What Every Stressed Out Person Needs to Hear | The Mel Robbins Podcast

(ticking sound) (upbeat music) I'm gonna bring you into my life in real time as I am experiencing a breakdown. Just this morning, I had something incredibly stressful happen. When the shit hits the fan in your life, you are either what researchers call an over-functioner or an under-functioner. Now, my husband and I are opposites. We're gonna go into the stressful situation. You're gonna see yourself in either Mel or Chris. Let's go to the scene. (upbeat music) Hey, it's your friend, Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Today, you and I are gonna do something so awesome. I'm gonna bring you into my life in real time as I am experiencing a breakdown. That's right. Just this morning, I had something incredibly stressful happen, and I decided, because I knew that this was something that you would likely relate to, that I would just hit the voice memo and I would take you into the stressful breakdown in real time. The reason why I wanted to do that is because there are only two ways, according to the research, that you and I cope with stressful situations. When the shit hits the fan in your life, you are either what researchers call an over-functioner or an under-functioner. Now, my husband and I are opposites. Chris, in a stressful situation, under-functions. Mel, she over-functions. This is a very common problem in friendships, in relationships. If you don't understand your automatic response to stress, it gets the best of you, and so I'm so excited for today, because we're gonna go into the stressful situation. You're gonna see yourself in either Mel or Chris. Let's go to the scene. This morning, sitting in the front seat of my husband's pickup truck, I am unpacking, in real time for you, the shit that went down on the drive there. (laughs) And will you just give me some grace? This is not my finest hour, and especially if you identify with Chris, you're gonna think I'm a real nightmare, but I am willing to show you the worst sides of me so that we can all become a little bit better. So without further ado, meet over-functioning Mel Robbins. (engine starting) So I'm sitting here in the front seat of Chris's pickup, and I just wanted to talk to you. I have had one hell of a morning, and you know when you have a morning or a day where everything just goes off the rails and you can feel your heart pounding in your chest? That is me right now. My heart is pressing against the seatbelt. It has just been one thing after another. So I thought, "You know what? I'm gonna pick up my phone and hit record, and I'm just gonna talk to you," 'cause for me, I'm the kind of person that needs to process this kind of stuff out loud, and I figured that hearing how I deal with the circumstances of life that stress us all out, it might help you the next time you feel like your day just went off the rails. So Chris has a colonoscopy appointment today, and for the past 24 hours, he has been prepping for it. He's been grumpy. He's been back and forth to the bathroom, and, um, we've been sending funny memes in our family group chat. One of the funny ones is, you know those scenes in a movie where there's a big, like, explosion or car crash and somebody is casually walking away from this massive ball of fire? I'm thinking of, like, the Fast and Furious movies, as if nothing's happened. The kids were joking that that was Chris leaving the bathroom last night every time he would, uh, go in there because the colonoscopy cleanout medication was working. I knew that we were gonna have a really early morning departure this morning, and so I'd planned on getting up at the ass crack of dawn so that I could let the dogs out and get my morning rituals in, and setting myself up so that I could sit at the hospital and have everything ready. And you know that podcast, the Mel Robbins podcast? She did this episode about evening routines and how evening routines help you set up a morning routine. Well, guess what? I didn't listen to that fucking bitch. (laughs) I did not set myself up last night. Nope, not at all. Did not listen to that advice. Nope. Would have been great had I set out my computer. Would have been great had I set out the cords I needed and the notebook, or printed out the transcripts that I needed to review so that I could have been prepared when I woke up, and empowered, but no, I didn't do that. I went to bed, and I forgot to set my fucking alarm. And so I was woken up this morning, hearing Chris shuffle into our bedroom, grouchy, mad, hungry. He's been up all night, you know, emptying the pipes. I shoot out of bed like a rocket. "Oh my God, we've got 25 minutes before we're supposed to leave." I let the dogs out, I feed the dogs. I'm now racing around. Chris is now quietly shuffling to the pickup truck, where he is climbing into the front seat and reclining it like a bed, and I don't know about you, but when I'm running late and my family gets into the car, it makes my heart race, because I now feel the added pressure of not only racing around like a lunatic and feeling stressed out because I have shot myself in the foot, but I'm feeling the added pressure because people are now waiting for me.So, I go back and forth to the car. I put my water in, my coffee in. I start grabbing stuff from the office, from my bedroom, from all these other places. And it's kind of a nightmare, honestly. And so I climb into the car and my heart is racing. