Welcome to Episode 86 of The Non Anxious Leader podcast, I'm Jack Shitama, and today we're going to jump right into our episode where I'm going to break down the difference between worry, stress, anxiety and excitement and how understanding these differences, using them and managing them properly can help you to be a non-anxious leader.

One of my primary sources for this podcast is an article in The New York Times, I will put a link in the show notes, entitled "The Difference Between Worry, Stress and Anxiety." The subtitle is "They're not all the same, but we do have tips to help you deal with all of them." So I think this was helpful in its own right. And then when you put the family systems take on it, I think it really is applicable to trying to be a non-anxious presence, both personally and professionally.

The article is written by Emma Pattee, and she says that worry is defined as "When your mind dwells on negative thoughts, uncertain outcomes or things that could go wrong." Pattee quotes Melanie Greenberg, who is the author of The Stress-Proof Brain and a clinical psychologist, who says that worry tends to be repetitive and obsessive in our thoughts. Greenberg calls worry the cognitive component of anxiety. So when we think about anxiety, worry, is that part of anxiety that happens in our brain.

It's when we are thinking about things that aren't right, things that could go wrong or when we dwell on the uncertainty of a situation.

Pattee cites the work of the Luana Marques, an associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and the president of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, noting that worry can be a good thing. When we worry our brains become stimulated and actually can calm down. And it's when we worry that we are able to deal with problems and actually take action. So worry can be a positive thing. When we worry appropriately, we are being responsible. We are taking care of the challenges of life.

The problem becomes when we worry obsessively, when we can't stop thinking, when we can't stop worrying. Pattee has three suggestions to deal with worry. One is to limit the amount of time. She calls it a worry budget. So when you are thinking about something, thinking about a challenge in life, don't let it become a problem by being obsessed with it. Focus on it for a certain amount of time. She suggests 20 minutes, then consciously redirect your thoughts to something else.

Also, when you are worrying, when you notice that you're worrying, actually think about what is your next step, what is your next action, what are you going to do next? Because that will help you to feel positive that you are dealing with the challenge. Finally write your worries down. This is a tried and true fact of journaling that when you write things down, it actually helps you to calm down. So those are three things you can do to deal with worry, which takes part in the cognitive part of the brain.

While worry is a cognitive response, it's your brain thinking about challenges that you have in your life, stress is a physiological response. There must always be an external event. So stress by definition, comes in response to an external stimulus. This is, in fact, the fight or flight response. When we experience something that is outside of us and it causes adrenaline and cortisol to go coursing through our body, it is because it is firing up our limbic system.

We have experienced something that causes us to prepare a physical response. Of course, we are no longer worried about saber tooth tigers. Often this external stimulus is not a physical threat, but it still invokes this stress response. This could be anything from a project deadline that is coming due, to a family member who is calling you to complain about somebody else in the family, to a co-worker who has unleashed their anxiety on you because they don't like the way you treated them in a meeting, to how a congregant responds to your sermon.

Remember that when we think about emotional process and not content, the content can be anything. But the process itself is this physiological response that happens within us and in which we feel stressed because of this external stimuli. Occasional stress is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be a positive thing when it helps you respond to the moment. But of course, chronic stress is something that is not healthy for you. If you are continually in fight or flight mode, if you are continually having physical responses to external stimuli, then it can cause serious health problems.

Pattee's three suggestions for managing stress are one to get exercise because this actually helps your body recover from the release of adrenaline and cortisol, and two to distinguish between what you can and can't control.

That way you are not focusing on the things that you can't control. Think of the Serenity Prayer. And then three, don't compare your stress with anyone else's stress because everybody responds differently to external stimuli. Your stressful response is yours only and shouldn't be compared to that of others.

I know we are only six minutes into the podcast, but a quick summary: worry is a cognitive response to a challenge. Worry is something that is happening in the brain. Stress is a physiological response to an external stimulus. So stress is something that is happening in the body. Anxiety has both the cognitive element of worry and the physiological element of stress. Anxiety is experienced both in the mind and the body. That's why anxiety is so challenging. And of course, when I talk about anxiety in my podcast and when I talk about being a non-anxious presence, a non-anxious leader, I'm not talking about clinical anxiety, which needs to be treated by a professional.

The interesting thing about the anxiety that many of us, if not most of us, experience is that even though it is a body-mind experience, the actual threat, the actual external stimulus that causes the physiological response doesn't really exist. Dr. Marquez says that in some ways, anxiety is a false alarm. It is a response to an external stimulus, which actually isn't there. We were only imagining that it's there. I think this is really helpful to understand when you are in the presence of an anxious other, whether they are targeting you with their anxiety or they're just unleashing it into the system, perhaps in a meeting or in a family gathering when that anxiety is coming out.

If you understand that they are perceiving a threat that actually isn't there, it helps you to be more empathetic and it helps you to be more of a non-anxious presence, to not take it personally and to help you be less reactive. Pattee, the author of the article, has three suggestions. The first is to limit sugar, alcohol and caffeine because anxiety is a physiological response. These can have a significant impact on your anxiety level.

She also says, to wiggle your toes and concentrate on them. That actually can break the anxiety loop by refocusing on something outside of what is going on in your brain and in your body. And finally, in the middle of an anxiety episode, don't talk or think about it. Don't try to solve it, but try to distract yourself with your senses. So listen to music, jump rope, rub a piece of Velcro or velvet are three of the things that she suggests.

