Published October 2026 | Last updated October 2026
It is 11:40pm. The deck has been finished since Tuesday. You open it anyway.
You move a heading two millimetres to the left. You rewrite the opening line for the fourth time — the one you will not read out loud, because you could run this meeting in your sleep. You know the numbers. You know the room. You know the two people who will push back and roughly what they will say.
And still you sit there, in a quiet apartment somewhere between Downtown Dubai and a 7am call with Europe, polishing something that was already done.
That is high-functioning anxiety at work. Not shaking hands. Not a racing heart in the lift. Just one more pass. Just to be sure.
What High-Functioning Anxiety at Work Actually Looks Like
High-functioning anxiety is anxiety that has learned to look like excellence — it shows up as over-preparation, over-rehearsal and control rather than visible distress, which is why it rarely gets named.
Nobody in your team sees anxiety. They see someone thorough. Someone who never gets caught out. Someone who has already thought of the thing they were about to ask.
In my coaching work in Dubai, this is one of the most common patterns I meet, and almost never the reason people book the call. They come in for focus, or a decision, or because they cannot switch off. Then somewhere in the first session they say something like: “I over-prepare for everything. I always have. It’s just how I am.”
It is not who you are. It is what worked.
The Rehearsal Never Reaches the Fear
Here is the part that makes this so persistent.
Preparation is genuinely useful — up to a point. There is a threshold where you have what you need. Past that threshold, you are no longer preparing for the meeting. You are trying to make a feeling go away.
And it almost works. Each pass through the slides gives you about twenty minutes of relief. Then the unease comes back, so you go again. The deck is the sandbag. The water is coming from somewhere else entirely.
What makes high-functioning anxiety at work so hard to interrupt is that the environment rewards it. Visible anxiety gets noticed — someone asks if you are okay. Invisible anxiety gets promoted. You are described as reliable, detailed, across everything. The behaviour that keeps the threat signal alive is the same behaviour that built your reputation.
So the underlying sense of threat is never addressed. It is monetised.
Why It Lives in the Body, Not Just the Mind
You cannot reason your way out of this, and you have probably tried. You have told yourself the meeting does not matter that much. You were right, and it changed nothing.
That is because the signal driving the fourth rewrite is not a thought. It is a physiological state. Your nervous system is scanning for cues of safety or danger long before your reasoning arrives, and it does not consult your CV. Stephen Porges’ work on polyvagal theory describes this constant, below-conscious scanning: the body decides whether it is safe, and the mind then builds a story to match.
Reference: Polyvagal theory — Stephen Porges, on how the nervous system scans for safety
This is why you can know you are competent and still not feel it. Safety is not a conclusion. It is a state.
And states have a cost. The stress researcher Bruce McEwen called it allostatic load — the accumulated wear and tear that builds when the body stays switched on without resolution. Over-preparation keeps you switched on in the evenings, which is precisely when the system is supposed to stand down. Years of that shows up as the 3am waking, the jaw, the shallow sleep the week before anything significant, the flatness that arrives the day after a success.
Reference: Bruce McEwen and allostatic load
I look at a person as bio-energetic — Body, Mind and Energy. The body sets the capacity. The mind shapes the perception. Underneath both sits Energy: the subconscious beliefs and trapped emotions quietly driving the whole thing. With over-preparers, that deepest layer usually holds a sentence like if I am caught unprepared, something bad happens to me. Not a thought you would ever say out loud. Just a rule you have never broken.
I will say this plainly, because it matters: this is coaching, not clinical care — and I’ll tell you if you need more. If anxiety is affecting your health, your breathing or your ability to function, please speak to a doctor. The NHS overview of generalised anxiety is a sensible place to start.
The Uncomfortable Part
The preparation is not protecting you from the meeting. It is protecting you from finding out that you would survive being ordinary in it.
That is the bit that stings. Because as long as you over-rehearse, you never get the evidence. Every meeting that goes well confirms the ritual. You walked in over-prepared and nothing bad happened — so the ritual must be why. The belief is never tested, so it is never updated.
This is also why success does not fix it. A bigger role means bigger rooms, and the same rule scales with you. Ask anyone in a senior seat in Abu Dhabi or Dubai who is still rewriting slides at midnight after twenty years of not being caught out.
This is not a discipline problem. Your system is doing exactly what it was designed to do — just at a cost you have stopped noticing.
One Small Thing to Try
Pick something genuinely low-stakes this week. A recurring internal update. A call with people who like you.
Prepare to eighty per cent, and then stop.
Before you close the laptop, put one hand on your chest and take one slow exhale — longer out than in. Then finish this sentence honestly: If I go in only this prepared, it means…
…they’ll see I’m not as good as they think. …I’ll lose control of the room. …I’ll be found out.
Whatever arrives is the belief, not the forecast. You do not have to argue with it. Notice it, breathe once more, and go to bed. Then, the next day, notice what actually happened.
Awareness plus regulation. That combination is where change begins — and it is the foundation of both anxiety management coaching and nervous system regulation coaching.
The Good News
Preparation is not the enemy. You are allowed to be excellent and thorough. What changes is that it becomes a choice rather than a condition of feeling safe.
When the body settles enough to register that you are not in danger, the fourth rewrite simply loses its pull. Clients describe it in small, unglamorous ways: closing the laptop at nine. Walking into a room without the tightness. Noticing, a week later, that they prepared once and it was enough.
The competence stays. The tax on it goes.
You are not your patterns. You are what is underneath them — and that can change. If this shows up mostly in how you lead, see also my Executive and Leadership Coaching.
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If this landed, a gentle first step is my free Mental Fitness Guide — simple, science-informed tools to settle the body and start noticing the rules running quietly underneath your days.
And when you are ready to change the pattern rather than keep performing it, you are warmly invited to book a free intro call. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, or online.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is high-functioning anxiety at work?
High-functioning anxiety at work is anxiety that expresses itself as control, over-preparation and over-rehearsal rather than visible distress. The person keeps performing well, often above average, which is why the anxiety underneath is rarely recognised or addressed.
Is over-preparation a sign of anxiety?
It can be. Preparation becomes a signal of anxiety when it continues past the point of usefulness — rewriting something that is already finished, or rehearsing a conversation you could handle easily. The give-away is that it brings short-lived relief rather than a sense of completion.
Why do high achievers not realise they are anxious?
Because their anxiety is rewarded. Thoroughness, vigilance and never being caught out are valued at work, so the behaviour gets praised while the underlying sense of threat stays untouched. Many people only recognise it when their sleep, health or relationships start carrying the cost.
How do you stop over-preparing?
Not by trying harder to relax. Lasting change usually needs two things together: regulating the nervous system so the body registers safety, and then working with the belief underneath — often something like “if I am caught unprepared, something bad happens.” Small, deliberate experiments in preparing less give the system new evidence.
Is this coaching or therapy?
This is coaching, not clinical care. It is forward-focused work on patterns, beliefs and nervous system regulation — and if something calls for clinical support, I will tell you.
Author
Bettina Koster is a Certified Leadership and Executive Coach and ICF-accredited life coach (PCC), and a Theta Healing and Emotion Code practitioner, based on Palm Jumeirah, Dubai. Before founding Blooming Key, she spent over 15 years in corporate leadership — including five years in management at the Dubai Herbal & Treatment Centre. She works one-to-one with high-functioning people across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and online.
