Marriage Counsellor and Psychologist Shivani Misri Sadhoo

Couples Therapist Shivani Misri Sadhoo Shares how to Address such Situations in a Relationship

A scenario: You and your wife have been together for some years and have kids. You both work hard and are doing your best to develop yourselves by establishing a strong career and building a home. However, whenever you talk about anything you plan to do or have any disagreement, your partner runs and tells his/her family everything. All of a sudden, you start receiving phone calls and messages from their family, advising you on what you should do instead. You have told your spouse several times to keep certain things private but they don’t listen. Should you stop talking to your partner and do everything by yourself?

Couples Therapist Shivani says this situation seems stressful since no one wishes to feel betrayed by the one they expect to protect them. Marriage is sacred and special and it comes with all the good things that are embedded in a union of two consenting adults. However, this relationship is also certain to face several difficulties along the way.

One of the facts that makes a marriage special is both partners are vulnerable to each other. This is one of the ideal methods of developing a close and fulfilling relationship. It brings about being more open with your spouse and letting yourself be who you genuinely are. It could involve discussing feelings at a greater level and being open with each other without being afraid of being judged.

It is mostly a big temptation for people to look to share everything about their relationship with their parents or friends. This generally happens when the relationship is facing certain challenges although even out of excitement, a partner may be tempted to share more than they should with other persons. Parents usually lend a sympathetic ear and one goes feeling much better.

The issue here is that naturally, parents love and side with their kids and no parent wishes to see their children hurting. This could jeopardize a relationship since relatives generally take sides and will not present a neutral environment. At times, the couple may have worked on their problems but since relatives are not the ones in the relationship, they are going to judge based on old information or preconceived notions and continue to disrespect your spouse.

It is also possible that your partner has not yet fully come to the level of cutting cords with her parents and still feels safe when she discusses things with them that you are doing as a family. This also has plenty to do with certain parenting styles in a family. It is generally the adults who help younger persons become independent and relate properly and be loyal to their own intimate relationships as well.

If this is not properly handled early in life, then those adult children might have problems or conflicts in their marriage relationships.

People are capable of learning new things even during adulthood if they are willing. In this scenario, attending a marriage therapy session together as a couple could help address these intricate matters and provide an avenue for both of you to express yourselves without being judged.

Although you may have talked to your partner about this earlier, you could try bringing it up again when you are both relaxed and happy. Let your partner know how this makes you feel as their spouse and as a son or daughter-in-law. Generally, a heated debate simply aggravates issues but when you communicate calmly others tend to listen and even take a deep interest in what you are saying.

Leading couple’s therapist Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares some ways to address those situations. If you also feel that you or your partner reveals everything to the respective families, then read this blog further.

Set boundaries

This is a quite common problem. While it is a fact in many cultures that when you marry your spouse, you also marry the family, you must also maintain proper boundaries. It is a wonderful quality that your spouse loves their family and looks to tell them everything but there has to be a limit and your spouse needs to put your needs and the requirements of the marriage first.

Look for counseling

Feelings are not incorrect and your partner cannot argue with how you feel. If you believe that your spouse is not setting proper boundaries, probably he/she does not know how to do that. If you are willing, maybe you two need to seek marriage counseling to learn to communicate effectively and set healthy boundaries with their respective families. This issue can be resolved. Simply, be patient and communicate without attacking or provoking each other.

Talk to your partner

If your partner runs and complains about you or tells others things that need to be private, they are stuck with it. If your spouse is mad at you, they might be too when they hear they are venting about it. But then they will get over it and they will not, since they are not married to you. This will be a good thing to talk to your partner about, and let him/her know that what they are doing is hurting your marriage and that you wish it to stop.

Couples Therapist Shivani Sadhoo shares 3 must-have qualities for long-lasting love

A healthy relationship or marriage is commonly defined by the couple’s bonding condition where both the partners feel connected to each other and they feel satisfied with how the relationship is growing. A healthy relationship is best suited to travel through all difficult stages of life and survive the iron of time. But unfortunately, that does not happen too often. Many a time we witness couples who are happy today face issues like infidelity, breakups, and disinterest in sex in the future.

