Professional Fear vs Professional Anxiety

Fear and anxiety are often intertwined, acting as partners on the professional journey. These reactions are hard to ignore: they force a reckoning with doubts, disbelief, and the internal critic – this also means they can be unexpected allies. Standing up to fear and anxiety as a hero on this career journey is an excavation that allows movement past troubling states, and into synergistic ones.

Professional anxiety is rooted in fear: without fear, there is no anxiety. Fear, however, can exist without the presence of an anxiety response. When they’re present, they affect thinking, the psyche, and even the body: cold sweats, hyperventilation, the feeling of a pit in your stomach. Nothing about their presence feels releasing, especially when they are at their worst. If you have had thoughts quickly and incessantly running through your brain and found it difficult to track what’s going on or even how to slow things down to gather your thoughts, you have met anxiety and fear. Unforeseen professional circumstance is a potent state that can also offer insights into how you react to certain information. From there, we gather information on needs as well as what to avoid. What you're left with are self-soothing tools that will serve you for a lifetime. 

Tell the Difference

Fear is a reaction to something real and present, while anxiety is a reaction to something imagined in the future. Ask yourself:

• Are you able to tell the difference at the moment?
• What about in hindsight?
• What happens when you respond to anxiety by facing it rather than trying to just get through it and letting it build up? Is it the same with fear?
• What happens when trying to confront fear? Is it the same with anxiety?

Listen to Thoughts

Knowing what your “tells” are prior to experiencing professional fear and anxiety is a method to creating allies. Becoming a thoughts-based data tracker, noting what happened in your thoughts or in your body right before anxiety and fear come on, gives you time to use your counter-attack tools. Start observing the following:

• Where does the mind go when anxious vs fear?
• Do the thoughts repeat, or is your mind blank?
• What are your thoughts exactly?

Having the ability to observe overwhelming feelings during professional fear and anxiety is not just the first step, but a major tool to turn them into allies. Notice how the relationship with fear and anxiety changes over the course of a few weeks as the immediate reaction to overwhelm is to observe. Think about your allies and whom you can speak to about fear and anxiety. Also, think about when a good time might be keeping in mind that off-clock mental health meetings remove possible anxiety inducing work-related thoughts and duties during this reflective time.

After some introspection and self-observing, ask what you have learned about yourself. What happens when you respond to anxiety by facing it rather than "powering through" and letting it build up?