Musings from Career True North
Fear and Anxiety on Your Path? – It's OK
by Michele Fawcett-Long, Career True North
Today I was supposed to write a meaningful email to people who are searching for a new career direction. Ha! I dragged my feet. I avoided. I made excuses. And now I will swallow my pride and confess – I felt overwhelmed and afraid. From the fight, flight and freeze menu, my adrenals picked a combination of “Get Away From Me!” and “Escape!”
So what did I do? I shoved cookies and chips into my pie hole as an attempt to push away the yucky feelings (“Get Away From Me!”). Of course, I checked Facebook and did some Wordle puzzles (“Escape!”) And then there was that novel that I would pick up for just a few minutes. . .
Sound familiar?
Fear and anxiety can raise their heads whenever any of us are starting something new. Personally, my first reaction is usually to try any and all possible ways to Make The Feelings Go Away (Ex: my strategies in paragraph 2).
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. When my clients start to move toward a new career direction, they almost always meet fear and anxiety at some point. It’s normal. Finding a new career always involves some kind of stepping into unknown territory, and the parts of our brains wanting to keep us safe say, “Danger! Danger!” It’s what human brains do.
Did My Strategies Work?
Many of us try some of the flight, flight or freeze strategies I used today, or we come up with other creative versions. Sadly, most of the time our strategies don’t work, and those of us who need and hope for change end up being stuck.
The good news is that no one has to stay stuck. Let’s look a little closer about what happened to me today and see if there’s something that might be useful.
Did the cookies and chips calm me down?
Nope.
Did the Wordle distract my adrenals?
Not really.
Did reading that novel make things better?
Sadly, yet another no.
All my strategies to feel better actually contributed to me feeling worse. My fear and anxiety remained, plus I started beating myself up for shoving food in my face and avoiding my work.
Yow?!?
But luckily my clumsy strategies were mixed in with some that did help.
But First, Let's Talk a Little About Brains
The parts of our brains that revert to “Danger! Danger!” when they perceive threats are older brain functions. They developed hundreds of thousands of years to help our ancestors survive starvation and wild animals on the African savannahs. The impulses from this part of the brain are quick, immediate reactions designed to get us out of danger NOW. They activate the adrenals, which in turn urge us to do things RIGHT AWAY to get out of danger.
Luckily, starvation and wild animals are less immediate threats to many of us today. And we have other, newer parts of our brains that can come up with alternative plans and choices beyond “Run! Fight! Freeze!” With these newer parts of our brain, we can do more complex and thoughtful contemplations. It takes a bit longer, but we gain the ability to choose whether to heed the dire warnings of the older parts of our brain or to do something else.
And as evidenced by the fact that I wrote this post today, I was eventually able access those newer, more thoughtful parts of my brain. How did I do it?
Making Peace with Fear and Anxiety
First, I realized that despite my best efforts to quell them, my fear and anxiety continued to exist. I decided to stop fighting with them or trying to escape. I had to let myself acknowledge the thoughts and feelings and be gentle with them.
Once I stop pushing them away, I could see that my fear and anxiety were actually coming from parts of me that were little and young, scared that I would get hurt or fail. In their way, they were trying to take care of me. When I saw they weren’t monsters, I could make space for them and be kind to them.
This ability to observe and choose how to relate to my fears came from that newer part of my brain.
Taking Very Small Steps
Second, while I was allowing my fear and anxiety to exist, I also needed to find a way to make some kind of progress. I needed to be able to find more skillful solutions, which again is a new-brain ability.
In my experience, the brain switch doesn’t usually happen immediately, and I’ve learned some techniques that help me gradually move from fight/flight/freeze to more thoughtful productivity. In case you want to steal them, here are some of the tricks that helped me today:
- Journaling about everything and nothing without judgment, to give some of the fear-based thoughts and feelings breathing space;
- Writing down everything that I was supposed to be doing and then finding the one very small thing that I knew I could do right then;
- Plowing forward with the next very small thing, despite feeling like I was swimming through mud;
- Focusing on the moments – hearing what I heard, seeing what I saw, smelling what I smelled, tasting what I tasted, and feeling what I felt;
- Giving myself permission to do my best just for today, without judgment and with compassion (if this meant floundering through my allotted hours, then so be it);
- Letting myself pivot from drafting an email to writing this post (following my energy);
- Noticing when I was thinking unhelpful thoughts and just letting them be until they eventually floated away;
- Taking any and all gifts that arrived – finding some momentum; my spouse being kind to me; moments of feeling calmer.
You Can Keep What's Useful
Knowing that we have different ways to respond gives us choices when fear and anxiety arise. We don’t have to automatically follow the urgent demands of our adrenals. We can acknowledge and be kind to our fear-based feelings. We can access those other parts of our brain that allow more thoughtful responses*. We can find very small steps and do them. We can treat all parts of ourselves with kindness.
If anything in this post resonated with you, I invite you to take it with you. What I offered is by no means an exhaustive list of strategies, and I bet you have your own that serve you well. You’re welcome to post them in the comments below.
And the next time fear and anxiety threaten to divert or derail your intentions, know you can pat your adrenals on the head, give them a little love, and open to the possibility of other, more full-brained choices.
I'll Listen
If you’re searching for a new career direction and would like to talk about what’s going on for you, I’ll listen. You can reach me at michele@careertruenorth.com.
1 thought on “Fear and Anxiety on Your Path? – It’s OK”
Such a funny and relatable opening! These are great strategies to work with fear and anxiety.