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It isn’t always obvious when someone’s suffering from anxiety. People with high-functioning anxiety move through life masking their battle with an easy smile and a quick joke. While we commonly think of someone with anxiety as freezing up or panicking, individuals with high-functioning anxiety may appear from the outside to have it all. They’re often successful at work and in their personal lives—they themselves may even think that they have tamed the beast, for a while.

People with emotional trauma often struggle to articulate their experience with it. They may carry it with them for years, embarrassed, ashamed, or even unaware of the impact of a traumatic event on their lives. Many of us minimize or write off our own traumas. We look at the suffering in the world around us and think our troubles seem small in comparison and that our struggle to cope with them is a personal failing of some sort.

Whether age or unforeseen circumstance, chronic illness can arrive without warning. It upsets that delicate balance, introducing a new set of fears and worries. It inflames new and old anxieties alike, upending the delicate order of our lives. In this article, we’ll examine the interplay between chronic illness and anxiety.

Perfectionism is a form of Anxiety, and counter-intuitively, it is frequently linked to low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy. Despite being high performers, their backgrounds cause them to feel abused, neglected, or missing control. Perfectionism is defined by a black-and-white worldview. Perfectionists either feel like they did a great job, or failed utterly. There is no middle ground.