Is It Work or Is It Anxiety? How High-Pressure Jobs Keep Women and BIPOC Professionals Stuck in Overdrive
Uploaded from Unsplash on 11/19/2025
You may be experiencing high-functioning anxiety if you feel anxious much of the time but outwardly appear successful and in control. High-functioning anxiety is REAL and a significant source of suffering for so many. It’s something that often goes unnoticed by others - even to you. As an anxiety therapist in Oakland, CA, I see how the mix of social, financial, political, and family pressures combine to create an environment of constant stress - it becomes the air you breathe. Others may see only the calm, competent exterior, while you feel constantly on edge and overextended.
If you find your mind is stuck on worrying about work more than you’d like, your work environment could be the source of your anxiety. You might notice your mind spinning with ways to manage unread emails, looming deadlines, and high expectations from your boss. Working faster and harder doesn’t seem to shorten your to-do list and this approach isn’t getting you the results you’re hoping for. If it’s hard to stop your mind from spinning with ways to manage all of these demands, you feel tightness in your chest, are constantly on edge, feel deeply exhausted, and feel more dread than typical Sunday evening blues, you may be experiencing workplace anxiety.
Unlike general anxiety, which often leads people to avoid stressors, high-functioning anxiety pushes you to work harder, mask your struggle, and maintain appearances. On the inside you may be self-critical and plagued with self-doubt. Even as you excel at work and appear composed, worrying about not being smart enough, capable enough, competent enough, (fill in the blank) can leave you feeling trapped in a cycle of perfectionism, stress, and unrelenting internal pressure.
If you’re someone who tells yourself: It’s just work stress. Everyone’s tired, right? and you can’t remember the last time you actually felt rested—something deeper might be going on.
How High-Functioning Anxiety Differs from General Anxiety
It’s often the case with anxiety that we will want to avoid the things that make us anxious because that anxious feeling is so uncomfortable. When we do this (for example, calling in sick to work or avoiding responding to messages or emails), the anxiety starts to impact how we function in our relationships and our ability to carry out our daily tasks. With high functioning anxiety, when a person has anxiety symptoms, rather than pulling away from others or uncomfortable situations, they actually cope by working harder and masking how much they are struggling (their symptoms). You may actually even be excelling at work, but you are plagues by relentless worry, fear or feel on edge underneath your cool exterior. Chronic self-criticism, self-doubt and the feeling you can’t measure up fuels your anxiety and keeps you stuck in the cycle of overworking.
You might not just be burned out. You might be anxious. The number of people experiencing anxiety is likely much higher than the number of people who are diagnosed with anxiety disorders (6.8 million adults in the US) because high-functioning anxiety often goes unnoticed. People with high functioning anxiety experience anxiety symptoms but maintain a high level of functioning in many aspects of their lives. In other words, things aren’t falling apart, but the toll it takes on you is significant.
When Work Stops Feeling Manageable
Uploaded from Unsplash on 11/19/2025
Workplace anxiety is sneaky because it doesn’t always appear in the form of breaking down in tears at your desk or having panic attacks in meetings. It’s a feeling of being on edge and overwhelmed, constantly bracing yourself for something to go wrong even when in reality all is fine. You may be hyper aware and worried about how you come across which leads to endless self-monitoring, reviewing past conversations, writing and re-writing emails, wondering if you overshared and you are unable to stop thinking about it.
Like a shark, you keep moving because slowing down feels dangerous and stopping feels like it would be catastrophic. You cling to the hope that if you can just get ahead and finish the week’s tasks or your current project - then you can finally rest. But the goal post keeps moving.
Modern workplaces and capitalism signal that your worth and stability depend on your output. Hustle culture and exploitation inherent in these systems, make this marathon feel normal and instill fear in your that maybe you are just not cutting it. For women and people of color, there’s an added layer having to work harder to prove your worth and in our patriarchal and white supremacist culture. It can feel like nothing short of perfection is expected.
What Workplace Anxiety Really Looks Like
Anxiety at work ripples into nearly every part of your day and you can find yourself feeling tense, worried and nervous much of the time. Internally you may struggle with the following:
Trouble concentrating and remembering
Feeling the need to be perfect - Unrelenting self-criticism and fear of criticism from others.
Feeling afraid of looking foolish or appearing inadequate to others
Fear that you are on the verge of losing control and feeling on edge
Dread and impending doom
High levels of stress
Difficulty with racing thoughts, especially before presentations or meetings.
