This post is also available as a podcast here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/s-p01/episodes/Anxiety-e25l0jn

I know so many people with anxiety – does everyone have anxiety?! I feel like everyone I talk to has some level of anxiety. Why? I’ve had a wide range on the anxiety scale, I go through periods of overwhelming anxiety and I also go through periods of grounded calm. I feel the anxiety of those near me, be it my students or my friends, or complete strangers on the bus. As an empath, I feel it – I feel it how they’re feeling it. It’s how I knew that the woman next to me on a flight was going to vomit into her little paper bag when there were no visual or auditory signs, or when my friend had just suffered a breakup, or when a guy at a concert was way too drunk and needed assistance, or when my friend was anxious over a conversation that had nothing to do with me. I was in their proximity, and I just felt what they were feeling.

It goes for positive feelings, too, but I usually have to step in when I sense negative feelings. Positive feelings radiate differently, and people aren’t often afraid of sharing excitement or happiness. They’re afraid to share their pain. I feel their pain, so I’m already sharing it. This opens a door where some choose to cross the threshold and voice the pain, but others close it. Every time, it’s their choice – it’s their pain.

Anxiety is the feeling I see and feel the most often. As a professor, my students have so many reasons to be anxious in my presence. Sometimes it’s related to me or my class, but sometimes they’re anxious about completely separate things. I want to dig into some sources of anxiety because I see it so much, and I hope what I can share might help you with any anxiety that you experience.

As I can only truly unpack my own anxieties, I’m going to start there. A cognitive behavioral therapy tool called Bloom (not advertising, just referencing my source,) referred to anxiety as something we experience when we care about an outcome, but feel a lack of control in that outcome. This resonated for me, but there’s also a layer I see in expectations. There’s an umbrella outcome here: life success/happiness/fulfillment/etc. There are societal expectations, family expectations, partner expectations, etc. We are surrounded by perceived expectations to be met (outcomes) and no roadmap for our path to reach them (lack of control.)

It always comes back to knowing myself and my wants, needs, goals, etc. The more certain we are of our personal (internal) expectations, the less we will care about the external expectations. This connects very well with the concept of locus of control (the belief that I have control over my outcomes rather than external sources.) When I shift to an external locus of control perspective, more anxiety will fill me because I feel like I have no control. Whereas, when I am able to shift my perspective back to what I can control, I have far less anxiety.

For example: I don’t care about society’s expectations for my house. I’m a “clutterbug,” and I will never own a house that looks like those on television. I do not care. I think living in my home is more important than keeping it pristine. I clean, I teach my child to clean up toys, wash dishes, etc. But, I also have a couple piles of mail, work, and random items that need to be “put away.” I can use the space, and I’ll put those items away as I find the mental and temporal space to do so. They aren’t hurting anyone. It’s not worth me stressing about because I don’t have the pristine house expectation, and anyone who thinks I should can kindly f*ck off. Suddenly, the anxiety and stress about my home: disappears.

So, this is how I check myself when I’m feeling anxious:

1. Check in: what am I feeling anxious about? Why am I feeling this way?
2. Analyze my personal expectations in this realm: What are my expectations for ____?
3. Compare my personal expectations with the external “expectation”: Are these different? Is that what is causing my anxiety?
4. Reframe: Am I meeting my expectations?
   Yes: great! Dismiss the external expectations. You define what is important to you.
   No: How can I meet my expectations within reason? How can I divide this problem into smaller problems? Or, share the workload to take some of the stress off?

Honestly, this is basically a roadmap for how I manage my anxiety (well, anxiety caused by expectations.) I can tell you that it gets easier with practice, like most things. Let me know if it helps you, or if you have other things that help you.

The other major cause of anxiety for me is risk. This is another form of investment in an outcome that is out of my control. In these cases, I am stepping outside my “comfort zone.” Risks help us grow as humans, but risks can also cause us damage. That’s inherent in the word: risk. A risk can have a reward, or a cost. We don’t know which we have until we take the risk. So, it leaves us with an unknown outcome that we feel is out of our control. We may attempt to take “controlled” risks, but risks are risky – always. Thus the anxiety.

This one is harder because the anxiety is going to be there. You cannot simply manage it or push it away. We have to embrace the anxiety and accept the potential cost while reaching for the reward with all we have. Accepting the unknown is the only thing that has allowed me to take these risks. I take a lot of these types of risks… I always reach for the rewards. I think it’s part of my goal-oriented attitude: always moving onward and upward. So, my best advice for the anxiety here is simply the acknowledgement and acceptance of the anxiety and potential cost. If you’re taking a risk where the cost is too great to accept – that risk is potentially too much. If you can face the cost as an acceptable loss – that’s going to relieve the anxiety and pressure. However, some of us thrive under certain pressures, so it all comes back to knowing ourselves. Whee!

My story this week is about a risk I took.

I lived my life in California until I finished graduate school. I found myself completing a PhD and facing a job decision: try to stay in CA (and potentially without a job), or move to a place with lots of snow for a job… I hate snow and cold. I was the kid that hid in the car shivering after two runs on the sled. I made a snow angel, or a snowman, and then immediately went back inside. I don’t like being cold, and snow is frigging cold. I would live in a tropical place, no problem. Give me all the warmth and humidity, please. Screw all this dry, cold, BS.

Anyway, I got a job somewhere cold. So… I was terrified of the risk associated with moving somewhere that I knew no one and had to deal with snow. I’m still cringing at that decision. I made the right one, I think, but I still feel how anxious it made me. The potential for a job in CA was there, but I would have to give up the job in the cold place… a different risk. So, the costs were either: live in a cold place, or risk graduating without a job. When I weighed the costs: having a job seemed to be more important than my distaste for cold and snow. So, I took the job in the cold place.

This job became part of the catalyst for my first divorce. I left everyone and everything I knew in CA to move to the middle of the US, and I started over. I had to build a friend base, date people (ugh), and learn the ropes at a new institution. It took a long time, and I still cringe at the snow and ice, but I found a home. It was the “right” choice for me. If there was some other path on the other side of that decision, I’ll never know what it was, but I took a big risk – and I found a home. I found myself here. I created things. I made friends. I even learned how to drive in the snow, hahaha.

We never know what is on the other side, but trusting ourselves and trusting in the flow of life can change everything.

I hope you found some peace in my experience. Love, -S.