How To Get Out Of Your Head When Your Brain Is Swirling
As I shared with you last week, I had a professional setback recently that turned my already anxious mind into a swirling category 4 tornado. It’s just the kind of basic life disappointment we tell our kids to be gritty through, but let me tell you, it sucks. I’m so fidgety I can’t sit still. I’m obsessively checking my bank balance. I’m not as busy as I was last year which feels terrifying for someone addicted to being busy. Still, life won’t stop for my pity party, so given that I write about managing anxiety at work I really should take my own advice.
In the tornado, it can be easy to turn an immediate task into an overwhelming thought exercise that sends your brain into catastrophizing. Or, you may feel very stuck and overwhelmed by a routine work task. Facing the blank page of a simple writing task turns into an interrogation into your career trajectory and general worthiness as a person. You may find more time on your hands when between jobs and that can feel really uncomfortable.
When anxious, we tend to focus inward. Unmanaged anxiety narrows the lens on one subject, you. Worry and rumination loops keep you stuck inside yourself. Taking small steps out of the swirl means getting outside your own head. There’s a saying: “When you’re anxious, just do something.”
So I'm sharing what I’m trying to do right now to unstick the swirl- it’s advice so good I just had to share it with you. And it breaks a habit: the habit of diving into more work when I’m anxious. We’ve talked about this habit a lot. Working off your anxiety can feel productive but it can just reinforce habits and patterns that don’t serve you. Plus it keeps you in your head.
My friend and longtime journalist Garance Franke-Ruta, whom I first met 20 years ago when we lived in Washington, D.C. has some incredible action steps here.
She shares, "I found getting connected to my community and communities and supporting other people and trying to improve my environment, quite literally, has been such a good way to get out of my head around life in my collapsing economic sector.*
"The main thing is to be doing something that nets you positive feedback or at least a feeling you have made a positive contribution to other people's lives. And out of that you will be reminded of who you are and what you're capable of.
I've always found time to be elastic and that the more you do, the more you can do, while doing nothing takes forever and is enervating. Joining groups cracks the ice on the surface of the expanse of time and speeds things up when they've gotten too slow, without putting all the pressure on you to be the star when you're not feeling like putting yourself out there.
For me that's looked like:
Alumni interviewing for college (provides contact with cool, inspiring students at the start of their lives, the energy of youth etc.)
Chairing a block association committee and organizing for improvements at my local park (meeting neighbors, navigating public bureaucracies, shaping the future of my neighborhood)
Judging a professional awards contest (spending time in a room with peers at the top of their game, reading the best in the business, helping to give other people recognition)
It's a big world out there and while it may not feel like it right now, one full of opportunities and so many ways for you to contribute when you're ready to try again. Until then, community-care can be a kind of self-care, too.”
Community connection is a wonderful way to flip the anxiety switch and shift your thinking. Think of making a quick, generous act. It doesn't take much; sending a text message is enough. And when you’re struggling emotionally, it’s sometimes easier to connect with people you know less well than close friends or family.
When I asked how she was handling staying motivated through a crisis, my friend and colleague Cheryl Contee said that she was trying to “be a good neighbor.” I included this quote in my first book Hiding in the Bathroom. Cheryl described her grandfather, William Gailes Contee. He was such a good neighbor that there is a square dedicated to him and another good neighbor Edward Wilson Parago, in their Baltimore neighborhood. “By good neighbor he meant that both literally but also in the sense of your community as well. Be a good neighbor because no one knows you and can help you like your neighbors.”
I consider colleagues on LinkedIn neighbors of a sort, and so it’s my job to support you- please let me know how!
Morra
*Journalism as a profession is in crisis. Support journalists and quality media! "The newspaper industry has declined faster and fallen further than some of the most famously collapsing sectors of the American economy. Coal mining, steel manufacturing, fishing: They can’t match the job losses and wage erosion in the newspaper business over the past few decades."
PS: Check out today's episode of The Anxious Achiever where I interview two entrepreneurs who sold their businesses... and experienced emotional shifts that surprised them. Entrepreneur Robert Glazer and I talk about how to approach success mindfully instead of rushing to fill space. Glazer shares, "For people who set these high goals and achieve them, these goals aren't really long lasting. You get to the top of the mountain and you think- ok, that's nice, which mountain am I going to climb next? It becomes a trap you need to pay attention to."