Work Anxiety and Egotism
A vain anxiety has hobbled my efficacy in times past. Recently, reflection precipitated by career changes and insights from my S.O. have helped to clarify the dynamics at play.
Recording theses notes has helped me overcome the dynamics described to a significant extent. Though the confessions here are trite and more than a little embarrassing, I feel that publishing them will help me further exorcise the unhealthy patterns. More importantly, it is possible that they might be of value to others who face similar difficulties.
Ruminations set to
Anxiety as a Mood
Objects of my Anxiety
I often feel very anxious. The objects of my anxiety tend to fall under one of these categories:
- work performance
- social interaction
- death or injury (of self or loved ones)
- squandering my time (and thus my life)
Moodiness
The grounds for such anxious moods are not the object on which the anxiety focuses. Rather, some concern, a pervasive care, first enables a mood to arise and bend our intention. As Heidegger notes in Being and Time (Heidegger 1967), a frightening object can only appear as frightening because one is experiencing in the mood of fear:
…to be affected by the unserviceable, resistant, or threatening character of that which is ready-to-hand, becomes ontologically possible only in so far as Being-in as such has been determined existentially beforehand in such a manner that what it encounters within-the-world can “matter” to it in this way. The fact that this sort of thing can “matter” to it is grounded in one’s state-of-mind; and as a state-of-mind it has already disclosed the world—as something by which it can be threatened, for instance. Only something which is in the state-of-mind of fearing (or fearlessness) can discover that what is environmentally ready-to-hand is threatnening. Dasein’s openness to the world is constituted existentially by the attunement of a state-of-mind.
Thus, my anxious obsession over details from my work presuppose some basic concern which makes the bouts of anxiety possible.1
There may be any number of factors contributing to the advent of an anxious state of mind:
- caffeine
- lack of sleep
- bad news
- our horrendous political circumstance
- etc.
But these factors can only catalyze anxiety because there is a structure of care that’s makes the anxiousness a possible disposition. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they lead to sadness, cynicism, despair, anger, etc.?
Characterization of my Mood of Anxiety
I find adequate characterization of my mood in the etyma of anxiety offered by etymonline.com:
anxious (adj.)
1620s, “greatly troubled by uncertainties,” from Latin anxius “solicitous, uneasy, troubled in mind” (also “causing anxiety, troublesome”), from angere, anguere “to choke, squeeze,” figuratively “to torment, cause distress” (from PIE root *angh- “tight, painfully constricted, painful”). The same image is in Serbo-Croatian tjeskoba “anxiety,” literally “tightness, narrowness.” Meaning “earnestly desirous” (as in anxious to please) is from 1742. Related: Anxiously; anxiousness.
The speculated PIE root *angh- brings it to a point:
… the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit amhu- “narrow,” amhah “anguish;” Armenian anjuk “narrow;” Lithuanian ankštas “narrow;” Greek ankhein “to squeeze,” ankhone “a strangling;” Latin angere “to throttle, torment;” Old Irish cum-ang “straitness, want;” Old English enge “narrow, painful,” Old Norse angra “to grieve, vex, distress,” Gothic aggwus “narrow.”
I feel my anxiety to have a dyadic quality. It is marked by fixation on a specious dilemma. E.g.,
- Will I be praised, or will I be blamed?
- Am I incompetent or is my assignment impossible?
- Am I unbearable or are these people bigots?
- Will I transform the entire company with the success of this project, or will it’s inevitable failure lead to my termination?
Am I an insignificant and impotent victim of an ineluctable reality, or am I an extraordinary hero who can help set the world right?
My thoughts flit back and forth between the alternatives and the (felt) enormity of each amplifies my worry or longing for the other. This dynamic produces a pathological loop of positive feedback. In constraining my sense of possibility and narrowing my focus, the process hyper-inflates my ego. Simultaneously and reciprocally, it shrinks the significance of the world in which my self should be seeking a modest place.
