Anxiety: Hibernate, Adapt, or Migrate: Summer Beretsky (Transcript)

They can adapt, like chameleons or they can migrate.

We’re animals too, as humans.

I want to tell you about my time working in a call center now. How many of you have called into a customer service call center? OK? Yeah, we’ve all done it. It’s a miserable experience, isn’t it?

It’s even more miserable for the people who are answering the phones. Let me tell you a couple things about call centers.

First of all, the physical environment is extremely stressful. It really is a cubicle farm, rows and rows of gray fabric lined cubicles.

You log into a phone queue, you put a headset on, kind of like this one. You answer the phone: “Thank you for calling customer service. My name is Summer. How can I help you? “

Over and over and over again. It’s algorithmic tasks all day long. If X, then Y, you follow scripts, you listen to people yell at you for things that you didn’t do wrong. But you have to help them with their problems. And this can be extremely draining for anybody.

So every time I walked into work in the morning, I would pass one of those inspirational motivational posters in every workplace across America.

And this particular one had a picture of a leaf on a tree and it said, never give up.

What, why, why a leaf? Why a leaf?

I pass this every day. And it really started to irritate me.

First of all, because I don’t like motivational posters, they do completely the opposite for me. I was walking into a call center, a place I didn’t really want to work at, but I was there because the economy wasn’t good.

I just finished grad school. I needed a job. But it wasn’t really fulfilling. So I saw the sign that said never give up. And I started thinking.

So it’s kind of an unfulfilling job, working in a call center. The environment did not support me. I eventually realized, but I hibernated.

I hibernated to that fact. I kept my eyes closed. I just tried to go in and out of each day trying to answer my phone calls, improve my average handle time. Because the average handle time, boy. and when you work in a call center, it’s all based on metrics.

They judge you. They judge the quality of your work and the quality of your personhood by numbers. You are scheduled by numbers. There’s an equation called Erlang–C part of queueing theory.

Mathematics dictates when you have to sit down at the phone every day, when you are allowed to get up and take a break, when you are allowed to go and have your lunch. And when you’re allowed to get up and go to the bathroom.

If you have to go to the bathroom at a call center, at a time when you’re not scheduled to go, you’re limited to five minutes.

So at some point, my eyes started opening. I can only hibernate there for so long. So eventually I woke up and I thought, this environment still is not supporting me. I have to try and adapt in some way. And so I tried.

Here’s how. I tried weaving myself into the call center culture. I did what I could. I really did what I could to try and be a good worker. I measured my self-worth by my average handle time.

I tried to climb through the ranks at work. I tried to go from a customer service representative level one to two to three. I tried to rise. I really tried to become part of the culture. And I tried to create a name for myself because I was getting tired of these algorithmic if X then Y tasks.

I wanted something challenging. And every day I continued to pass: “Never give up” — the little leaf on the tree.

And I kind of took that to heart. I thought, I really don’t like this job, but I’m going to try to adapt. I’m going to do what I can. And I’m going to see what happens.

Well, here’s the big paradox when it comes to adaptation. Adaptation sounds like a fine thing, right?

The environment doesn’t support you. So you kind of change a couple of things about yourself so that you can then adapt and feel good in the environment. OK. That’s fantastic. Sometimes.

But here’s the paradox part: Adaptation itself emphasizes the very fact that you didn’t quite fit in in the first place. And so that thought stayed with me.

Now let’s talk a little bit about my panic disorder, which is the reason this stool is here, just in case.

But I’m doing fine so far, so I’m thrilled. But it hasn’t been easy. I’ve had panic disorder for about 10 years now. And for those of you who aren’t familiar, panic disorder is basically the pathological recurrence of panic attacks to the point where you become so fearful of the next panic attack that you can’t leave your house.

I developed agoraphobia for a while, hasn’t been a good time. My very first panic attack was when I was in college, just down the street. I was in my dorm room at 2:30 a.m. and I laid down, and all of a sudden my body felt a little funny on the right side. And I’m a healthy 19 year old at this point.

