Ask Christa! How Can I Better Manage Anxiety at Work? (S4E38)

Introduction and Listener Question

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! the place where you can ask questions about how to work through business challenges and workplace issues. I'm Christa Dhimo and today’s listener question is a question I spend a lot of time on these days, especially with a couple of the CEOs I’m currently advising. It’s about experiencing anxiety at work, and I want to start by stating clearly that I’m not a psychologist or a mental health professional. As my disclaimer reads in every episode, I offer practical answers to common business challenges and workplace issues, but every situation is different. Seek out expert and specialized advice for any scenario beyond the straightforward and general answers I offer on my show.

Here's the listener question:

“I work in a good group, and I like my manager. We’re in a high stress organization with stretched resources, but it helps to be on a good team where everyone supports each other. Recently we were told there would be a re-org in Q4, which for us starts October 1st. None of us knows what that means, but I’ve been having what I think are anxiety issues ever since. I’m worried every day. I’m distracted. I’m having problems sleeping. I feel stressed out every morning and every night not knowing what’s going to happen. I’m having a hard time focusing at work, too. Our team is the best team in our department, and I believe that is because of our manager. I see other teams who feel burnt out and overworked all the time. None feel appreciated, but my team does. Our manager has a calm way about her, and she checks in on all of us daily. She knows us by who we are and spends time making sure we know she knows us. She invests in our development and cares about our interests, too. I’ve only been here three years, but I’ve seen enough to know she’s special, including how she is the only Senior Director out of seven who is a woman. I’m also a woman, and the thought of being re-org’d under one of her peers makes me very nervous. This whole situation is giving all of us a lot of concern and we don’t know what to do. I am thinking of looking for a new job just to have a fallback plan if needed, but the job market is so bad right now. How can I better manage anxiety at work?”

Hard Times are Hard

First, I want to acknowledge that our listener seems to have a wonderful manager—the type we should all aspire to be from a trust and respect perspective, and we can see through the listener’s description how impactful an engaged, supportive manager is. I also want to say… hard times are hard, and there’s no question a lot of us may be feeling more anxiety than we’re used to.  And from a business perspective, the uncertainty is real for a lot of industries right now and also for tightly-run small businesses with a global presence relying on general stability of THEIR supplies and the way in which THEY supply. Same goes for those in known volatile markets that already contend with high-risk unknowns, such as farmers who might (in any year) experience an insect or weather issue that significantly changes or disrupts or even devastates its yield. 

These are businesses that already manage right to the line of risk because the very work they do and lines of business they’re in may be difficult to predict market conditions and other analytics we all use to determine what the upcoming quarters and potential year-over-year forecasts might be. As I’ve discussed in other episodes, having the ability to make predictions and how much confidence you HAVE in those predictions enables higher-risk organizations, such as startups, small businesses, and those in volatile industries like farming, to plan for and implement risk mitigation and management strategies ahead of time. That often blunts the impact and failure rate if such risks were to occur.

But when those conditions are impacted as they’ve been these last six months, it creates A LOT of unknowns… which happens to also be the basis… of anxiety.  

And again, hard times are hard, especially if you cannot analyze or predict your market or buyer behavior or even standard costs as you have in the past because of various factors impacting businesses these days.

Anxiety is a Future-Worry That Happens All Day Today (and tomorrow… and the next day…)

So let’s first talk about anxiety—and by the way, I recommend Season 1 Episode 4 as a supplement to this episode. Episode four answers the question, “How Can I Handle Necessary Changes at Work Better?” My answer talks about stability and predictability being key points to how we feel more steady during changes we have no control over, which was the crux of the question asking about “necessary changes.” 

Back to THIS episode: some level of anxiety is natural and typical in life. It’s considered a vital emotion we all can and should experience if we think we’re in danger or in harm’s way. But when it becomes chronic, when it feels like a daily part of your life, it’s stressful, and …. Chronic anxiety is often related to a stressful life… so… you can see the loop.

According to the American Psychological Association, and I’m paraphrasing, anxiety is an emotion that creates feelings of apprehension along with certain physical responses or reactions based on a feeling of anticipated danger or disaster. Anxiety is rooted in the future: what COULD happen, anticipating danger or disaster. 

To note, one of the hardest things about anxiety is someone feeling that the impending danger or maybe even doom is something they cannot control—it’s an anticipated hardship that MAY happen, and the not-knowing if it WILL happen is… part of the anxiety.

Some might refer to it as, “the waiting.” That’s how it is an anticipatory emotion—the anxiety puts people on alert so that they are prepared if the really bad thing happens. In this case for our listener, it’s whether an anticipated re-org will mean she is moved out from her current manager’s team and into a different team with a different manager, a move our listener is anxious about. Perhaps it’s fair to say she even dreads it.

