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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?
