6 hidden ways anxiety can hold you back at work | Pro IQRA News

Feeling anxious can not only take over your mind; It can also hurt your career in the long run.

Besides the obvious signs of dread and panic, there are subtle ways anxiety can manifest in your job performance.

“Anxiety can be very sneaky. Your brain will want to avoid the causes of anxiety,” said Shannon Garcia, MD, a psychologist with the States of Wellness Counseling in Illinois and Wisconsin. “It’s a natural reaction designed to protect us, but it can have unintended consequences, Especially at work.”

Here are some unexpected warning signs to watch out for:

Anxiety can cause you to jump to negative conclusions about how your colleagues view you. It can keep you calm even when you have something important to say.

“Let’s say you’re in a meeting and you have a great idea that will help your team perform better. However, you worry that other people will judge you, that they will think your idea is stupid, or that you will stumble over your words. So, you Don’t share the idea.

The problem is, hard work doesn’t speak for itself. Remaining silent in team meetings can give others the false impression that you lack ideas.

“Certainly avoiding speaking in a meeting means you won’t have to worry about speaking in front of others,” Garcia said. “But it also means that your idea won’t get noticed and your boss won’t see you as a contributing person.”

That’s why Garcia recommends seeing your anxiety separate from your own.

Instead of, “I don’t want to speak in this meeting,” say to yourself, “My anxiety doesn’t want me to speak in this meeting.” Identifying how your anxiety is trying to control your behaviors can help you begin to challenge anxiety behaviors.

Procrastination is a common way anxiety appears at work.

It’s, “Oh no, I’m not going to feel good if I do this.” “You may be dealing with imposter syndrome, and you may be questioning your own performance,” said Alicia Velez, a licensed clinical social worker based in Brooklyn, New York. “Procrastination is a mechanism for anxiety and a form of avoidance.”

But avoiding your duties will only harm your well-being and performance in the long run.

“Unfortunately, anxiety tends to worsen over time if it is not addressed. The more you avoid, the more your brain will learn that avoidance is the only way to reduce anxiety,” Garcia said. “Avoidance is a temporary relief for whatever we worry about.”

One antidote to procrastination, Velez said, is to face the task head-on and “try to move forward instead of sticking around.”

Breaking down tasks into smaller pieces can be a way to make them less daunting. “If you imagine stairs, what’s the first step? … If you look at 12 steps, that’s too much, but if you look at the first step, it can be more bearable,” she said.

Anxiety can also creep into your mood and make you less fun at work.

“Many people are familiar with the emergence of anxiety as an inner critic — when you are perfect at your own work and worry that it is not good enough,” said Lauren Apio, psychologist, executive coach, and counselor. “But the sneakiest way anxiety can manifest is as an external critic—getting nervous, judgmental, and annoyed with co-workers. You may find yourself managing others to the smallest detail, getting angry in meetings or otherwise detached from managing that manifestation of anxiety.”

Maintaining good relationships with colleagues is not only useful for helping workdays go by faster; It is also crucial to help you advance within your company. People talk, and making enemies of your co-workers will hurt your career.

If you don’t address this side effect of anxiety, “people may be walking on eggshells around you or trying to avoid working with you. And of course, the health of your relationships with colleagues and people in your network is key to getting the job done.” “But it would be really stressful to always feel like you couldn’t count on anyone to do their job right — it would certainly add pressure to overwork and overwork.”

In the long run, it can help distinguish other people’s behaviors that are simply annoying or stylistically different from yours from those that are wrong and outright harmful.

The outer critic is ultimately trying to keep you out of harm’s way, but sometimes he gets a little overzealous. Work with a therapist, coach, or mentor to explore when it’s wise for you to step in with others, and when it’s wise to sit back and let them do their own thing,” Abiu suggested.

If you find that you need coffee to survive the work day and are constantly drained, your anxiety may be to blame.

“There is no place to rest [when you’re dealing with anxiety at work] “Because you worry about a possible future outcome and so you adapt to the demands of the present and what could happen in the future,” said Cicely Horsham Brathwaite, a licensed psychologist and executive coach.

Over time, she added, this can prevent you from looking for work or planning your career.

“You are so exhausted and exhausted that you don’t even have the energy to think that there could be something better.”

Anxiety can often stem from a fear of the unknown, which can keep you trapped in roles and jobs that you should have left a long time ago.

“It becomes “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” said Velez, noting that trying to predict a future outcome that can’t actually be predicted can leave you stuck in the anxious space you’re already in.

“Worry of ‘I might be worse’ holds us back, even though we have the information that we know we don’t feel good right now.”

This fear of the unknown, said Horsham Brathwaite It can also lead to people becoming “unemployed” because they don’t believe they can handle what it takes to be in a role commensurate with their professional contributions.

Garcia gave as an example: “You may not interview for a promotion because this job description includes managing meetings, and you have anxiety about speaking in front of others.”

To deal with this kind of anxiety, Horsham-Brathwaite said, it can be helpful to find someone within the organization, such as a mentor or trusted colleague, “who can help you do some reality testing. [You can ask them questions] Like, ‘How did I sound when I was sharing my thoughts in the meeting today? Does that make sense?'”

This way, you can feel more confident about pursuing opportunities to speak up and be noticed without feeling too much anxiety.

If you love people, you will often worry more about what other people think of you than about how you think of yourself. This is a troubling work trait that can prevent you from searching for the kind of authentic career you actually want — and leave you stuck in a career you hate.

Velez said she typically sees this type of anxiety in clients who are first-generation young professionals of color who pursue a certain type of work because it will make their parents happy.

“A lot of the time it’s guilt. My parents didn’t make all these sacrifices, my parents didn’t work 80 hours a week, my parents didn’t go through generational trauma, or what have you, for me to sit here and do nothing, or for me to just choose to be happy.” “. “When we start to buy into the narrative ‘things worthwhile must involve struggle’…we start telling ourselves not to be so kind to ourselves.”

And if family disapproval is the cause of your anxiety, try to find out where your family comes from and have a tough conversation with them about which profession you would prefer to pursue. The conversation might surprise you.

Perhaps you underestimate your ability to have a firm conversation with your parents and to communicate effectively your wants and needs, and [are underestimating] Your ability to tolerate discomfort, said Velez. Adding that we learn about anxiety not through avoidance, but by facing our fears and realizing that these types of feelings can be a temporary condition.