Anxiety in business: the relationship nobody asked for
Your anxiety wants back in.
You know the feeling. That familiar knock at your mental door. The overthinking. The what-if spirals. The way it makes you second-guess decisions you’d otherwise make with confidence.
You’re not alone in this. Around 4% of the global population experience an anxiety disorder at any given time (WHO, 2022), but for entrepreneurs that figure is significantly higher: more than half of business owners, 50.2%, report struggling with anxiety, making it the single most common mental health challenge in the entrepreneurial world (Founder Reports, 2024).
But what if the problem isn’t anxiety itself? What if it’s the relationship you have with it?
What if the way through isn’t fighting it head-on or pretending it doesn’t exist, but treating it exactly like that ex-partner who keeps showing up uninvited: firmly, clearly, and without letting them back in the driver’s seat?
The hidden relationship problem
The most natural response to anxiety is to fight it. But when you go to war with your own thoughts and feelings, you tend to lose.
The breakthrough comes when you stop treating anxiety as part of your identity and start treating it as something external: something that visits you, not something you are.
This has solid roots in cognitive behavioural therapy. Externalising a problem, treating it as separate from your sense of self, consistently helps people respond more effectively to it. When anxiety stops being “who I am” and becomes “something that shows up sometimes,” everything shifts.
Anxiety promises to keep you safe. But unchecked, it often keeps you small. It claims to be helping while quietly talking you out of the networking event, the pitch, the difficult conversation, the risk worth taking.
The Professional Breakup Strategy
Working with many entrepreneurs and high performers, I’ve developed what I call the Professional Breakup Strategy. It draws on three principles that mirror exactly how you’d set healthy boundaries in any relationship that wasn’t serving you.
1. Expect the return attempts
Your ex, anxiety, will try to come back. That’s not failure; it’s just what anxiety does.
Just like a former partner who texts at 2 AM during your biggest business launch, anxiety has terrible timing. It tends to show up precisely when the stakes are highest: before the presentation, during the difficult call, at the moment you most need to think clearly.
Expecting this takes away its power. When you know it’s coming, you stop being ambushed by it. You can acknowledge it without being derailed: “Ah, there you are. I knew you’d turn up for this one.”
Ask yourself: what would I do here if anxiety wasn’t in the room? Then do that.
2. Externalise the relationship
Give anxiety a name if it helps. Notice it as a presence that arrives, rather than a truth about you. This isn’t avoidance. It’s a deliberate shift in perspective that gives you back agency. Instead of being inside the anxiety looking out, you’re observing it from a place of choice.
A technique I use with clients takes this further. Rather than becoming your thoughts, you learn to notice them. Instead of “I’m going to fail this presentation,” try “I’m having a thought that I’m going to fail this presentation.” One step further: “I notice I’m having a thought about failing this presentation.” It sounds subtle, but that small language shift creates real psychological distance. You’re no longer fused with the thought. You’re the observer of it.
This is precisely why cognitive behavioural therapy is considered a first-line, empirically supported intervention for anxiety disorders (Curtiss et al., 2021): it works by helping people recognise these thought patterns rather than be ruled by them.
From that more grounded place, better questions become possible. What is anxiety trying to tell me right now? What old pattern is it running? What does it need me to believe, and is that actually true?
3. Experience without attachment
Here’s the counterintuitive part. You don’t need to slam the door and refuse all contact.
You can acknowledge anxiety’s presence without letting it drive your decisions. Think of it like running into an ex at a coffee shop: you can be civil, notice they’re there, and still go about your day without getting pulled back into old dynamics.
That means feeling the physical sensations of anxiety without immediately changing your plans. Noticing the worried thoughts without treating them as emergency broadcasts. Maintaining your direction while still being human.
Why this approach works for anxiety in business
The breakup metaphor resonates with business owners because you already understand relationship dynamics, boundaries, and the cost of letting toxic patterns run unchecked.
You know what it’s like to have someone in your life who creates more problems than they solve. You understand the relief that comes from establishing a healthy distance from something that was draining your energy and clouding your judgment.
Anxiety operates the same way. It promises to keep you safe, but often keeps you small. It claims to be helping, but it frequently creates more problems than it prevents. When anxiety in business goes unchecked, it can sabotage everything from networking opportunities to strategic decision-making. And fortunately, the same skills that help you protect your professional boundaries, recognising patterns, naming them, and refusing to be led by them, work just as well here.
Putting it into practice
Start by noticing the pattern. When does anxiety tend to show up for you? What are its favourite triggers? Recognising the recurring moments gives you a map.
Then practise the pause. Between the anxious thought and your response, there is a gap. It can feel tiny at first. But with practice, that gap grows, and that’s where your choice lives.
Finally, build the evidence base. Every time you do the thing anxiety told you not to do, and it goes reasonably well, you’re updating the story your nervous system tells about what’s safe. That’s not toxic positivity. That’s neuroplasticity, your brain’s ability to physically rewire itself in response to new experiences. Each time you act despite anxiety, you’re laying down new neural pathways that make it easier to do the same next time.
How Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy deepens the work
Alongside the Professional Breakup Strategy, I use Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH) with many of my clients. I want to be clear about what that means, because the word “hypnotherapy” puts a lot of people off.
There’s no trance, no swinging watch, no “you’re getting very sleepy.” CBH is an evidence-based approach that combines cognitive behavioural techniques with hypnotherapy. Contrary to popular misconceptions, there’s no “trance” or “subconscious” work involved. It’s simply a natural, learnable psychological state that enhances your ability to rehearse new responses and desensitise yourself to anxiety triggers.
Rehearsing new responses
One of the most powerful aspects of CBH is mental rehearsal. Instead of anxiety running its usual script before a difficult presentation or important conversation, you practise a different response in a calm, receptive state.
Your brain doesn’t fully distinguish between a vividly imagined experience and a real one when it comes to building neural pathways. That’s not a quirk; it’s something you can work with deliberately.
Systematic desensitisation
CBH also works well for systematically reducing the charge around specific anxiety provoking situations. Rather than avoiding situations that make you anxious, you can gently expose yourself to these scenarios in a controlled, relaxed way.
For business owners, that might mean mentally rehearsing a difficult client conversation, a public speaking moment, or a financial discussion until the emotional charge around it decreases. Combined with a cognitive behavioural approach, it addresses both how you think about anxiety and how your body automatically responds to it.
Moving forward
Reaching out for support with anxiety isn’t a sign that something is broken. It’s a sign that you’re paying attention.
Just as ending a toxic relationship often opens the door to healthier ones, changing your relationship with anxiety tends to bring greater confidence, clearer decision-making, and the kind of calm that lets you actually enjoy what you’ve built.
The goal isn’t to never feel anxious again. The goal is to stop letting it make your decisions for you.
Ready to change your relationship with anxiety?
If anxiety in business is something you recognise in yourself, I’d love to talk. The work I do draws on CBT, ACT, and CBH to create an approach that’s tailored to you, not a generic toolkit.
Between sessions, my clients also have access to the Your Mind Works app, where personalised resources, reflective exercises, and psychological tools are available exactly when they’re needed. Because the work that happens between sessions is often where the real change takes root.
When you’re ready to break up with anxiety for good, I’m here.
References
Curtiss, J. E., Levine, D. S., Ito, M., & Baker, A. W. (2021). Cognitive-behavioral treatments for anxiety and stress-related disorders. Focus, 19(4), 184–189. view
Founder Reports. (2024). 17 mental health statistics for entrepreneurs. view
World Health Organisation. (2022). Mental disorders. view
