Always On, Always Anxious: Hypervigilance at Work
If you’re feeling overwhelmed as you read this, try this right now: unclench your jaw. Drop your shoulders. Exhale slowly. You don’t need to fix everything today—just start by noticing.
You’re in the middle of writing a document. It’s quiet—no alerts, no meetings. But your hand moves almost involuntarily to your mouse. Slack. Teams. Email. Maybe someone messaged. You just checked, but... what if?
Later that evening, you’re technically off work, but not really. Your body’s home, but your mind is replaying a message you sent. Should you have worded it differently? Did that emoji seem passive-aggressive? The pings have stopped, but your nervous system hasn’t.
This low-grade buzz of alertness? It’s not just distraction. It’s hypervigilance—a state where your brain and body stay on constant alert, as if something bad might happen—even when nothing is wrong.
In this piece, we’ll look at what hypervigilance is, why it shows up at work, what it does to your mind and body, and how to slowly step out of it. It’s more common in professional settings than we admit—especially in fast-paced, high-responsibility, high-expectation environments, where staying 'on' becomes the norm and rest feels risky.
The Shape of Workplace Hypervigilance
Hypervigilance at work doesn’t look like panic. It looks like professionalism—on overdrive. It’s constantly checking chat apps. Rewriting emails. Feeling uneasy when things are quiet. It masquerades as being diligent, responsive, dependable. But it slowly erodes your sense of ease, trust, and focus.
Some days, it begins before you even open your laptop. A vague meeting invite. A delayed response from your manager. A calendar reschedule. The alarm system in your brain gets triggered, quietly humming under every task.
Why This Happens
It’s not random. This kind of alertness usually comes from somewhere:
Maybe you’ve been burned before—public feedback, team politics, layoffs.
Maybe the culture’s unclear—goals change, expectations are murky, or your manager's communication is inconsistent.
Or maybe it’s internal—your own high standards or fear of being seen as not pulling your weight.
When you’ve learned (consciously or not) that missed signals equal consequences, you start scanning for signals all the time.
The Quiet Toll It Takes
Hypervigilance is not just a mental state—it’s a physiological one. At the root of it is your autonomic nervous system, particularly the sympathetic branch, which governs your fight-or-flight response. When it’s chronically activated, your body and brain remain in a heightened state of readiness, even in the absence of actual threats. This chronic activation narrows your focus, makes it difficult to relax, and convinces your body that you're never quite safe—no matter what the calendar says. The key is learning how to gently shift back into the parasympathetic state—the one responsible for rest, digestion, and recovery.
You might look productive on the outside. You reply quickly, attend meetings, and stay online. But inside, you’re fragmented.
You check for messages mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-break.
You hesitate before pressing "Send," rereading your message three times to catch some invisible mistake.
You find it hard to focus on a single task for more than a few minutes, bouncing between tabs like a browser with too many windows open.
You feel a background pressure—an ambient sense that you’re not doing enough, or that something urgent is just around the corner.
For some, it gets more intense. The mind feels foggy. Sentences stop making sense. Reading becomes difficult. You feel like you're slipping behind, but your brain can't seem to hold onto the thread. When your working memory is overloaded—juggling too many invisible balls—it eventually starts dropping them. That’s not a failure; it’s a signal that your system has been pushed too far, too long. These symptoms aren’t personal defects. They’re your nervous system’s SOS.
And it’s not just mental. Your shoulders are up by your ears. Your jaw is clenched. Your breathing is shallow. Some people even feel dizzy, disconnected, or detached. You might be tired by 10 a.m. and wired by 10 p.m. You want to rest, but your body doesn't seem to know how.
You end the day overstimulated, undernourished, and quietly wondering: did I actually get anything meaningful done?
Easing Out of Hypervigilance
Start Here
There’s no switch to turn it off, but you can turn it down.
Try this first: look around the room and name five things you can see. Say them out loud. This simple orienting technique tells your nervous system: "I’m here. I’m safe. I’m in the present." It helps shift your body out of scan-for-danger mode and into grounded awareness.
Here are some ways to ease yourself into a calmer rhythm:
Create tiny no-check windows: Start with 15-minute blocks where you don’t check Slack or Teams—just to show your brain that silence doesn’t mean danger.
Name what you fear: Sometimes just saying "I’m worried they think I’m not responsive" softens the fear.
Ground yourself in safety: Keep a daily note of what went right today—not to inflate ego, but to retrain your brain to spot safety, not just risk.
Clarify instead of guessing: If you’re reading between the lines of a message too much, just ask.
Use physical tools to declutter your mind: For example, I use sticky notes for my to-do list. It gets tasks out of my head and into the real world—giving me focus, flexibility, and even a sense of control. I can rearrange them, cluster related tasks, or highlight the ones that matter most. It’s a visual, tactile break from digital chaos.
Build From Here
You may also need longer-term reconditioning:
Conversations with your manager about what “good enough” looks like.
Coaching or therapy to unravel the patterns you internalized from past roles.
Setting internal rules for your nervous system, not just your calendar.
A Gentle Reminder
You’re not failing. You’re responding to a pattern your brain learned to survive. But survival is not the same as thriving. Not every notification is a warning. Not every silence is a threat.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do is remember: your brain is a tool—not your identity. You are not your thoughts. Not every fear it throws at you is valid, and not every sensation of urgency is a command you have to follow. Learning to gently deassociate from your mind can be a powerful path to freedom. Watch it, observe it, even appreciate its vigilance—but don’t confuse it for the real you.
You’re allowed to breathe.
You’re already on the path back to calm—just by reading this. One breath, one thought, one choice at a time.
You’re not alone in this. And you’re not stuck. You’re learning to live differently—and that’s already enough.