High-Functioning Anxiety: How It Can Feel and the Signs You Might Miss

What is High-Functioning Anxiety?

High-functioning or high-performance anxiety, can be a term often used to describe a specific experience of anxiety. Although it's not a formal clinical diagnosis, it's a term many people can relate to, when their experience of anxiety doesn't necessarily fit what they expect it to look like. High-functioning anxiety is where anxiety can be covered by a mask of appearing to be coping well on the outside. For example, you may be functioning or performing well in aspects of your life, such as work, with study or in social settings with family and friends. Yet, on the inside, things can feel very different.

In this blog, we'll explore how high-functioning anxiety can feel day-to-day and some of the signs that can be easy to miss, especially when you're so used to managing things all the time.

How High-Functioning Anxiety Can Feel

One of the confusing experiences about high-functioning anxiety, is that it might not always feel intense or obvious. There might be intensity, but it can also be something that feels like a constant background noise that can't be turned off.

You might find you're keeping up in work or other responsibilities, or the one others rely on much of the time. Someone who seems organised or on top of everything. But underneath, there's this constant feeling of pressure. A mind that doesn't switch off no matter how hard you try, or you can't seem to settle or rest. There could also be a sense that you're going to drop something or slip up at any moment because of everything you're holding together.

Sometimes, coping with carrying all of this, doesn't feel calm or empowering. It might not feel like you have everything together or you're performing well, despite what others say on the outside. It's more of a feeling like you're just about holding things together inside and it can feel exhausting, isolating and overwhelming.

You might notice:

• Your mind rarely switches off

• You replay conversations or worry about how you came across to people

• You feel responsible for needing to get things right all the time

• You struggle to relax or give yourself any time to rest

• There's a pressure or need to always be on top of everything

Signs of High-Functioning Anxiety (That Can be Easy to Miss)

High-functioning anxiety can show up in ways that are easy to overlook, especially if they're seen as strengths or even praised. And if you are experiencing high-functioning anxiety, the signs will also be unique to your own experiences.

Some signs can be:

• Overthinking decisions, even small ones

• Being highly self-critical

• Difficulty switching off from work or responsibilities

• Feeling guilty when resting

• A tendency to people please or avoid conflict

• Setting very high expectations of yourself

• Pushing yourself to always do more or keep going to get on with things

• Feeling like you always need to be productive

Some of these signs can also sit alongside a more critical inner voice, or a subtle feeling of needing to keep proving that you’re enough. If this feels familiar, you can find out more about how I support with this here.

Why it Can Be Easy to Miss

High-functioning anxiety can be easy to miss, as we can recognise the signs as something we've always done or just how we've always been. And because you're still functioning, pushing through or coping externally, it can be challenging to notice that something might not feel quite right.

You might tell yourself:

• 'I'm coping, so it can't be that bad'

• 'Other people have things way worse'

• 'This is just who I am'

And because these patterns or signs are often reinforced or sometimes praised by others, they can become part of your identity. For being the 'capable one' the 'one who always gets things done', or the 'one who always has everything together'. And just because these labels are spoken in a positive way, it might not mean there's not something there that's costing you internally.

When Coping Starts to Feel Like Effort

There can come a point where things that once felt manageable, now feel completely draining and overwhelming. You might notice that you feel tired even when you've rested, your mind is overflowing with thoughts and to do lists, it's impossible to switch off, or smaller things feel too heavy to manage. You might also still be coping on the outside to others, but it takes so much effort to keep this mask on.

Can You Still Be Struggling if You're Coping?

This can often be the question that sits underneath all this. And the answer can be, yes. Because struggling doesn't mean you need to be at breaking point. It doesn't need to be when everything is falling apart. It can also be keeping everything going and you're overwhelmed and exhausted.

A Gentle Way Forward

Rather than jumping into 'fixing' everything straight away, it can firstly begin with noticing. Noticing with curiosity when your mind is particularly overactive, and what situations or experiences seem to make it worse? It can be noticing the pressure you place on yourself, and how you experience this pressure. Being aware of the feelings that arise when you allow yourself to rest and letting them in. Letting them come and go without judgement, even if the feelings are uncomfortable.

It can be in noticing that smaller shifts can begin to take place.

If this resonates, or you recognise this in yourself, I hear you. And you don't need to wait until things feel unmanageable to explore things more deeply with this. Counselling can offer a space to look at what high-functioning anxiety looks like for you, it can give a judgement-free space to talk things through, explore where these patterns may have come from and reconnect to a way of being that might feel less effortful for you.

You can find out more about counselling with me here, I offer counselling in Marlow and online across the UK. You're also welcome to visit my homepage and get in touch, for a free 20-minute call, to understand what counselling with me looks like, and whether I might be the right counsellor for you.