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. I did not print out the transcript, but now we're, uh, up against arriving on time. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. And Chris is sound asleep and I'm thinking, "We just have to go. We just have to go." I have now doubly shot myself in the foot because I have not gotten my morning routine in that helped me feel grounded, so I'm feeling behind the ball there. I have half the stuff that I need and I don't even know what I've forgotten. I don't have time to get it because I really need to support Chris right now. And so I back out of the driveway, we start driving. It's a nice quiet 15 minutes. I'm doing my psychological or physiological sigh where you go (breathes deeply) . To try to activate my parasympathetic relaxed calm response. It's starting to work. I'm thinking, "Okay. Just gonna have a nice quiet drive." And all of a sudden our son calls. Now it's 8:15 and he's supposed to be sitting in class at high school. And so I pick up the phone and I'm like, "Hey Oak, what's up?" "Mom! Mom! I don't know what to do. Mom! Mom! The Jeep, it just stopped working. It just like all of a sudden just stopped working and I don't know what to do. Like i- it's in drive but it's not going anywhere and the electricity's on and I'm in the middle of the road and oh my god, oh my god." And I'm like, "Okay." And now my heart is racing again. And I take a deep breath and now Chris hears this so he wakes up. And I say, "Oak, no problem. Take a deep breath. Are you stopped?" "Yes, I'm stopped but I don't wanna take my foot off the brake. The car's not moving. I don't know what to do." And now all of a sudden I hear adults talking. He's like, "Hold on mom, there's all these adults," because he's of course right outside of school. So I'm driving away from him, of course, 'cause I'm heading an hour and 40 minutes away to a hospital. And I hear other adults going, "Uh, why don't we disconnect the battery? Why don't we do this? Why don't we do that?" I realize he's in good hands. He tells me, "I'm okay, I'll call you in a minute." And so I take a deep breath and all of that flood. You know how something happens to somebody you love and you immediately feel guilty for not being there? You immediately feel like somehow you've done something wrong. Well, this is me. That's what happened. I immediately started to feel that way. Oh my God. You know, the venting is not making me feel better. I thought it would make me feel better and I'm wondering if it's because I can't hear you responding. So I'm putting my hand on my heart. Mm, it's okay, Mel. It's okay. It's okay. So Oak calls back and he says, "All these cool adults stopped and helped me. We disconnected the battery and we were able to push the car over to the side of the road. Can you and dad help? I don't know what to do." And so I said, "Sure. You go to school, take a photo where the, the Jeep is and we will get a tow truck." Now by this point Chris is awake and he is reclined with a pillow and a blanket in the passenger seat, and I'm driving up, uh, Highway 91 and he says, "I'll call AAA." So Chris gets on the phone and I don't know if you're like this, but I cannot help myself in situations where I'm stressed out. I cannot help myself. I start stressing over how Chris is handling the call with AAA. "Tell them that you're going to a colonoscopy. Tell them that Oakley's in school. Tell them this." Like I'm, and he's just like, "Shh, shh, shh." And I'm thinking, "Shut up, Mel. Shut up, Mel. Shut up, Mel." And so I tell myself, "Five, four, three, two, one," just (exhales deeply) . And I'm trying to stay quiet as Chris is managing this call. Oh my God. I don't know what is wrong with me. I literally could not help myself. He gets to the near end of the call and I go, "Can you please tell them that you're getting a colonoscopy?" Because I'm thinking, "They will help you more if they know that you're going to the hospital so we can't handle this, and then that way they know we're not irresponsible parents." It is so ridiculous. Chris is a 53-year-old grown-ass man. He knows how to handle AAA and here I cannot help myself. You know what I have? I have overfunctioning anxiety. That's my issue. See, there are two types of anxiety in the world. There is overfunctioning and there is underfunctioning. Overfunctioning is when you get into a stressful situation and you become the helper. You cannot stop yourself from being the first responder. "I'll do this, I'll do that." Ordering everybody else around, like you're a nightmare to be around. And on one hand it is a superpower to have overfunctioning anxiety, and on the other hand it is horrendous to have it because you stomp all over everybody