There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from always feeling braced. You might wake up with your shoulders already tight, notice your jaw clenching during ordinary conversations, or feel a subtle jolt when your phone buzzes — even when nothing is wrong. From the outside, your life may look steady and functional. Inside, your body feels like it is waiting for impact.

In our work with adults across the SF Bay Area — including Los Altos, Mountain View, San Jose, and Half Moon Bay — we often meet people who describe this exact pattern. They are responsible, high-performing, and capable. Yet their nervous system rarely settles. The question they ask is simple: Why does my body feel like something bad is about to happen when nothing actually is?

The answer usually has less to do with weakness and more to do with how the nervous system adapts to prolonged stress.

When “On Edge” Becomes Your Baseline

Most stress is temporary. A deadline approaches, your system activates, you complete the task, and eventually your body comes down. That rise-and-fall rhythm is healthy. The problem begins when the rise never fully falls.

Over time, especially in high-pressure environments, your brain can start interpreting everyday demands as ongoing threat. Instead of activating only when necessary, your stress response becomes the background setting. You may not feel panicked. You may simply feel constantly alert.

In Silicon Valley culture, where productivity and achievement are often normalized as baseline expectations, this chronic activation can be easy to miss. Many adults we see do not describe themselves as “anxious.” They describe themselves as driven, responsible, or wired. But their nervous system tells a different story: shallow sleep, difficulty relaxing, irritability, muscle tension, scanning for problems before they occur.

When feeling on edge becomes your default rather than your reaction, your body is signaling that it has not learned how to power down.

What Feeling On Edge Actually Looks Like

This experience is rarely dramatic. It is usually subtle and persistent.

Mentally, it may show up as constant anticipation. Your mind jumps ahead to possible problems. You replay conversations to check for mistakes. You mentally prepare for scenarios that may never happen. Even neutral events feel slightly charged.

Physically, the signs are often clearer than the thoughts. Your shoulders remain lifted. Your stomach feels tight. Your breathing stays shallow. You startle easily at sudden sounds. Sleep becomes lighter, and you may wake during the night with your mind already active.

None of these symptoms necessarily mean something is severely wrong. They mean your stress system has been running longer than it was designed to.

Why Your Nervous System Stays Activated

Your body has two major stress pathways. One responds quickly, releasing adrenaline-related chemicals that prepare you to act. The other works more gradually, involving hormones that sustain effort over time. Both are protective. Both are adaptive in short bursts.

However, when stressors are chronic — ongoing work pressure, relational tension, caregiving demands, or even long periods of uncertainty — the brain can begin to interpret normal life as consistently demanding. Instead of distinguishing between urgent and ordinary, it treats both as important.

In our Los Altos and Mountain View offices, we often hear stories like this: someone finishes a demanding quarter at work, yet their body keeps waking at 3 a.m. as if the deadline still exists. Or a parent navigates a difficult season with their child, and even after things stabilize, their chest still tightens at every unexpected notification.

The body learned vigilance. It has not yet learned safety.

Stress vs. Chronic Anxiety

A common confusion is whether feeling on edge is simply stress. Stress usually has a clear source and a predictable arc. It rises around something specific and decreases once that situation resolves.

Chronic anxiety behaves differently. It spreads. The original stressor may fade, but the activation remains. Worry moves from work to health to relationships without pause. Even on objectively “good” days, the nervous system remains slightly guarded.

In clinical conversations across San Jose and surrounding communities, we often ask two simple questions: Does your body settle when the stressor is gone? And does your worry stay contained to one area, or does it generalize?

If your system does not reset, and if your worry migrates from topic to topic, it may no longer be ordinary stress. It may be a pattern your nervous system has adopted for protection.

Hypervigilance and Threat Scanning

Hypervigilance is not just overthinking. It is a form of attention training. Your brain becomes skilled at detecting potential threat and difficulty. It scans tone, facial expressions, email wording, and subtle changes in routine.

In high-functioning adults, this can look like competence. You catch problems early. You prepare thoroughly. You anticipate needs. Yet internally, this constant scanning is draining.

Parents in the SF Bay Area frequently describe reading between the lines of every school message, monitoring their children’s moods carefully, or feeling a spike of adrenaline at minor disruptions. Professionals often describe rereading emails repeatedly before sending them or checking systems late at night “just in case.”

These behaviors often reduce anxiety briefly. However, they also teach the brain that vigilance is necessary for safety. The cycle continues.

Physical Symptoms That Accompany Chronic Activation

When the nervous system remains in a heightened state, the body absorbs the cost.

Sleep is usually affected first. You may fall asleep exhausted but wake wired. Your body may interpret nighttime stillness as a cue to scan for unresolved concerns. Over time, fragmented sleep increases irritability and lowers your stress tolerance.

Muscle tension is another frequent sign. Chronic shoulder tightness, jaw clenching, headaches, and neck pain are common in individuals who feel persistently on edge. These symptoms are not imagined; they reflect sustained muscular activation.

Digestive changes also occur. Stress signaling can influence gut motility and sensitivity, leading to cramping, nausea, appetite shifts, or unpredictable bowel patterns. Many adults initially assume these symptoms are purely physical before recognizing their stress correlation.

Your body is not malfunctioning. It is responding to signals it believes are necessary.

When It May Be More Than Ordinary Stress

It may be time to consider support if you notice that feeling on edge is present across multiple areas of life rather than confined to one event. If worry continues even after problems are addressed, or if you rely heavily on over-preparing, checking, or avoidance to manage discomfort, your coping strategies may be reinforcing the pattern.

Another signal is cost. If your relationships feel strained, your patience is shorter, your sleep is disrupted, or your enjoyment has decreased, the impact is meaningful even if you remain productive.

High-functioning anxiety often hides behind success. The question is not whether you can perform. The question is how much energy it takes to maintain that performance.

How Therapy Helps Reduce That Constant Edge

Anxiety therapy does not aim to eliminate stress. It aims to restore flexibility to your nervous system.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps identify and interrupt thought patterns and behaviors that maintain activation. Mindfulness-based strategies help retrain attention so that bodily sensations are not automatically interpreted as danger. EMDR may be helpful when hypervigilance connects to earlier life experiences that trained the system to remain alert. Internal Family Systems (IFS)-informed work can reduce internal pressure from perfectionistic or protective parts of you that push for constant vigilance.

In practice, this often looks less dramatic than people expect. Sleep gradually improves. Shoulders drop more easily. Startle responses soften. You notice moments of calm that previously felt inaccessible.

Change is typically incremental. The baseline becomes quieter.