Do you feel anxiety or fear before a work meeting?

The number of people who admit to feeling anxiety, or even fear, before a work meeting is growing fast. And of those people who are confessing to it, a significant proportion say it has actually affected their performance in those meetings, whether they are there to make a presentation or not. 

It may be of course that people have always felt the fear, but felt it was a weakness to admit to it, or it may be because people are feeling more stressed and pressured at work and work meetings are an environment where one is supposed to show one’s value, so the pressure is enhanced in those situations. Or it may be that since Covid, many work meetings are undertaken on Teams or Zoom, or a mix of face-to-face and remote. These aren’t easy circumstances under which to work, never mind ‘perform’, so it’s no wonder people feel uncomfortable or anxious at the very thought, never mind during the actual meeting.

Whatever the reason – the admission is the first step to taking action, and taking action is your first step to taking control – and it’s that feeling of not having control that sits at the heart of the problem, even if you don’t recognise that.

BWRT® for work meeting anxiety

BrainWorking Recursive Therapy® (BWRT®) is a powerful therapy for treating, and resolving anxiety before and during work meetings.

Anxiety in work meetings is a form of social anxiety – a fear of how you might perform, or be judged by others, in a social or group situation. It’s a very common issue, with many people using the ‘fake it till you make it’ way of coping, which can be pretty exhausting and not really a long-term solution, and others simply ‘hiding in plain sight’ – not speaking unless directly addressed, making copious notes and carefully, intently following proceedings until, phew, it’s all over.

And if you’re asked to present – whether that be results you know backwards, or a plan for going forwards – the symptoms can really ratchet up.

I use Level 1 BWRT® to treat social anxiety – and it’s fast and powerful.

Resolving work meeting anxiety

Our subconscious is designed to protect us and does a great job, by and large. It’s marvellous at spotting real dangers and triggering a response (often called fight or flight) before we have even had time to process that danger. How many times have you jumped out of the way of a falling cup or plate before you have even realised you have dropped it? Or ducked a flying insect without even thinking about it? This is our subconscious at work – it’s there to keep us safe. Our subconscious relies a lot on experience, and uses memories of past upsets to code its response to similar future occurrences. However, it’s not so smart at separating experience (when things actually happen) from imagination (when we picture things happening). When we picture something happening that is bad – a disastrous performance in a work meeting for example – our subconscious can register this as an experience to be avoided, so next time you’re heading into that setting, it starts the flight or fight response, which manifests as anxiety – raised heart rate, a tendency to perspire, shallow breaths, etc.

Level 1 BWRT® is designed to help you recode your subconscious response to the trigger that induces that sense of anxiety. We can’t remove the memory (real or imagined) but we can change the way your brain responds to it. 

How long will it take?