So many may, question, why relationships that are happy and fine today, can break tomorrow?

India’s leading marriage counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo suggests it happens because many times, couples fail to identify if their current non-problematic relationship is actually healthy or not? They fail to identify unhealthy relationships on time and thus fail to take correction steps, effectively on time.

In today’s blog, Shivani Sadhoo shares 5 key qualities of a healthy relationship, that can help couples if something.

1.  Both the partners can communicate clearly
Many a time, one partner does all the talking and the other just listens, the person who does the most talking may identify the relationship as healthy, but what about the partner who might have stopped expressing him or herself. Thus, clear and direct communication by both partners is the first sign of a healthy relationship.

2. Partner’s trust

The second sign of a healthy relationship, is the partner’s complete trust for each other in all key areas of marital life like money, investment, parenting style, faithfulness, and others. Plus, each partner respects the other’s decision on these matters.

3. Partner feels independent

A healthy relationship does not mean staying happy together at cost of sacrificing self-identity and personal space. It’s important that the couples have their own identity independent of their partners. This means having your own interests and hobbies, or your own friendship circle that is separate from your relationship.

But this also doesn’t mean that the husband goes to a party every Saturday night while the wife waits at home and she takes care of home chores and children alone. Make it a collaborative effort, husband must understand and express the gratitude for wife’s contribution if she is a housewife and alternately both husband and wife should take out time to spend quality time together as well as to spend some time for their individual interests.

Says Couples Therapist Shivani Sadhoo

The majority of people underestimate the amount of work it requires to retain a marriage. It is not merely companionship and love but fights, arguments, blame games, and misunderstandings. Couples often fail to realize and act on these negative traits of their marriage, says Shivani Sadhoo thus stumbling into the deep and dark trenches of marital problems. To stop your marriage from struggling further, you and your partner could cater by doing some of the few things that’ll enhance the intimacy between you both, says India’s eminent couples therapist Shivani Misri Sadhoo.

Think of your spouse’s happiness

When you start prioritizing your partner’s happiness first, you will witness the wonders it does to your marriage. This would initiate trust, better understanding, and happiness in the marriage. Love, attention, and care completely transform a person.

Surround yourself with healthy relationships

When you are continuously surrounded by negativity i.e. others’ relationships that just include bitterness, fights, and heated arguments, you and your partner are probably to reflect that same energy into your own marriage too. So, it is very essential to surround yourself with couples who have a healthy marriage and are also able to support you likewise.

Repetitive way

When analyzed, you both observe and find a pattern that reflects negative conduct. If you always fight over your partner’s decisions, then look to doing things according to their perspective too. It might be a welcoming change. You could guide your spouse to do the same as well. Once you both come out of a stagnant pattern, you’ll realize there is a lot more to disagreements, arguments, and fights.

A new beginning is not that bad

Never hesitate to begin afresh. If you and your spouse have reached a standstill where things are not working out anymore, you both could start from scratch. Act in a way the teenagers do, who met each other for the first time and took each other on hour-long dates and to the movies. This could be a big change for the both of you, that will result positively.

Professional support

When things simply cannot work out anymore, professional couples therapists or marriage counselors step in to guide you through your struggles. They have a better understanding and neutral approach and intake of your issues as a couple and they will suggest solutions that if implemented, adequately could impact your marriage to a greater degree.

Personal boundaries are the “limits” that a person needs in his/her life and relationship, to dictate to other people how they should treat and behave with them and what they can expect from them. Unfortunately, a lot of people set poor personal boundaries and suffer, day and night in their friendship, professions, and relationships.

The problem lies in the fact that as toddlers and children, society teaches us to say “Yes” to elders, be it in school or at home. Society at large appreciates obedience and does not encourage kids and teenagers to ask questions, which in fact is the foundation of a free mind, self-belief, and bravery.

The problem starts when this obedient child, grows-ups and enters the throat-cutting competitive world, find himself/herself in a group of peers, or finds a partner with poor morals and weak self-belief, and fails to say “NO” against emotional, psychological, and materialistic worldly exploitations.

In today’s blog, India’s eminent psychologist and couples therapist Shivani Sadhoo signs that can help you identify if you are suffering in your life due to poor personal boundaries.

