high-functioning means nobody asks if you're okay

i took a call this morning with a client in a different time zone and my hands were shaking so bad i had to hold the phone with both hands. not nervous-about-the-call shaking. the other kind. the kind where your body is doing something your mind didnt authorize and you just have to wait for it to stop.

the call went fine. i was sharp. i asked the right questions. i pushed back where i needed to push back. i closed with a clear next step and a timeline. the client said “great call” and hung up. and then i sat in my chair for eleven minutes doing nothing because my legs felt like they were made of water and i wasnt sure they would hold me if i stood up.

thats high-functioning anxiety. thats the whole thing right there.

you perform. and then you collapse. and the performance is so good that nobody sees the collapse. and because nobody sees the collapse nobody asks if youre okay. and because nobody asks if youre okay you start to believe that the collapse isnt real. that the shaking and the nausea and the cold hands and the eleven minutes of not being able to stand up — thats just..what. weakness? drama? the thing your mother told you to stop doing?

i run businesses. i manage people across time zones. i make decisions that affect payroll and contracts and families who depend on those paychecks. i do this every day. i have done this for years. from the outside it looks like someone who has it together. from the outside it looks like confidence. drive. maybe even ambition.

from the inside it looks like this:

wake up at 5 am not because im disciplined but because the anxiety woke me up. lie in bed for twenty minutes running scenarios about things that havent happened. get up because lying there makes it worse. check my phone. respond to messages. sound normal. be normal. perform normal.

the performing is the part that kills you. not fast. slow. the way water erodes stone. because the performance never stops. there is no moment in my day where i am not managing the gap between what im feeling and what im showing. every call. every message. every meeting. every interaction with my team. every dinner with my wife where she asks how my day was and i say “busy but good” because thats easier than saying “i sat in my car for fifteen minutes before my first meeting because my chest was so tight i thought i was going to pass out.”

nobody asks if youre okay when youre performing well. thats the trade. you get to keep your reputation and your authority and your image of having it together. and the cost is that you carry everything alone. because the moment you stop performing..the moment you say “actually im not okay, actually i havent been okay for a long time, actually i shake before calls and i sit in parking lots and i count my heartbeats at my desk when everyone thinks im reading emails”..you become something else. you become the person who needs help. and i have spent my entire adult life being the person who provides help. whos going to run the company while im falling apart. whos going to make the decisions. whos going to hold it together.

me. im going to hold it together. thats the answer every time. me.

god..im so tired of holding it together.

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my wife knows some of it. not all of it. she knows i have anxiety. she knows some nights are bad. she sees my face when its bad — 얼굴이 안 좋아 (eolguri an joa — “your face doesnt look right”), she says. your face doesnt look right. she knows that much. but she doesnt know about the parking lots. she doesnt know that sometimes when im “on a call” in my office im actually sitting on the floor with my back against the wall trying to get my breathing under control. she doesnt know that the reason im always the first one up isnt discipline. its dread.

i compare myself to her constantly. she handles everything. the kids. the house. the logistics of a life in a country where she doesnt speak the language fluently. she does all of it without her hands shaking. she does all of it without sitting on floors. she does it and then she sleeps and she sleeps through the night and wakes up and does it again. and i look at her and i think..why cant i just be like that. why do i have to make everything so complicated. why does my body do this.

i know the answer now. or at least part of it. the answer is that something happened a long time ago that taught my nervous system that the world is not safe. and my nervous system believed it. and it has been running emergency protocols ever since. twenty years of emergency protocols. twenty years of adrenaline and cortisol and hypervigilance dressed up as “work ethic” and “drive” and “high performance.”

the high functioning isnt a type of anxiety. its a coping mechanism. its the mask the anxiety wears so it can operate in public without getting caught. and the mask works so well that eventually you forget its a mask. you think thats just who you are. the guy who gets things done. the guy who shows up. the guy who handles it. and underneath..

underneath is a kid who is terrified. all the time. of everything. and has learned to build businesses and manage teams and negotiate contracts as an elaborate way of proving to himself that he is not as scared as he feels.

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someone told me once that the opposite of anxiety isnt calm. its presence. being actually here. not performing here. not managing the gap between the inside and the outside. just..here. no mask. no performance. no “im fine” when im not fine.

i dont know what that looks like yet. im trying to learn. some evenings i sit with something warm in my hands and i try to just..be in the room. not thinking about tomorrow. not replaying today. not running scenarios. just sitting. feeling the heat through the cup. watching the steam. letting my hands be still for once instead of shaking or typing or holding a phone with both hands so a client doesnt hear the tremor in my voice.

some evenings it works for a few minutes. some evenings my brain wont shut up and i sit there vibrating with anxiety while pretending to be peaceful. the irony is not lost on me. if you want to read what tea for anxiety actually looks like from a research angle — and from mine — that piece gets into it honestly.

but the few minutes when it works..those few minutes are the closest i come to being the person i am when nobody is watching. no performance. no mask. no high functioning. just a tired man sitting quietly in a house full of people he loves, trying to learn how to stop pretending hes not afraid.

i dont post about this. i dont talk about it at dinners. i dont bring it up with the people i work with. this is the first time ive put any of it into words outside my own head and i dont know why im doing it except that maybe someone else is sitting in a parking lot right now before a meeting with shaking hands and a tight chest and they need to know that the person on the other side of that call might be shaking too.

they probably are.

you just cant hear it because the performance is that good.