The Wrong Way to Manage Anxiety

We often encounter situations in life and leadership where we have absolutely no control over an outcome that matters to us. Perhaps you’ve had the interview and are now waiting to see if you got the job. Or the grant application’s been submitted and you’re waiting to see if you get the money. In my case, In my case, my revised book proposal is now in my agent’s hands, and it’s up to her to match me with a publisher. 

Despite teaching this stuff, I did the exact wrong thing to manage my anxiety. Keep reading to learn what anxious gulls, a fledgling author, and a very silly song have in common, and what your nervous system actually needs to calm down.

STORY: The wrong way to manage anxiety, and what to do instead.

READ MORE: The drama triangle, displacement activity, and the science of shaking it off. Also, check out my new book website!

BOOK STUFF: We’re reading Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ book: How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day.

GOING FURTHER: Join the Work/Play CoLab, a community of leaders who get through the waiting together instead of alone in a loop of busyness.

STORY: The Wrong Way to Manage Anxiety

I recently sent my wonderful agent, Kimberley Cameron, a thoroughly revised book proposal, query letter, sample chapters, and website. Before that, I completed a scan of all 589 deals listed in Publishers Marketplace in my genre and every genre next door, so we’d understand exactly where my book fits in the current market. 

I love this version. The book gets so much better with every rewrite. And my fancy spreadsheet has so many new names we can send it to.

So you’d think I’d feel calm. Accomplished. Confident.

Yet there I was, sitting at my desk, heart rate pattering fast, hands a bit trembly, feeling like a fledgling in the open with hawks circling. As soon as the email was sent, I felt a crest of anxiety like a roar, and then I immediately opened a messaging app to check incoming texts. Whether to seek reassurance or stay busy, I don’t even know.

What will my agent think? What will editors think? Will I get a good deal? Will I get ANY deal? 

I was feeling anxiety over an outcome I had absolutely no control over.

Here’s the part I’m less proud of. I’ve researched how the stress system works. I trained leadership teams on the neuroscience of chronic stress and anxiety all over the country. And I knew what actually helps me with this kind of nervous energy: breathwork, a long walk in nature, a strength training class. Instead, I’ve been diffusing it into busyness. Another text. Another email. Another small task checked off. It feels productive, but it totally isn’t what I need.

The Drama Triangle

When anxiety strikes, our bodies naturally lean towards fight, flight, or freeze. And our minds spin a whole lot of stories. Yet in many cases there’s truly nothing more to do. The application is submitted. The proposal is in someone else’s hands. All you can do is wait. 

When this happens, and I fall into a pit of busyness, I work with my body and mind using a tool known as the drama triangle. 

The drama triangle was introduced in 1968 by psychiatrist Stephen Karpman (read his original paper). He had an interest in storytelling and was a member of the Screen Actors Guild. He observed that people’s interactions with one another often fit the fairy tale roles of a villain, victim, and hero. Later, he and others like the Conscious Leadership Group expanded the drama triangle to help people process their own inner self-talk. I often invite my 1:1 coaching clients to stand on physical cards that say Villain, Victim, and Hero and play-act the voices in their heads. Psychologically, it allows the stories in our subconscious and unconscious mind to come to the surface so we can deal with them.

Here’s what my self-talk sounded like the day after I hit send:

Hero: I’ll check a bunch of things off my to-do list.

Villain: That’s an excuse and you KNOW it! You get busy, on purpose, when you are anxious and want to avoid what’ll really settle you down.

Victim: I’ll just hide. This is too much.

When I stepped off the drama triangle, I could clearly see my pattern: anxiety → busyness → sustained anxiety and stress. There was tension in my nervous system that tricked me into thinking that I should use it to get a bunch of stuff done, but the busyness didn’t settle the tension at all.

Pecking at the Ground

Animal behaviorists have a name for this. When a herring gull is caught between two competing drives: This guy is intruding on my territory but we’re evenly matched! I can’t decide whether to fight or flee. So the gull will sometimes abruptly engage in a behavior that seems to have nothing at all to do with the actual intruder problem, such as preening or pulling up grass. Niko Tinbergen and other ethologists call this “displacement activity”: behavior that discharges tension without touching what’s causing it. 