But the first thing I thought was: “Is this a stroke…Oh my God. What’s going on here? What’s going on here?”

And my body felt kind of weird. And I got up and I started getting sweaty and nervous and I started thinking I am having a stroke, what’s going on with my body?

This is what happens in your head when you’re having a panic attack. What’s going on with my body? I feel funny.

So you get up and your heart starts racing. Once your heart starts racing, you start getting lightheaded. And when you’re lightheaded, you think, God, I really must be having a stroke. Right.

And then once that thought goes into your head, then your fingers and your toes start tingling. And then once those start tingling, you start thinking, I think I’m going to pass out.

And so your mind and your body interact in this downward spiral that basically just takes you into hell. So that’s what a panic attack is.

Why do we panic?

Well, let’s go back a couple years to our ancestors, hunters, gatherers. They came in contact with some type of wild animal. You know, let’s say a mountain lion.

We need a nervous system. We need a nervous system to protect ourselves. Right. OK. You see an animal. You get the adrenaline rush to either fight or flee. And that saves your life.

But what about now? If we walk outside, are we going to see a panther roaming down the street that we have to fight off? No.

What are our big threats now? We have bosses. We have deadlines. We have angry customers calling into a call center. These are all threats. These all trigger our nervous system response.

So do we fight or do we flee? Should we do either of those things? Maybe if your boss yells at you, you can run away, but you probably shouldn’t stick up your fists and try to fight him. That’s not a very good idea.

So this is a biological artifact that we still carry that doesn’t really fit in with the culture of life today.

Now, the panic attack started in college. I went through grad school, they continued. And I tried some meds, tried some therapy, and got everything kind of under control by the time I went to work for the call center.

So I hibernated and then I woke up and I tried to adapt. But my attempt and adaptation created a fertile breeding ground for panic again.

OK, now here’s the thing. I’m not an algorithmic kind of person. I like challenges. And working in a call center isn’t really a very challenging environment.

So, I picked up Daniel Pink’s book called ‘Drive’. It’s a book about motivation. And in there, he said that mastery, autonomy and purpose are the three nutrients that feed our intrinsic motivation. And they promote our greater physical and mental well-being.

And I started to think I answer phones all day long. I answer 50 phone calls. If X, then Y.

Where’s the mastery? I can’t master anything here because things are changing every day, there’s new policies, new procedures, new scripts, new things to manage. I’m not — I’m not really developing a skill.

Yes, I’m memorizing account numbers. But what good is that doing for my personal satisfaction? Absolutely nothing. There’s no mastery.

Do I have autonomy? No, I have no autonomy over my time or my tasks. People tell me what to do. And mathematics tells me when I can do it. Mathematics tells me when I can go and use the restroom.

And I had no purpose. I didn’t feel good about working there, so I began to panic on phone calls. I began to hang up on customers because I would get so lightheaded that I couldn’t just finish taking their bill payments over the phone.

And I would run out to my car. The only safe place that I could really get to.

And every time I passed that motivational poster, ‘never give up’, ran light-headed, heart racing at a million miles per hour on the way to my car where I never really felt quite safe.

Because once I got out to my car, I kept thinking: Oh, God, I’m out of the phone queue, I’m out of the phone queue. Managers are going to be able to see that I’m out of the phone queue for more than five minutes, the allotted five minutes and I’m going to get in trouble.

And that made me even more anxious. And then eventually I started to panic at meetings as well.

There was this one point where I was in a meeting with about seven or eight other people, and it was a small room. And my heart started to race and I got lightheaded and I started shaking.

And I thought, I need to get out of here, I need to get out of here, or I am going to pass out and embarrass myself or I’m going to throw up or something horrible is going to happen.

So I had a cup of water. And I intentionally spilled it on myself so that I had an excuse- “Woops. Excuse me. I need to run to the bathroom to fix my mess.”

That’s what panic drove me to do. You get to do some really, really weird things. But it got worse. I got so nauseous at this call center and so sick every day. My panic got that bad. It got so bad that I couldn’t eat. I would come to work.

