High-Functioning Anxiety: When Coping is Mistaken for Strength

The term high-functioning anxiety has become increasingly common in conversations about mental health, particularly in workplace settings. It is usually used to describe people who appear to cope well externally while experiencing persistent anxiety internally. They meet deadlines, take responsibility, and continue to perform, often to a high standard. On the surface, everything looks intact. Internally, things can feel far more precarious.

While many people recognize themselves in this description, the label itself deserves scrutiny. High-functioning anxiety is not a clinical diagnosis, and it risks oversimplifying what is actually happening. Most people with anxiety function. They go to work, care for others, manage finances, and maintain relationships. Anxiety does not typically prevent functioning. What it often affects is how much internal effort is required to sustain that functioning.

When we describe someone as high-functioning, we can inadvertently reinforce the idea that coping is best measured by output. This creates a false distinction between those who are supposedly coping well and those who are not. In reality, the difference is often not capacity, but concealment. Many people who are labelled as high-functioning are simply better at hiding distress.

What is often being described is masking.

Masking refers to the process of suppressing or managing emotional expression in order to meet social or professional expectations. In many workplace cultures, emotional conservatism remains the norm. There may be statements about wellbeing, mental health awareness days, or access to support services, but the unspoken rules often persist. Be professional. Be capable. Do not let personal difficulties interfere with performance. Vulnerability may be acknowledged in principle, but its boundaries are rarely clear in practice.

As a result, people learn to adapt. They learn what is acceptable to show and what is safer to keep contained. Over time, this becomes automatic. Distress is managed privately. Anxiety is internalized. Coping becomes a performance rather than a lived experience.

This dynamic becomes particularly pronounced in the context of grief.

Loss destabilizes people at a fundamental level. That loss may be the death of a loved one, but it can also be the end of a relationship, redundancy, or the loss of a role or identity that once provided structure and meaning. Grief affects concentration, sleep, motivation, emotional regulation, and a sense of safety in the world. Even when organizations acknowledge loss, there is often an implicit expectation that its impact should be time-limited and contained.

People are encouraged to take time, but not too much. They are offered support, but output is still monitored. They are told to be honest, but only within acceptable parameters. In this context, many people respond by tightening the mask rather than removing it.

They continue to work. They stay busy. They avoid talking about the internal impact of what they are going through. From the outside, this can look like impressive resilience. Internally, anxiety often increases. Sleep becomes lighter. Decision-making becomes harder. Emotions feel blunted or overwhelming, sometimes both. Grief does not disappear because it is unspoken. It simply goes underground.

This response is not a sign of weakness or emotional avoidance. It is an understandable adaptation to cultural and organizational pressure.

From a psychological perspective, grief often heightens sensitivity to threat. After a loss, the world can feel less predictable and less secure. People may become more vigilant, more cautious, and more concerned with maintaining control. Productivity and routine can feel stabilizing. Work can offer structure, distraction, and a sense of purpose at a time when other parts of life feel fractured.

In the short term, this can be helpful. In the longer term, it can become exhausting.

When productivity becomes the primary way of managing emotional pain, it leaves little space for grief to be processed or integrated. Anxiety can increase as the nervous system remains in a prolonged state of alert. People may find themselves functioning well on the surface while feeling increasingly disconnected, irritable, or depleted.

One of the most overlooked aspects of masked anxiety is the effort involved. Holding oneself together requires constant self-monitoring. People assess how much emotion is acceptable, adjust their tone, suppress visible distress, and work hard to appear steady. This emotional labour is rarely recognized, particularly when someone continues to perform well.

Over time, the cost becomes apparent. Energy is drained. Small tasks feel disproportionately effortful. People may begin to experience burnout, not because they lack resilience, but because they have been relying on self-suppression for too long.

As a therapist, I am less interested in helping people appear to cope better, and more interested in questioning why they feel they have to. The aim is not to encourage oversharing or to turn workplaces into therapeutic spaces. It is to challenge the assumption that professionalism requires emotional concealment.

Functioning while affected is not the same as failing to cope.

Allowing for variability in capacity, acknowledging that grief and anxiety can alter how people function for a time, and recognizing that continued output does not necessarily indicate well-being are all important shifts. These changes do not lower standards. They support sustainability.

For organizations, this means moving beyond surface-level approaches to wellbeing. Supportive workplaces do not expect people to stop functioning, but they do recognize that loss and anxiety can change how people function. This might involve flexible expectations, managers who are comfortable acknowledging loss without rushing to solutions, and policies that allow support without suspicion or penalty 

It also means understanding that grief does not always look dramatic. Often, it looks like people continuing to show up while carrying more than is visible. When organizations only respond to distress once it becomes disruptive or obvious, they miss an opportunity to support people earlier.

For individuals, change often begins with permission. Permission to be impacted by loss. Permission to not be at full capacity. Permission to acknowledge anxiety without immediately trying to eliminate it. When people no longer feel compelled to prove that they are coping, anxiety tends to reduce. Grief becomes more workable. Functioning continues, but it becomes more sustainable.

The real issue is not high-functioning anxiety. The issue is the belief that strength requires concealment. When coping is measured solely by performance, people are encouraged to hide rather than heal.

At Pathpal, the focus is on recognizing how loss actually shows up in working lives. Grief does not always result in absence or visible distress. Often, it looks like people continuing to function while carrying significant internal strain. Supporting grieving employees means understanding this hidden effort and creating conditions where people do not have to mask in order to remain valued, trusted, and supported at work.