Employing Differences

Employing Differences, Episode 95: Whose anxiety is this?

March 08, 2022 Karen Gimnig & Paul Tevis
Employing Differences
Employing Differences, Episode 95: Whose anxiety is this?
Show Notes Transcript

"When we come together to do things collectively, it's not smooth. There are friction points. There are difficulties. And in fact, that's a feature, not a bug."

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Paul:

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen:

I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul:

And I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen:

Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Whose anxiety is this?"

Paul:

One of the things that anybody who has worked with groups for any period of time will notice is that when we come together to do things collectively, it's not smooth. There are friction points. There are difficulties. And in fact, that's a feature, not a bug. Actually a lot of our creativity, the really interesting things that we come up with, the things that are outside of our normal set of solutions to problems comes from that friction, comes from that rubbing together of ideas, that sometimes creative misunderstanding of each other. However, that is also stress inducing, and it produces anxiety in people in different ways. One of the things that Karen and I have both noticed in our time working with groups is that sometimes anxiety comes in, which is perfectly normal and where that anxiety resides is sometimes misidentified. What we mean by this is that sometimes I may be responding to a thing that I think is a concern that someone else has and in fact, without realizing it, I'm responding to my own concern about that thing. So we want to explore a little bit here today where those things come from, how we tend to misidentify them, what we can do about them, so that we can actually deal with them in a more effective way.

Karen:

One of the things to get into here a little bit is when was the last time you were in a group and somebody said something to the effect of, "I'm feeling anxious about this thing." My experience is that doesn't happen very often. And I don't think that's because people don't feel anxious very often. I think it's because we don't in our culture generally have a practice of expressing our emotions, especially not our discomfort. Even anger is probably more acceptable than I'm uncomfortable, I'm anxious, I'm worried about something. All of that isn't particularly invited I think particularly in corporate culture. But even in more nonprofit or collaborative group type cultures, we bring the mainstream culture in. There's definitely the "Buck up, don't be a crybaby," all that stuff that we probably heard in our childhood growing up. School is a lot of where we learn how to be in groups because, boy, were we. So there's a tendency not to name it. And I'm going to suggest that if we're not naming it out loud, odds are we're not naming it for ourselves either. It's actually much easier to not say the thing out loud if I haven't said it to myself. So we don't.

Paul:

Yeah. And I think one of the ways of disguising it and the way that we actually end up fooling ourselves around a lot of these things is that we present these concerns more as objective qualities of the thing rather than our reaction to the thing. So we say things like,"Well, the problem with that is..." as opposed to, "What I'm concerned about that is..." So we actually project them outward. I think that that actually happens often at a subconscious level. We don't even realize that the feeling that we have in response to anything comes from the story we tell ourselves about its meaning. There's an interpretive aspect to it. We don't actually have feelings about things in the world. We have feelings about what we perceive to be the case or the story we tell ourselves about the thing out in the world. So we don't even recognize the piece of us that is involved in the generation of the feeling often. And that, I think, gets to where you're talking about it where we've been conditioned to deny that we actually have any involvement with it or that it's about us at all. It's not about us, it's about the thing. So I think part of being able to recognize that is to start to use language that actually recognizes that. To be able to say, "I have this concern." And and as you pointed out, that can be incredibly countercultural.

Karen:

