You know that friend who triple checks every plan, seems like they’re scanning the room even during casual conversations, or cancels at the last minute for reasons that seem…well, a bit flimsy? Maybe you’ve rolled your eyes or felt frustrated. Here’s the thing though: what looks like rudeness or overreaction to you might be anxiety working overtime in their brain.
To an outside observer, people with high-functioning anxiety may appear to excel and be in control, yet behind this facade, these people have persistent thoughts of worry, fear and high-stress levels. The behaviors that confuse you most aren’t random quirks. They’re survival strategies their anxious brain has crafted to navigate a world that feels perpetually threatening. Let’s dive into what’s really going on when anxiety drives behavior that leaves everyone else scratching their heads.
They Cancel Plans Because of a Headache or Feeling Tired
You finally nail down dinner plans after weeks of texting back and forth. Then, an hour before you’re supposed to meet, you get the text: “So sorry, I have a headache” or “I’m just too exhausted tonight.” You might think they’re flaking or making excuses.
An anxious person might change appointments at the last minute or not turn up, giving pathetic excuses or canceling because of niggling health problems such as a headache, feeling too tired or having a stomach upset, and these issues are real for the person. Their body is actually responding to the mounting dread about the social situation. The physical symptoms aren’t made up. Physiological symptoms include increased heart rate, palpitations, shortness of breath, chest pain or pressure, nausea, upset stomach, dizzy, light-headed, sweaty, tense muscles, and dry mouth.
What you see as a minor inconvenience feels like a legitimate physical crisis to them. Their nervous system has been in overdrive all day anticipating the evening, and by the time the event rolls around, they’re genuinely depleted. It’s not about you. It’s about their brain treating a casual dinner like a high-stakes performance.
They Overplan Everything to an Absurd Degree
In efforts to guard against anything going wrong, behavior can take on an element of contingency planning, or preparing for every single possibility, even those that are unlikely to occur, which to the anxious mind is a way to safeguard against potential threat or risk. Your colleague has given the same presentation dozens of times, yet they’re up until midnight rehearsing. They plot three different routes to a familiar location. They prepare responses to questions that will probably never get asked.
They spend more time than necessary reviewing presentation materials, plot out three separate routes to the location in case there is traffic or an accident although they have been there before, and toss and turn in bed the night before, rehearsing the presentation and imagining all the ways it might go wrong. To you, this looks like they don’t trust themselves or are wasting time on pointless contingencies.
From their perspective, though, this exhaustive planning is the only thing standing between them and complete disaster. In an anxious mindset, we tend to disregard our competency and our past successes, as our minds amplify only possibilities of failure. The planning isn’t optional. It’s the anxiety tax they pay just to function.
They Read Negativity Into Every Neutral Interaction
You send a quick “ok” text because you’re busy. Your anxious friend immediately spirals: Are you mad? Did I do something wrong? Why are they being cold? Anxiety can skew how you perceive others’ feelings, and if you’ve been convinced someone was upset with you with little evidence, this happens due to cognitive biases, hypervigilance to threat, and our mind’s tendency to jump to worst-case interpretations.
Imagine sending a text to a friend and receiving a short okay in response; an anxious mind might immediately conclude she’s mad at me or I must’ve done something wrong, but in reality your friend might just be busy or tired, though anxiety makes it feel personal. This isn’t them being dramatic. In anxious individuals, the amygdala tends to overreact, flagging potential threats even when they’re not real.
Their brain has essentially been rewired to scan for danger in every interaction. When you’re walking around with a threat detection system stuck on high alert, neutral becomes negative by default. They’re not trying to create drama. Their brain is genuinely convinced the drama already exists.
They Look Away or Fidget During Conversations
Their behavior is related to the adrenaline levels in their body as they are trying to assess all the threats around them and focus more on their negative thoughts and feelings rather than on other people. You’re talking to them, making eye contact, but they keep glancing around the room or playing with their phone. It feels dismissive, maybe even rude.
Let’s be real though: they’re not ignoring you because they don’t care. Anxious people have difficulty focusing on one thing because their minds are racing with different thoughts, many negative, and they might think that you are judging them or they may believe that they don’t have anything interesting to say. Their nervous system is so flooded with anxious energy that sitting still and maintaining steady eye contact feels impossible.
When talking to an anxious person and they are looking away, looking away may be one of their coping mechanisms. That fidgeting or averted gaze? It’s a pressure release valve. Without it, the anxiety might become completely overwhelming. They want to connect with you. Their body just won’t cooperate.
They Control Small Details That Don’t Really Matter
The glass left on the counter. The towel hung slightly crooked. The plan that changed by five minutes. Your partner sees the glass left on the counter and it creates anxiety, something is out of place, and their micromanaging is their attempt to get you to do what they feel you need to do so they don’t feel anxious.