Talk to Your Manager (if You Can)

I’ll include some general resources about anxiety and workplace stress in the show notes, and I also always recommend employees learn about and then take full advantage of their workplace benefits because there may be an Employee Assistance Program, or EAP, with immediate mental health resources available to support employees during acutely stressful times that create anxiety.

Also, AS IS IN the case of this listener, I recommend to anyone who has a fantastic manager as our listener seems to have that they approach and talk through this kind of stress and anxiety directly. This is the only way your manager can raise the angst up to senior leaders who SHOULD be offering more than the grapevine effect or slow-drip of information into the workplace. 

There is a saying I use a lot, and that is, “in absence of information, imagination takes over.” The author is unknown, otherwise I’d cite and give credit each time I say it. One of the QUICKEST ways leaders burn up productivity and create a languishing or listless, floating workplace energy is to slow-drip information or allow the grapevine to create the narrative THEY, the leaders, are responsible for providing. This is particularly critical during stressful times AND when there is a potential for disruption and upheaval to the organizational structure the employees are used to.

Our imaginations, especially for those who’ve been through a few layoffs or terrible re-organizations, WILL create the worst-case scenario as a means to prepare us for the worst-case scenario. It’s a typical and natural response, but the imagined scenario worsens in the land of the unknown, so if your employees aren’t getting the information they need to stay focused… AND they’re hearing about what they may feel is “pending doom,” which for this listener is the thought of being re-org’d to a different team and losing their manager along the way, expect their focus to drift at the same rate and distance as their imagination, preparing for… the… worst… case scenario. All because they don’t have enough information to direct their attention, energy, and… imaginations.

If you cannot talk to your manager or others about your stress and anxiety about a re-org (or ANY possible upcoming change that is causing anxiety at work), then look for anonymous and confidential ways to communicate your concerns and anxiety, such as suggestion boxes or even the ethics and compliance hotline, which most companies have depending on your size, the products you sell, the State or Commonwealth you work in, and/or your funding status, such as whether you are a publicly listed company (and I’m getting into the weeds, here, but even if your company carries debt through certain US bonds, you may be considered a public company).

And of course, consider speaking with external resources that can support and guide you through the highly stressful environment causing anxiety as our listener describes. It’s vitally important to address your brain health, including your mental and emotional health, just as you would your heart health, digestive health, kidney health, skin health, and so on. I’ll include some resources in the show notes.

Taking Back Control: Your Worth At Work is Your Value at Work

Also important: when we experience anxiety from a possible future re-org or we hear rumbles of a possible future lay-off or other common workplace stressors, part of the anxiety is feeling or knowing you have no control over what might happen or when it might happen. You just know SOMETHING will happen SOME TIME.

BUT. There are steps you can take to balance your sense of self-strength and choice, which some refer to as “agency,” and this is something everyone should be doing in the workplace anyway, even in good times. And that’s: knowing your worth because you know your value.

I just wrote about these three steps in this weeks’ More Answers… newsletter.

#1: Gain insights into your strengths. I always recommend the Gallup CliftonStrengths® assessment as the gold standard for this because of how it offers workplace-related support in the results. I’ve talked a lot about Gallup in previous episodes; the organization is well-known for their quantitative and qualitative research on organizational performance through employees, and their strengths assessment offers reliability (meaning, it is consistent) and validity (meaning it is accurate). Worth noting: I am not affiliated with nor do I have any disclaimers or disclosures with Gallup. My recommendations are purely related to my knowledge and experience with their products, and again—my recommendation here is because of their assessment’s reliability and validity plus the various resources they provide about how you can speak to your strengths within the workplace and in a work-related environment.

At the time of this recording, prices ranges from 25 US Dollars for a short-form assessment to 60 US Dollars for the standard assessment that provides additional analysis and phrasing about your strengths. Please only consider this strengths assessment if you feel those expenses are responsible and reasonable for you. I’ll have information in the show notes.

If that expense isn’t reasonable for you, that’s OK. I know and appreciate that any extra expense may create a hardship, so the other assessment I’ll put in the show notes is The Big Five assessment. You can find this assessment for free; it is not affiliated with any one organization. In fact, I use the Big Five in my business strategy and performance research. It not only demonstrates reliability and validity, but it’s also simple while emphasizing how we all fit into a spectrum within our personalities. The Big Five Test measures what we call OCEAN, O-C-E-A-N, traits, which stands for: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. I won’t go into the details here, but I’ll include an overview article from The Big Five Test site, which has a link to a free assessment.

Also to note: The Myers Briggs. I do not recommend that assessment. There have always been known statistical issues with the reliability and the validity of that assessment, hugely flawed from a results perspective. It’s a composite of multiple datapoints that then labels you into a category; and this just isn’t how humans work. We’re too dynamic to be a “type,” so look to the Big Five assessment or CliftonStrengths® so you can see where you land on the spectrum of various human aspects. Avoid any test that labels you a type.