Yeah. And I think the other piece is that often there's a culture says, "Don't bring the problem unless you have a solution," that kind of thing. And so there's this sense of, "If I'm concerned..." or maybe all I have is a feeling, maybe I don't have a thought yet, well, I sure better come up with one. And then I skip right over the feeling and land on the thought, which probably isn't my best thought. Whereas if I can start with, "Something about this doesn't feel right," if we can create a culture in our collaborative spaces where it's wanted and encouraged to say,"It doesn't feel quite right to me, I haven't figured out why yet." I don't have a thought yet, all I've got is a feeling, and I can say that. Then there can be a conversation. And it's actually in the interaction that I'm likely to get my own wisdom, my own knowledge, my own thought coming forward. So something in me knows there's something I miss about this. And it may be that it's a really major flaw in the thing being talked about for the group. It may be that it's reminded me of a thing that happened to me before, that as it turns out isn't actually relevant. But I don't know the difference between those until we have a chance to talk through it. And so if the group can hang with me, and encourage me, and ask questions, it can go a lot of ways. One thing is if I say it, somebody else may then be brave enough to say it, and they may have the thought. They may be a little further along. And so there's that part of it. It may be that my uncertainty and objection to it gets talked about, and I go, "Okay, I'm seeing my objection is my own internal thing. It's actually about my past experience, or my other thing. It actually doesn't apply in this case. Okay, I'm good now." And now I can be fully behind it in a way that I never would have been if I didn't go through that process and just sort of let it roll and went along with this niggling feeling. And then, of course, the other possibility is that as we work through it, the actual problem that does exist becomes clear to the group. And the whole group goes, "Whoa, we're really glad that came up." So it can go a lot of different ways. And the only way you get any of those benefits is to engage with curiosity and a safe space, even if all you've got is the initial feeling.

Paul:

Engaging in that process of mutual exploration a collective exploration of that concern can be really powerful and really useful. And it as you point out, can bring you to any one of those conclusions. Unfortunately, the response that we usually get as the, as you point out, "Don't bring up a problem if unless you have a solution," or "Well, you shouldn't be worried about that. You shouldn't feel that way." That's my favorite response telling people how they should and shouldn't feel. And we do it all the time. But what's interesting about that is that's actually the case of the escalating anxiety. Because you are concerned about a particular thing. And I probably have some concerns as well. But I maybe more concerned about, "Can we get through this? Can we just make a decision and move on?" And now you bring up a concern or objection. And now that heightens my sense of, "Oh, we're never going to get through this. This is horrible. We shouldn't have..." And so now, I start blaming you for having brought it up and trying to shut that down and push the genie back into the bottle. But that's an anxiety response on my part. I don't see how I am participating in the perpetuation of the problem. Because this is one of those cycles. You bring up a concern, I try to shut back down. We're both contributing to that recurring pattern, but I can't see that I have a part of it at all, because I'm likely to just say, "Well, Karen, just always bringing up these problems. She's so negative. She's such a naysayer." That's actually an expression of my anxiety about the process and my anxiety of the thing that's going on. So that's sort of the second place where this surprised anxiety. I can think that what I'm feeling is not about me, that what I'm feeling is about an objective thing in the world. I can also feel the source of the problem is somebody else. And that's another way that I can just not notice it.

Karen:

Of course, I'm on the other side of it going, you know, "Paul's trying to rush everything through, and my needs aren't being met, and Paul's so dismissive of me," because I'm not seeing the urgency that you feel. It may be that you're seeing an urgency I don't and we do need to move quickly on it. Or not. But we'll never get there if we're not bringing it up. And I think there is a balance here, because there is also a need for efficiency. So we're saying have a safe space to talk about these things, be able to bring these things up. But also, I think there's a personal work piece here, and a commitment that we each need to have to starting to pay attention to what is going on in me. This isn't a thing you learn overnight, especially if we've had decades and decades of learning the habit of not sharing emotions. But even as you're not sharing them getting more and more aware. Just having a consciousness of, "What am I feeling?" Before I make an objection to something, can I just pause and ask myself,"What's the emotion behind that? Is there emotional piece for me? Where might that be coming from?" Doing that personal work of exploring what's going on in me hopefully, before I speak, but you know, maybe it happens afterwards. There are lots of places in the cycle where that growth can happen. But if each of us is doing that work, then the group work becomes easier.

