The Hustle Reflex: Why High-Functioning Anxiety Makes Rest Feel Unsafe

As a therapist, you get to meet people from all different backgrounds. There is such a range of socioeconomic statuses, family cultures, immigration stories, worldviews, etc.

Yet despite these differences, I’ve noticed some common things, particularly in high achievers. I have affectionately called this tendency, “the hustle reflex.”

As a side note, in an attempt to push back against AI, I wanted to maintain my ability to provide a different perspective on what it’s like as a working therapist. I know it’s much more efficient to have ChatGPT write a blog about the “5 signs of an anxiety disorder,” but I hope that you are able to gain a more human perspective from me and glean something from all the time I spend listening and learning about people.

Okay, so getting back to it. I work a lot with high achievers, overthinkers, and people who look like they’re functioning well on the outside while carrying a lot of anxiety underneath. And as I've sat in multiple sessions, I started to notice that clients, especially those from immigrant or first/second generation households hold a complex relationship to success and working hard.

In so many ways, working hard is driven out of need to be successful. Whether it is the guilt of feeling like your parents sacrificed so that you could have more opportunities, or the belief that success was the way to survive your family of origin and make a better life for yourself, working hard can start to feel like the only way you know how to operate

If you’re like some of the clients I’ve worked with, that drive to be successful can start to look less like healthy ambition and more like high-functioning anxiety: the constant pressure to keep pushing, reach the next rung of the ladder, hit the next financial goal, or find the next job opportunity. And even though you know that the pressure to succeed is starting to choke you out, you can’t help but keep fixating on how to get to the next place. Thus, the hustle reflex.

I want to focus a bit here on the reflex part because as I’ve been working with this high-functioning anxiety, I see it show up in two different ways.

It shows up in the hyper fixation on doing it all and it shows up in your view of yourself.

The Hustle Reflex and High-Functioning Anxiety

I like the word reflex because for a high-functioning anxious overachiever, continuing to push yourself, to not slow down, to not let yourself step off the gas is more of a state of being than a conscious choice. I’ve had multiple clients spend so many sessions trying to convince me that the solution to their crushing anxiety is to just get to this arbitrary next step to feel a sense of safety and security.

I’ve responded to those comments by saying your job in therapy is to do nothing or at the very least to do less.

Typically I get a lot of blank stares and some incredulous looks because high achievers can’t even fathom what that means.

For me, this is again not a practical thing. I understand you need to do your job, take care of your kids, save for retirement, find the next preschool, figure out what to cook for dinner, but I mean this more on a psychological level or in your state of being. What happens if you let go for a moment of needing to be better. Perhaps you are good enough right now in this moment. What happens if you stop expecting yourself to arrive and allow yourself the time and space to grow into the person you want to be in 3 weeks from now, 6 months, 2 years, 10 years from now. What happens if you let go of the expectation for other people to operate at the same level and you allow yourself to figure out how to ask for what you need instead of holding resentment or overproducing.

Good questions, I know.

The Relational Cost of High-Functioning Anxiety

So the second way I see this playing out is in relationships. This includes both your relationship to other people and relationship with yourself.

On an identity level, perhaps you’ve self identified as being a successful or competent individual. And this goes one of two ways. Either you feel like you are treading water, just trying to keep up the appearance that you excel in everything that you do, which can feel suffocating or like you are playing imposter syndrome. Or it comes out in resentment and frustration when you have to operate with people who don’t function the same way you do. This can lead to feeling unseen, disconnected, or feeling like you are putting in more of the work in your marriage, in a friendship, or even as a parent.

Sometimes it can feel scary to let go of what it means to self identify as the one who gets shit done because it is so tied to your family of origin. It’s part of what’s allowed you to be successful or to survive. Part of what I want to do in our work together, should you dare to go down that path is to start to learn how to recognize that subconscious reflex. To start to recognize and work on developing a different relationship to yourself and to expectations, the next success, the next job, the goal. To sit with and slow down long enough to start to cultivate a softness toward yourself that you may not always have. This is the work.

Therapy for High-Functioning Anxiety in Santa Ana

In therapy, especially with high-functioning anxiety, the work is not just about learning how to be more productive or manage stress more efficiently. You probably already know how to perform, achieve, and keep going. The deeper work is learning how to recognize the reflex underneath all of that — the pressure to prove, perfect, please, over-function, or outrun the fear that you are somehow behind.

In my therapy practice in Santa Ana, I work with adults who are outwardly capable but internally exhausted. People who are thoughtful, driven, relationally sensitive, and tired of feeling like they have to hold everything together all the time.

So let me know what you think! I hope I was able to capture and name something true. If you’re interested in learning more or working with me, you can book a consultation with me here.

Warmly,

-M