2. Anxiety
What
Types of anxiety
To say that "stress" is everywhere in the IT world is
commonsensical, but to claim the same about anxiety or fear is
perhaps less evident. Still, in this chapter I will argue that it
has far more influence on our day to day lives than you might
think. Even more so,
fear is the root cause of stress.
Consider the following three stressful situations:
1.
It is Sunday evening. For some reason, you decide to check your
work emails and discover one from your lead engineer. It's
subject is "Urgent: 1-on-1 Monday". When you open it, it is just
a meeting request without further information.
2.
You have been working with
git
your whole career, and while it still has its mysteries you're
pretty proficient with it. In his first dev meeting with the
team, your new CTO states that he is a big fan of
fossil
and expects the team to migrate to fossil ASAP.
3.
You're rewriting an API for manipulating CSV data. There is a
test-suite for the old API that mocks various CSV inputs --
different dialects, data with or without headers, different
delimiters, non-standard encodings, and so on. However, you've
never studied CSV in detail and have only limited time to spend
on the project.
These three scenarios have two things in common. The first is that
they are clearly stressful. The second is that in all three cases
the underlying emotion is fear.
/1 Fear of abandonment
The first scenario is stressful because the email would instil a
sense of dread for the mysterious "urgent" 1-on-1 meeting. The
context strongly suggests that something is wrong and that the
meeting will not be a pleasant on. So this "dread" ultimately
boils down to anxiety that someone will be angry with us. This is
an example of what we generally call fear of abandonment.
/2 Fear of change
The second scenario causes stress because it turns our
professional world upside-down. Working with git for
version control is difficult enough to master, but now someone
comes in from the outside and wants to change that overnight. This
is fear of change.
/3 Fear of failure
The last scenario can be hard to manage because we can easily
start doubting ourselves, if faced with difficult problems and
limited knowledge or experience. In IT, things are either right or
wrong, so you cannot bluff yourself out of it. You need to
deliver. This is fear of failure.
Fear versus FEAR
People are fearful creatures, and, sometimes, fear is a normal
emotional response to certain situations. Most people will
experience fear when they go skydiving or when someone points a
gun at them. Such fear is a normal, evolutionary beneficient
response to dangerous situations.
Yet there are many situations where fear (you could call it FEAR
to distinguish both) is not a helpful emotion, but rather
limits our day-to-day functioning. We might
experience anxiety when we need to make a phone call, when our
child climbs a chair, when we need to say something in public,
when we accidentally ate something past expiration date, ...
There is a growing
list of phobias
that modern people seem to suffer from more and more, but even in
our day-to-day lives fear is everywhere. So when you come to think
of it
fear dominates our lives. I challenge you to think of
any difficult situation, personally or professionally, and see if
you can't analyse it in terms of one of the three fears. It is
almost always part of the equation...
Why
But why is fear so dominant in our lives?
The answer lies in our brains.
Triune brain
The so-called
triune brain
is a model that distinguishes three types of brains in the
evolution of the verbrate forebrain.
/1 Reptilian complex
Our oldest and most basic brain complex we share with reptiles. It
is about 500 million years old and has a limited but very powerful
learning capacity, called
classical conditioning
(e.g. Pavlovian reflexes). It is almost completely shut off from
the neocortex and free will.
/2 Palaeomammalian complex
Over the course of evolution, mammals have developed another type
of brain structure (about 300 to 150 million years old) that is
called the
limbic system. This palaeomammalian brain also has a learning capacity, which
is called
operant conditioning
(learning through stimuli of reward or punishment). This is the
brain that houses emotions, body language and social
communication.
/3 Neomammalian complex
Humans, finally, developed a third brain system, the the cerebral
neocortex,
which makes us capable of intelligent, rational thought,
decision-making and morality. It gives us means for self-control,
languages, self-awareness, and self-organization. It is a powerful
tool, but also less immediate and primary than the other two
systems, that function primarily subconsciously.
Anxiety and the brain
This brief history of the brain shows that stress (reptilian) and
fear (limbic system) largely
operate outside of our conscious control. This is why
we cannot reason away feelings of stress or anxiety.
Secondly, it is also important to realize that
fear always elicts a stress response. In the light of
the previous chapter, this means that if we want to adequately
deal with stress we need to deal with fear as its root factor.
Fear memory
Third, we should also be aware just how powerful the fear system
is. Two neurological systems are vital for this.
The first is the
amygdala, one of two almond-shaped clusters of nuclei that are part of
the limbic system responsible for the processing of memory,
decision making, and emotional responses — including fear,
anxiety, and aggression:
The amygdalae perform primary roles in the
formation and storage of emotional memories . These
can be positive, but also negative. For instance, during fear
conditioning, sensory stimuli reach the basolateral complexes of
the amygdalae, where they form associations with memories of the
stimuli.
From an evolutionary perspective, it makes perfect sense that
animals should develop a system for fear memory, as this mechanism
serves to protect them against future danger. However, in cases of
extreme or continuous fear the amygdala can also become
overactive and therefore overreact to small stimuli
and taint all sorts of experiences as emotionally negative and
fearful.
A second neurological structure involved in fear memory is the
HPA axis, which controls reactions to stress and regulates many body
processes, including digestion, the immune system, mood and
emotions, sexuality, and energy storage and expenditure. With
regards to stress and fear it works in two ways. One is the fast
production of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. The
second is a long-lasting component in that the HPA axis is
capable, through what is called
long-term potentiation, of changing existing neurological circuits and building new
ones, by which
fear responses are embedded in our system.
