How to Manage Generalized Anxiety in High-Pressure Careers as a Young Adult

Young adulthood has historically been a period marked by change: you graduate high school, move across the country and get a taste of independence, before being thrown head first into the workforce just a few short years later. While we often romanticize this time in our blossoming adulthood, expecting to “find our people” as well as ourselves, the pressure of new-found independence and all of its responsibilities can be jarring. For some adults it can often feel like the ground has been taken out right from under them.

At The Dorm, we understand that the transition from college life to the professional workplace can be stressful for anyone, especially those who struggle with anxiety. We spoke with one of our Clinical Supervisors who specializes in GAD to discuss the challenges young professionals can expect in the workplace and the skills they can use to prevent burnout, foster success, self-advocacy, and well-being. 

Key Points You’ll Learn in this Article

• How to treat generalized anxiety disorder in high-pressure work environments
• Managing GAD symptoms in professional settings
• How to set effective work-life boundaries
• Recognizing early warning signs that your workplace is aggravating your anxiety
• Skills to navigate performance reviews 

Understanding GAD For Young Professionals

Anxiety seems to be everywhere among young professionals today. What are you seeing at The Dorm when it comes to generalized anxiety disorder?

Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD, is defined as someone who experiences persistent worrying or anxiety across many different areas of their life that cause impairment to everyday life. 

The CDC states that over 15% of young adults, ages 18 to 29, live with a diagnosis of generalized anxiety. However, numbers don’t paint the full picture because accurate data is difficult to obtain. Not everyone with GAD has a formal diagnosis, and the CDC simply doesn’t have access to people’s therapy notes and diagnoses. Therefore, speaking from my clinical experience, GAD is incredibly prevalent.

The transition from college to career seems to be a particularly vulnerable time. How does this shift typically affect anxiety levels, and what makes this period so challenging for GAD development?

Several factors can affect anxiety levels during this transition, with environmental changes and the sudden shift in responsibility playing pivotal roles. 

For example, if you’re going to college in a rural area where the campus is small and everyone knows each other, and then you move into a bigger city, that change can feel jarring.

This period is also marked by a sudden increase in responsibility. For young adults, college acts as a stepping stone between adolescence and full adulthood. As a student, there’s less pressure: you go to class, do your homework, submit your paper, and you’re done. 

When you get a job, there’s less support and significantly more pressure as you become this “true adult.” You’re suddenly managing job security and layoff stress, alongside new independence and financial responsibility – health insurance, paying your bills, and cooking for yourself. 

These changes can all cause a major flare-up in someone already predisposed to anxiety.

Recognizing Early Warning Signs

What are the early warning signs someone should watch for? How can they recognize when their workplace is amplifying their existing GAD symptoms?

Early warning signs are going to look different for everybody, but one of the key things we look for in therapeutic spaces is if someone’s everyday needs are being affected. These biological needs include changes in appetite, sleep quality, or energy levels. You might sleep a full eight hours but still wake up exhausted, for example. Emotional regulation connects closely to these needs, so we also look at changes in mood and irritability. Are you feeling more irritable or short tempered?  What are you feeling? What are you prioritizing?

This self-awareness connects directly to a skill clients learn in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). The PLEASE skill emphasizes the mind-body connection and emotional regulation:

• treating PhysicaL illness
• balanced Eating
• Avoiding mood-altering substances
• balanced Sleep
• Exercise

When any of these areas become disrupted, it’s often our first indication that workplace stress is amplifying underlying anxiety.

What to Know Going into the Workforce 

What do you wish people who are predisposed to anxiety knew before entering the workforce?

I regularly tell my clients this: there is a healthy amount of anxiety that one will experience, especially in the workplace. Anxiety serves important purposes and provides functional benefits, like motivating you to get to work on time, meet deadlines, and go above and beyond on projects. 

That said, I think it’s important to distinguish between functional anxiety and overwhelming anxiety. You need to be able to manage your own anxiety before going into work because, unfortunately, your workplace won’t manage it for you. While some employers offer mental health resources, the day-to-day regulation of your anxiety symptoms is your own responsibility.

How to Treat Generalized Anxiety Disorder in High-Pressure Work Environments

What should someone do to prioritize their mental health as a young professional?

At The Dorm, we work extensively with young adults preparing for or returning to professional environments. With these clients, I focus on one key question: ‘How can we best set ourselves up for success?’ The answer involves two interconnected approaches: comprehensive self-care and strategic boundary-setting.

