I’m on the phone with Lauren, who has a very interesting story, and for anyone who experiences issues with perfectionism, obsessiveness, as well as fear of public speaking and performance issues, you’re going to find this very interesting. Lauren, thank you very much for being with us. Can you describe what was going on in your life when you first made the phone call to come into the program? Sure, I was working at a relatively big company. I had been there for a few years. I had a mid-level position, but with a lot of responsibility. It had continually increased for the past couple years, and I was in the middle of a conference call, which I had done several times, with two of my senior employees, and during the call, someone passed over the presentation to me before I was really ready to talk about that particular product, and at that moment, I felt unprepared, kind of caught off guard, and I started to feel my heart race, and started to feel short of breath, and kind of went through something very quickly, in about a minute, when I probably would have spent a lot more time on
describing that part of the product, kind of passed it over to the next person, and after that call, I realized that something had happened during that call that was not normal for me, and that I had had an anxiety episode. That happened probably another four or five times in the next few months, a lot of times when it was something pretty high-level, with a big client, with a lot of my senior people on the phone, when I hadn’t had a lot of time to prepare, and after those few months, that’s the first time that I kind of realized that this was a pattern, that this was something that was obviously not kind of going away. Okay, so now you said that you had your first panic attack. You had never had one before, right?
No, I had never had one. And then you had a series of half a dozen of them in a relatively short period of time. Yes. How was this impacting your life? It was very, it was very, very difficult for me to deal with. I was very confused about what was going on. This had never happened to me before. Again, this wasn’t a new job. I had been there for years. I had spoken in front of people before. I had done meetings and calls with clients before, and I was just, I was very confused, and I was very scared about what was happening, because I felt like it was really impacting my ability to do my job well, and it was making me, you know, basically fear the going into the office and having these kinds of things happen over and over again. And you made a decision to take a leave of absence, because why? You were doing well on your job.
You were making a very nice six-figure salary. You chose to take the leave of absence, because? I think a few reasons. You know, what was happening was obviously one of them, and it was the type of thing where, you know, these kind of responsibilities were just going to get more and more for me, so it was going to be a situation where every day I was kind of in these situations. That was one reason. The second reason was I had already for quite some time, even before the first time I had the panic attack, had been thinking about a career change, and that was really for just because I wanted to be in another field. It really had nothing to do with this, but it was really kind of those, the anxiety that was happening sort of, I think, pushed my decision kind of faster to take the time off and figure out what I wanted to do, but also deal with what was happening. How was your mood during this period of time?
I would say I was, well, I felt a lot of stress because of everything going on, the responsibility and what was happening. I, you know, for me, I think that I was pretty depressed. I didn’t like the job, on top of which all of this was sort of, was coming into play, making it harder for me to do it well. I didn’t know if I should leave, if I should stay, and I was working, you know, a lot of hours during the day, so I would come home, and I was basically exhausted, and… All right, so you were depressed, you were, I think you’re saying you were exhausted, and you were burning out, and there was something else going on. You were worrying a lot, I think. Yes. Yes, I think so. I mean, before, I was just, you know, always stressed at work, not really loving it either, but I knew I could kind of do the job. When the anxiety set in, I was just, I had a lot of worry on top of everything else, like, you know, what, what is happening? You know, why am I not able to do this? I was able to do it before.
What am I going to do if I leave here? So yeah, I think that was another layer. Would you say that you were obsessing? I know I’m leading you, but… Yes, I think so. I think I was, I had always wanted to leave, but I felt like, okay, I’m going to do this, and then, you know, I’m going to leave at the top of my game, and you know, that’s going to be my decision, and when all of this happened, I think that kind of threw me, and I was sort of obsessing about everything. Would you refer to yourself as a perfectionist? Definitely, yeah. Give the listeners a little insight. I remember you went to an Ivy League school. You got, what was your grade point average? What were you doing on Saturday nights? Yeah, I mean, I went to a very competitive school. I had done well in high school. I went to a very competitive college. I had a very difficult major.
I had always been a straight-A student in high school, so I, you know, I wanted to be a straight-A student in college, which meant, for what I was doing, a lot of studying, a lot of time, you know, basically a lot of time studying, and I had that, you know, that basically, that mentality throughout college, and I think that continued when I left and took, you know, took my first job of sort of really wanting to do everything I did, you know, perfectly. When you were at work, and when this anxiety was building, give an example of how you were obsessing and locked into the need to be perfect. Sure. I think that, you know, by the time that I had this kind of responsibility, I really knew my area fairly well for my level, and I had gotten, you know, several sort of promotions along the way, which obviously, you know, people give that to you because they think you’re ready to sort of do the next step. I always, you know, I would always feeling like I needed to know something top to bottom, a hundred percent, before I could go talk to somebody about it, which is really kind of, you know, impossible in many situations because these, you know, the things that we were dealing with had a lot of detail, had a lot of layers, so for me, you know, when I had a presentation, I would kind of sit there, and even if I knew, you know, probably 90% of what anyone would talk about the next day, I always felt compelled to know, you know, that last 10% down to the last detail before I personally felt ready, which meant, you know, I never felt ready. Now, for the sake of relativity, one of our famous one-to-ten scales, ten is the most, one is the least. We’re measuring the severity of your overall
problem when you came into the program, so that includes the anxiety, the avoidant behavior, the worrying, the obsessing, the mood. You would have given it a what number, ten being the most? I would probably give it a nine to ten at certain times. Where do you think you’re at now? Right now, I think that… Number wise? Yeah, I mean, I think I’m probably at a, probably at like a four or five, but given that I’m sort of going into the next phase for myself of things that I want to challenge myself at, but, you know, if I had to judge right now, I would say I’m at about a four or five. A four or five. So you’re saying that about 50%?