How
We have now seen that the brain is very capable of learning and
embedding fear in our bodies. Not in a metaphorical sense, but
right down to our neurological pathways.
Fortunately, we also have the ability to unlearn and erase fear.
Unlearning fear
As fear can be learned through the strengthening of connections
between neurons it can also be unlearned by weakening those same
connections. In order to accomplish that, we can distinguish two
steps.
Face your fears
First you need to face your fears by acknowledging, retelling and
reliving them. This draws on the research about so-called
prolonged exposure therapy, a form of behavior therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy
designed to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. The way this
works is, in fact, quite common-sensical. If you are not aware of
your fears or always hesitant to look them in the eye, you will
never get to know them through and through, and never be able to
conquer them. In fact, if you keep acting out of fear you are
doomed to (unconciously) repeat your mistakes and pain (repetition compulsion).
So go ahead and take the bull by the horns. Whenever
you notice a fear response in yourself, become really aware of it
and confront it. It is actually a good thing, because it heralds
the opportunity to face it and conquer it. We know that
neuroplasticity — the brain's ability to
change and adapt — is triggered especially by situations
that require a learning effort. However, I also need to warn you
about doing this in the case of severe trauma, as this might cause
panic attacks or other acute reactions or consequences. In such
cases you should really only confront these fears under the
guidance of a therapist.
Positive experiences
Once you know your fears, you can strive to experience new,
positive things that
instill confidence instead of fear. Again, this is
not (only) a metaphor, but you can take it literally on a
neurophsyiological level. Creating positive experiences and
memories has an inhibitory effect on the threat and fear reflex.
Ideally, the positive experiences that you strive for should be in
a similar context as the negative.
git revisited
Let's look at an example. Suppose a junior developer has had one very bad experience with git, which has made them very fearful of git ever since. It is easy to imagine such a person avoiding git as much as possible, sticking to a number of safe commands and practices, but always remaining on edge (stress reflex!) when they have to use git.
According to this technique, this person should first go back to thhat one negative experience and really try to relive it. Experience the emotions of the moment and acknowledge the fear that is in their body at the time. The second step is then reading up on git, maybe using it extensively for one of their side-projects, and actively stretching their comfort zone with the technology. After a while, they're bound to get better and have some positive experiences, which will then slowly subvert the negative emotional memories.
Perhaps this example of "fear of version control" isn't so far-fetched? Maybe it's a good starting point to start dealing with your fears?
Erasing fear
As said these techniques for unlearning fear come from behavioral
and cognitive therapy. However, we repeatedly seen that especially
cognitive techniques are not ideally suited for handling stress
and fear which are emotional responses that are closely connected
to our physical bodies. It will come as no surprise then, that the
most effective technique for truly erasing fear also takes into
account the physical aspect of fear.
Dynamic meditation
Dynamic meditation is a form of emotional therapy developed by a
Belgian psychiatrist, Dr.
Tom Herregodts
and his team. Since 1995, he has been researching and perfecting
techniques of somatic and emotional therapy to earse fear, based
on the insights of
affective neuroscience.
Dynamic meditation goes several steps further than regular
("quiet") meditation. Not only does it aim to
rid the body of stress and tension, it also strives to
emotionally reprogram the fear memory. In this way, it combines the aforementioned "unlearning" of
fear with the bodily techniques we saw in
Stress chapter.
Dynamic meditation is a complex therapeutic technique that needs
to be carefully introduced, preferably by an experienced
therapist. At this point, we will only give a brief introduction
to the technique, and a more detailed explanation later.
As an introduction, I'd like to invite you to watch this short
documentary on Dr. Herregodts and his psychiatric practice made
by VTM2. It's in Dutch, but you
should have no problem following with the English subtitles on
(click "Watch" for a direct link with subtitles).
In the video, you can see some examples of dynamic meditation
(starting at
04:28
and especially
06:24)... On the surface, dynamic meditation might look quite
strange, scary even. It always involves
expressing anger, whether by softer techniques like
wringing a towel or pushing up against a wall, or stronger
techniques like shaking the body, shouting and hitting a cushion
with a tennis racket, which is the most common form practiced.
However, it is important to realize that in dynamic meditation
anger is never directed towards a person and always used as a
catalyst to get rid of negative emotions, never as
a negative emotion itself. We will discuss anger more in depth
in the next chapter.
Exercise
Fear list
For this week's assignment, I'd like you to first write down your 5 biggest personal and 5 biggest professional fears. The goal is to dig deep and identify, and especially feel what really threatens or scares you.
Here's a few things that might provide some inspiration:
Personal
- losing a loved one (child, partner, ...)
- being rejected by a love interest
- being homeless
Professional
- getting fired
- deleting production data
- getting mocked by colleagues
Accomplishments list
Having drafted your fear list, it is now time to see if we can pit
this list against its positive counterpart, which I will call your
"accomplishments list". What are your 5 biggest personal and
professional accomplishments? Try to spend as much time and
emotional energy on this positive list as you did on the fear
list. Ideally you should think of accomplishments that offset the
fears, so you can use them as positive experiences to unlearn your
fears, as discussed above.
For instance, these experiences might be positive counterparts of
the examples for the fear list:
Personal
- being a good parent
- getting married
- volunteering for a charity
Professional
- graduating from college
- completing a challenging project
- getting promoted