This week’s question is: What does my anxiety tell me?
Anxiety is a natural human response to stress, uncertainty or perceived danger. It is part of the internal system that helps us prepare, react and protect ourselves when something feels risky or unknown.
So anxiety is not the problem in itself. The question is how we interpret it.
I have been thinking about this because anxiety often sounds convincing. It can feel like a warning that something is wrong, or that something will go wrong if I make the wrong move.
What if I make the wrong decision?
What if I can’t find a job?
What if I am offered the job and still do not know whether to take it?
What if I fail?
What if I miss something important?
Anxiety may be responding to past experience, present pressure or future uncertainty. But it often points our attention forwards, towards something we cannot yet know or control.
That is where it becomes difficult. Anxiety can help us prepare, but it can also ask for a level of certainty that real life cannot provide.
The challenge
The challenge is not that anxiety exists. The challenge is how much authority we give it.
When anxiety appears, we may start to treat it as the clearest voice in the room. We delay the email. We over-prepare. We avoid the decision. We over-explain the boundary. We keep researching long after we have enough information to take the next step.
This can feel sensible because it reduces the discomfort in the moment.
But relief is not always the same as rightness.
Sometimes we are not making a better decision. We are simply trying to make the anxiety stop.
This is why the question is not, “How do I get rid of the anxiety?”
A better question might be, “What is this anxiety asking me to do, and is that response actually useful?”
A new perspective
I find it more useful to think of anxiety as information
It may be telling me I need to prepare.
It may be telling me I need more information.
It may be telling me something matters.
It may be telling me I am trying to control too much too soon.
It may be telling me I am confusing uncertainty with danger.
The distinction matters, because not every anxious thought needs the same response. Some need action. Some need information. Some need support. Some need to be noticed without being obeyed.
The work is not to remove the anxiety before acting. The work is to stop giving anxiety the final vote.
There is a difference between thinking clearly and trying to remove all possible future discomfort.
There is a difference between needing more information and needing reassurance that nothing will go wrong.
Most career and life decisions do not come with that level of certainty.
Five distinctions I am finding useful
First, anxiety is a signal, not a verdict. We use emotions and bodily sensations as information when making judgements, but those feelings can either be useful or misleading depending on what we attribute them to. In plain English: the feeling is real, but the meaning we attach to it still needs checking.
Second, relief is not always the same as rightness. Undoing the decision, sending the extra paragraph, apologising again, or saying yes after all may reduce anxiety quickly. But quick relief can train the brain to treat the original decision as dangerous. This is why exposure-based approaches focus on gradually facing feared situations rather than avoiding them.
Third, new behaviour often feels wrong before it feels natural. A person who is learning to stop over-explaining may feel rude. A person who is learning to say no may feel selfish. A person who is learning to stand their ground may feel difficult. But those feelings may reflect the loss of an old coping strategy, not the loss of integrity.
Fourth, anxiety can point to values. If I feel anxious before speaking up, it may be because honesty matters. If I feel anxious after setting a boundary, it may be because fairness, or respect matters. If I feel anxious when I stop over-functioning, it may be because I am learning to value my own capacity as much as other people’s comfort.
Fifth, the decision and the feeling can coexist. This may be the most powerful bit: “I can feel anxious and still know my decision was sound.” That is a very different leadership stance from “I must feel calm before I can trust myself.”
Next week, notice where anxiety is asking for certainty before you move.
Then try asking:
What am I assuming this anxiety means?
What information do I genuinely need, and what am I trying to know too soon?
What is the next reasonable step I can take without needing the whole answer
Sometimes anxiety is asking you to make the future completely safe before you participate in it.
And that is rarely possible.
The useful place to start is to listen to the anxiety, without assuming it has understood the whole situation.
PS: This article is part of a bi-weekly email series asking leadership questions, some of which appear in the Architect’s Leadership Journal. You can join this email series here.