1. You completely hate it when you let others down

It means that you mostly go along with the other person’s plans and say yes to all the things you wouldn’t normally choose to do, and possibly do not want to do. Joining added committees, agreeing to visit restaurants where you know you will not be able to avail anything for your kid’s health restrictions on the menu, opting to go along with a messy schedule at work in an attempt to accommodate your boss’ new whim.

2. You are continuously tired and don’t even know the reason

And every mother said, “Yes” Though it is completely different from “mom-tired,” it is incredibly common. It occurs as you are giving all your energy away by continuously tending to everyone else’s wishes and needs and putting your own interest on the shelf.

3. You feel like how other person feels is solely up to you

You always worry whether they are having a good time and feeling good. You go beyond your limits to make certain this is the case. It means you feel guilty and anxious quite regularly. You seldom feel settled because there is always going to be an individual who is upset or a blame to put out. And you ought to be the one to do it.

4. It’s simple for others to take advantage of you

It’s simply for others to take advantage of you. You are pretty certain that is not what you agreed to, but you would rather not say anything. And they also, know you won’t either. You might even wonder if you are being manipulated by those who are actually closest to you.

5. Deep within you think no one respects you

This is perhaps because you have been pushed over far too many times, so they never think they need to.

6. It is too difficult for you to take and make decisions on the basis of your own needs

You are not able to take any stand for yourself because you feel what others want or will feel.  Eventually, when you truly decide for yourself, you find it overwhelming or exhausting.

7. You are not certain who you are or what you like

Perhaps you may feel like having an identity crisis. You do not know what you prefer or love. How it feels to make a decision on your own interests. Rather you are preoccupied with what others want you to do.

Stay tuned to Saarthi’s blog because we will be posting soon the article by Shivani Misri Sadhoo on ways one can set their personal boundaries correctly.

The role of power plays a crucial role in any relationship. When one specific partner enjoys too much power it often creates disharmony, imbalance and often becomes the sole cause of the relationship to crumble. Shivani says, in any marital relationship maintaining the balance in power dynamics helps it to navigate smoothly.

No relationship can blossom when one partner enjoys the power and the other one has little or no say virtually.

India’s top marriage counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo says times are changing and so do the dynamics of power in your relationship. One who better understands this aspect of balancing power in a relationship stands a higher probability to reap the goods from their relationship.

Here are the things that may help you.

Share power

It is pre-eminent to realize that real empowerment of both partners makes for a happier, healthier family. Learn to balance and divide the power and distribute duties amongst yourselves so that none of you feel stressed or burdened. This needs a mindset shift.

Balance goals both individual and family

Both the partners in a marriage need to honor common goals related to the family and respect individual dreams as well. This lessens the major portion of the load on the husband for the finances and a major portion of the load on the wife for caregiving or in other cases, or vice versa.

Try to influence not impose

Imposing your will and views and one-way communication never help in any relationship. It often leads to a deadlock and damaged egos. The skill of positive impact using listening and questioning is more vital than merely demanding or imposing your views. Honest open communication will assist in solutions when both parties feel empowered and respected.

There may always be a soft balance of power in a husband-wife relationship but to make a long-lasting relationship work, both partners require to feel empowered enough to share their power.

For any relationship to last long, the balancing act of power amongst the partners often decides which way the relationship will march on. If you feel that maintaining the balance in power often creates a rift in your relationship. It is better to introspect that and try to include the above-said things to see the positive changes in your relationship.

Do you remember when you first met your special one? It might have been one of those fairy-tale moments.

Everything surrounding you faded into the background and the one thing that existed was them. You gathered up the courage to introduce yourself and your relationship was created

Or it might have been a simple friendship that eventually transformed into a romance.

Regardless of how it started, married life is totally contrasting to dating.

And nothing can truly prepare you for marriage.

Marriage could be the most difficult aspect in your life – it could also be the finest thing in your life – likely both too.

Shivani Sadhoo says perhaps it is designed that way only.

Marriage is designed to grow two individuals up into better humans. Marriage is not about just being happy, it is about growing.

Keeping this in mind India’s top marriage counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares a few simple points to consider that may help make your marriage better, regardless of how it started.

