Are you having trouble sleeping and difficulty controlling your worry? People with high-functioning anxiety experience such symptoms but are still able to get through the day, often due to sheer force. But being high-functioning doesn’t mean you aren’t suffering, and it doesn’t mean you don’t need help, support or to make changes in your daily routine.
Here are some signs you may have high-functioning anxiety:

1. You experience the world in a different way

People with an anxiety disorder worry excessively and expect the worst, often without any good reason to do so. This leads to mental exhaustion, with a lot of energy spent on all that worrying. The whole experience is then worsened because those who don’t have anxiety perceive people who do to be irrational or emotional. So a person with high-functioning anxiety is actively doing life’s daily tasks, but on the inside feels like they are fighting a battle to get through the day.

Research has found that this altered perception of the world comes down to the brain’s plasticity — that is, the brain’s ability to change and reorganize itself. People with anxiety often struggle to tell the difference between safe, neutral and threatening stimuli and will overgeneralize emotional experiences.

2. You struggle to sleep well

The constant worrying can make it hard to relax, and that means it can be hard to sleep. People with high-functioning anxiety often find it hard to get to sleep, or wake up in the middle of the night and then find it hard to fall back to sleep. They also generally find it hard to relax, and work or exercise is barely distracting.

3. You can be a bit controlling and negative

Controlling habits can help people with anxiety anticipate problems or changes or variations in life, and feel like they have some control over them. In a similar vein, people can be perfectionists and have excessively high expectations of themselves, whilst overburdening themselves with constant negative self-talk.

– Tamara Pearson

Read more: 5 Telltale Signs You Have High-Functioning Anxiety

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