In support of Mental Health Awareness Week Feel Good hosted an event on ‘High Functioning Anxiety’ alongside our talented panellists – Dr Sonia Greenidge – Counselling Psychologist at UCL, Sean Maywood at PWC and Anastasia Vinnikova – City Mental Health Alliance.

The phrase High Functioning Anxiety, a term used to describe those that have high levels of anxiety but function well on the outside, resonated well with lots of stimulating and insightful perspectives shared by the panellists from both a personal and organisational perspective.

Dr Sonia provided excellent context on anxiety and namely, anxiety amongst high-functioning individuals. Anastasia successfully applied Dr Sonia’s explanation of “high functioning anxiety” to real-world examples, commonly seen among young high-performing talent, mainly Gen Z and Millennials.

Anastasia highlighted several relevant case studies, exploring strategies to identify warning signs in yourself and others, and how leaders can initiate conversations correctly and over time, to embed a culture that truly supports mental health.

Sean brought the conversation to life by concurring that the early careers cohort, is struggling most with anxiety due to having to manage the transition from university into the workplace (during Covid), then office integration with the added pressure of in-person exams. Sean’s passion for supporting, training, and mentoring at PWC to remove the stigma around mental health was an inspiration to all and is a reminder to all leaders to positively role model behaviours.

High Functioning Anxiety proved to be a very relevant and popular topic that received positive feedback; it thoroughly explored one of the most common mental health issues experienced in the workplace.