Your manager asks if you can “pop in for a chat” tomorrow, with absolutely no indication what the chat is about. Immediately, your mind gets to work. Have I done something wrong? Is somebody unhappy? Am I about to be criticised? You start going through recent emails and conversations looking for clues. By bedtime, you have mentally attended the meeting several times and, strangely enough, none of them has gone particularly well.
The same thing can happen when you are the one who needs to start the conversation. A client has let you down, a builder has left a job unfinished, you need to tell somebody at work that you are unhappy, or perhaps there is something going on with your partner or family that you know you need to address. You keep thinking, “I really should say something”, then imagine how awkward it might become and decide that perhaps tomorrow would be better.
This is your brain trying to help. It is attempting to predict what might happen so you can be ready for it. Unfortunately, anxious preparation has a habit of going round in circles. Instead of producing a plan, you replay the same uncomfortable scene over and over again. By the time the conversation actually happens, you can feel as though you have already lived through it twenty times.
And this kind of anxiety is incredibly common. An ACAS report published in May 2021 estimated that close to 10 million UK employees experience conflict at work each year, with more than half reporting stress, anxiety or depression as a result.
Sometimes you are worried you will be criticised, blamed or challenged. At other times, you know you need to raise something yourself, but you tend to avoid conflict and worry about the reaction you might get.
So why do some people find these conversations so much harder than others?
Why confrontation can feel so uncomfortable
For some people, the pattern starts quite early. Perhaps speaking up when you were younger led to criticism, embarrassment or an argument. Maybe you became very good at judging the mood of an unpredictable parent and learnt when it was safer to stay quiet. In some families, one person becomes the peacemaker. You learn to smooth things over, agree or keep your feelings to yourself because that keeps everything calm.
Those patterns can follow us into adult life. Suddenly, telling a tradesperson that you are unhappy with their work feels horribly confrontational. Saying no to a colleague feels rude. Telling your manager that you disagree can feel as though you are risking the whole relationship.
Of course, these patterns can start much later too. A bullying boss, an aggressive relationship, an angry client or one meeting where you felt publicly embarrassed can leave you wary of the next one.
Then there is fear of judgement. Add a touch of impostor syndrome and a perfectly ordinary performance review can start to feel like the moment everyone finally discovers you have been winging it for the last ten years.
Understanding where your reaction might be coming from helps because it gives you a little distance from it.
Stop mind reading
We also do something psychologists sometimes call “mind reading”. Essentially, we convince ourselves that we know what somebody else is thinking. Your manager sends an unusually short email, so you decide they are angry. A client looks serious, so you assume the meeting is going badly. Someone takes a while to reply and your mind fills in the silence for them.
The trouble is that we can become anxious about a story we have written ourselves.
Ask yourself if you are responding to something that has happened, or to something you are predicting. A meeting may still be difficult, but you will go into it with a clearer idea of what is real.
If you are going to rehearse it, rehearse something useful
We are surprisingly good at mental rehearsal. The problem is that most of us rehearse the bit we do not want. We picture ourselves stumbling over our words. We see the other person becoming angry. We hear ourselves saying the wrong thing. You are effectively rehearsing failure.
So, decide first what you would actually like to happen. What do you need to say? What would you like the other person to understand? What would be a fair outcome? Where are you happy to compromise, and where do you need to hold a boundary?
Then turn the conversation into a movie in your mind. Picture yourself walking into the room feeling steady. See yourself listening rather than jumping in to defend yourself. Imagine somebody asking a difficult question and watch yourself pause, think and answer clearly.
Think of another time in your life when you felt confident and capable. It does not even need to be a similar situation. Remember how you stood, how you breathed and how you felt in yourself, then imagine taking some of that feeling into the meeting. And if the unwanted movie keeps playing, start editing it.
Perhaps the other person looks huge in your imagination and you look tiny. Shrink the image. Push it further away. Make it black and white.
Listen to the dialogue as well. If you have a voice in your head saying, “You’re going to mess this up. This is going to be awful”, notice how that voice sounds. Then change it. Make it squeaky, ridiculously slow or give it a silly cartoon voice. Try feeling deeply intimidated by a voice that sounds completely absurd. It becomes surprisingly difficult.
The images and sounds we create internally affect how we feel. Change the movie and you can begin changing your response to it.
Give yourself time to respond
One of the first things anxiety does is speed us up. We answer too quickly. We start overexplaining. We fill every silence because the silence feels uncomfortable. Slow it down.
If somebody says something that catches you off guard, take a breath. Have a sip of water. Give yourself a few seconds. You are allowed to say, “I need a moment to think about that.” If somebody gives you vague criticism, ask them to be specific. It’s difficult to do anything with someone saying that you need to be more professional, but a comment that the report was two days late and nobody updated the client gives you something you can actually discuss.
The same applies when you are raising the issue. Rather than saying, “You’re completely unreliable”, explain what happened and what you would like done about it. If you say, “The work we agreed hasn’t been completed and I’d like the remaining work finished by Friday” you have now given the other person something concrete to respond to, which gives the conversation a much better chance of going somewhere useful.
When it is over, let it be over
A difficult meeting can finish at three in the afternoon while you are still having it in your head at eleven that evening.
Give yourself a few minutes to come back down. Walk around the block. Shake some tension out of your shoulders and arms. Take a few slower breaths or use a simple grounding exercise: notice five things you can see, four things you can feel and three things you can hear.
Then, once you feel settled, work out what needs to happen next. What was agreed? Is there anything you need to follow up? What did you handle well? Is there anything you would do differently another time?
So, remember before the next time you have a difficult conversation, notice the movie you are playing in your mind. Turn down the frightening pictures and voices rather than repeatedly rehearsing everything going wrong.
Get clear on what you want to happen and mentally rehearse yourself handling it well.
Check your body. Lift your head, open your posture and allow yourself to feel steady and confident.
Then broaden your awareness, breathe and take in what is actually happening around you.
You may find that the conversation in front of you is nowhere near as frightening as the one your mind has been having for days.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Paul Jones is a leading Harley Street phobia expert and author of ‘Face your Fears’. Having overcome his own phobias, and conducted 20+ years of research across Europe, North America and Asia, Christopher has developed an integrated approach combining mainstream psychology with cutting edge techniques: The Integrated Change System™. The system aims to change the mind’s danger response and leave people free and happy to enjoy things they once found terrifying. A fear, anxiety or phobia can be cured in as little as a session. Christopher’s clients come from all over the world and include Hollywood actors and Oscar nominees, models, musicians, presenters and celebrities. His latest book ‘Face your Fears’ has been translated into multiple languages. www.christopherpauljones.com
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REFERENCES:
https://www.acas.org.uk/workplace-conflict-estimating-the-cost-to-employers
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25664473/
