How to Handle Anxiety and High-Stakes Deadlines

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Have you ever had a crushing deadline at work, one that weighed heavily on you for months? Frantically, you worked on the project all day, and sometimes into the evening. And you thought, if I can just get through this project, then I will feel better? And then, when you finally submitted the project, you felt…worse?

Impossible Expectations

When I wrote my last book, A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education, I worked ferociously trying to meet a crushing deadline. But the more I worked, it seemed that I was even farther from the deadline than before.

As time went on, every time I revised a chapter, my writing seemed to get worse and worse. How was that possible?

Each day, as the deadline loomed closer, I lost sleep and worked more hours.

I was experiencing severe chronic anxiety. Now, I have an anxiety disorder, but this project drove it out of control.

Under stressful situations, it can feel like the more you work on a project, the less you accomplish. The more you study for an exam, for example, the less you feel you know. That’s what anxiety does. It lies to you and tells you that things are getting worse, not better.

In an attempt to soothe your anxiety, you work harder, overdoing it and harming yourself in the process. The problem is that the work is never finished because you can never soothe anxiety. Your work is never good enough.

Fortunately, if you have an exam, one day you have to take it. If you have a project deadline, one day you have to turn it in.

Sometimes being done makes you feel better. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t.

Where This Worry Comes From

According to psychological research, anxiety is the most prevalent mental health struggle. According to epidemiological research, one in three people will be affected by an anxiety disorder during their lifetime.

Chronic anxiety harms both our minds and our bodies. We may get our work done, and done well, but at a great cost.

When we worry that our work is getting worse and worse, we are catastrophizing, which "prompts people to jump to the worst possible conclusion, usually with very limited information or objective reason to despair." For a person with anxiety, catastrophizing means the worry increases in severity the more they think about it—that is, if you are catastrophizing, then your fear increases as time goes on, instead of decreasing. It doesn't matter how hard you work; the worry doesn't go away. You believe you're going to fail the test. The book you are writing will be terrible. The proposal will be a failure.

You are wrong. But anxiety doesn't care about the truth.

The Consequences of Chronic Anxiety

When we are working with severe chronic anxiety for an extended period, we experience chemical changes in our bodies. Cortisol is the body's primary stress hormone. Among other things, cortisol tells your body that you are in a crisis, and therefore it slows down bodily functions that it doesn't need in a fight-or-flight situation. But these functions are really important, unless you're actually running from a saber-toothed tiger.

We all occasionally experience acute stress and the body's response. But acute stress quickly resolves. Chronic anxiety is different, and the consequences include physiological and psychological damage.

When we are working on a difficult project that has swept us up like a tornado, turning in the project or taking the exam doesn't stop the body's responses. Our rational brain might know that the project is over. But the body still thinks it is being chased by a tiger.

What Happens Afterward

After I turned in my book, I fell into a depression. I told my husband, "I think instead of someone who had a burden lightened, I'm someone who was on Speed and is coming down from the high."

Yes, the book was turned in. But instead of feeling lighter, I crashed. I didn't suddenly feel happier. I felt the opposite.

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Have you ever finally finished an enormous project and thought you'd feel happiness on the other side—but didn't?

When the weight of my book project was gone, that feeling of lightness I expected never came. It makes so much sense in retrospect: My book project was a boulder that crushed me for months. Therefore taking it away didn't make me feel lightened; it made me feel crushed.

I was burned out.

What to Do About Burnout

I was in burnout that I didn't see coming, and burnout can lead directly to depression, as it did for me.

Chronic stress and burnout are directly related, as researcher Christina Maslach points out: "It's the chronic job stressors that drive people really nuts after a while—they don't have the right equipment, they don't have the things they need, they don't have enough people to do the work."

Or, in my case, I had an overly tight deadline paired with a lifetime of anxiety, which pushed me into severe chronic anxiety and catastrophizing.

Once you are in burnout, the only choice you have is to stop going along the path you are on, according to burnout expert Rebecca Pope-Ruark. So I did. And once I dug out of depression and burnout, I swore I'd make changes.

The next time you find yourself under crushing deadlines, do it differently:

• Seek help for anxiety so that you can stop catastrophizing and saturating your body in cortisol.
• Have a friend review your work and tell you honestly that it is good enough. And listen to them.
• Lower your standards. No one will notice, I promise.