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You knew it. You just knew it. You’re about to be canned. Your boss’s door has been suspiciously closed all day, and when he walked by you on the way to the bathroom, he, well, he didn’t say…anything. He’s avoiding you. It’s just a matter of time until you’re escorted to the door by the security guards, your personal effects piled up humiliatingly in a cardboard box. Omigod!

High-Achiever Anxiety
Whoa, woman! Quit playing mind games with yourself. Your boss’s behavior may have nothing to do with you. He could be catching the heat from the even bigger bosses upstairs. Or he’s suspecting his wife to be doing more than the chacha with her dance instructor. Who knows? He may have been arrested for trying to buy black market Viagra from an undercover cop at Dunkin’ Donuts. There’s only one thing you know for sure: You have a full-blown case of office paranoia.

But you’re not alone. Take Maria, a 31-year-old lawyer, for example. One Friday last month, she received a memo that she’d been taken off a high-profile, labor-extensive case. No explanation. “I obsessed about it all weekend. Did the higher-ups think I’d mess it up? Did the new senior partner secretly hate me after that comment I made at his meeting? On Monday, I was a total wreck.” But when Maria asked her boss why she was taken off the case, he said that he knew she’d been working 14-hour days for months. “He also said there was another case he wanted me to take on, and this would free my schedule to do it,” she adds.

Clearly, Maria’s boss saw her as a competent employee, yet she still struggled with fears of being fired. “That’s why they call it paranoia. These perceptions are not reality-based,” says Hendrie Weisinger, Ph.D., author of Emotional Intelligence at Work (Jossey-Bass, 1997). “When you don’t consider all the facts, then you can lose perspective and succumb to irrational fears.”

Performance Panic
Office paranoia can strike for dozens of reasons and is common in volatile environments where legends of crazy bosses and firings create an unstable atmosphere. Or maybe you were burned at your previous job and worry that it could happen again. Office politics can play a part too—particularly when gossip runs rampant.

“I was promoted within three months from an entry-level job to head of a division,” recalls Maricris, 27, a market researcher. “I didn’t have a lot of experience, but my boss saw that I had a knack for the job. Still, there was a rumor circulating that I had slept with my boss. On top of that, I worried that I would lose favor with him—I’d heard that sometimes he turned on people he once liked, so I figured it was only a matter of time before it happened to me.” Maricris felt so alienated from her coworkers that she spent most lunch hours sobbing in her car. But after a few months, her hard work paid off and her division was performing better than anyone had expected. She felt more confident, the rumors died down, and the anxiety subsided.

“Even the most competent people have moments when they question their own ability,” says Kathleen Ryan, a management consultant and co-author of Driving Fear Out of the Workplace (Jossey-Bass, 1998). Weisinger agrees. “The high performer puts a lot of pressure on herself because she has such high standards, her ego investment in doing well is high,” he says. “You feel constantly anxious, guilty, and overly critical of yourself.” The result is you don’t take the creative risks that make you as good as you are capable of being.

The roots of paranoia can often be traced back to childhood insecurity, explains Weisinger. Let’s say you grew up unsure of your abilities and believed that you got by because you were charming or cute. That low self-image can carry over into your career, and you may feel like a fraud. You could have so little faith in your own value that if one person in the office looks at you funny, you worry that you’re out on your butt.

Getting a Grip
So how can you do a reality check before you freak out? Weisinger recommends talking to the person whose opinion matters most: your boss. Julia, a website designer, had worked herself into a frenzy when she landed a job assisting a high-profile art director. “Everyone was like, ‘You’re So-and-so’s assistant? Good luck,’” she recalls. Her boss was aloof, and Julia was so insecure that she started doubting her instincts. Aside from being a waste of time, her paranoia was damaging her performance. “I’d forget things, and I couldn’t concentrate,” she recalls. After Julia woke up in the middle of the night, panicked that she’d spaced out on giving her boss a telephone message, she knew she had to get a grip. “I went to my boss and asked him how my performance was. He said I was doing just fine. I realized that just because others’ experiences with him were bad, it didn’t mean mine would be.”

But you can’t have a sit-down with your boss every week, so Weisinger also recommends backing up your paranoid perception with facts. “Let’s say you’re giving a presentation, and your boss, who’s standing in the back of the room, looks at her watch, frowns, and walks out of the room,” he says. You flip out and conclude: She couldn’t stand to hear another word and left to arrange a cruel and unusual way to fire you. “But the real reason she’s looking at her watch could be that her kid is sick, and she realized it was time to check in.” Stop mind-reading, and later, approach her and ask, “I noticed you left early. Did that mean that you didn’t like my report?” You’ll get instant feedback. “And the longer you spend agonizing, the more time you have to cook up a huge paranoid scenario.”

Sometimes paranoia strikes when a boss isn’t good at giving feedback. “My boss only comments on our work when we do something wrong,” says Gianna, 28, a computer programming head. “When I asked how I was doing, he’d say, ‘Do you think I’d keep you around if you were doing a bad job?’” Still, Gianna felt unsure. With a boss who is stingy with praise or only comments on the negative, “try not to become defensive so you can learn from what he is saying,” says Weisinger. “I also try to remember that when my boss says something is fine, it means I’ve done a great job—that’s just how he is,” says Gianna.

Not to make you paranoid, but it’s also possible that you’re not paranoid—that your anxiety comes from your knowing you’re not doing such a hot job. Or you’ve heard a rumor that your company is about to merge with another, and you’re worried you’ll be phased out. In that case, now might be a good time to kick your job hunt into gear or talk to your boss about how to improve your performance. The trick is to listen to your fears and assess them in a realistic light, says Weisinger. After a clear look at your situation, take action.