Overfunctioners vs. Underfunctioners: Mel and Chris Robbins Unpack Their Opposite Stress Styles

High-Level Overview

In an unusual, audio-only episode, Mel Robbins takes listeners into a stressful morning as it unfolds. Recording voice memos from the front seat of her husband Chris's pickup truck outside a New Hampshire hospital, she recounts how everything went off the rails on the drive to his colonoscopy: she overslept, their son's Jeep died in the middle of the road outside his high school, their sick daughter slept through a virtual doctor's appointment, and Mel found herself barking instructions at Chris while he handled calls with AAA, a tow company and a helpful school administrator. Later that day, with Chris recovered from the anesthesia, the two sit down to unpack what happened using psychologist Harriet Lerner's framework of overfunctioners and underfunctioners.

The tone is funny, self-deprecating and candid, with Robbins calling herself a "bulldozing stress freak" and Chris offering calm, thoughtful pushback. The conversation moves from a raw real-time confession to research, then to an honest couple's negotiation about how to support each other.

The Discussion Explores:

• A real-time account of a morning that spiraled out of control
• Harriet Lerner's two patterned responses to stress: overfunctioning and underfunctioning
• Why neither style is good or bad, and why awareness of your default matters
• How the same event can register as an eight for one partner and a three for the other
• The resentment that builds in both directions
• Lerner's advice to "hang in": say less if you overfunction, speak up if you underfunction
• The power of asking "What are you scared of?"
• Mel's lesson about showing up without asking permission

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

A Morning Off the Rails

Robbins admits she ignored her own advice about evening routines: she didn't lay out her computer, cords or notes, and forgot to set her alarm. She woke to Chris shuffling in, grouchy and hungry after a night of colonoscopy prep, with 25 minutes to spare. She raced around letting out the dogs and grabbing half of what she needed while Chris reclined in the truck, and the feeling of people waiting for her sent her heart racing. On the drive she was using a physiological sigh to calm down when their son Oakley called, panicked, because the Jeep had stopped in the road outside school. Other adults helped him disconnect the battery and push it aside, but Robbins was flooded with guilt at not being there.

Then, as Chris called AAA, she could not stop herself from telling him what to say, including that he was headed to a colonoscopy, even as she silently told herself, "shut up, Mel." When a school administrator named Mary offered to meet the tow truck, Robbins talked over Chris again. Sitting in the hospital parking lot, she recognizes that in trying to take control, she "just trampled all over everything."

Two Patterned Responses to Stress

Robbins explains that, according to Harriet Lerner, one of the most respected and cited psychologists of our time, people respond to stress in one of two patterned ways. Overfunctioners become first responders: they take charge, order people around and act fast. It can be a superpower, but it also tramples other people's ability and capacity to handle things, because the body's alarm goes into a "five alarm fire drill" that shuts down rational thinking. Underfunctioners tend to slow down, go quiet, feel unsure and sometimes wait for someone else to tell them what to do.

Robbins stresses that neither is good or bad and that the response is automatic. The goal is to become aware of your default, because awareness lets you be more compassionate with yourself and start to change it. If you are an overfunctioner, you risk burning out and stressing everyone around you; if you freeze, you need to learn to advocate for yourself and problem-solve when the alarm goes off.

Chris's Side: Bulldozed, Not Checked Out

Asked what it is like when she becomes a tornado, Chris says it's tough, and that she often becomes "kind of just a bulldozer," all about her opinion and solution. On the phone, he explains, he can only hear with one ear while processing the other person, so outside instructions, however well meant, are "sort of destructive to the conversation." He rates Oakley's call as a three or four out of ten; for Mel it was an eight. He notes that neither of them asked Oakley the best first question: whether he was safe.

Chris says what he resents is the unspoken assumption that he is not problem-solving. He may be slower and more methodical in gathering information, but he is thinking about a solution every step of the way. Mel concedes that she skips information gathering and races 25 steps ahead, and that Lerner's research shows overfunctioners come to resent underfunctioning partners because they feel they must carry the alarm alone and read slowness as not caring. Chris answers that the resentment cuts both ways: being bulldozed leaves him feeling "bullied, mistrusted" and not good enough. After 29 years together, he says, he has learned to take her anxious state with a grain of salt.

Hanging In

Lerner's guidance for both styles is to "hang in," which means stopping yourself from doing what you normally do. For overfunctioners like Mel, that means holding your tongue and saying 50% less than you normally would. For underfunctioners like Chris, it means not disappearing into silent processing: talk more and tell your partner you're processing, because to an overfunctioner, silence can feel like abandonment.

"What Are You Scared Of?"

Chris suggests that, when the situation is not life-threatening, they slow down and get to the root of Mel's fear. Mel loves the idea that he could simply ask, "What's scaring you, Mel?" It would reach her emotionally and show he recognizes that something real is driving her, not that she is just being difficult. In the Jeep situation she would have said she was scared Oakley was alone and would feel abandoned, fears far bigger than a car stalled four blocks from school. Chris, true to form, immediately starts analyzing how they would then address her fears, which Mel points out as his information-gathering style in real time. In turn, Chris could say, "I need a sec, I'm processing," to help her speak less. He also notes that their kids often come to Mel because her fast, 20-steps-ahead counsel is valuable; the goal is a more team-oriented middle ground.

The Hospital Lesson: Just Show Up

Chris recalls a recent day when their daughter Sawyer, who had been sick with odd symptoms for two weeks, was sent from a Boston clinic to the emergency room at Mass General while they were three and a half hours away in Vermont. Sawyer, like Chris, narrowed her focus and insisted she was fine. Mel spent hours anxiously calling people and saying she should go, and only drove down around 3 p.m. after hearing they had drawn 23 vials of blood. Chris says his own stress that day was just as high, but internal.

Mel's lesson: "You do not ask somebody if they want you there. If you feel called to just show up," go. In her busyness she never stopped to ask what she needed to do. Had Chris asked what she was scared of, she would have said her daughter was going through something scary alone, and recalled when Oakley was six days old and rushed to Mass General for life-saving surgery, and two close friends, Robin Halk and Lisa Schwartz, were waiting at the NICU doors because they knew the couple wouldn't know how to ask for help. Sawyer was alone for 11 hours, and she too learned about asking for help.

The Trip Leader

Robbins shares an idea from their couples therapy with Dr. Cooper. Asked to describe a time she felt completely safe and taken care of by Chris, she named every camping, hiking and fly-fishing trip: in the wilderness, Chris is "the trip leader" and she never worries. They agree to try having Mel say she needs the trip leader during stressful moments, which Chris thinks could also nudge him to lead in a more visible, thoughtful way. Mel closes by apologizing that Chris does not get credit for all the hard thinking and worrying he does internally, and he accepts.

Conclusion

By exposing her own worst moments, Mel Robbins makes Harriet Lerner's overfunctioning and underfunctioning framework easy to recognize in yourself and your relationships. The key takeaways are to learn your automatic stress response without judgment, to "hang in" by doing the opposite of your default, to ask the people you love what they are scared of, and to state what you need, whether that is a second to process or a trip leader to take charge. Chris's perspective adds an important balance: quiet does not mean uncaring, and both partners are usually working just as hard to solve the same problem.

This is a summary of "Are You an “Over” or “Under” Functioner? A Hilarious and Helpful Guide to YOUR Stress Style" from The Mel Robbins Podcast, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.