Self-care will look different for everyone—getting a massage, watching a game with friends, or simply taking a walk, so on and so forth. The key is identifying what genuinely restores your energy and emotional balance. Boundaries extend beyond what you set with others; they also include the limits you establish for yourself. How comfortable are you putting your phone down at the end of the workday? What does it feel like to leave a work message unread until the next morning? 

We also focus on identifying the cognitive distortions that commonly surface with generalized anxiety disorder, helping clients prepare for when workplace demands intensify. 

When a client shares work-related stress—for example, they’re worried about not doing a good “enough” job on an  assignment due Friday—we dig deeper into that fear. Maybe it’s “if I don’t have enough time on Thursday to get it done, I’ll get fired, and that means I am a failure.”

That’s the fear of the unknown driving their anxiety. How do we learn to sit with that uncertainty without burning out? Because when we burnout, our work effectiveness decreases. This is where boundaries and the responsibility of the individual to pace themselves and take care of themselves in these workplace settings becomes so important in mitigating that anxiety.

Setting Effective Boundaries

You mentioned that boundaries are crucial. What are the most effective boundary-setting strategies you recommend for young professionals struggling with GAD? 

Unless you’re really lucky, workplace settings won’t tell you to stop working. You need to determine what your boundaries are. If your contract says 9-to-5, how are we going to honor that for ourselves? What are the barriers to turning off our work phones or emails?  Can we avoid putting our work email on our personal phones? There are so many different ways you can set work-life boundaries.

A skill I use with my clients to establish mental boundaries is mental visualizations and imagery. Since we’re based in NYC, I’ll use a subway example. Say you ride the 4 train home and you get off at 59th Street. I’ll then have my clients visualize their work stress staying on the train and going to 42nd and 34th and 14th Street—they are not coming with you.

Now, when boundaries get tested, say your boss asks you to do something you’re uncomfortable with, it becomes about balance: protecting your mental health without allowing your anxiety to cause you to miss out on important opportunities. 

For example, if a client said, “My boss wants me to go to happy hour and I’m sober, and that’s giving me a lot of anxiety,” we would explore the pros and the cons. Why are they going? Are they new to the team and it’d be a good way to get to know everyone? If so, then what might that look like? Our goal would be to develop strategies that consider both the client’s recovery and professional goals. The client might go to the happy hour but establish clear boundaries by setting a hard cut-off so that they’re only there for an hour. They could also pre-plan what to drink—like a Sprite or Diet Coke—to mitigate anxiety.

Ultimately, a key skill in setting boundaries and reducing workplace anxiety is learning to advocate for yourself. By effectively communicating with your boss, supervisor, colleagues, or even roommates when you get back home, you can minimize anxiety because you know you were effective and respectful while sticking to your personal needs.

Managing GAD Symptoms in Professional Settings

Another major workplace stressor for people with GAD is evaluation and feedback. How can young professionals navigate performance reviews without spiraling into catastrophic thinking?

Great question. The first step here is to Check The Facts. This is a DBT skill that helps reframe thinking by examining factual evidence rather than treating thoughts and feelings as final. The steps include asking yourself:

1. What is the emotion I want to change?
2. What is the event prompting my emotion?
3. What are my interpretations, thoughts, and assumptions about the event?
4. Am I assuming a threat?
5. What’s the catastrophe?
6. Does my emotion and/or its intensity fit the actual facts?

The nice thing about performance reviews is you get a hard copy, meaning you can go back and read it. Therefore, just because your boss says, “Hey, I want Jane to be more careful with her typos,” doesn’t mean anything outside of that fact. This feedback is allowed to exist without negating the positive feedback like “Jane brings a lot of energy and is a team player.”

When we Check The Facts, we don’t let feedback be anything but what it is and we don’t let it negate the positive things and work that we are putting in.

With generalized anxiety, especially when it comes to professional settings, I often ask my clients: what’s the worst thing that could happen? You get a bad performance review? Performance reviews are put in place so that you can improve and grow. These things are supposed to help you. 

It’s always good to try and reframe your thinking. What’s the worst thing that could happen? You get fired? Okay, you’ll find another job. It’s important to remember that your job is just one piece of you.

Young Adult Anxiety Treatment at The Dorm

The transition to professional adulthood brings both exciting opportunities and genuine challenges that can trigger stress and anxiety as young adults navigate new emotional and financial responsibilities. At The Dorm, we use evidence-based approaches to help young adults with anxiety learn to self-regulate, build confidence, and engage more independently in life. 

Through clinical coaching, group therapy, and socially immersive experiences, young adults with anxiety gain vital skills like emotional stability and mental control while achieving long-term outcomes – those admitted with anxiety experience a 36% decrease in their GAD symptoms by discharge. Learn more about who we treat and our unique community model.