I Used to Worry About Worrying. Here’s What I Wish I’d Known.

I used to worry about worrying.

Why did I do this so much? What was wrong with me? It was just so… worrying.

I’d fixate on a problem—usually one that wasn’t even that much of a problem—and ruminate endlessly, trying to find a neat solution that would make the worrying stop. It rarely worked. Meanwhile, I’d run the coffee machine before putting a cup underneath. I’d get beeped by the car behind me because I hadn’t noticed the light had gone green. I’d burn dinner so badly it welded itself to the bottom of the pan, and my husband would spend ages scrubbing it off, exasperated with me (and annoyed because dinner was burnt).

At night, I’d lie in the dark, stare at the ceiling, and worry some more. It was exhausting.

I come from a long line of worriers. My mum. Her mum. Her mum’s mum. You could probably trace the family trait right back to our cave-dwelling ancestors, keeping one eye open for sabre-toothed tigers while everyone else slept. Which, back then, was probably useful. The worriers were the ones who survived. They passed on their genes. And here I am, thousands of years later, lying awake at 3am catastrophising about an email I sent that maybe had a slightly weird tone.

Thanks, ancestors.

The thing is, when I was younger, I didn’t understand why my brain wouldn’t switch off, or why I couldn’t just relax like everyone kept telling me to. I didn’t know anything about nervous systems, or energy budgets or the coping techniques I’m about to share with you. I just thought there was something wrong with me.

There wasn’t. I just didn’t have the manual.

What High-Functioning Anxiety Actually Looks Like

Here’s the thing about high-functioning anxiety: it doesn’t look like a crisis. It looks like competence.

You’re on time, organised, reliable. You meet deadlines, reply to emails, remember the school forms. People say things like I don’t know how you do it all and you smile and think: If you could see the inside of my head right now, you would not be impressed.

It’s not a formal diagnosis—you won’t find it in the DSM. But if you’ve ever felt like your anxiety is the engine driving your productivity, and you’re terrified of what happens if it stops? This one’s for you.

Dr Julie Smith, a clinical psychologist and author of Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? (2022), describes anxiety as the body’s alarm system—designed to alert you to danger, mobilise your resources, and get you moving. The problem isn’t the alarm. The problem is when it’s going off constantly, at a low hum, in situations where there’s no actual threat.

Because with high-functioning anxiety, the alarm doesn’t send you to bed. It sends you to your to-do list. You don’t freeze — you do more. You prepare, you plan, you over-deliver. And because the output looks impressive, nobody notices the cost.

Here’s what that looks like on a Tuesday: you’re awake at 5am, not because you’re a morning person but because your brain started composing tomorrow’s presentation while you were still technically asleep. You triple-check the school bag, the meeting notes, the reply you sent at 10pm. You say yes to things you don’t have capacity for because saying no feels like dropping a plate—and you’ve built your entire identity around not dropping plates.

The jaw tension. The shallow breathing. The knot in your stomach that’s been there so long you’ve stopped noticing it. All data. All your nervous system saying: I’m running hot, and I have been for a while.

Why It’s So Hard to Spot (Especially in Yourself)

Part of the problem is that high-functioning anxiety gets rewarded. You get praised for being thorough, dependable, always on top of things. The people around you benefit from your hypervigilance. (Your boss definitely benefits from your hypervigilance.) And because it’s producing results, it’s easy to convince yourself it’s just ‘being conscientious.’

Lisa Feldman Barrett, a neuroscientist and author of How Emotions Are Made (2017), describes the brain as running a constant body budget—tracking energy in versus energy out, like a bank account you can’t see. With high-functioning anxiety, the withdrawals are relentless but invisible. You don’t notice them because you’ve learned to push through, to override the signals, to keep the output steady even as the budget drains.

Which changes everything, when you think about it.

Because the crash, when it comes—and it does come—looks sudden from the outside. But you were fine yesterday! You weren’t fine yesterday. You were overdrawn yesterday. And the day before that. And the twelve days before that. The crash isn’t the problem arriving. It’s the body budget finally bouncing.