Even though there is no magical formula for a marriage to work, still certain factors help it to grow. Let us take a look at those factors which are basically the 4 C’s.

Chemistry

There has to be some kind of connection between the two individuals. Similar interests, aims, dreams, etc. While this is not mandatory, it does lay a foundation for several things in marriage, like travel, hobbies, vacations, and outside commitments both individually and together. Take heart and know that if you did not have chemistry, the relationship will be short-lived – so those of you who think or feel you now have nothing in common with your special one after several years of marriage, look and think again because it is probably there.

Communication

Here is another small but important secret for marriage, communication happens every time. In fact, you cannot go without communicating. Everything you say and even don’t say communicates something. Every act you do or don’t do says something too. Communication issues in marriage don’t happen because you cannot communicate, they occur because you do not like the message. In an attempt to master this arena of marriage changes your focus to learning ways to handle the message.

Comedy

Humor is a wonderful reparative aspect of marriage, as well as a fantastic connector. Having the ability to laugh with your loved one, whether this laughter is regarding something external or just about yourself and your relationship, laughter truly is good medicine. Often couples may get bored in a long relationship because of monotonous ways of living life. This is where having a little ingredient of humor in your marital life could often add a spark and color to it.

Commitment

A vital ingredient to any marriage is commitment. Without this, it falls apart. Incidentally, wish to know the secret to a long-lasting marriage? Two individuals who opt to stay married. That is it. Make the decision to stick out through the torrid and rough spots. Often some people say “my marriage is not worth fighting for.” The truth perhaps is they haven’t fought for it. Something is only worth fighting for the post you have fought for it.” Truer words are rarely spoken.

When you are aware of the 4 C’s in marriage, you potentially stand a better chance to have a long and satisfying relationship with your spouse.

Your Therapist Is Now Just Skype/Video Call Away

During the current challenging time, it’s common to experience anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, and relationship challenges at home. While you are under lockdown and maintaining social distancing norms to help the country to control the pandemic’s spread, your very own counsellor Shivani is now just a call and Skype video call away from you.

However, in this age of coronavirus, we hope to offer our therapeutic help. Change is difficult for all of us and changing the way you meet with your therapist is no exception.  But try it before you disregard this option.  This is a challenging moment in time, and fears and anxieties are running high.

You may find, telepsychology isn’t a second-rate option. Instead, it’s an effective and efficient upgrade to a valuable service!

Feel free to call Counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo at +91-8860875040 for telephonic or video support and to book an online counselling session to address any relationship issues, emotional and psychological challenges.

Several couples face at least four out of five common marital problems at some stage of their prolonged companionship. Shivani Sadhoo says if you are among that group too, take heart: every marital relationship has certain issues. The good news is that by being proactive rather than reactive, you can make a huge transformation and see growth and health come to your most essential relationship.

Some couples always struggle with communicating. They are not able to find time to discuss because one of the partners is always busy with work during the day and exhausted in the evenings. This is when perhaps you suddenly realized you needed to schedule a lunch date just as if you were scheduling it to catch up with a friend. But things always do not work like that. Here India’s top marriage counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares some solutions to the 5 major marriage issues.

Lack or absence of emotional intimacy

Planning time to be intentional in sharing your mind and heart with one another is vital here. Talk about things that are truly important to you, and remember not to disagree with or challenge your spouse when they are being vulnerable and telling you what is most essential to them. If time is an issue, look to create a dedicated time into your weekly schedule to be intentional in doing this; otherwise, it is not going to happen.

A dearth of physical intimacy

One great idea for enhancing physical intimacy is to plan time for it. If you both are aware that you have agreed to be together on a specific day and time, you would be able to make it a priority and mentally get ready to enjoy it.

Communication

One method to address a lack of communication is to decide a time for a face-to-face each day, even if it is only for 15 minutes. Make it the same every day, so it is easy for neither of you to miss this opportunity. Do this prior to you spending time with the kids. Or if daily planning is too difficult perhaps because of your professional commitments. Then set up a dedicated day of the week.