Forgetting the Objective of the Work
The mindset that drives me to anxiety at work feeds on praise and is terrified of being shamed, blamed, or otherwise denigrated. This work anxiety invariably stems from fear of blame and/or a ravenous hunger for praise.2
Note that “praise” and “blame” here should be understood in the widest sense. It includes:
- encouraging nods
- expression of thanks
- promotions, raises
- accumulating “metrics” of productivity
etc.
This form of feedback has many obvious problems. E.g.,
- Is the source of that feedback a valid/adequate judge?
- What if one is praised by incompetent people for trivial deeds?
- What if one is praised by evil people for evil deeds?
- Even if one is praised by a worthy expert, what if they are mistaken in this case, and the product of the work ends up being a net detriment?
- What if the metrics are miscalibrated or incorrectly focused?
- What if the recipient doesn’t really deserve to bear blame or receive
praise?
- What if they didn’t do the work in question?
- Or perhaps they only contributed a final touch, and the bulk should go elsewhere?
- What is the point of the work?
- Is it to receive praise and aggrandize oneself?
- If so, gross and too bad :( Better find something better to do.
- Is it to receive praise and aggrandize oneself?
- Is the source of that feedback a valid/adequate judge?
The objective of the work
Work worth doing should manifest a worthwhile change, whether that be an improved process, product, or circumstance. We should seek to work for the sake of good works and meaningful improvement. Ideally, then, we would not be driven by pride at all, and the pursuit of praise would be cut off in principle. But if we are going to succumb to an egotistic motive, let us at least take pride in the product and result of the work itself.
This focus should help us avoid mere task fulfillment and focus instead on systems thinking, since evaluation requires considering the objective reality that will be altered by our efforts and the context within with the work takes place. Whereas task fulfillment can easily leave one doing meaningless or regressive things to meet ungrounded and specious goals, system thinking helps ensure the work is effective and meaningful for our organizations as a whole.
Honoring the Intersubjective Condition of Possibility for Meaningful Work
Every mood actualizes both revelations and velations: in the way things manifest under the guise of any mood, some aspects are hidden and others shown.
Among the things revealed by the tension between my hunger for praise and my fear of blame is the vital significance of intersubjectivity. For seeking praise and avoiding blame are degenerate and measly ways of relating to the being of others. So even if the praise/blame dynamic is unhealthy and pathetic, it is nonetheless a pattern of relation rooted in concern with others.
There’s nothing more advanced than relating with others. There’s nothing more advanced than communication — compassionate communication. (Chödrön 2005)
In my estimation, there can be no meaning or value to our work outside of our connections with our fellows (with this fellowship extended as widely as we can possible conceive). The urgency I feel in my inappropriate concern with blame and praise is connected to this real basis for significance. But the praise/blame dynamic is marred by the vice of concern with others for the sake of oneself. As a result, the communication driven by this dynamic is consumptive rather than compassionate.
Provisional Conclusion
The dynamics of the feedback manifest in the praise/blame dichotomy are pathological in nature. While the concern that underwrites that dynamic intimates something near to the core of any tenable table of values (ime), its specific structure short circuits proper evaluation and degrades decision making.
In letting my work and estimation of self be subordinated to the merely dyadic relation between another’s expressions and my own activity, I become vulnerable to an ungrounded positive feedback loop. Proper estimation should mediate any evaluation of a work’s worth through the objective conditions in which it takes place and be concerned first and foremost with the real impact it will have in transforming those conditions.
References
Footnotes:
Since I have invoked Heidegger explicitly, and made some (shallow) use of his existential analysis, I should clarify: the kind of anxiety I mean here is the utterly mundane, “ontical” kind. I am here concerned with being more effective by being less paralyzed by stupid worries at work (and in the world), not with disclosing the fundamental structures of being and existence.
The dynamic of this particular fear/aversion is not the root of my work anxiety, but it is a powerful force discernible under the surface of every anxious episode. The question of the ultimate enabling condition for this disposition must remain open for the moment, as perhaps is should for all time. The attempt to deduce a single motive for a mood is probably a category mistake, and a misapplication of foundationalism.