Staying motivated without the anxiety

It’s very common to hear people say that they need a bit of ‘anxiety’ to push them to achieve. That they work best under the pressure of a deadline, or they do their best work when they are ‘up against it’. And it can be true that sometimes a little pressure is what we need. Especially if the task is difficult or boring.

But like any negative emotion, there is a healthy and an unhealthy version. Concern is a healthy negative emotion, filled with thoughts such as ‘this looks like a difficult task, so I best prepare and knuckle down’, or ‘I hope I do well, it’s very important to me so I’m going to work extra hard’. Anxiety is the unhealthy version. This is when we are filled with thoughts such as ‘This task looks impossible, but I HAVE TO get this right. If I fail it will be awful and I’ll be a failure. The consequences of not being perfect are unbearable!’

Anxiety is not your friend

As a therapist practicing Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT, they type of CBT taught here at the College), I meet a lot of anxious people who, naturally, hate feeling anxious and find it debilitating and very disturbing. But often, if their anxiety is linked to professional or academic performance, when it is suggested they can learn to think about work without anxiety, they become resistant. How can I maintain my levels of motivation and performance if I’m not anxious, they say. Isn’t not being anxious the same as not caring, they ask.

This is a great example of what can happen when we live with an unhealthy negative emotion for a long time. We become habituated to it and feeling ‘bad’ begins to feel like feeling ‘normal’. Despite its obvious discomfort, our anxiety (or depression or anger etc) has become familiar, and in its own perverse way, comfortable.

You can choose which way to turn

It is then that I will try to explain the different consequences of healthy and unhealthy emotions. Anxiety will ultimately turn you away from your goal or solutions with demands around perfection and the terrible things that will happen if they are not meant, like those outlined above. Concern, on the other hand, will turn you towards your goal or solution. It will enable you to realistically assess the challenge (rather than feeling overwhelmed), and motivate you to take steps to meet it.

And the key here is the absence of fear. Concern, and the rational, healthy beliefs behind it (I really want to succeed, but I understand if I don’t it wouldn’t be awful, just bad, and I could tolerate it. Failing at this task does not make me a failure) mean we are focussed on the task and why we want to achieve it, rather than the fear of what might happen if we fail. Who will work better? Someone who is concerned but fully engaged, or someone who is anxious and distracted by perfectionism and fear of consequences?

Think and behave the fear away

This can be a difficult lesson to learn and integrate into our daily lives. That’s why REBT has lots of ways to help us practically (the ‘B’ in CBT is for Behaviour, after all).

Through repeated real life experiences we can learn that thinking rationally, and behaving in accordance with these thoughts, even if it’s uncomfortable at first, can move us from that familiar yet unpleasant state of anxiety into a productive and emotionally healthy state of concern. And once here, we usually find we are equally if not more motivated than before, just without the fear.

Nick Jones
REBT / CBT therapist