Losing interest or lack of appreciation

It is important to opt to put the relationship above everything else, including work and your kids. Act like you are dating again. Enact as you did then. Take time to pay attention only to your partner. Have both of you take the texting challenge to make certain you are staying in touch through the day.

Finance

Decide upon a time to work out a budget that is agreeable to both. Agree to sit down to check at expenses at the end of each month. If the discussion is prearranged and you both come to the table with complete transparency, then the conversation about finance could move from the emotional and into the practical ones.

Your Therapist Is Now Just Skype/Video Call Away

During the current challenging time, it’s common to experience anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, and relationship challenges at home. While you are under lockdown and maintaining social distancing norms to help the country to control the pandemic’s spread, your very own counsellor Shivani is now just a call and Skype video call away from you.

However, in this age of coronavirus, we hope to offer our therapeutic help. Change is difficult for all of us and changing the way you meet with your therapist is no exception.  But try it before you disregard this option.  This is a challenging moment in time, and fears and anxieties are running high.

You may find, telepsychology isn’t a second-rate option. Instead, it’s an effective and efficient upgrade to a valuable service!

Feel free to call Counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo at +91-8860875040 for telephonic or video support and to book an online counselling session to address any relationship issues, emotional and psychological challenges.

What decides whether you click with a new friend, or have good chemistry with a possible romantic partner? You perhaps think that these procedures of interaction attraction are mysterious, or decided by a person’s unique personal attributes — a quick wit, for instance. However, Shivani Sadhoo says research in social psychology indicates that liking and loving are mostly triggered by simple, mundane factors such as how close your apartment is to the stairs.

These factors could be influential to make you more likable and, more essentially, to help you meet your fundamental need for a true social connection, shares Shivani Misri Sadhoo, India’s eminent psychologist and relationship counselor.

Sheer exposure impact

The more one is exposed to a specific thing, the more you tend to like it. This phenomenon is called the sheer exposure impact, this is why one seems to love familiar music to new tunes, elect political candidates having the most media exposure, and grow fonder of persons the more often we interact with them.

One can leverage the mere exposure impact to boost your likeability and assist you to connect with others. Make an attempt to be seen, repeatedly. Turn your camera on during online meetings. Comment on other people’s social media posts. Visit the gym at the same time every day to improve the odds of bumping into the same people. If you can opt for your office or cubicle, opt for one that is close to the break room where more people will see you.

In other words, make yourself visible. Just do not overdo it. Excessive exposure could backfire – evidenced by the fact that you may get sick of hearing your favorite song when it is overplayed.

Remember names

Remembering somebody’s name is vital since it signals that he/she is important to you. On the other hand, failing to remember somebody’s name – or other important aspects about them – weakens the closeness of the relationship.

One of the factors to connecting with others, then, is to remember names. The problems are that remembering a name could be difficult. One impactful, research-based strategy for remembering names is known as retrieval practice — constantly pulling information out of your brain. Shortly after being introduced to someone, retrieve his/her name from memory. Ask yourself: “What was his/her name?” Or, use their name while in conversation. The more consistently you retrieve a name from memory, the more likely you are to remember it.

Smile

In spite of the maxim to “never judge a book by its cover,” one mostly routinely judges people on the basis of their looks. One tends to assume that attractive-looking people are more competent and socially skilled compared to others. One also finds attractive people more likable.

There is great news for those who believe that beauty advantage is an unfair thing. A bright smile can instantly make someone more attractive. In one study, it asked people to rate the attractiveness of computer-generated faces. The faces differ in attractiveness, and whether they were smiling or showing a neutral expression. The results indicated that faces were seen as more attractive when they were smiling, which is consistent with earlier findings on the topic. What really surprised the researchers was that less attractive but smiling faces were rated quite highly as attractive faces without a smile. It was decided that “smiling can compensate for relative unattractiveness.”

If you wish to be perceived as more attractive, more likable – simply flash a smile.

Ask Questions

Be authentically curious about other people and ask them questions. People who ask more questions while in conversations are regarded as more responsive and are more liked by conversation partners. When you ask questions, specifically follow-up questions (“What was that moment like?”), you display that you are actively listening and interested in what that individual has to convey.

To make a good effect, be more interested in other people than you are in making a good impact.