else and everybody else's ability and capacity to handle things, and you think you can do it better. And it's not even that you think you can do it better, it's that your alarm state in your body when you get stressed out goes into such a five-alarm fire drill that you lose your ability to think rationally. And the truth is, Chris is perfectly capable of handling a call with AAA. In fact, he did it just fine.And I am capable of shutting up and letting other people help. But when you have overfunctioning anxiety, you trample everyone around you. And you go into this mode where you're like, "Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do." And that's not all that was going on, by the way. Because Chris hangs up with AAA and I realize, "Oh my gosh, it's now 8:30," and I haven't heard from our daughter who has a virtual appointment with a doctor right now. And so I then call her and it goes straight to voicemail. And I'm like, "Oh, she must be on with it." And so I then call her back. Straight to voicemail. Straight to voicemail. And I realize, "Oh my god, she has slept through this thing." Because when I checked on her before I left, she had an eye mask on and she was kind of warm, 'cause she's been sick, and, "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, she's gonna miss her appointment, oh my god." And now the first responder mode goes on. And then the phone rings, and it's Oakley. "Dad, what do I do? I don't know what to do. Is the tow tr- I gotta go to school. What do I do?" So now Chris is talking to Oakley, and I'm now trying to reach our daughter who is missing her virtual health appointment. I spent literally two hours trying to get this thing set up. And then a school administrator beeps in and she starts to tell Chris that she's more than happy to handle the situation. (laughs) So what do you think your friend Mel Robbins does? Oh my god, my heart's racing. I literally start telling Chris how to utilize this amazing school administrator, Mary, who was calling to help. And she's going, "Hey, just, you know, I'm happy to meet the tow truck. Here's my phone number. What do you want me to do?" And Chris starts going, "Well here, why don't you go get Oakley's phone," and when they call Oakley's phone and I'm like talking over Chris, "No, just have Mary, give, give, give Mary, tell, tell the tow truck how to call..." I am an uncontrollable freak. And so as I sit here in the front seat of the pickup truck, in a parking lot outside of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital, and I am calming myself down and I'm settling back into my body, and I noticed that in trying to take control, I just trampled all over everything. So with a little bit of grace and a little bit of compassion, I thought, why don't you and I talk about these two different types of stress response, overfunctioning and underfunctioning? You're gonna learn the research around why self-awareness is critical, and what you can do when you catch yourself in this situation. And the reason why you wanna catch yourself is because if you're somebody like me who just goes in "I got it, I got it, I got it" mode, you don't let other people rise up and express themselves, or rise up and help. And you burn out. You stress everybody out. And it's not a good thing. You can help without being a freak monster like I was. And if you're more like, "I don't know what to do. Freeze," and you feel helpless, and you wait for somebody else to tell you what to do and you question yourself and you start to spiral, that's not great either. Because you need to learn how to advocate for yourself, how to step up, how to problem solve when that alarm goes off in your body. And that's what we're gonna talk about today on the Mel Robbins Podcast. Okay, I'm gonna take a deep breath. My heart is no longer pounding, and I am going to go find the nearest Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, and I'm gonna get a yummy cup of coffee, and I'm gonna get a snack for Chris. And we're gonna talk about overfunctioning and underfunctioning anxiety when we come back. Whoo. Hey, it's Mel, and if you've ever thought, "Gosh, I just wish I could get Mel to coach me," well now you can. Once a year, I offer a live coaching program called Launch, and it is open for registration right now. If you're interested, I invite you, no, I urge you to check it out. Last year it sold out. It has a 7,000 person wait list. But being a fan of the podcast, I know you're not just the listening type, you're the doing type. You're gonna love this. It's 42 lectures. That's the curriculum. It's all new. It is a private premium app-driven community. I am the professor. It lasts for six months. There are 11 live coaching calls. You're going to love this. The information is in the link above. And I would love, love, love to coach you. I'd love to empower you to launch a new chapter in your personal or professional life. If you've ever wanted me to coach you, this is your chance. Do not wait. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Let's go. Christopher Robbins, your chariot awaits.