You may or may not have heard the term High Functioning Anxiety and so not sure whether you have it or not. Below are the common characteristics of someone with High Functioning Anxiety with my perspective as someone who is in this category.
What is High Functioning Anxiety?
High Functioning Anxiety is a term used to describe a person who ‘suffers’ from anxiety but who copes well in life despite having it. Closely linked to Generalised Anxiety Disorder, a person with HFA behaviours, tends to cope better than someone with GAD in their life and career. They may seem to have it all together but if there was a t-shirt that summarised their behaviour it would read- FUELLED BY FEAR
Everything they think and do is from a place of fear and we push ourselves to avoid the worst that can happen, even though the worst is usually in our heads.
Who has High Functioning Anxiety?
Anyone can ‘have it’ so to speak because anxiety aka worry has a spectrum from mild to severe and so you could be a child and start to be a worrier- as I did, or you could find that in later life when you start work, fear, anxiety and worry start to take over.
How do I know if I have High Functioning Anxiety?
- Typically you push yourself, you may be seen as an overachiever, you may be highly successful at work or in your career, but you worry, you stress, and you ruminate on things for weeks, months and years.
- You may suffer from poor sleep and find it hard to relax
- You typically overthink things and perfectionism and control of people and things around you gives you a sense of calm. If you can’t control what goes on, or if your routine is changed, you react badly and others may find you inflexible and difficult to work around.
- You have an avoidant personality, that is, you would rather avoid confrontations, or difficult situations than face them, and often you will use alcohol, food, shopping or other distracting pursuits to avoid painful situations in order to cope.
- You may or may not have had other anxiety related issues such as social anxiety, depression, or even OCD
- You hide how you really feel or how you are really coping from others, and would hate for others to know that you really aren’t as confident as you come across.
- You indulge in “what if thinking” and find it difficult to switch off.
- You are highly competent and work very hard to get things done, and as people rely more and more on you, you find the pressure difficult but you will keep going until you either buckle under the strain or you find a negative way to cope with it.
- You tend to be a people pleaser and what others think of you is important. If your competence is called into question then you will work doubly hard to fix that so that it can’t be said about you again.
If you are given power over others, you can be an unrelenting perfectionist in the pursuit of doing things the right way which makes working for you not so much fun.
You are a high achiever and once you see where the top is, you will aim for that pushing yourself out of the fear of failure rather than to achieve success. How much you achieve and what you achieve is directly tied to your identity and as such you can never rest on your laurels.
My Perspective
So how does this fit in with how I have been living with High Functioning Anxiety?
In the main, as someone who didn’t even know there was such a thing as high functioning anxiety until 2021, most of the descriptions that I’ve read are pretty much on the mark. There is not much difference between myself and someone with generalised anxiety, except that I cope better than they do. The rest is pretty much the same.
- In general, I’ve always had poor sleep habits, once my mind is thinking or worrying I cannot shut it off and will not sleep unaided by music, stories or other external things. And despite feeling less and less anxious, my sleep has improved to being able to know what it is to sleep for 8 hours a night, but I rarely get 8 hours, usually between 6-7 and even more rarely sleep all the way through without waking up.
- Pushing myself is another factor that lead to burnout when I left uni to become a teacher, the worry, and fear of failure that was always there at the back of my mind, and meant that I found it hard to cope with the extra pressure at work. Anxiety ruled my mind 24/7.
- People pleasing is another area that is difficult to navigate with high functioning anxiety because we need others to be pleased with our efforts and will do more than is necessary to get that external validation. The downside is that something I do can be 99% great, but that 1% that isn’t, will be what I ruminate on and will leave a very bitter taste in my mouth.
- All in all, high functioning anxiety is like being buried alive in a coffin, bound and gagged, and screaming for help but no one can hear me, and this is why I’ve spent years working on myself so that I can feel better about myself every day for the rest of my life. And I’ve got to say that thankfully the above is no longer a prominent way for me to be, I am now in a great place emotionally and would say that my anxiety is within average norms.
If you resonate with anything on this page, contact me here to find out how you can live with less and less anxiety in your life.