Intense worrying and rumination is miserable, so people with anxiety disorders usually do their best to control as many outcomes as possible in an attempt to soothe these worries. What you interpret as nitpicking or bossiness is actually their attempt to create order in a mind that feels perpetually chaotic. When everything inside feels out of control, controlling external details becomes a lifeline.
When you put colossal amounts of effort into making something run smoothly and it ends up going well, you attribute the success of the outcome to your controlling behaviors not to you, and each time this happens you reinforce the idea that you need to keep controlling everything in order for things to turn out okay. Honestly, it’s exhausting for them too. They know the glass on the counter isn’t a crisis. Their brain just won’t stop screaming that it is.
They Struggle With Decisions Everyone Else Finds Simple
Picking a restaurant for lunch becomes a twenty-minute ordeal. Choosing which movie to watch requires extensive deliberation. You’re thinking “just pick something already,” but their brain is running through every possible outcome and consequence of each choice. What if everyone hates the restaurant? What if the movie is boring and it ruins the whole evening?
When it comes to anxiety and procrastination, procrastination is both a result and a driver of anxiety, and procrastination means putting off tasks because of anxiety which will only increase future anxiety. The inability to decide isn’t indecisiveness in the traditional sense. It’s anxiety paralyzing their ability to trust their own judgment. Every choice feels loaded with the potential for catastrophic failure.
They’re not trying to be difficult or waste your time. Their brain is genuinely convinced that making the wrong choice about where to eat lunch could somehow spiral into social disaster. The mental energy required to override that fear and just pick something is enormous. Sometimes they simply run out of steam.
They Apologize Constantly for Things That Aren’t Their Fault
“Sorry for bothering you.” “Sorry, that’s probably a stupid question.” “Sorry for being in the way.” Constantly apologizing even for things that aren’t your fault happens when we are constantly criticized or consistently made to feel that everything is our fault, and we develop a strong sense of shame that manifests in a constant need to over-apologize even when you have not done anything wrong.
It’s hard to say for sure why this particular behavior develops so strongly in anxious people, but the pattern is unmistakable. They’re not fishing for reassurance or trying to be annoying. People-pleasing is a way of controlling other people’s reactions and feelings about you in an attempt to keep yourself safe from rejection. The constant apologies are a pre-emptive strike against criticism or rejection.
By apologizing first, they’re trying to defuse any potential negative reaction before it happens. It’s exhausting to witness, sure. Imagine how exhausting it is to live inside a brain that tells you that you’re constantly doing something wrong just by existing.
They Go Silent or Shut Down in Group Settings
In one-on-one conversations, they’re fine, even engaging. Put them in a group of five or more people, and suddenly they’re a completely different person. Silent. Withdrawn. Maybe they leave early or disappear to the bathroom for suspiciously long periods.
They are trying to assess all the threats around them and focus more on their negative thoughts and feelings rather than on other people, and people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder do this most of the time but they don’t know why they do it. What you’re seeing isn’t antisocial behavior or disinterest. Most people with social anxiety deeply crave connection but are overwhelmed by the fear of being judged, embarrassed, or misunderstood.
Group dynamics multiply the number of people who could potentially judge them, the conversational threads they need to track, and the ways they could accidentally say something wrong. Their brain essentially hits overload and shuts down to protect itself. They want to participate. The fear just won’t let them.
They Need Excessive Reassurance That Everything’s Okay
“Are we good?” “You’re not mad, right?” “Did I say something wrong earlier?” People who always talk about themselves and their accomplishments seeking reassurance are coping when they feel insecure, and their anxiety is driving them to make sure the other person is happy, looking for validation that they did the right thing. After the tenth time answering these questions, you’re probably ready to lose it.
People diagnosed with anxiety are less able to distinguish between a neutral safe stimulus and one that was earlier associated with threat, and when it comes to emotional experiences they show a behavioral phenomenon known as over-generalization. Their brain genuinely cannot tell the difference between everything being fine and everything being on the verge of disaster. Your reassurance provides temporary relief, but the anxiety creeps back in almost immediately.
They know they’re being repetitive. They know it’s probably annoying. The need for confirmation that they haven’t destroyed the relationship is simply stronger than their ability to stop asking. It’s not about doubting you. It’s about their brain’s inability to hold onto the reassurance you’ve already given.
Conclusion
People with anxiety for over twenty years are some of the strongest people, as they get up every day and do the very things that scare them. These behaviors that confuse or frustrate you aren’t character flaws or deliberate attempts to be difficult. They’re the visible manifestations of an invisible battle happening inside someone’s nervous system.
High-functioning anxiety represents people who exhibit anxiety symptoms while maintaining a high level of functionality in various aspects of their lives, often successful in careers or other roles yet internally struggle with persistent feelings of stress, self-doubt and the fear of not measuring up. The next time someone cancels last minute, over-apologizes, or seems to read negativity into your neutral text, maybe take a breath before getting annoyed.
What do you think? Have you noticed these behaviors in yourself or someone you know? Understanding is the first step toward compassion, both for others and for ourselves.
