Anxiety in technology professionals working in international teams

When the meeting is over, but your mind is still stuck in it

Five minutes left until the daily.

You open your notes, quickly review what you need to say, and think about how to explain that problem in English without seeming insecure.

Maybe you know exactly what happened in the project.

Perhaps you technically master the subject.

Even so, before opening the microphone, that doubt appears:

Will I be able to explain this properly?

Working in an international team can broaden professional experiences, foster contact with other cultures, and open up career possibilities.

But it can also require effort that isn't always visible to those looking from the outside.

It's not just about working.

It’s working while navigating another language, different accents, communication styles, cultural references, and professional expectations.

In a technical meeting, for example, you might be trying to understand the problem, organize a response, choose words in another language, and observe how others are reacting to what you say.

All of this happens almost at the same time.

And there's another point.

When you are Brazilian working outside the country or on an international team, you may feel the need to constantly prove that you deserve to be there.

So you review one more time before submitting.

Think carefully before you disagree.

Mentally repeat a phrase before speaking.

You return to the meeting after it has ended and wonder if you could have answered better.

The challenge is that this state of attention does not necessarily end when you close your laptop.

Work may end, but the conversation continues in your head.

Do you remember the question you received?

Think about tomorrow's delivery.

Mentally reviews a decision.

Try to anticipate what could go wrong in the next sprint.

And when this starts taking up your rest time too, perhaps the problem is no longer just an English meeting.

There may be a pattern of self-demand that follows you outside of work.

Your professional capability is not measured by how quickly you find a word in another language.

Taking a few seconds to formulate a response does not mean you know less.

Having an accent does not mean you know less about the subject.

Not immediately understanding an expression in a meeting does not erase all that you know how to do.

It may be important to recognize how much of your daily effort is being used for work and how much is being spent trying to prove that you are competent enough.

This difference matters.

When every meeting feels like a performance review and every mistake feels like a threat to what you’ve built, work can become a constant exercise in self-monitoring.

No one can remain in a state of constant alertness without feeling some impact.

The question may not be just whether your job is demanding.

It may be:

When you close your laptop, can you truly get out of work?

Or any part of you still stuck in that meeting?

When anxiety, self-imposed pressure, or the difficulty of disengaging begin to take up too much space in your routine, psychotherapy can offer a place to better understand this functioning and build other ways of coping with these situations.

In Brazilian Portuguese, without having to spend half the conversation explaining how a daily, a sprint, or a pull request works.

Alexandre Bartoli

Psychologist – CRP-04 / 86889