Body tension - clenching your jaw, stomach issues, muscle tension in your shoulders, face and back.
Overthinking - rereading communications, replaying conversations, difficulty stopping your thoughts.
Difficulty sleeping, especially on week nights.
Feeling irritable, tired and tense
Workplace anxiety hides behind high performance and can go unnoticed. You may be one of your workplace’s most reliable employees - dependable, always available, organized and efficient, but underneath your nervous system is on overdrive. If your wondering whether your anxiety stems from your job or if it’s something deeper, imagine you were to win the lottery and be able to stop working tomorrow. Would your worries evaporate or would you find yourself
Why Workplace Anxiety Hits Women and People of Color Harder
People of color and many women professionals have learned to survive in systems that are exploitative and unhealthy - essentially not built with them in mind.
Many women I talk to were raised to take care of others’ feelings and needs before their own and that thought of not being liked is terrifying. In American society, women are rewarded for being accommodating, reliable, selfless and calm which often leads to women overextending themselves. In workplaces that demand constant productivity, that conditioning easily turns into self-erasure.
For people of color, anxiety at work can also come from racialized stress—microaggressions, being the only one in the room, or feeling pressure to code-switch or overperform just to be seen as worthy, valued and competent. The subtle and persistent messages are: Don’t make anyone uncomfortable. Don’t show emotion. Mistakes won’t be tolerated.
Many women and BIPOC clients who seek anxiety therapy in Oakland describe their work environments as demanding, exhausting and invalidating. The fear is that they are “too sensitive”. But they’re having a healthy response to systems that violate their boundaries and put immense pressure on them to push past their limits.
The Cost of Staying in Overdrive
Over time, your body will exhibit signs of chronic anxiety like GI issues, deep fatigues, headaches and emotionally feeling numb. The burnout is so deep you may be showing up, meeting expectations and doing the work, but on the inside you feel flat. This is the cost of running on overdrive for too long.
A nervous system that is on high alert for too long, starts to forget what calm feels like. Or if you do remember, it can be harder to find your way back to a relaxed state even when you try to rest. Your mind is always sprinting, you may find yourself more forgetful, less present with the people around you and generally grumpy - even on weekends or when doing something fun that you’ve been looking forward to.
Being a hard or fast worker, may have kept you sharp, engaged and excelling in the past. Now it is wearing you down.
Finding Your Way Back: Healing and Support with Anxiety Therapy in Oakland
While workplace anxiety doesn’t necessarily mean you have to quit your job tomorrow (though sometimes that could need to happen for you to heal). Workplace anxiety may mean learning to respond differently—to your body, your boundaries, and your beliefs about worth and success.
Here are a few ways to begin:
Listen to what your body is telling you. Notice the tension and fatigue, signs of burnout, generally feeling unwell. These are important signals that your body and mind need care and tending to.
Become aware of what’s happening and name it. Saying to yourself: “I’m feeling anxious right now” helps the brain shift away from panic and toward awareness.
Set baby boundaries. You don’t have to make drastic changes overnight. Start with one, small thing like taking a pause before replying to communication outside of your work hours or schedule 20 minutes for an real break. Step away from the computer, eat lunch, sit outside or meditate.
Rest without guilt! Your value is not what you produce. Rest is not weakness nor indulgent -it’s a vital need.
Ask for support. Therapy offers a space to identify the fears driving overwork, heal from the effects of chronic stress, and learn to regulate your emotions and nervous system.
Anxiety Therapy in Oakland
You don’t have to suffer alone. Overdrive as a survival strategy takes a profound toll on mental and physical well-being and anxiety therapy can help you untangle workplace stress from deeper patterns, build skills for setting boundaries, and challenge internalized narratives that keep you pushing past your limits. Existing in survival mode is so very depleting and you deserve to feel safe, supported and valued for who you are.
Author Bio:
Anxiety Therapist Oakland
Lara Clayman, LCSW, is an anxiety therapist based in Oakland who offers inclusive, client-centered therapy for multicultural adults, women and counseling for men. Her approach weaves together somatic awareness, practical tools, and deep empathy to help clients with healing.
Learn more about Anxiety Therapy, or explore her work in trauma therapy and culturally sensitive therapy, online therapy in California and counseling for men.
