Work Stress and Overthinking: What Changes in Work Anxiety When You Step Back?

Welcome To Work Stress Anxiety

0:21 SPEAKER_00: This great story teaches us something about being inland. I'm Cheryl Paris and this is Work Stress Anxiety. Together, let's borrow a little wisdom from a story to help us navigate a very modern world.

Why The Meeting Keeps Replaying

0:44 SPEAKER_01: Have you ever left a meeting?

0:51 SPEAKER_01: Or even a slightly odd exchange at work and found that maybe hours later you are still sitting in it. Not physically, obviously, but you may be making your dinner or driving home or putting some washing on, uh, pretending to watch the TV, but mentally you're still in that chair, you can still hear exactly what they said, you remember their expression, you remember what you said, you remember what you wish you'd said, and every time you replay it in your mind, you experience the whole thing from the exact same position, your position.

1:35 SPEAKER_01: I want you to picture Marcia. Something happened in a meeting that really unsettled her. Maybe she felt something she said was dismissed, or maybe somebody interrupted her, maybe she was challenged in a way that felt unfair, and now her mind keeps returning to it. She can't make sense of it. She can replay the meeting perfectly from inside her own chair, but here's the question I want to explore today. What becomes visible when she imagines watching the same scene from somewhere else in the room?

2:27 SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes the problem isn't that we're thinking about something too much, sometimes we're thinking about it repeatedly from one position.

2:49 SPEAKER_02: And those are not quite the same thing.

2:56 SPEAKER_01: Before we get into that, I just want to give a little shout out today to all my fellow Londoners listening to Work Stress Anxiety. London is where I'm from. So whenever wherever I see a listener tuning in from London, I sometimes feel rather lovely about it. So whether you're listening on a train, walking through the city, sitting in your desk, or hiding somewhere with a cup of tea for 10 minutes, just for some peace. Thank you for taking the time to listen. Okay, so back to Marcia because she's still in that meeting, isn't she, in her head?

3:40 SPEAKER_01: And perhaps you've done that too. You think, I can't believe she said that to me. You know, everyone must have thought I was incompetent. I should have seen that coming. And notice how close all of those thoughts are to the experience. They're almost nose to nose with it. There is there isn't, you know, much room between what happened and what it what it means now. And when we're stressed, that closeness can make everything feel rather convincing. You know, the interpretation starts to feel like somehow it's evidence.

Distance Without Denial

4:22 SPEAKER_01: Now, I want to be careful here. Creating some distance from an experience does not mean pretending something didn't happen. It doesn't mean explaining away poor behavior, it doesn't mean deciding that actually your manager was delightful, the meeting was marvelous, and perhaps you should simply, you know, just accept that you imagined the whole thing. No. Sometimes something was genuinely unfair. Sometimes people did behave badly, and sometimes there is a pattern at work that needs to rest in. Distance is not denial.

5:07 SPEAKER_01: To me, it simply gives you another place from which to look from, and perhaps another place from which to choose. You know, one of the interesting things about difficult experiences, from what I've noticed, is that we can often see things very differently when they happen to someone else. You know, imagine a friend came to you and described exactly what had happened to Marcia. Same meeting, same words, same people, you know, same sequence of events. Would you necessarily speak to her in the way she might be speaking to herself?

5:43 SPEAKER_01: Would you say, well, obviously everyone thinks you're useless? Probably not. You might say, hang on a minute, what actually happened? Or that comment from your manager sounds important. Has that happened before? Or perhaps you might say, you know what, I don't think you handled every part of that brilliant, but does that really matter? No, not really. And I think that last one matters because compassion doesn't require us to manufacture innocence. Sometimes when we look at something from another position, we notice where we could have handled something differently, and when someone else needs to take some responsibility, those things can live in the same room.

The Owl View And Better Data

6:32 SPEAKER_01: Human beings are inconveniently complicated like that, and that's why I like the image of an owl for this episode. Not because I want you sitting at the top of the office stationary cupboard hooting, okay? Especially not on a Monday, no. Think about an owl perching somewhere quietly above all that commotion. It doesn't need to fly into the middle of everything to see what's happening. It observes, it notices movement, it can see more than one part of the landscape at a time, and sometimes psychologically, I think we need to do a little something like that.

