Ambition and Anxiety
Prolonged anxious thinking has debilitating effects. It makes people feel constantly on edge, unable to focus on the task at hand and frustrated that they can’t meet their goals.
At Vienna Praxis we have developed a clinical expertise for working with people who demand a lot from themselves. Ambition can be very invigorating but not if one’s anxiety constantly gets in the way. This might resonate for you if you find yourself suffering from mental exhaustion and a nagging frustration that your goals are repeatedly thwarted by self doubt, bouts of anxiety or panic attacks.
Anxiety and Ambition
Anxiety and ambition are two sides of the same coin. This seems counterintuitive at first as we regard ambition as a positive trait and anxiety as an unwelcome interference. Ambition fills us with the strong desire to act on or achieve something that does not come easy. It requires determination and tenacity. We want something very badly and have to tolerate not knowing if we will get it. This state of “not knowing” is the main driver of our anxiety. Faced with uncertainty, our brain’s alarm system, called the amygdala, accelerates into overdrive.
Another insidious symptom of anxiety is the belief that one has to be ready to act immediately when faced with a difficult situation. This has been referred to as the thought-action fusion. A non-anxious mind is able to keep these states separated and use thoughts as a safe way to play through possible actions without consequences. An anxious mind conflates thought and action, which leads to impulsivity and the fear that other people’s imagined thoughts can turn into dangerous actions at any moment.
This has instantaneous physical and mental effects, typically referred to as the fight-or-flight response. From an evolutionary perspective, this reaction to uncertainty made sense (will the animal attack me or not), and the way the amygdala operates has not changed: it still automatically sends out danger signals when faced with “not knowing.” It's the underlying uncertainties that are different today. Instead of wild animals, we are concerned with getting into a highly selective graduate program, wanting our start-up to succeed, making partner at our firm, and so on. Our increasingly complex societal structure equates success with ambition. Our amygdala equates ambition with uncertainty and unleashes all the classic symptoms of anxiety.
How can I break the negative ambition - anxiety cycle
The wrong approach:
You might want to say to yourself: “Let me give up some of my goals and hopes and accept that I’m simply too weak and anxious to change my position in life.” Tempting as it may seem when you feel crushed under pressure, this avoidance approach is self-defeating. It enables your anxiety to hijack your ambition by rendering you emotionally numb and cynical about other people’s success.
You don't have to curb your enthusiasm for getting ahead in life. Being on friendly terms with your ambition is important and a wonderful testimony to your inner strength and creative vision. Dreaming and wanting and longing fills us with anticipatory joy and giddiness for life.
Abandoning your ambition may come at the cost of losing this life energy. Don’t let your anxiety extol such a high price from you. This is the wrong approach.
The right approach:
Embrace the intrinsic duality of ambition and anxiety. You can learn to accept the discomfort of anxiety as an emotional state that has its own utility. The more you understand the function of your anxious mind, the more agency you will achieve over it. You certainly cannot disable your amygdala’s danger signaling function. But you can train another brain mechanism located in the higher-up prefrontal cortex that has the capacity to reason and judge.
Consider the following thought: “The idea of my professional future fills me with anxiety about all the things that could go wrong.”
To this you can learn to say to yourself: “I know that uncertainty about the future triggers my amygdala to release danger signals. I also know that this system is very primitive and does not differentiate between true danger and false alarm. By relying on my higher-up cortical brain capacity for pros and cons formulations I can come up with a risk assessment and professional development plan that allows me to act on my ambition in a safe way. I do not need to rule out all uncertainty. I derive strength from my enthusiasm for a successful professional career, and I use this strength to cope with the remaining level of anxiety that I can accept as an intrinsic part of my ambition and a motivator for change".
The clinicians at Vienna Praxis are experts at helping high powered professionals address their inner struggle and help them find renewed strength to make more confident decisions in life. If you are interested in a 15 minute free phone consultation to see if this would be a good match for you, please contact us.