How do I stop catastrophizing about work?
December 22, 2021 11:48 AM Subscribe
I catastrophize a lot with work things. How do I give credit to myself and other people, acknowledge mistakes might happen but keep things in perspective, and be more easygoing? Looking for tips, articles, quotes, personal experiences, anything that could be helpful to reframe things.
I'm in the finance/accounting department at my workplace, and my roles and responsibilities are not very defined. But where I work, nobody's R&R are that well defined (is this normal?). My company is pretty large, and different global groups and local teams are very interdependent on each other, and managers often don't know the nitty gritty of what needs to be done, and often leave decision making to others, and so we're encouraged to take initiative and even to fail...which sounds good at first. But to me, a very detailed, methodical, procedural person...when something isn't done and done properly, I go on a downward spiral of worry and feeling guilt and foreseeing things failing and people blaming me, and shamefully even internally blaming other people, and ultimately feeling responsible for every "failure" even if things weren't fully under my control.
Examples:
> I approve orders to a certain supplier. The supplier wasn't technically set up in our purchasing system, which someone else is responsible for, but she told me late in the process that she hadn't been able to complete it. I know that if we don't have formal purchase orders approved in our system by the end of the year, certain services could be cut off in January and have "dire" impact. So over Christmas break, I've been trying to babysit the process by contacting several different people, trying to elevate it to other people. Sounds kinda normal right?, but this has actually been bothering my sleep because I didn't know how it would conclude as I don't actually have any firsthand control over this process anyway, and people who can do something are not being responsive unless I push them. And I can't help but feel annoyance at the person who told me late in the process this wasn't done yet.
> A few weeks ago, my manager approved a draft report I'd worked on with very short notice. I thought the report wasn't final, some content was new to me, and so I asked if we'd be able to review and update it later (he said we could, but didn't seem worried). Later though, my boss passed the draft report up the chain, and it was shown to a higher up corporate leadership, who caught an error in assumptions. My boss then asked me to explain it to local management, and as I struggled through it, a key stakeholder in management actually got emotional about it. I was so worried and trying to figure out what had gone wrong, that I skipped lunch and got practically nothing else done for a couple of days. Finally I quietly buckled down and created a plan to fix the gaps in assumptions and was a bit more direct in my questions/updating people of status (successfully, the issue/report was updated and I learned a few things in the process).
My bosses have been ok with me and I've been pretty close with all of them. But I've often gotten feedback to be more confident because they believe that I know more than I give myself credit for. I do think a lot of times, some issues are caused by me not communicating/asking questions enough because I get trapped in thoughts and planning or assume the answers will come to me later. When I force myself to put things in perspective, I almost have to laugh at the extent that silly things that worry me, and realize that myself and other people are doing their best. But my natural state is.... WORRY!
I would be grateful for any feedback on how to take catastrophizing out of the equation.
I'm in the finance/accounting department at my workplace, and my roles and responsibilities are not very defined. But where I work, nobody's R&R are that well defined (is this normal?). My company is pretty large, and different global groups and local teams are very interdependent on each other, and managers often don't know the nitty gritty of what needs to be done, and often leave decision making to others, and so we're encouraged to take initiative and even to fail...which sounds good at first. But to me, a very detailed, methodical, procedural person...when something isn't done and done properly, I go on a downward spiral of worry and feeling guilt and foreseeing things failing and people blaming me, and shamefully even internally blaming other people, and ultimately feeling responsible for every "failure" even if things weren't fully under my control.
Examples:
> I approve orders to a certain supplier. The supplier wasn't technically set up in our purchasing system, which someone else is responsible for, but she told me late in the process that she hadn't been able to complete it. I know that if we don't have formal purchase orders approved in our system by the end of the year, certain services could be cut off in January and have "dire" impact. So over Christmas break, I've been trying to babysit the process by contacting several different people, trying to elevate it to other people. Sounds kinda normal right?, but this has actually been bothering my sleep because I didn't know how it would conclude as I don't actually have any firsthand control over this process anyway, and people who can do something are not being responsive unless I push them. And I can't help but feel annoyance at the person who told me late in the process this wasn't done yet.
> A few weeks ago, my manager approved a draft report I'd worked on with very short notice. I thought the report wasn't final, some content was new to me, and so I asked if we'd be able to review and update it later (he said we could, but didn't seem worried). Later though, my boss passed the draft report up the chain, and it was shown to a higher up corporate leadership, who caught an error in assumptions. My boss then asked me to explain it to local management, and as I struggled through it, a key stakeholder in management actually got emotional about it. I was so worried and trying to figure out what had gone wrong, that I skipped lunch and got practically nothing else done for a couple of days. Finally I quietly buckled down and created a plan to fix the gaps in assumptions and was a bit more direct in my questions/updating people of status (successfully, the issue/report was updated and I learned a few things in the process).
My bosses have been ok with me and I've been pretty close with all of them. But I've often gotten feedback to be more confident because they believe that I know more than I give myself credit for. I do think a lot of times, some issues are caused by me not communicating/asking questions enough because I get trapped in thoughts and planning or assume the answers will come to me later. When I force myself to put things in perspective, I almost have to laugh at the extent that silly things that worry me, and realize that myself and other people are doing their best. But my natural state is.... WORRY!