7:18 SPEAKER_01: Not permanent distance, just enough distance to gather more information. Because when you're standing in the emotional blast zone of an experience, your attention becomes, and it can become very, very narrow. You notice the shark comments, the embarrassment, the tension in your body. But when you move into an observer position, even briefly, you can begin to start noticing lots more information. Who was under pressure? Were you tired? Were you rushed? Was there information you didn't have? None of those questions automatically give you the answer.

8:08 SPEAKER_01: That's important. The observer position isn't some magical thing, you know, where T in truth suddenly marches, you know, forth. It's suddenly no, that's not the right word. It's simply another source of information, and information is useful when we're trying to decide what happens next. This is one of the reasons I've been talking throughout um the last couple of weeks about the evidence bank about recording what actually happened. Because your journal, I call it the evidence bank, because your journal isn't supposed to become a prosecution file against your workplace, right?

9:00 SPEAKER_01: It isn't supposed to be a prosecution case against yourself, it's evidence, it's patterns, context, what happened, what you notice, what happened next. And once you've collected some of that information, you might begin to start noting sometime when you return to it later, when you're calmer and you some you'll start seeing things simply that weren't available to you in that original moment. You know, I kept blaming myself when I looked at the sequence, the expectations really weren't clear, or even I can see something I did contribute to here, and I could have handled that part differently, and I'll do that next time.

9:53 SPEAKER_01: Now that isn't self-blame. To me, that's agency. There is a considerable difference between everything was my fault and there is one part of that that belongs to me, and I can work with that. Now, stepping back doesn't always make a problem smaller. I understand that occasionally it helps you to see the problem is more consistent than you realize, and that is useful information too.

Three Perspectives To Find Options

10:23 SPEAKER_01: So here's a tiny experiment. I want you to give it a go today, maybe. Keep it to something manageable. Please don't choose the most upsetting workplace experience you've ever had. No, okay. Just one simple experience that was manageable, right? Choose one entry from your evidence bank or journal that you can revisit without becoming overwhelmed. Okay? Read it once and then write just three sentences. The first being an observer might notice dot dot. The second, a compassionate friend might notice dot dot.

11:14 SPEAKER_01: And the third my future me might notice dot dot dot. That's it. You don't need perfect answers, you don't even need those three perspectives to agree with one another. In fact, it actually might be more useful when they don't. Your observer might notice a sequence, your compassionate friend might notice how much pressure you were feeling, and the future view might notice an option that wasn't obvious at the time. Perhaps a conversation, a question, a piece of evidence you need to keep recording, or perhaps simply the realization that you don't yet have enough information to decide.

12:00 SPEAKER_01: Sometimes not deciding too quickly about something is progress. If you notice yourself becoming increasingly distressed while doing this, do yourself a favor, stop. You don't have to push through. Like, I don't know, like you need to do these things. Some experiences need more support, more safety, or a different setting before they're useful to revisit. But with the ordinary work moments we tend to chew over repeatedly, this little change of position may help start loosening something, not by telling you what to think, but by giving you somewhere else to think from.

13:38 SPEAKER_01: Keep it going, you know. I've got one too. And you you're not trying to create an immaculate record of every difficult um situation at work, that's not the point. You're creating something much more useful, I think. A way of noticing patterns before the story becomes the only thing that you can see. And if this work stress or work anxiety situation, there is one that you might think, oh, that'd be really good for Cheryl to explore, you can send it to me at podcastfeedback.com forward slash work stressanxiety.

14:23 SPEAKER_01: So today, choose one manageable entry, not the biggest, not the worst, just one, and give yourself those three different perspectives viewing the position differently. An observer might notice, a compassionate friend might notice, the future me might notice. Then see what information becomes available when you are no longer standing right in the middle of the replay because a different viewpoint doesn't decide the answer for you. It gives you another place from which to choose. And perhaps that's the thought I want you to take away with.

15:09 SPEAKER_01: You can step back from a moment without stepping away from yourself. Remember, every step you take, no matter how small, is a step towards a brighter, more balanced future. Trust your journey and remember, progress is progress no matter the pace. Bye for now.

15:30 SPEAKER_01: I hope today's episode gave you something useful to carry into your week. Now finish your coffee, take a breath, and remember progress is progress no matter the pace. Until next time, bye for now.