Stopping an Anxiety Spiral at Work (or Anywhere!)

Fear is a topic that my coaching clients often raise, and it’s one I’ve written about a couple of times before.

Three boats in Provincetown Harbor at low tide.

As someone who has anxiety, I understand what my clients are going through, and empathize with how quickly a narrative can take root in our hearts and minds and keep us spinning.

I’ve also learned a quick (and often easy) way for me to re-ground myself when I start to spin. In these instances, I’m not trying to deny or invalidate the fear that I’m feeling. Instead, I’m trying to disrupt the anxious energy that is running through my system.

I do this by asking myself three questions:

First, is the thing I’m fearing–the bad outcome I’m expecting–going to be as bad as I think?

Our brains are marvelous machines, and are great at helping us predict worst-case scenarios. This activity is our brain’s way of keeping us safe: If we anticipate the dangers ahead, we can do our best to avoid them. This is essential from an evolutionary perspective, but it’s not terribly helpful that our brains sometimes equate sitting down for a performance review meeting in 2023 with getting chased by a bear while hunting and gathering out in the wild thousands of years ago.

Both the performance review meeting with your boss and hunting in the wild can result in negative outcomes, but only one could be immediately life threatening (unless you work for a serial killer, which I’m assuming you do not). And, if you’re like most people, somewhere in your head you have a pretty good idea how your performance review is going to go.

So as step one, slow down and ask yourself if the thing you’re dreading is really going to be as horrible as you think it is. In this example, your review meeting might be hard at times, but chances are it will be better than your brain is telling you it will be. And even if the review is still pretty bad, the immediate effect will not be the same as getting eaten by a bear. I promise.

Second, am I underestimating my ability to handle what’s coming?

Staying with our boss/bear analogy, it’s reasonable to worry about how well we’d do out in the wild with a bear chasing us and no way to defend ourselves. That scenario can get grim, fast.

But a performance review meeting with your boss? You will likely do better than you think. Again, your brain is preparing you for the absolute worst, which means it’s ignoring the experience, knowledge, and skills you bring to the conversation.

Think about how best to prepare for the situation that’s causing the anxiety. If it’s a performance review, schedule time to take an honest look at what you bring to the position and organization, and what your accomplishments have been. Give some real thought to what could have gone better, too–not to beat yourself up, but to acknowledge that we always have room to grow and learn.

For those of us who struggle with lower self-esteem, underestimating ourselves is a pretty common habit. So one corollary here is to start reckoning with these feelings to better understand how they may contribute to making the future seem much scarier than it will be.

Third, are these anxious feelings grounded in yesterday or today?

This final question brings together what you learned in the previous two and then pushes a bit deeper. You’re not looking to your evolutionary ancestors for answers, but instead are looking to your own past for some clues about what might be causing your heart to race and your brain to spin.

Did you have an unreasonably tough or unfair teacher in high school or college? Was a past boss–or parent or partner–impossible to please? Have you experienced discrimination due to your race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, health issues, or other factors? If so, your body and mind might be remembering those situations and applying the lessons you learned from them to today. Several times in my career I’ve dreaded coworkers or bosses who I eventually realized were guilty of nothing more than reminding me of someone or something from my past. I put up my defenses, unfairly, and prevented a relationship grounded in reality from forming.

By reminding myself that my feelings were tied to the past, I was able to see that the emotions were real but not applicable. That helped me move into conversations with people who had been triggering me in a more fair and authentic way, usually to very good results.

Bonus lesson: These situations helped me learn that although getting triggered is real, sometimes the person or situation doing the triggering bears no blame for my bad or scary feelings. And that it’s up to me to figure this stuff out and then to show up differently (or to report or confront someone for discriminatory behavior).

Bringing it all together: If you find yourself panicked before a meeting, or fearing having to give a speech or anything else that seems dreadful, ask yourself:

• Will it be as bad as I think?

• Am I underestimating my ability to navigate the situation?

• Are these feelings about today and now, or are they a habit from the past?

The steps I outline above have, at the very least, helped me get clarity in tough situations. And although clarity itself won’t make everything perfect, it does increase my chances of successfully navigating tough situations.

Two caveats:

First, you might actually be in a really bad situation or have a truly awful boss. I don’t want to deny or minimize that. If that’s the case, this exercise can still be used, because it is always helpful to slow your anxiety down and get yourself grounded in reality. But you might need to take other steps to get out of or otherwise manage the situation. As I said earlier, this exercise won’t solve all your problems and challenges.

Second, anxiety is real–again, I have it so I know what it’s like. And sometimes you need a mental health professional to help you understand and manage it (I’ve used one off and on for over 20 years now). A coach can be helpful while you also work with a therapist, but they are no substitute for one. Most coach training programs teach their students how to know when a client needs a therapist–and how to direct clients to one–which is one reason why working with a trained coach is often better than working with someone who one day just decides to call themselves a coach. So, choose well!