  In this study we explore the astrophysical implications of pressure
anisotropy on the physical characteristics of millisecond pulsars within the
framework of $f(Q)$ gravity. Starting off with the field equations for
anisotropic matter distributions, we adopt the physically salient
Durgapal-Fuloria ansatz together with a well-motivated anisotropic factor for
the interior matter distribution. This leads to a nonlinear second order
differential equation which is integrated to give the complete gravitational
and thermodynamical properties of the stellar object. The resulting model is
subjected to rigorous tests to ensure that it qualifies as a physically viable
compact object within the $f(Q)$-gravity framework. We study in detail two
factors, one being non-metricity (gravitational interaction) and the other the
pressure anisotropy (matter variation) and their contributions to the mass,
radius and stability of the star. Our analyses indicate that our models are
well-behaved, singularity-free and can account for the existence of a wide
range of observed pulsars with masses ranging from 2.08 to 2.67 $M_{\odot}$,
with the upper value being in the so-called {\em mass gap} regime observed in
gravitational events such as GW190814. A novel finding of this work is
two-fold: an increase in the non-metricity factor (fixed anisotropy) leads to a
spectrum of pulsars with radii ranging from a minimum of 10 km whereas a
variation in anisotropy (fixed non-metricity) restricts the radii to a narrow
window between ($12 - 13.2$) km for a 450 Hz pulsar. In addition, contributions
from anisotropy outweigh the impact of nonmetricity in predicting the masses of
pulsars with the ratio, $\left(\frac{M_\Delta}{M_Q}\right)_{max} \approx 2.43 $
for low mass pulsars.
