Ask HN: How do you differentiate between Real anxiety and “Fake” anxiety

My 2 cents…

Anxiety is the emotion, not the internal conflict that leads to that emotion. You are having the exact same anxiety in both cases but the cause appears to be slightly different.

So the real question is not "what kind of anxiety is this?" but "what causes this anxiety?".

The problem, here, is that impostor syndrome, if that's something you actually have, is very likely to skew your perception and prevent you from answering the question correctly. In the first situation, "is way above my skill set" may just as well be your impostor syndrome kicking in, so how can you actually tell if you need a confidence boost or a kick in the ass if internal signals can't be trusted? I guess external signals are the only alternative.

Do the people who put you on that project actually know what you are capable of or do they have a history of bad resource management decisions? How do you compare with others on the team in terms of experience? Is it something you have already done or something new? Is it the same for everyone in the team? Etc.

In any case, a clear, honest, unbiased answer to "what causes this anxiety?" is what you really need to go further.

By the way, the "good" thinking and the "bad" thinking are both done at the same place by the same entity so you should give up on that dissociation between "my brain" and "me": there is only one pawannitj and he/she is as responsible of the "bad" thinking (internal conflict, impostor syndrome, etc.) as he/she is of counteracting with "good" thinking. Deflecting responsibilities to "my brain" is not a healthy way to address your problems.

"what causes the anxiety" seems right place to start. Thanks for the tip and advice.

This isn't a classification of anxiety that is supported by the literature, i.e. if you have anxiety you have anxiety and it's a symptom for lots of different things including fear, trauma, self esteem issues, procrastination, etc.

My suggestion is that you find a therapist who can guide you through this. Good luck!

I guess you can try to face both with courage, and it seems like that’s what is needed and that is what you try to do already. The type of courage that arises indicates the type of anxiety you’re dealing with.

“I am going to be ok, I just have to face this” will arise when you’re dealing with the less specific, apparently unhelpful anxiety.

“This is going to be a difficult project, and I have a lot to learn but I am up for it” will arise when dealing with the more specific, attuned-to-a-real-world-complexity anxiety.

Does that make sense? Anxiety is always best met with courage; sometimes it’s a blunt courage and sometimes it’s a pointed courage, just as anxiety can be blunt or pointed.

Definitely makes sense. Thanks for the advice

A lot of "fake" anxiety as you described can be cured by just doing _something_.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by a large task and psych yourself out. Motivation stems from _action_; the key is just start doing something small related to the task. This action leads to inspiration, which then leads to motivation, and the effect snowballs from there.

I think you could use concepts from cognitive behaviour therapy here.

In CBT you examine your thought and emotions, and then you look at the evidence you have to support those.

[I feel anxious. I feel quite strongly anxious. My hot thought is "I don't understand what I'm doing".]

You'd then look at the situation, and the evidence you have for that.

Your first example:

a) I've been given a project way above my skill set.

evidence) The project uses frameworks and protocols I've never used before, and the documentation refers to a language I've not used before.

Your second example:

b) I've been given a new project and it's complex.

evidence) well, okay, it's new to me, but I'm familiar with some of the concepts and I think I know how to attempt it.

I guess people may say this is similar to rubber duck debugging: Explain to a rubber duck why you're anxious about something, but also what your strengths are for this new thing you're doing.

I feel part of your dilemma is that you are defining the problem using two scenarios that will appear the same to you without previous experience with it.

Allow me to explain. Let’s suppose you have been assigned to do the task X and we want to determine how you should feel about it. In your dilemma you ponder how to differentiate between something being outside of your skill set or merely being new and you may tell yourself you cannot do it. Both of these are just different ways to react to the same situation if you have not recently tested yourself against doing task X. Have you done it before and recently (since we need to account for change in skills over time) you can objectively know if it is within your skill set or not. Otherwise, this is an unknown and only after truly tackling it can you objectively know if you can or cannot do task X.

Herein lies the role of anxiety, because in reality we cannot always try everything just to see what we can and cannot do because there are real world consequences to this that make it not worthwhile to test every aspect of your abilities. So when presented with a task, you have described two ways anxiety can filter out for you your comfort level: 1. Feeling anxiety because you have reason to believe it is outside your skill set based on previous experiences.

2. Feeling anxiety because you have not attempted it before, so whether you can or cannot do it is an unknown (which is a hook Imposter Syndrome can use to get itself reeling).

These are not the only ways of anxiety can have a role in this scenario, but it outlines where the anxiety can come from. For your question about a mental model, differentiating between the two could by asking yourself the question, “What about task X makes me feel anxious?” If part of task X includes some aspect you failed at before this falls closer to what you call “real” anxiety and if it is just the fear of the unknown it is closer to what you are calling “fake” anxiety (to be clear, as like others commenting here I do not agree with these terms as all anxiety is a real emotion you are feeling). However, in the case of the latter it being an unknown still means it may or may not be outside your skill set, so as mentioned above you cannot objectively know this until after trying it. Short of this, that is where your judgement skills and honesty towards yourself would play a factor in how comfortable you feel on taking on task X given unknowns. Edit: formatting

This makes lots of sense. Thanks for taking time to write your perspective.

I strongly suspect it'd be impossible to figure out which anxiety a given problem falls in to on your own. A good mentor would be able to help you differentiate between the two.

You talk too much. Just say to yourself "I am the rouge 1 leader" and proceed..

Rogue. Rouge is the color.