Paul:

The other place that I want to point to with this is actually that where it can be hidden is I can think that I'm addressing someone else's concerns, when in fact, I'm trying to address my own. It feels incredibly altruistic. Like, "I know that Karen is probably worried about this particular thing. This is a concern that she has. And so..." But I never actually say those words. I never actually ask,"Karen, are you worried about this particular thing? Because I have some information that might address it." Instead, I just start presenting, and it just starts coming out. And Karen, meanwhile, is sitting here going, "Why is he bringing this up? What is this?" And it's because I don't realize that that's not about Karen's concern. It's actually about mine. That maybe I'm trying to convince myself but I think that I'm doing on behalf of another person. And so I think that that's a different shade of how we don't see that we have it, that it may be coming up from us. And because it seems so helpful we don't feel like we're getting angry or frustrated or things like that, we think we're being helpful, it's the other person who's getting frustrated, because they just don't know why you won't shut up that we can, again, completely miss the fact that it's coming up out of our own need and our own sense of needing to deal with this. And again, I think that the key piece there really is the awareness of "Why am I bringing this up, and have I validated that the other person is actually concerned about it or not?"

Karen:

Yeah, and I want to tie this back to what we talked about in Episode 91 around giving and receiving, which is we have a culture that says it's great to give. It's great to be concerned about somebody else. But it's not okay to be on the receiving end or to be asking for a thing that I need. And so I think we've gotten so good at reframing our own needs that I can present my own need though it's your need. And then I'm much more comfortable with that. And the only problem is you're trying to figure out what the need is because it doesn't match. And sometimes they do. I mean, sometimes it works out, okay, because you do have that need. But I think what you're pointing to is where there is that mismatch, and I just want to link it to that idea of what the cultural standard is around asking, needing, receiving that kind of thing. And if we can get good with the idea that we want to be both giving and receiving and that's all part of the same system we want all of that to be showing up and we want all of us in all of those roles it helps with the culture shift that we're aiming towards.

Paul:

Absolutely. And of course, it doesn't help that while we're going through this process, we are in that heightened state of anxiety and thus we're cognitively impaired. So our ability to self-reflect and even notice our own behavior isn't necessarily at its finest in those moments. So this is hard. And it's why practice is actually really useful. And the languaging piece around it being in a in a space where you're comfortable to actually say things like" I am worried about" or "I need" or "I would like" to get your mouth used to making those sounds goes a long way towards helping your brain actually recognize when that's what it really means, even though it's trying to say something else.

Karen:

Yeah, I think that that piece about it's hard to do in real time, which is why you need to do it when it's not big. Or afterwards. Like the debrief after. "Okay, that didn't go well. What happened there?" If I can rehearse that situation over again and replay it, and what would I have said in that case? And I think all of this work is best done with a partner, with another person. I could sit down at home with my journal and write it by myself. And that's one way. But I think we get further usually with another human being and the connection around that. And frankly, the empathy that says, "Yep, I've been that crazy, too. Yep, that's a thing that happens for me, too." Because it is so human, and we deny that piece of our humanity so routinely in our culture. So the point here is to know that things are not always what they seem. And get curious about what is going on here and willing to ask ourselves, "Is it me?"

Paul:

Yeah, so to sum up, you know, what we've really been exploring here today has been how we often don't recognize that we are the one who's bringing an anxiety or concerned to a situation, because we convince ourselves somehow that either it's an objective feature of whatever it is being discussed, or that it actually lives in someone else. It's not our concern, it's their concern. Either what we're doing in that moment is trying to push that concern away that anxiety away which just makes things worse, or we're maybe trying to address what we think is someone else's concern, but is actually our own, and not realizing it. So there's a lot of different patterns that can be at play here. But all of them stem from a lack of awareness that it's actually going on in us however it got there. And so that the first key to working with it is developing that awareness. You can do that in a lot of different ways. Journaling is one. Working with a partner. Working in a small group in a space where where you can actually think about that. And then also being able to say, in a debrief, "Oh, here's what I noticed about why I was so worked up in that conversation. It's because I was concerned about this." Spotting it after the fact is building the skill. You're spotting it sooner and sooner and sooner, because it's super hard to do in real time. And then practicing that, "So what would you like to do instead? What words would you like to use? How would you like to talk about it?" And for some people, again, working that out in journaling is good, for some people working with a partner. But getting the ability to behave in a different way when you notice that it's coming up for you. How can you do something that's actually congruent with what it is that you really want?

Karen:

That's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul:

And I'm Paul Tevis. And this has been Employing Differences.