Field Notes · by Kristen Tolbert

One thing I have noticed over decades of working with people is that they rarely become consumed by an external issue because of the issue alone. The issue becomes a psychological container.

Politics, professional titles, the economy, other people's behavior, the n...

Most people say they want peace of mind, but what they often mean is that they want certainty. They want to know the relationship is stable, the job is safe, the result will be good, the decision is correct, the body is fine, the future is manageable. The problem is that mental health does not come ...

That "I'm about to get in trouble" feeling is a threat response — and there's a clear logic to it. Most people have felt it at some point: a meeting with someone who holds real authority over them, and the strange, uncomfortable intensity that comes with it. The heart rate that climbs before a perfo...

There is no shortage of commentary on leadership breakdowns inside modern organizations — widening power distances, executive insulation, and the subtle ways authority begins to distort communication and trust. These patterns are often described as "friction," but that term obscures more than it exp...

The work of integrating anxiety

Not all anxiety needs to be "resolved." In many cases anxiety is an intelligent strategy — one that kept you functional, vigilant, productive, and safe when you needed it to. Like any well-built defense, it arose to do a real job and persists in proportion to how m...

Not all anxiety is a problem to solve. Sometimes it's a signal. Other times, it's a smokescreen. And sometimes it's neither of those — it's a symptom of something happening in the body. The real challenge is discernment: knowing when your anxiety is pointing at something true, when it's blocking s...

Anxiety is often treated as a thinking problem — racing thoughts, irrational beliefs, catastrophic predictions. So we try to fix it with insight: convincing ourselves the worry is unfounded, reframing the thought, applying logic. Sometimes that helps. But often it doesn't, and the reason is importan...

Stress and Anxiety: the two words get used interchangeably, but they name different things — and understanding the difference can change how you relate to your body, your thoughts, and your inner world.

The short version: stress is situational; anxiety is anticipatory. Stress is a pressure; anxiety...

Some anxiety gets rewarded. It looks like drive, perfectionism, responsiveness, ambition. In high-achieving environments it gets relabeled as leadership, initiative, and excellence. But under the surface, a great many high-functioning people are running on panic. Their accomplishments are a social...

Most people treat anxiety as a thinking problem: too many thoughts, too fast, too overwhelming. But what looks like overthinking is often overfeeling that hasn't found contact. Anxiety becomes the dominant signal when an emotion is trying to surface and can't find language, safety, or space to land....