Working With Anxiety (When You Work for Yourself)

I struggle with anxiety. Pretty much every day, in some capacity.

I was diagnosed with anxiety after having my daughter, when postpartum anxiety hit me pretty hard. And while I think we’ve gotten a lot better at talking about anxiety in general, I don’t think we talk enough about what anxiety looks like at work — especially when you work for yourself.

I own my own business. I love what I do. I love designing, I love my clients, and I genuinely feel lucky that this is my job.

And some days, I still really don’t want to open my laptop.

Today is one of those days.

I have that pit in my stomach. That weird nervous feeling where there isn’t necessarily one specific thing I’m nervous about, but my body has apparently decided something terrible is happening anyway.

And when you work for yourself, there’s no calling in sick to your boss or quietly hiding at your desk for the morning. The work is still there. The emails are still there. The projects are still there. And sometimes knowing all of that is exactly what makes the anxiety worse.

Over the years, I’ve figured out a few things that help me get over that initial hump.

Not get rid of the anxiety. Just make starting feel a little less impossible.

I make working as comfortable as possible.

Sometimes that means I work from the couch.

Laptop, blanket, coffee and a comfort show I’ve probably watched an embarrassing number of times playing in the background.

Is it the world's most productive work environment? Probably not.

But if the choice is between sitting at my desk feeling anxious about working or sitting on the couch and actually getting something done, the couch wins.

Sometimes removing the pressure around how I’m supposed to work is enough to help me start.

I change locations.

Other times, I need the complete opposite.

I’ll take my laptop to a coffee shop, go work at my parents’ house, or just move somewhere different for a while.

There’s something about arriving somewhere, opening the laptop and saying, okay, I’m just going to do one thing that can break the ice.

I don’t go in expecting myself to suddenly have the most productive day of my life. Sometimes I answer a couple emails. Sometimes I organize a project. Sometimes I get into it and end up accomplishing way more than I expected.

The goal is really just to start.

I figure out if I'm anxious... or overwhelmed.

This is a big one for me.

Sometimes what feels like anxiety about work is actually the fact that I have 400 things floating around in my head at once.

A website needs revisions. Someone emailed me. I need to send an invoice. There’s a project I haven’t started yet. I remembered something else I need to do next week. And suddenly every single thing feels equally urgent.

Those are the days when I don't even try to dive straight into design.

I open my laptop and organize.

I write down every project. Every task. Every random thing taking up space in my brain. Then I figure out what actually needs my attention today.

Sometimes that's enough to make the giant scary cloud of EVERYTHING I HAVE TO DO turn into a few very normal, manageable tasks.

I start ridiculously small.

Open the laptop.

That can literally be step one.

Then maybe check my email.

Answer the easiest one.

Open the project I’ve been avoiding.

Organize the files.

Make one tiny change.

I’ve learned that waiting until I feel ready to work doesn't always work for me. Sometimes the feeling comes after I've started.

Once I get one little thing done, the next thing usually feels easier. And then the next.

And if it doesn't? That's okay too.

I try not to make it personal.

This is probably the hardest one.

Anxiety has a fun way of turning normal parts of running a business into very dramatic stories.

A client sends revisions and suddenly my brain wants to interpret that as they hate it rather than what it actually is: a normal part of the design process.

An email comes in and I’m nervous to open it.

I’m behind on something and suddenly I'm questioning whether I'm good at my job at all.

I've been trying to remind myself to look at those things more mechanically.

It's an email.

They're revisions.

It's a task.

It's not personal.

There isn't always a deeper meaning attached to it, even if my anxiety would very much like to create one.

I don't have some perfect ending for this because, like I said, I'm writing this on one of those days.

I still have the pit in my stomach.

I still don't particularly feel like working.

But I opened my laptop.

And apparently I wrote a blog post.

So maybe that's enough for today.