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One of my BIG goals with this blog, and the website to follow, is to develop a community of people who are helping each other bust their fears and anxieties -

Today I’m all about outlining what happens when we make the easy-to-make mistake of turning a problem into a crisis. I call this the Chronic Anxiety Cycle. Please be clear that while I call out specific stages of this cycle for clarity and understanding, this is very much an organic process – you can move back and forth through this cycle, and different stages can happen at the same time, and at different speeds.

The point is that there are specific things we do when we turn a problem into a crisis in our thinking, and there are specific things we can do to disrupt that cycle and get our fear and anxiety back under control. So don’t get too lost in the stages! Do, however, please get clear on what’s happening in our thinking when we continue to worry over a problem as if it was a crisis…

The Descent

In my posts on the Flight or Fight Response I listed out some of the things that are happening in our bodies and brains when we activate Flight or Fight. The Chronic Anxiety Cycle is the result of that activation. In a very real sense it is simply the long-duration effort of Flight or Fight to get us away from the danger we perceive.

It starts like this: let’s pretend for a moment you’ve been asked by your manager to give a presentation at work. Let’s pretend further that you’d rather face down a pack of saber tooth tigers (I am really stuck on saber tooth tigers right now – can you imagine how scary THEY must have been?) than get up in front of an audience. (I know NONE of us are afraid to speak to an audience – but this is just hypothetical…)

Now you’re feeling afraid – and so Flight or Fight kicks in. Along with your favorite/preferred physical and emotional responses to Flight or Fight (maybe for you it is sweaty palms, a racing heart and an abiding, restless feeling of frustration and anxiety) you also find yourself trying very hard in your thinking to resolve this crisis.

How does that look?

The Worry Engine

This is the name I have given to this first stage of the Chronic Anxiety Cycle. You know the drill. We start asking ourselves all kinds of “what if?” questions, and NONE of them are hopeful, maybe-it-will-be-fine questions. Oh no. We’re asking ourselves SCARY questions -

Questions like “what if I make a mistake during the presentation?” or “what if I say something stupid?” Questions like “what if I stutter?” or “what if I can’t talk at all?” And of course every time we ask a question like that we continue to activate Flight or Fight (assuming these questions scare us.)

It’s a lot like revving an engine without engaging the clutch – you make a lot of noise and burn a lot of energy, but you don’t get anyplace. Except that you DO crank up your stress and anxiety and fear and worry – hence the name.

Those scenarios you’re spinning out? They’re efforts to escape – efforts to find the way out of the danger. Except there IS no danger – you can’t die from giving a presentation. (I can hear some folks now saying “sez YOU ERIK! It sure FEELS like dying!”)

Sure – But What IF Those Horrible Things I’m Worried About Actually Happen?

Just asking this question reveals how much our thinking can frighten us. Without exception when I’m talking to coaching clients they ask this question. Let’s go back to the work presentation example question “what if I say something stupid?”

When we’re doing Worry Engine obsessing we imagine all kinds of nightmare scenarios. We say something stupid and people laugh at us. We say something stupid and people shake their heads, get up and leave the room. Then our boss tells us we’re fired. Then we’re being evicted from our house. Then we’re living on the street… etc.

All of this stems from Flight or Fight trying desperately to 1) figure out a way to get away from the danger you’re perceiving/thinking (looking for what might happen, doing projections to help you quickly decide what to do next) and 2) get you moving as a fast as possible. Think of Flight or Fight trying to find an escape route, so it is sorting out which things to avoid doing…

Brilliant – if you’re facing down a saber tooth tiger! NOT so useful if you’re worrying about a presentation at work. In fact it is seriously NOT useful for the latter.

OK, Smart Guy – What Might Actually Happen If My Fears Come True?

I’m not saying something difficult, embarrassing or frustrating couldn’t happen. Those things do happen to all of us. I’m saying our Worry Engine Fears are way, way distorted from the actual likely outcomes.

Let’s say you do say something goofy during your work presentation. Let’s do one better and define goofy – let’s say you say a word wrong, pronouncing it incorrectly. OK. So what? People look at each other in puzzlement, maybe consider it for a second (assuming they even noticed, which they often don’t) and then they move on. Maybe someone gently corrects you privately after the presentation.

Heck, maybe someone teases you after the presentation! OK. So? You don’t get fired, you don’t have co-workers howling at you, you don’t wind up on the street.

I’ve mentioned before in this blog that one of my professional skills is helping people become better presenters. I easily spend 40% of my time in that work just helping people get over their anxieties and very deep fears about failing at presenting.

Better still, you KNOW this already – when you’re not afraid. When you’re in your problem-solving, calm mind you already get this. But let’s not forget that Flight or Fight degrades or even largely closes down rational, critical thinking capacities – you don’t need those to escape tigers.

What to DO When We Start the Worry Engine?

Great question. Here are some suggestions:

1) Realize that you are firing up The Worry Engine! Just identifying the fact that you’re now racing into hypothetical, dark, unnerving future scenarios is a step in the right direction.

2) Along with that realization, remember that you’re busy scaring yourself every single time you conjure a scary future scenario – you are activating your own Flight or Fight Response, and so of course you’re also conjuring the frightening feelings and sensations that come with doing that.

3) Take a moment to physically calm down. Do some serious deep breathing – conscious, deliberate, controlled breathing, driving your focus into your breathing and away from your anxious thinking about the future. This works. It probably won’t shut down your fear permanently, but it is a great short-term relief technique.

Why? Because it to some extent shuts down Flight or Fight. The two responses can’t co-exist – you’re either panicking or you’re calming yourself down, physically.

4) Once you get a little less worried, start challenging your worst-case thinking. Lose my job? Really? Sure, it is scary to think about that – but then it is scary to think about LOTS of things. Does that mean you should sit around and WORRY about them?

The answer is no, you shouldn’t. Work, prepare, take sensible precautions (in the case of presenting; sort your data, create some sort of outline, practice a little), but then practice letting it GO. This runs counter to our very natural inclination to worry the concern to death in the vague hope that doing all that worrying will somehow create something useful or productive.

Time for a strong statement: worry does nothing for us. It FEELs like we’re doing something, but in reality we’re only making ourselves crazy, giving away energy that we can spend better in other ways.

Stop The Worry Engine, And You Stop the Chronic Anxiety Cycle

Here’s the funny thing: all of us, all the time, have topics or issues that might start us into Worry Engine/What If thinking – but then we stop it, get a grip and move on. All of us. Less funny but equally true, just about all of us have things that get our Worry Engine fired up, and off we go, heading merrily down the road to on-going anxiety and fretting and fear…

We have the capacity, the real power to stop this dance in its tracks. It is a great place to do this stopping, the stage I call the Worry Engine – in some respects it is the easiest place to stop this descent. It takes the least energy of any point in the Chronic Anxiety Cycle, and we’re potentially the most aware (or most likely to be aware) that we’re driving into worry at this point.

Of course the best place of all to avoiding starting the cycle is to get skillful at not converting problems into crises in the first place. :)

Next up – the next stage in Chronic Anxiety – the Indefinite Negative Future

Sometimes we naturally, as I said earlier, stop at The Worry Engine stage of things, getting ahold of our thinking and remembering that we’re facing a problem, not a crisis. But sometimes we don’t – sometimes we continue to obsess over our frightening future projections -

which in turn often leads us to landing on one or two “what ifs?” that really scare us, and we begin to focus on them most of all. We begin to act as if we KNEW those things were going to happen. And that takes us to the next stage of the Chronic Anxiety Cycle – more on that next post.