Anxiety & Me

Anxiety. It used to be that you couldn’t talk about it. And certainly not at work. But, thankfully, times have changed as mental health issues have been coaxed out of the shadows.

Looking at the number of celebrities who now talk openly about their own experiences, one might think it has almost become fashionable. But the sad truth is that it’s just very common.

The World Health Organisation estimates more than 264m people globally suffer from depression, with many of these people also suffering from symptoms of anxiety. Which means about 3% of the global population suffers. If we extrapolate for RELX with 33,000 people, this means that around 1,000 people in our business may well be suffering.

If you work in a busy office, well pre-Covid at least, look up and in eyeshot the likelihood is that one or two people will have mental health issues. And the chances are you simply won’t know. It’s rarely visible.

World Mental Health Day is 10 October. So, for what this piece is worth, I wanted to share my experience with anxiety in the hope that it may help us across RELX to continue the debate and accelerate our growing acceptance of the issue.

Anxiety is a stalker. It lays in wait and chooses its moment to strike. And so it was with me - making its first few appearances at times of maximum strain in my younger days.

Like a viscous assailant it came out of nowhere and threw me to the floor. It set about trying to pull my thumping heart out of my chest. It shut down my hearing, corrupted my vision, took my voice away, drained my head of blood and turned my internal thermostat to maximum. Initial shock over, it then sat weightily, like an exhausted rhinoceros, on my ribcage intent on squeezing out every last breath I had. It had plummeted me into fear. And it took less than 10 seconds to do its worst. If you have experienced this then I am with you. If you haven’t, I pray you never do.

My first attack of panic was like a visitation from something totally alien, and I set out, mistakenly, to cut this out of me so it would never happen again. Such was the need to avoid a repeat.

It turns out, wanting it simply gone is not how it works.

To be clear, I am lucky. When it happens, it’s bad. But for me it happens infrequently and when it does, I always seem to find a way through. Many don’t.

What matters for me is knowing my triggers, using my coping mechanisms and recognising that it actually makes me a better person. And, a recent revelation, it makes me better at what I do at work - but more about that later. Above all though, I have learnt, over time, to accept it as a fundamental part of who I am.

I don’t fight it anymore. I just look it in the face and stare it down.

One day I hope to see it as an old friend.

When we meet new people, we make judgements about them. We can’t help it. It’s part of our natural protection mechanism. Friend or foe? But we tend to think that everyone else has had it easier than we have - don’t you think? Our own stories are fraught with difficulties. Nobody has been through what we have been through to get here…

And then, of course, as we find out more about people, we realise that life has a way of reaching in and messing things up in different ways and at different times for pretty much everyone. We all have our own story and our problems are real for us, even if others don’t see it that way.

You don’t have to experience war, starvation, homelessness or disease to know stress. In fact, it’s very often the case in the world of work, that people who seem to have it all carry some of the heaviest burdens inside. Another successful business leader taking their life is all too common a read in our daily media.

When I first told people about my anxiety, no one took me seriously. I have a relaxed demeanour, or so I am told. Calm on the outside, so how could there be turmoil inside? And what on earth did I have to be anxious about?

But when I went to see a cognitive behavioural therapist for some help, the first thing she did was smile and tell me I was in fine company with many, many people just like me on her books. It was then, and only then, that I started to feel okay about it.  It was a revelation for sure, but more a relief.

My anxiety lives inside me. I make it. Prompted by external factors in many cases, but it is driven by my inner critic and my sometime inability to deal with anger. It turns out my inner critic can be extremely good at making me feel vulnerable and that my easy going way of looking at the world was burying anger. It was a recipe for damage not least because I was conflating anger and anxiety. If you think about it, they are remarkably similar in what they do to you. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised.

This is the way anxiety makes its way into my life. For everyone reading this it will be different. And I say everyone because it is my belief that anxiety is rife - obvious, hidden, buried, ignored, masked or simply waiting for the right moment.

When panic hits, I can describe what happens to my body, but it is impossible to describe how I feel. Suffice to say that I hope it can never be weaponised.

Getting to know my triggers has been an important step in managing this condition. There’s logic to this disease. There’s always a reason and usually, for me, it is something very specific. So, if I see a potential situation coming, which as I have better understood the roots of my anxiety I usually can, then I get busy creating a new way of reframing what will happen to remove potential pitfalls.

That used to include avoidance. It was driven by my singular ability to catastrophise about upcoming events. I became expert at catastrophising and avoiding. This way it meant I would never fall victim to the panic. But it soon became clear this wasn’t a sustainable way forward for me, or my work.

One of my triggers is about being pushed front and centre by someone else and asked to speak to a group. ‘Over to you James to outline the approach’ and my heartrate jumps instantly as my first indicator of panic. Quite a trigger when you are a communications professional in a global business.

This is much like stage fright. And we all know how common that is. After all, who really likes making speeches, giving presentations or being the focus of attention? For me though, it's way more than a dislike. It's a bear trap that I need to make sure I don't step on.

So, I manage this by not allowing myself to be pushed. I insert myself into the conversation on my own terms in my own time. I decide when it is time to share my thoughts, not others. If you watch very carefully, you will see many people on television such as celebrities, reporters and newsreaders use similar coping techniques.

It’s quite subtle, but I have become pretty good at this now, so many with whom I work would never know. Not least because when it is on my own terms I enjoy speaking to groups and am actually quite good at it.

This has achieved an unexpected benefit. Those dreary meetings full of one way presentations where nothing ever changes have turned into real conversations - where ideas flourish, relationships are strengthened and people feel included.

My journey has taken me from being someone who occasionally felt utterly hijacked by things out of my control, to someone who started to face it down and got to understand how to manage it; to now, someone who uses it to my advantage. The last point being still a work in progress.

I have used my experiences and learnings to help others’ present to groups. And it turns out that this is one of the things I am really good at while at work. Over the years I have helped dozens of people at all levels in all sorts of organisations to go from a terrible or terrified presenter to someone who consistently aces their presentations, and perhaps even enjoys doing them.

I have found some ways to use this condition to help me at work. If you have read this far and anything of what I have said has resonated, I ask only that you think about how you can use your anxiety to your advantage. I know that might sound ridiculous but it’s the best therapy I have found.

Apart from maybe one other thing…

Apparently, we each take about 20,000 breaths a day. Anxiety is heightened by a lack of oxygen. In my worst moments by body literally forgets to make itself take in air. It’s as if my brain can only cope with so many things and it shuts down breathing to do other stuff.

I spent some time learning basic meditation and breathing exercises, which I have found uniquely effective at keeping me balanced. If I have another recommendation it would be to invest some time to learn how to breathe properly again and appreciate the stillness it can bring.

In my time at RELX I have always felt safe in being exactly who I am. This safety tells me it’s okay to write this article and share my experiences. And to tell others who suffer with anxiety that not only are they not alone, they are in fine company.

My hope in sharing my story is that even if it helps just one other person who reads it, then it was a job well done.