That’s what I was doing: discharging tension by getting really busy with my to-do list in a way that does nothing at all to resolve the underlying anxiety. I see the human version all the time in the leaders I work with. When an outcome sits outside our control, we turn to displacement activities: email, Slack, house cleaning, reviewing subscription costs and renewal dates (yes seriously). My husband, Jason, loved grading season when I was a professor because it always meant I’d avoid grading by baking bread and cookies. Busyness gives anxious energy somewhere to go, and it also lets us avoid sitting with uncertainty in a body that needs something else entirely.

Real Solutions

There’s a song called “BusyBusyBusy” by Kevin Kline (listen to it here) that we’d play whenever the kids were too crazily wound up, anxious, and frantic.

Jason or I would declare: “OK. Everyone just needs to relax. We’re going to play some calm, quiet Christmas music.” Then we’d put on the song:

“We’re very very busy and we have a lot to do

And we haven’t got a minute to explain it all to you.”

Everyone would race around the living room at top speed, climbing over couches and speed-walking around the lamps as fast as we possibly could, until all four of us collapsed in a heap giggling, all our anxious, nervous, wound-up energy spent.

I played “BusyBusyBusy” in the car the other day to dispel the tension and get all the heart-racing anxiety out of my system. By the end of the song, and after a final whiny wail of teenager-ish angst, I felt so much better.

A 2022 meta-analysis showed that even just a single session of physical exercise reduced blood pressure spikes in response to a stressful event that followed. Which probably shouldn’t be a surprise, since Indigenous cultures have used shaking, drum circles, and ecstatic dance, such as the Kalahari San healing dance, to relieve stress for centuries.

Other research-backed solutions that actually dispel anxiety and stress (that aren’t just displacement activities) include breathwork, meditation, time in nature, social connection, art, music, and dance.

So that weekend, I did many of those things: a hike along the Sacramento River, painting mini-figures, board games with friends, and daily breathwork. And guess what? After my weekend reset, the urge to get BusyBusyBusy was gone. 

Close

There's this old Bob Newhart MadTV sketch where the therapist yells “Just STOP IT” to everyone who comes in his door. For almost a year, my husband Jason's been joking about his version of that therapist applied to my field of expertise: leadership coaching. Jason claims that he can coach anyone in 60 seconds with just 4 easy steps! (To be fair, it seems every coach has a patented 4 or 5 step model. Including me... 🥸)

1. Calm the f**k down

2. Realize it’s all your fault

3. Get over it

4. Make a plan and get on with it

   
   

Well, all of these anxiety-release strategies help with step #1 because you can’t fully access your creative, solution finding, perspective shifting cognitive functions without calming down first. And displacement activities don’t count.

So what’s your displacement activity when you’re anxiously waiting on an outcome you can’t control? And what does your nervous system actually need? Practice noticing your pattern or get onto a drama triangle to surface it. 

And when you catch yourself mid-email/Slack/stupid-todo-list-task, ask yourself what this is. Sometimes it’s genuinely work. Other times the braver move is to close the laptop and engage in the real solutions that your nervous system needs.

READ MORE

For the drama triangle, Stephen Karpman’s original 1968 article “Fairy Tales and Script Drama Analysis” is surprisingly accessible. Or watch this great short video from the Conscious Leadership Group.

For both the science and practice of shaking, dance, and expressive movement to release stress, see the video resources of the Center for Mind Body Medicine, the largest global group supporting community healing and stress resilience. (Scroll down to the “Expressive Meditation” section and try it!)

Also, check out my husband’s very funny 60 second coaching site. He’s the co-founder of Five Paths, a web development company. Jason’s having a blast expanding his AI skills with various side projects. See what you think (and maybe buy him a beer). 

BOOK STUFF

Check out my new book website and follow along here for updates. Do you love discussing nonfiction books with others? Our book club now lives inside CoLab. We’re reading How to Live a Meaningful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, a design-thinking approach to purpose, joy, and flow.

GOING FURTHER

Waiting on an outcome you can’t control is hard to do alone. Without other people around, it’s easy to end up pecking at the ground: answering one more email, checking one more message, staying busy instead of settling down.

The Work/Play CoLab is a community of leaders who move through the hard parts together. Each month includes workshops, coworking sessions, and book club, which gives you a steady place to calm your nervous system, get perspective, and work on what actually matters with people who understand.

October’s book club meets Thursday, October 29, 4–5pm PT, to discuss How to Live a Meaningful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.

Join the Work/Play CoLab