The time for this newsletter always seems to approach with a steady, relentless step, and here I am again, wondering what to share today.
My thoughts today revolve around something that is both a gender issue and a people issue. Vorrei parlare dell’ANSIA. Che per la forza con la quale si presenta sempre ai nostri occhi, mi sembra appropriato descrivere con lettere maiuscole.
Anxiety is a state of being, or at least I think so. I say think because I’m not an expert—this is where the phone consultations with my psychologist friend, Laura, come in handy. She has the ability to explain in two seconds, with clarity, what I struggle to articulate in a thousand words. In any case, I’ve come to understand that anxiety is something we experience when we’re confronted with something unmanageable—unmanageable, that is, based on our current capacity to handle anxiety in that particular moment. Ingestibile per il nostro livello di gestione dell’ansia in quel dato momento, si intende. What interests me here is the social dimension of anxiety. In one of the manuals on Adaptive Leadership, Marty—writing alongside his co-author Ronald Heifetz, whom I’ve never met but who seems like an interesting character—states that anxiety has a social function that is often misunderstood.
If I think about things that once caused me anxiety but no longer do, one example that comes to mind is merging onto the highway while my mother was driving, an experience that felt life-threatening every single time. There were also countless other moments tied to my complete lack of a sense of direction.
In my notes for this newsletter, I had written: write that I didn’t have the courage. I’m not sure what I meant by that, but it’s something I need to acknowledge and reckon with.
For any reality that is being built—like a startup—there are two key moments. The first is the construction phase, where the best approach is to reduce social anxiety by creating an environment that is stable and secure enough to sustain the complexity of building something from scratch. The second is when it becomes necessary to lower those barriers and stare straight at the sources of anxiety within the group. What are we avoiding? What truths do we need to confront? And sometimes, in this moment, decisions are made—like turning the page. It happened to me. What are we avoiding? What truths do we need to confront? And sometimes, in this moment, decisions are made—like turning the page. It happened to me.
And speaking of choices, with the European elections approaching, beyond reminding my sister to vote at the Swiss consulate and beyond digging up my own voter card from some drawer in Padova, it would be interesting if elected politicians were forced to confront their own personal anxiety—instead of projecting it outward like stardust, spreading it over everyone else. It would be powerful if we acknowledged the social function of recognizing our own fragility, of understanding that of others, and of containing collective anxiety rather than fueling it. There is a real need to name this anxiety—because whether we like it or not, it moves us. And yet, we are often so afraid of it that we hide it away, only to let it grow unchecked into something much larger than it ever needed to be.
Isn’t this precisely the misunderstood social function of anxiety that Marty was talking about?