So: learn about your strengths. It is one of the best ways to counterbalance the natural anxiety that comes from uncertainty about your role in the workplace, whether it’s because of a possible re-org or because of a possible lay-off. And no matter what, you should ALWAYS be able to clearly articulate your worth and your value. A great way to start is to learn about your strengths and how to talk about them.

#2: Be certain of the value you are adding to your organization in quantifiable ways-- your goals AND others' goals. With the backdrop of your strengths fresh in your mind, write out the value you are adding to your organization in terms of your results. Align this with your current goals as well as your achievements that might be contributing to "fringe" goals, or goals that aren't formally listed but enable good things for your company. Write out this “fringe” value you are adding to your team and others beyond your formal goals—this is showcasing the way your achievements are impacting the broader team and department. Your value goes beyond just your goals. Be the one who enables the world around you to achieve better results. 

#3: Take it a step further: talk about HOW you achieve those results, and think qualitatively: what is your working style and how does that reinforce, strengthen, and improve the culture? what is your teaming style and how does that enable the team to be more productive? how much success do you enable around you because of your approach? How many times have you made an adjustment or a change that created an improvement that saved steps or defects or costs? Use your strengths to guide you, and use your goals as examples of what was achieved because of HOW you worked.

AND THEN—write them out as though you are answering an interview question such as, “Tell me about a time when you achieved a challenging goal.” Or “Tell me about a time when your working style enabled success for your team beyond your own goals?”

The purpose of these three steps is to reinvigorate what you know about YOUR WORTH and YOUR VALUE at a time when you’re uncertain of where you fit, or will fit, in the workplace. Re-evaluating and reminding ourselves of our strengths, our achievements, and HOW we work is not only a validating exercise, but a great way to prepare for what you may want to say about yourself in the face of a challenge at work.

It… also prepare you for your next role, either in your current organization or in a different one. This exercise should remind you that you do actually have control in your life (even if you don’t feel it at your current workplace). It’s also a good start for updating your resume, which is also something you should be doing regularly, even when things are good in the workplace.

And of course: breathe deeply and slowly… blow it out… sip cold water… stretch several times throughout your day. These are quick tips and techniques that instantly dissolve a lot more stress than you may think, and when you can reduce your stress, you are making room to reduce your anxiety also.

Additional Resources

For your resources, I’ve included three different articles about anxiety: two are from the American Psychological Association, which includes various links to learn more and also find support if you feel you need it. The first article is related to anxiety overall so you can learn more about it. The second article is called, “Coping with stress at work,” published in October 2024. Work stress, especially chronic work stress, can lead to chronic anxiety at work, and the article may offer helpful insights.

I also included an article from Project Healthy Minds called “Navigating anxiety.” Project Healthy Minds is an interesting organization developed to remove stigma about mental health, and in today’s work environments that’s a critical aspect not just from a humanistic perspective, which is the place from which I work, but also from a business success perspective. As long as you have good humans working at your organization, you have to be aware of what will bring out their best each day, whatever that “best” might be, and it doesn’t take much to do that—At. All. The article is written by Malia Clark and clinically reviewed by Dr. Andy Sekel, PhD. It was published in July 2025.

I then offer two resources so you can learn about The Big Five test: I included a video from Dr. Abby Medcalf, a PhD Psychologist who does a lot of work on how human psychology impacts relationships, and this is an area I care A LOT about because again—aside from the humanistic perspective I care about, relationships can make or break high performance in ANY organization. Our listener’s question for this episode is a perfect example of that: how our listener feels about work is directly tied to the relationship she has with her boss, and it’s clear that her boss works at developing good professional relationships with everyone on her team. Dr. Medcalf gives a great overview of The Big Five Test in her video; it’s just over ten minutes long, and it’s very good and very watchable.

I also included an article called, “The history and background of the Big Five Test,” written by Eli Marianne Huseby and published in April 2024. It’s a delightful and short overview of the Big Five Test, complete with cited sources. The page takes you to a free Big Five Test if you’d like to participate.

And of course, I included a link to the CliftonStrengths® assessment.

Wrap Up & Submitting Your Questions

OK! There it is, Episode 38—a tough question for a tough situation, and I hope I offered an answer that enables empowerment and action for our listener and anyone else managing anxiety at work while anticipating a potentially difficult work change. We’re in Season 4 focused on Doing the Work, which includes what might slow us down or keep us from Doing the Work at our best.

You can submit your question directly on my show’s site, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H, where you can also browse through various episodes based on category. While your there—sign up for my More Answers… newsletter, where you will receive additional content on Sunday nights to set you up for the work week.

As always—thank you for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!