I would be grateful for any feedback on how to take catastrophizing out of the equation.
One other piece of advice from my therapist which I also found useful - ride the anxiety train to the last stop. That is, entertain the thought of “what is the absolute worst thing that could happen as a result of what I’m worried about? What would I do in that situation?” In my case, this might look something like this:
- I missed a step when compiling this widget-making guide, oh no. Now my team don’t have the right instructions for this widget.
- If the team have the wrong instructions, they might make a mistake putting the widget together.
- If they put the widget together wrong, it might not fit correctly or there might be a delay in delivering it.
- If there’s a delay in delivery, the client might get upset.
- If the client get upset, I might get disciplined or lose my job.
- Etc., etc.
Usually once I’ve reached about this “train stop” it’s started to feel hyperbolic even to myself and I’m able to circle back. Then I can revisit the previous stops and see that 1) my team are experienced at looking at widgets and can usually tell when there’s a piece missing, even if the instructions don’t tell them what to do. 2) Even if they do make a mistake putting the widget together, it’s very likely that the widget-testing we do would catch it, and we can just take that piece out or replace it with one that works. 3) Even if the entire widget doesn’t work, we can take it back and work on it a bit more before handing it over to the client. 4) Even if the broken widget goes to the client, they do their own testing on it before accepting it, and they’d likely catch the error, in which case we can work with them to fix it. And so on and so on.
posted by gleiris at 4:33 PM on December 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
- I missed a step when compiling this widget-making guide, oh no. Now my team don’t have the right instructions for this widget.
- If the team have the wrong instructions, they might make a mistake putting the widget together.
- If they put the widget together wrong, it might not fit correctly or there might be a delay in delivering it.
- If there’s a delay in delivery, the client might get upset.
- If the client get upset, I might get disciplined or lose my job.
- Etc., etc.
Usually once I’ve reached about this “train stop” it’s started to feel hyperbolic even to myself and I’m able to circle back. Then I can revisit the previous stops and see that 1) my team are experienced at looking at widgets and can usually tell when there’s a piece missing, even if the instructions don’t tell them what to do. 2) Even if they do make a mistake putting the widget together, it’s very likely that the widget-testing we do would catch it, and we can just take that piece out or replace it with one that works. 3) Even if the entire widget doesn’t work, we can take it back and work on it a bit more before handing it over to the client. 4) Even if the broken widget goes to the client, they do their own testing on it before accepting it, and they’d likely catch the error, in which case we can work with them to fix it. And so on and so on.
posted by gleiris at 4:33 PM on December 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
Does mindfulness work for you? The meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg has a book called Real Happiness at work that has some good perspectives.
posted by matildaben at 7:36 PM on December 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by matildaben at 7:36 PM on December 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
I get a lot of mileage out of in addition to skipping to the end of the anxiety train with worst case (which usually seems pretty silly I realize when I verbalize it!) but also "How will I feel in 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days, 50 days?" And usually I get a ton of perspective.
I have been 2 months at a new job that's been a looooot to take in so I've been really having to dig deep into my anxious and catastrophizing feelings.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 11:11 AM on December 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
I have been 2 months at a new job that's been a looooot to take in so I've been really having to dig deep into my anxious and catastrophizing feelings.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 11:11 AM on December 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
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One thing that’s helped me significantly in a similar-sounding environment (big project with lots of moving pieces, lots of collaborators with sometimes unclear or inconsistent processes for implementation/review, items shifting priority or scope sometimes to tight deadlines, etc.) was having a frank conversation with my project lead about my concerns and how I was finding it hard to disengage from some of this sort of nebulous stress. This may not be feasible for you depending on your relationship, but what they told me might help you - they reiterated that the success or failure of a particular task is a team effort, and that it’s unreasonable for me to take on the pressure of feeling like delivery is totally dependent on me getting my job exactly right, or that any issues that come up are my primary responsibility to fix.
Also, not sure if you have an on-call or off-hours rotation on your team, or whether it’s regular for folks to put in time outside of core hours - but my team does, and it was hard for a while for me to disengage fully on e.g. weekends when I wasn’t scheduled to be working but when my team were implementing some thing that I’d handed off to them. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was to immediately stop checking in or even thinking about work when I was off, and to trust that they’d call me if they needed me but they’d work hard to fix whatever they needed to on their own. And guess what, I’ve never been called, ever, even when I was obsessively checking Slack at the weekend and worrying about some thing or other going a bit sideways in the moment. The team were always able to course-correct on their own and it was always fine. My fretting contributed nothing whatsoever to the effort and just served to wear me out. Once I really took that in, that helped a lot.
It also helped a lot that I had management who were very willing to make this explicit and to help me defend my time - but it sounds like your leadership are also supportive and you have a reputation for competence. I found therapy to be helpful in untying some of these knots and resetting some behaviors, on top of my talks with my team leads - if you have access to it, that might help you too?
Good luck!
posted by gleiris at 4:22 PM on December 22, 2021 [1 favorite]