The Sunday Scaries. A specific kind of evening many of us know too well, because it’s Monday tomorrow and … here we go again.
And then the weekdays. I’ll have pushed back on something in a meeting, said my piece, moved on with the day. And then, hours later, often when trying to sleep, I’m replaying the exact words. Wondering if my tone landed the way I meant it to. Wondering if the person on the other end went home unhappy, and whether that’s now sitting on them because of me.
In reality, nothing happened. Nobody said anything was wrong. I built the whole thing myself, out of nothing, in about 10 seconds flat.
If you live with anxiety, or anything in that family, you probably know this particular flavor of wanting. Not just wanting to do good work. Wanting everyone to be happy. Wanting to be liked, specifically, by everyone, all the time. It’s a quiet, constant hum underneath everything else you’re doing.
But disagreement is supposed to be there
Here’s the part that makes it complicated for us … a workplace where nobody ever disagrees isn’t healthy, it’s just muted. Good teams argue (disagree, politely debate, positively argue is what I mean). They push on each other’s thinking, say the uncomfortable thing, sit in a bit of friction before they land somewhere better than where they started.
I know this, and people who know me have heard this, we need healthy tension, it isn’t the enemy, the avoidance of it is.
But knowing it and feeling it are two very different things, though. My brain can hold “healthy disagreement is good” and “that person might be upset with me right now” at the exact same time, in full contradiction, and somehow believe both.
The part not in the collaboration manual
The thing that makes this genuinely hard, not just uncomfortable, is that people are different. Wildly different. The exact same amount of pushback, delivered the exact same way, will land as “great, thanks for being direct” with one person and “why is he coming at me like that” with another.
There’s no dial you can set once. You’re recalibrating in real time, mid-conversation, based on someone else’s history and mood, and whatever they walked in carrying that you know nothing about.
Get it slightly wrong and the outcome isn’t a shrug, it’s someone unhappy, and you don’t find out until three days later, secondhand. That gap is exactly what an anxious brain fills in with the worst possible story.
The forceful, insecure combination
I’m aware I’m an odd mix on this front. From the outside, I come across forceful, blunt, confident even. I’ll weigh in on something, push on a decision, poke at a plan I think has a hole in it, because to me that’s just … working. That’s what “let’s figure this out together” looks like in my brain.
Except sometimes what I think is a completely reasonable level of engagement lands on someone else as way too strong. I’m not trying to win, I’m trying to get to the right answer, out loud, with other people, the way my brain works. But the volume I think I’m using isn’t the volume that arrives.
And underneath the forceful part is the part nobody sees. Someone who is inherently insecure, running a constant check on himself. Did I overstep? Was that the right call? Are people actually fine, or just saying they’re fine? Am I going to hear about that later? Did I piss someone off?
Confident and worried, at the same time, about the same ten minutes. Welcome to my brain at 2am.
The other thing that doesn’t help
I’m also comfortable saying no. If something isn’t a priority, or it used to matter and doesn’t anymore, I’ll say so plainly instead of letting it limp along on everyone’s plate out of politeness.
That’s the right call, most of the time. It’s also its own source of unhappiness. Someone was doing that thing, or wanted it done, and “no, not anymore” can read as “you don’t matter,” even when that was never the point. Being right about the priority and being liked for saying it out loud are two completely separate outcomes, and you don’t get to pick both.
The spin cycle
Put those two things together, the pushing and the saying no, and you get a lot of small moments where someone, somewhere, might be a little unhappy with me. Most weeks, that’s just the cost of actually doing the job.
But the anxious version of me doesn’t file it under “cost of doing the job,” it files it under “evidence.” One flat reaction in a meeting becomes a story about whether I’ve overstepped, whether the relationship is now damaged, whether I’m someone people dread dealing with. None of that is checked against anything real, although I have no doubt it’s true in some cases. It just runs.
Where that leaves me
I don’t have a clean fix for this, and I’m suspicious of anyone who claims they do. What I’ve got instead is a smaller, more honest goal … I tell people actively what mode I’m in, I am quick to apologize if I feel I did screw up or I’m told I did, and explain the intent. I try not to look for zero friction, understanding that universal liking is simply not possible when in a position of leadership. The checking in after the sharp moment, asking directly instead of guessing, and being willing to say “I came in too hot there” without treating it as proof I shouldn’t have said anything at all, is usually enough.
The workplace was never going to make everyone happy all the time, and chasing that is a losing game no matter how good you are at your job. If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not managing it wrong. You’re just doing something genuinely hard, with a brain that’s grading you on a curve nobody else can see.
Be Awesome. And Nice.
Adam