Generalized anxiety disorder is defined as excessive and difficult to control anxiety or worry about various things. It usually manifests in physical symptoms. It is beyond stress. People dealing with GAD, or simply anxiety as I will be referring to it for the rest of the article, do so at various levels.

I'm going to share a secret with you: I have high-functioning anxiety.

I can speak for nobody but myself. However, I hope that by sharing how my anxiety affects me and has affected me for the last decade, others will be able to speak about their own experiences with anxiety. Or maybe I can help somebody understand what their loved one is going through. Or maybe I just want to get out of my head.

So here I go.

High-functioning anxiety is getting up every morning and partially doing what is expected of me. It is going to classes, struggling through readings, making sure to eat, washing my hair regularly. It is struggling to get out of bed every morning and struggling to go to sleep every night. It is family and friends believing me when I say, "I'm fine," and strangers not being able to notice my anxiety.

High-functioning anxiety is a wasp that follows me everywhere I go. It flies close to my head every day and creates a buzz I can usually ignore. But sometimes, it gets too loud. Sometimes, the wasp stings me.

High-functioning anxiety is physical. It is a steady pressure on my chest that becomes more and more painful with each gasping breath. It is a vise clenching my sternum. My bones shaking. My nerves on fire. High-functioning anxiety is the inability to breathe some nights.

It is the constant stream of thoughts that remind me what I have to do today, tomorrow, this week, next week, next month, next year, decades from now. It is what I did years ago, what I wish I did, what I am expected to do, what I want to do.

It is the remembrance of minute details of what I have done or said, of what others have done or said, things they said in passing and have forgotten, things I repeat and repeat and repeat until they become part of the never-ending barrage of thoughts.

High-functioning anxiety is a stream of consciousness on crack. Repeating the same information over and over again. Constantly making lists I know I will never completely check off. A multitude of 'What If's' that become more and more pressing each time they cross my mind. Fixating on worries until they become insurmountable mountains even though I know they are only grains of sand. It is focusing on those mountains until they explode into a wreckage no one can sort through. It becomes another mountain.

High-functioning anxiety is a continuous worry of what would happen if my family ever knew I had high-functioning depression.

It is every worry I have ever had played on a loop.

It is wondering if I am broken.

High-functioning anxiety is when I know that I have GAD and am constantly aware of it, but others are not.

High-functioning anxiety looks like any mentally healthy person on the street, but it is not.