Find Similarities

Studies show that you like people who share your interests, values, and personality traits. Hence, the old saying “birds of a feather flock together” is more correct than the popular belief that “opposites attract.”

When you try to make new friends, fill the deck in your favor by meeting individuals who share your interests. Then, find other things you have in common.

Make others feel good

On the basis of the reward theory of attraction, you like people who reward you, or whom you associate with good feelings. If you wish to enhance your likeability, make others feel good in your company. Be friendly and warm. Give genuine compliments. If you are going for a movie for a first date, opt for a happy film over a sad one.

Stay positive on social media, too. It has been seen that people who tend to make more negative posts on social media are liked less compared to those who make more positive posts. This does not mean that you cannot express your feelings genuinely when you are feeling anxious or depressed, but you might want to save negative disclosures for personal conversations with trusted friends.

Show your liking for them

Liking is mostly mutual. Rather, one of the most powerful factors of whether you will like someone is whether they like you.

In a small way, let another person know that you like them. You can do so using words (“I had so much fun hanging out today”) or through non-verbal behavior – by smiling when he/she enter the room.

Conclusion

Shivani says one can apply the science of attraction to enhance the odds that someone will like you. By doing it, you are not being manipulative. You are merely making it a lot easier to connect with others in this modern, often disconnected world.

Your Therapist Is Now Just Skype/Video Call Away

During the current challenging time, it’s common to experience anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, and relationship challenges at home. While you are under lockdown and maintaining social distancing norms to help the country to control the pandemic’s spread, your very own counsellor Shivani is now just a call and Skype video call away from you.

However, in this age of coronavirus, we hope to offer our therapeutic help. Change is difficult for all of us and changing the way you meet with your therapist is no exception.  But try it before you disregard this option.  This is a challenging moment in time, and fears and anxieties are running high.

You may find, telepsychology isn’t a second-rate option. Instead, it’s an effective and efficient upgrade to a valuable service!

Feel free to call Counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo at +91-8860875040 for telephonic or video support and to book an online counselling session to address any relationship issues, emotional and psychological challenges.

One of the oldest and biggest mantras to a healthy and lasting relationship is trust. It is a fragile yet powerful adhesive that holds two people together. It certainly is hard and at times a complex task to develop trust when you are beginning out in a relationship. But it is not so much of an arduous challenge once both the entities in a relationship are in it together says Shivani Sadhoo.

Here India’s eminent relationship counselor and couple’s therapist Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares some effective tips that will assist you to form trust, feel loved, respected, secure, and content in your relationship.

·       Understand the causes why you two are together and make certain the reasons are right. Develop a framework around your relationship first.

·       If you love somebody, you have to respect them. The more respect you form between the two of you, the greater the love is. Define things that makes you feel disrespected and agree not to use that as a ploy in your relationship.

·       Do not expect the sort of romance that is shown in movies. Have realistic expectations related to your relationship and romance. You need to know that true romance is an outcome of respect, trust, and freedom of expression.

·       Always express what you feel like. If you are too worried or scared to speak out, it will simply make it difficult for you in the future. Make certain you let it all out of your system for the benefit of your relationship.

·       Providing each other space is equally vital as spending quality time with each other. Both of you must enjoy a space where you do things individually that makes you happy.

·       Changes are inevitable. You fall in love with a person’s mind and the person you fell in love with is bound to change with time. You need to expect and accept it. It is basic human nature to change, so do not let it get in your way.

Your Therapist Is Now Just Skype/Video Call Away

During the current challenging time, it’s common to experience anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, and relationship challenges at home. While you are under lockdown and maintaining social distancing norms to help the country to control the pandemic’s spread, your very own counsellor Shivani is now just a call and Skype video call away from you.

However, in this age of pandemic, we hope to offer our therapeutic help. Change is difficult for all of us and changing the way you meet with your therapist is no exception.  But try it before you disregard this option.  This is a challenging moment in time, and fears and anxieties are running high.

You may find, telepsychology isn’t a second-rate option. Instead, it’s an effective and efficient upgrade to a valuable service!

Feel free to call Counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo at +91-8860875040 for telephonic or video support and to book an online counselling session to address any relationship issues, emotional and psychological challenges.