And all of these are designed to get your mind off of the cognitive part so that your body can calm down. Mindfulness is very helpful in this respect. If you've done mindfulness work, you can focus on even something like a fan and the sound that it's making. Just focusing on that instead of what's going on in your head and what's going on in your body allows your body to relax, which will then allow your head to release what you're thinking about.

Now, all of this is well and good, but the reason I find this really interesting is I think it informs us in terms of how we can become more of a non-anxious presence, especially in anxiety producing situations. I'm now going to go to the work of Alison Wood Brooks, who is a professor at Harvard Business School. She has done work on pre-performance anxiety among musicians and other performers. I heard her on the Choiceology podcast, and actually recommended this in my two for Tuesday email a couple of weeks ago.

I will link that again in the show notes. It's interesting to listen to the podcast because it gives you great examples of how people can actually reappraise anxiety as excitement. Now we're talking about stage fright. We're talking about pre-performance anxiety. But what it's based on is the idea that the neurological response to anxiety and excitement are very similar. Both release adrenaline, both release cortisol, although with excitement you may tend to release more of the good hormones, as well, like dopamine and endorphins.

But because there is that cognitive element to anxiety, the worry element to anxiety, what Brooks has found is that the advice to calm down when we are feeling anxious actually is not as helpful as being able to reappraise anxiety as excitement. In other words, to tell ourselves that we are excited about something rather than anxious about it. Now, this seems rather simplistic. This seems kind of like a trick. But she has done studies that have shown that when people say, I am excited out loud, this has led to improved performance.

The way she describes it is that it enables them to adopt an opportunity mindset as opposed to a threat mindset. What this reminded me of is a woman that I heard talk about how she had done all kinds of work with a therapist on how to deal with her own reactivity to her teenage children. She always knew what she was supposed to do. But whenever she got in that heat of the moment, in the moment of truth, she could not remain a non-anxious presence.

She was always reactive. And then she did therapy that helped her to deal just with the physiological response. It had nothing to do with the actual content of the situation with her children. The emotional process, the physiological process was dealing with the stress response. And when she was actually able to do that, she was better able to be a non-anxious presence in that moment of truth with her children. Now, I don't know that you are going to necessarily go to therapy, but if you have a therapist or if you have a coach, I think one of the things that you can work on (or you can work on this yourself) is reappraising your anxiety as excitement when dealing with anxiety producing situations.

When I'm dealing with a coaching client and we are talking about anxiety producing situations, more often than not there are certain patterns that happen. This is especially true when these situations happen with a particular person, whether it is in the family of origin, in the congregation or in an organization. Knowing what that pattern is helps to actually unpack how things are going to happen in a way that then enables the person to think about how they can be less reactive. That is how they can not engage in conflict by trying to convince the other that they are right and the other is wrong, or how they are able to regulate their anxiety in a way that allows the anxiety in the situation to dissipate, or how they're able to take a non anxious stand. so they are not being adaptive to the other person when they are feeling anxiety in themselves.

We'll then work on practicing non-anxious responses that can help her or him be more of a non-anxious presence in that situation. This is very similar to the example I gave about the woman and her teenage children. This kind of preparation, this kind of practice with non-anxious responses, is dealing with the cognitive part, is dealing with the worry part. It's dealing with being able to understand what is going on inside of you in terms of the patterns of anxiety and being able to have responses that are less reactive.

However, it doesn't deal with the stress response. There's still going to be anxiety. And this is where I find that the work of Alison Wood Brooks may be helpful to us. So here's my thought. What if, as we are preparing for anxiety producing situations, as we are preparing to be a non anxious presence in situations where we already know the patterns, when we know how things are going to happen and we have prepared our non anxious responses, what if we are to tell ourselves as we are getting ready to engage in this way, that we are excited, that we're really excited about the possibility of being a non anxious presence?

We're really excited about no longer being adaptive and being able to take a non-anxious stand. Or we're really excited about being able to regulate our own reactivity because it's going to help the emotional process in the system. It's going to allow for healthier responses for everybody, especially the person that we are dealing with. Now, this sounds like a lot to process. It sounds like a lot to think about in advance. But I believe that if we are able to do this, then we are going to be able to manage both the cognitive and the physiological response.

We're going to be able to be less anxious in the situation and "perform better" in the moment of truth. We're going to "perform better" in that moment when typically the anxiety causes a reactive or adaptive response that is not helpful and actually makes things worse or keeps things stuck in the system. So that's my take on all this. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I am going to try it out. I will let you know how it goes.

I'm encouraging you to try it as well as you are preparing for anxiety producing situations. Remember, be prepared with how you're going to be a non-anxious presence. But as you're about to engage, reappraise that anxiety as excitement. Try to think of ways that actually being a non-anxious presence is going to help you and the system grow. Then get excited about that so that you will be able to be more of a non-anxious presence.

If you can try that, I'd love to know how it goes. I am not saying this is going to be easy. I'm not saying that this is necessarily going to work. But according to what I see in the research, I think it is definitely worth a try. So that's it for this episode. I hope that you will find my musings, my wonderings, my hopeful possibilities in this reappraising of anxiety as excitement, as something that you find exciting as well, something that you find you might want to try.

I think anything that works in helping us to be more of a non-anxious presence is worth doing.