personal development and mental health space.
Feeling my way from one specialist to the next, trying to assemble the puzzle pieces I had collected so far.
I want it not to take them eight years. I want them to feel tangible, significant results in the first two weeks. And it shows in the results.
Do you know why? Because it is not easy to find someone with over thirteen years of experience in exactly the problem you are facing who has also had the personal experience of going through that problem himself.
And who genuinely understands how frustrating it is to want to perform and, at the same time, to want to enjoy your life.
About the author
Andrei Roșca is a change strategist working one to one with founders, C level executives and senior managers who perform well on the outside while carrying a constant internal load. The work is nervous system regulation under real pressure, not motivation and not mindset. 13+ years of practice, 510+ clients, 8120+ individual sessions, through Whisper, Center for Strategic Change. Sessions are online, in English or in Romanian.
If this described your situation, start here: Coaching for overthinking executives. Or read more about my background and method.