Anxiety is that voice in the back of your head that says, “Something unwanted is going to happen.” This is what keeps you awake at 2:00 AM thinking about something gross you did some years ago.

Not every introvert has anxiety, and extroverts and ambiverts might struggle with it, too. To be certain introversion and anxiety are not the same thing. Introversion is a choice for calm, minimally stimulating surrounding and a requirement for alone time to recharge, while anxiety is a usual term for disorders that creates excessive fear, worrying, and nervousness. Still, for several introverts, anxiety is a consistent part of their lives. And actually, anxiety is more common in introverts than extroverts.

At times anxiety is obvious to think of (panic attacks and sweaty palms), but this is not always the case. Several people live with a form named “high-functioning anxiety.” Outwardly, they seem to have it all together. They might even lead very successful lives. No one can think from the outside that they are driven by fear. At times they do not even realize it themselves says Shivani Sadhoo.

Even though not an official diagnosis, high-functioning anxiety is a thing various people identify with. It is closely linked to Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which impacts millions of people worldwide. While women are twice as likely to experience it compared to men.

Here, India’s top psychologist Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares some signs of high functioning anxiety.

Here, they are.

You are always prepared

Your mind consistently jumps to the worst-case scenario in any given circumstances. As a result, you might find yourself over-preparing. For instance, you might pack your essentials in both your checked luggage and your carry-on, just in case the airline loses your suitcase. People perceive you as being the reliable one, your preparations mostly do come in handy, but few individuals (if any) realize that your “ready for anything” mentality stems due to anxiety.

You may go berserk inside, but you are unflappable on the outside

Interestingly, several people having high-functioning anxiety do not reveal simply how nervous they are, which is another reason why it is mostly secret anxiety. You perhaps have learned to compartmentalize your emotions.

You continuously feel the urge to be doing something

This could be a real problem if you are an introvert who requires plenty of downtimes to recharge. This does not necessarily mean you are attending plenty of social events; rather, you might feel a compulsion to always be getting things done or remaining on top of things. Remaining busy distracts you from your anxiety and provides you with a sense of control.

You view the world in a fundamentally different manner

Your anxiety is not merely “in your mind.” Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel saw that individuals who are anxious view the world differently than people who are not. In that study, anxious people were less capable to differentiate between a safe stimulus and one that was earlier linked with a threat. In simple words, anxious people overgeneralize their emotional experiences—even when they are not threatening.

You are fearful of disappointing others

You may be a people-pleaser. You are so afraid of allowing others down that you work hard to make everybody around you happy, even if it means sacrificing your own wishes and needs.

You are externally successful

Goal-oriented, organized, detail-oriented, and proactive in planning prior to all possibilities, you might be the picture of success. The issue is, it is never enough. You always feel like you need to be doing more.

You have formed your life around avoidance

You have restricted your world to stop overwhelm. You stick to fixed routines and familiar experiences that provide you a sense of easiness and control; you avoid intense emotional experiences, such as travel, social events, conflict, or anything else that may trigger your anxiety.

You are a perfectionist

You attempt to calm your worries by getting your tasks or your appearance simply right. This could bring positive results, but it comes at an expense. You might have an “everything-or-nothing” mentality (“If I am not the best employee, then I am the worst”). You might have a few unrealistic expectations of yourself, and a catastrophic fear of falling short of them.

You are prone to reflection and overthinking

You do plenty of negative self-talk. You mostly revisualize past mistakes in your mind, dwell on scary “what if” situations, and struggle to enjoy the present moment because you are expecting the worst. Sometimes your mind races and you are not able to stop it.

You experience aches, repetitive habits, and tics

Your anxiety perhaps manifests physically in your body as repeated muscle tension or aches. Similarly, you may unconsciously pick at the skin surrounding your nails, tap your foot, scratch your scalp, or do other repetitive tasks that gets your nervous energy out—even when you seem composed in other ways.

You are always tired

Your mind is repeatedly going on, so you have a problem falling asleep or staying asleep. Even when you sleep well, you feel fatigued during the day because dealing with a continuous underlying level of anxiety is exhausting.