Survival Anxiety vs. Learning Anxiety

Why Smart Leaders Sometimes Make Bad Decisions

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

The phone call comes on a Tuesday morning. The numbers are in, and they're not good. Really not good. Your stomach drops as you scan the spreadsheet: down 15% from last year, with the projections looking even worse.

We've all been there. That moment when everything feels like it's falling apart, and everyone is looking at you to fix it. Fast.

Sound familiar? If you've been in higher education leadership for more than five minutes, you've lived through some version of this moment. The details change, but the feeling is always the same. It’s like you're standing in the middle of a hurricane trying to hold everything together with scotch tape and good intentions.

We Need a Map for This Kind of Chaos

Here's the thing nobody tells you about leadership: the hardest part isn't making decisions when everything is going well. It's making good decisions when everything feels like it's on fire and you’re the one in charge.

In those moments, something happens to our brains. We stop thinking strategically and start reacting. We make choices we'd never make on a calm afternoon, but somehow seem perfectly reasonable when the pressure is on.

There's actually a name for what's happening to us.

A MIT psychologist named Edgar Schein studied this phenomenon for decades. He called it "survival anxiety,” that overwhelming feeling that if we don't do something right now, something terrible will happen.

Schein discovered that survival anxiety is like a powerful engine. It can drive us to make real, necessary changes. But it can also drive us straight into danger if we don't understand how it works.

The key insight? We all have two types of anxiety competing in our heads:

• Survival anxiety, the fear that staying the same will hurt us

• Learning anxiety, the fear that trying something new will hurt us

Real change only happens when survival anxiety tips the scale just enough to outweigh learning anxiety.

But here's the problem: right now, most of us are already drowning in survival anxiety. The scale isn't just tipped. It's broken.

The Survival Response

When that survival anxiety kicks in, we all have predictable ways of responding. None of these behaviors are particularly helpful, but they feel necessary in the moment.

Source: Brian Fleming, ref: Schein

Look familiar? If you're honest, you've probably done at least three of these in the past month. We all have. They're not character flaws. They're completely normal human responses to overwhelming pressure.

And strangely enough, they feel productive because they're doing something. But they're actually just ways of managing our own anxiety without solving the underlying problems.

The Learning Side of the Equation

While survival anxiety is pushing us to react, there's another voice in our heads telling us that trying anything new is dangerous. That's learning anxiety, and it's just as powerful (and yes, just as dangerous).

Learning anxiety whispers things like:

• "What if this doesn't work and everyone blames you?"

• "What if you look incompetent trying to figure this out?"

• "What if changing things just makes everything worse?"

It's the voice that says the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. It's why we keep doing things that aren't working, even when we know they aren't working.

In higher education, learning anxiety is particularly strong because so much of our identity is tied up in being the expert, the one with answers, the one most committed to the mission, the one who cares most about students. Admitting we need to try something completely different feels like admitting we don't know what we're doing.

But here's Schein's key insight: both types of anxiety are necessary. Survival anxiety provides the motivation to change. Learning anxiety keeps us from making reckless decisions. The problem comes when they get out of balance.

Right now, most of us have way too much survival anxiety and way too much learning anxiety. We're scared of staying the same and scared of changing at the same time.

So we get stuck doing things that feel like action but don't actually solve anything.

Turning the Energy Around

The good news? All that anxious energy you're feeling doesn't have to drive you toward panic or paralysis. It can be redirected toward strategies that help you solve problems. But it requires recognizing what's happening and consciously choosing a different response.

Source: Brian Fleming, ref: Schein

Same pressure, same urgency, but channeled in a completely different direction. Instead of departments fighting over scraps, they're sharing resources and expertise. Instead of looking for someone to blame, teams are looking at what's actually causing the problems. Instead of hoping for a magic solution, people are testing small changes and building on what works.

This isn't about eliminating the pressure or pretending everything is ok. It's about using that pressure as fuel for learning as leaders instead of fuel for panic.

The Practical Part

So what does this look like in real life? The next time you feel that familiar panic rising—when the phone rings with bad news or the email arrives that makes your heart sink—try this:

Pause and name it: "I'm in survival mode right now." Just recognizing that can help you step back from the automatic reactions.Ask yourself: "Which response am I about to default to?" Look at that first table. Are you about to blame someone? Form another committee? Look for a quick fix that doesn't actually fix anything?Then ask: "What would make trying something new feel less risky right now?" Maybe it's starting with a small pilot instead of a massive overhaul. Maybe it's bringing in people you trust to help think through options. Maybe it's just admitting you don't have all the answers and that's okay.Start small: What's the smallest, safest experiment you could try? What could you test without risking everything if it doesn't work?Create some support: Who else is dealing with similar challenges? How can you learn together instead of competing with each other?

Both Are Normal

Here's the most important thing to remember: neither survival anxiety nor learning anxiety is good or bad. They're both completely normal responses to pressure. The goal isn't to eliminate either one—it's to recognize when they're driving you toward responses that don't actually help.

You already have enough survival anxiety. You don't need more pressure, more urgency, or more fear about what will happen if things don't change. The pressure you're feeling is real, and it's justified.

The question is: where do you point all that energy? Toward reactions that feel productive but don't solve anything? Or toward learning that might actually help you build something better?

You're not broken. You're not a weak or an incompetent leader. You're just having a completely normal human response to overwhelming circumstances.

But that energy you're already feeling? You get to choose where it goes.