The ‘Anxiety Is My Engine’ Myth

If I let go of the anxiety, I’ll stop performing. I’ll become lazy. Everything will fall apart.

Sound familiar?

This is the belief that keeps most of us stuck. The idea that the anxiety is what makes you good at things. That without it, you’d just… stop.

Dr Claire Weekes, whose groundbreaking book Self-Help for Your Nerves (1962) has helped millions of people with anxiety over six decades, described the core of anxiety as fear of the fear itself. The original feeling isn’t the problem. It’s the secondary fear — the panicked reaction to the panic, the tension about the tension — that locks the cycle in place. She called it “second fear” and argued that learning to float through it, rather than fight it, was the path out.

Because with high-functioning anxiety, the second fear sounds like: If I stop being anxious about this, I’ll fail. The anxiety becomes fused with the competence. But they’re not the same thing. You’re succeeding despite the anxiety, not because of it. The proof? Think about the times you’ve done your best work. Chances are, you were absorbed, focused, maybe even calm. Not wired. Not bracing for disaster.

The anxiety isn’t the engine. It’s the tax.

What Actually Helps (Spoiler: It Starts With the Body)

Here’s the part most advice skips. Which is a problem.

You can’t think your way out of high-functioning anxiety. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve rationalised, analysed, made lists of reasons why I shouldn’t be anxious, and my body has completely ignored every single one of them. That’s because anxiety lives in the nervous system before it lives in your thoughts. The body activates first. The worried thinking comes after—as the brain’s attempt to explain what the body is already doing.

I spent years trying to think my way out of something that needed a completely different approach. Here’s what I wish someone had told me earlier.

Notice the physical signs before the spiral.

Jaw clenching. Shoulders up around your ears. Shallow breathing. That weird thing your left eyelid does when you’re really tired. These are your body’s early warning system. You don’t have to fix anything. Just notice. I’m activated right now. That’s it. When I first started doing this, it was embarrassing how often I caught myself clenching my jaw while doing something completely mundane, like unloading the dishwasher. (Apparently my nervous system considers Tupperware a threat.)

Extend your exhale.

Breathe in for four counts, out for six. This directly activates the parasympathetic nervous system—the branch that says ‘stand down.’ Two minutes. That’s it. You can do it in the car before school pick-up, in the bathroom at work, or standing in the Woolies checkout line while the person in front of you argues about a sales price. Smith recommends this as one of the simplest, most evidence-based ways to signal safety to your body.

Practise doing less, on purpose.

Start tiny. Leave one email unanswered for a few days. Send a message without re-reading it three times. Let something be good enough instead of perfect. Your nervous system needs evidence that slowing down is safe. The only way to build that evidence is to actually slow down and survive it. I started with not checking my phone for the first fifteen minutes after waking up. (Well. That was the goal. It was more like three minutes at first. But three minutes felt like an eternity, so I’m counting it.)

Stop treating rest as reward.

Rest isn’t something you earn by pushing through. It’s a body-budget deposit. It’s what keeps the whole system running. Weekes was firm about this: recovery from anxiety requires practising peace, not earning it. I know that’s hard to hear when you’ve spent your whole life believing that sitting still means falling behind. But sitting still is doing something. Your body is recalibrating. That counts.

So Where Does That Leave Us

High-functioning anxiety is exhausting precisely because it doesn’t look exhausting. You’re carrying a weight nobody can see, and you’ve gotten so good at carrying it that sometimes even you forget it’s there.

But your body knows. It’s been keeping the books the whole time.

Some days you’ll catch the pattern early—the tight chest, the racing thoughts, the urge to do one more thing before you let yourself stop. Other days you won’t catch it at all. That’s fine. This isn’t about being perfect at managing anxiety. (That would be very on-brand, but also completely missing the point.)

It’s about building a slightly wider margin between you and the edge. One exhale at a time.

References

Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Smith, J. (2022). Why has nobody told me this before? HarperOne.

Weekes, C. (1962). Self-help for your nerves: Learn to relax and enjoy life again by overcoming stress and fear. Angus & Robertson. (Reissued by HarperCollins, multiple editions.)