I would sit down at my cubicle and I would put my head on the edge of my desk, pull out my garbage can and sit and just wait. I sat nauseously waiting to throw up.

It was a horrible feeling. All I could do was eat saltines, every day. I tried to deal with customer calls. If X, then Y, but I couldn’t even do that because my nerves were so shot. I was unhappy.

I was unhappy. This was unfulfilling work. And by this point, the panic cycle had established itself so firmly and I had no control over my unfulfilling work and no control over my body.

And then there was the day that changed it all. I got up in the morning. Changed, got ready for work. Got my keys, went out to my car and I couldn’t even get in my car. I was shaking too badly.

At this point, never give up, really becomes a cruel joke.

So I went back into my house and I took leave of absence from work and I felt very defeated. This is the point where some people would say you had a breakdown. I call it my breakthrough.

There’s a very tiny difference between a breakdown and a breakthrough. When you have a breakdown, you don’t find value in it. But when you have a breakthrough, you do extract the value from it and you use that to change your life.

So at this point, I’ve tried to hibernate. I’ve tried to adapt. My only option really was to migrate, right?

I’ve done cognitive behavioral therapy before, which tells you to face your threats lest they become amplified. If you are afraid of shopping at the grocery store. OK. And you panic at the grocery store. You’re supposed to go back because if you don’t go back, guess what? The threat level of that grocery store rises.

If you panic on the highway, you’re going to be scared to go back and drive on the highway again. But if you avoid it, the threat level rises.

So cognitive behavioral therapy tells you to face your fears. So I pondered quitting and I thought,

“ If I quit, am I avoiding the threat?  The thing, the work, the job that is triggering all this panic, or am I taking a healthy step to overcome everything?”

I don’t know the answer to that question. I spent a lot of time trying to answer that. Is there an upside to quitting? Should I seek mastery, autonomy and purpose elsewhere?

Was I using my panic disorder to make this decision or was I using my heart?

That sign that said never give up. That sign made my decision. I’m sure the makers of the sign didn’t intend someone to look at a sign that says never give up and then decide to give up and completely quit her job.

But I didn’t fit; the environment didn’t support me; like those animals on the Discovery Channel, like the Ducks in winter time that Holden Caulfield wanted to know about, the environment did not support me.

But here’s the thing I didn’t tell you about that motivational poster.

The leaf was orange. It was an autumn leaf. And it said, never give up. I’m sorry, but what happens to orange leaves?

They fall. They give up. They leave the tree. They move on. Cycles continue. Seasons move on.

And so with that thought, I decided to quit my job. They say the quitters never win. But I disagree. My life lightened and my decision to migrate put control back into my life.

And eventually I gained control over my panic attacks and my world grew larger again. I was no longer afraid to leave my house.

It started small. I can go to the grocery store again and I can drive on the highway again, and then I got a job again.

And I began teaching and I began speaking in front of groups. It all came back slowly. And I’ve learned a lesson for me and I’ve got a lesson for you to hear.

I will no longer squeeze myself into an environment that does not support me. If you don’t feel supported at work or elsewhere in life, you have options- You can hibernate. You can adapt or you can migrate.

And I don’t advocate any one of those choices. One of them worked for me. But another choice might work for you. But that’s the beauty of it. The key is that you have control. You can make these choices.

If work is not fulfilling for you, if you cannot find mastery, autonomy and purpose, then there is something else out there that you can choose.

It is very important that you write your own script. Write the script of your life. You cannot go on to do great things if somebody else is writing your script.

Thank you.

Resources for Further Reading:

How I Live With High Functioning Anxiety: Jordan Raskopoulos (Transcript)

Alison Sommer on Anxiety Disorders and Panic Attacks at TEDxCarletonCollege (Transcript)

One Simple Trick to Overcome Your Biggest Fear: Ruth Soukup (Transcript)

Preetha ji: How to End Stress, Unhappiness and Anxiety to Live in a Beautiful State (Transcript)

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