High-Functioning Anxiety: When You Look Fine but Your Nervous System Isn’t
- Jacquelyn Turner-Haury
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
If you met me in my finance years, you wouldn’t have called me anxious.
I was competent. Organized. Early to the office. Good under pressure.
On paper, I was fine.
Inside, my body was bracing.
That’s what high-functioning anxiety often looks like.
I wasn't collapsing. I wasn't chaotic. But there was a constant hum of readiness.
The Version of Anxiety That Gets Applauded
High-functioning anxiety doesn’t always look like panic attacks.
It looks like:
Over-preparing
Checking your email one more time before bed
Difficulty resting, even on vacation
A jaw that never fully unclenches
Being the reliable one
Feeling slightly behind, even when ahead
You get praised for it. You become known for being steady.
And because you’re capable, no one questions it, including you.
When I Thought It Was Just Ambition
In New York, I told myself I was just driven.
That the tension in my body was normal. That exhaustion was part of being “serious.” That if I could just optimize a little more, I’d feel better.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that my nervous system had been living in long-term mobilization.
Sympathetic activation.
Fight-or-flight, without the tiger.
I wasn’t panicking.
There’s a difference.
The Nervous System Behind High-Functioning Anxiety
Your nervous system has states.
Safety and connection. Mobilization and urgency. Shutdown and collapse.
High-functioning anxiety lives mostly in mobilization.
You become very good at performing from there.
You respond quickly. You solve. You anticipate.
But your body rarely experiences full downshift.
Over time, that constant mobilization becomes baseline. So when you try to relax, your system doesn’t cooperate.
Rest feels edgy. Stillness feels uncomfortable. Joy feels fragile.
And you may wonder: Why can’t I just calm down?
“I Understand Myself, But I Still React.”
One of the most common things I hear from clients is this:
“I know where this comes from. I’ve done therapy. I’ve read the books. I understand my patterns. But I still react.”
High-functioning, intelligent people are often very insightful.
But insight doesn’t automatically rewire physiology.
You can intellectually understand your attachment style and still feel your heart race in a hard conversation.
You can know you’re safe and still feel like something is about to go wrong.
It’s a nervous system that hasn’t experienced enough safety yet.
A Composite Story (Because This Is Real Work)
I once worked with a woman who, on paper, was thriving.
Creative. Successful. Well-spoken.
She handled pressure professionally. She rarely cried in front of others. She didn’t “lose it.”
But in session, her jaw was clenched so tightly she didn’t realize it until I asked her to feel her face.
When she had to confront someone important in her life, she used to spiral for days beforehand. Over-prepare. Replay scenarios. Lose sleep.
Through somatic work, slowing down, building capacity, practicing regulation in small increments, something shifted.
She stayed calm in a high-stakes conversation that once would have undone her.
Not because she suppressed emotion.
But because her body could tolerate it.
She later said something that stayed with me:
“I didn’t need to win. I just needed to see that I could stay myself in the room.”
That’s high-functioning anxiety transforming into capacity.
Why Mindset Work Often Isn’t Enough
If high-functioning anxiety were purely cognitive, affirmations would solve it.
They don’t.
Because the body runs faster than the mind.
When your nervous system equates slowing down with vulnerability, it will override your best intentions.
Somatic work shifts this by:
Tracking activation in real time
Expanding your window of tolerance
Practicing down-regulation in small, repeatable ways
Teaching the body that stillness isn’t danger
The goal isn’t to eliminate drive.
It’s to remove the urgency underneath it.
Signs It Might Be You
You crash when a project ends
You get sick when you finally rest
You feel flat after achieving something big
You struggle to ask for what you need without shame
You confuse intensity with importance
You feel powerful professionally but unsure relationally
You may look fine.
But your system might be exhausted.
What Regulation Actually Feels Like
Regulation isn’t being calm all the time.
It’s flexibility.
It’s being able to feel:
Anger, without exploding. Sadness, without collapsing. Excitement, without bracing for loss.
It’s walking into a room that used to trigger you and feeling your feet under you.
It’s making decisions from clarity, not urgency.
It’s trusting that even if something falls apart, you won’t.
Why I Care About This
Burnout was my nervous system’s breaking point.
It forced me to confront the fact that competence doesn’t equal well-being.
The work I do now, through 1:1 somatic coaching and retreats, is about helping people build what I had to build from scratch:
A self-led nervous system.
Not to make you softer. But to make you sturdier.
If This Resonates
If you’re high-functioning on the outside and dysregulated on the inside, you’re not alone.
You’re not broken.
And you don’t need more insight.
You may need integration.
If you want to explore this work, through a private 1:1 session you can learn more here or join an upcoming retreat here.
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