To transform anxiety into power, you stop treating stress as the problem and start treating avoidance as the real enemy. That means noticing when you overwork, shut down, or back away from opportunities, and then taking one small, values-based step toward the thing you’re afraid of instead of away.
In a recent Admin Awards Institute session, Sunny invited Dr. Luana Marques — associate professor at Harvard Medical School, former president of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, and bestselling author of Bold Move: A Three-Step Plan to Transform Anxiety into Power — to talk directly to administrative professionals about this shift.
Dr. Marques works with people who use words you probably know by heart: anxiety, burnout, skating on thin ice, one more stressor away from breaking. She pointed to recent data showing a 25% global increase in depression and anxiety and that nearly 60% of Americans report work-related stress affecting every part of life; one Harvard Business Review piece even bumps that to 85%.
Her message to admins and executive assistants was blunt: anxiety is not the infection. It’s the fever. The real infection is avoidance — all the ways you react, retreat, or remain frozen instead of doing the hard, important thing that would actually move your career forward.
Psychological avoidance is any response to a perceived threat that makes you feel better fast but carries a long-term price tag. It’s not laziness; it’s your brain trying to turn down discomfort, even if that quietly burns through your potential as an administrative professional.
Dr. Marques told the story of “Anna,” an early-career admin in a company who dreamed of becoming the executive assistant to the CEO. Six months in, she got her shot: an interview with the CEO for a more senior role. At first she was excited — then her thoughts flipped.
“I’m too junior. I can’t climb up. What if the CEO doesn’t like me? What if I don’t know all the systems? What if I can’t do this?” Pretty soon, her brain landed on, “Yeah, I’m not good enough. I can’t do this.”
That’s when avoidance took over. She worked longer hours to prove herself, skipped the gym, and numbed out at home with “a little too many glasses of wine.” She never raised the topic of the promotion with her CEO. By the time she met with Dr. Marques, she was saying, “Maybe I should just quit, or maybe I shouldn’t be ambitious.”
On the surface, Anna’s problem looked like stress, burnout, maybe impostor syndrome. Underneath, the real pattern was psychological avoidance quietly pulling her away from the very future she wanted.
Psychological avoidance tends to travel in three flavors: reacting, retreating, and remaining frozen. Most administrative professionals can spot themselves in at least one — often all three, depending on the day.
Picture this: you’re deep in work when an email pops up from your CEO or department head with the subject line “We need to talk.” There’s no context. Your stomach drops. Your heart speeds up. That’s your amygdala, the fight–flight–freeze part of the brain, switching on as if a lion just walked into your office.
If you react to avoid discomfort, you move toward the perceived threat with one goal only: to stop feeling anxious. Maybe you fire off a long, defensive reply, ping your executive with rapid‑fire questions, or raise your voice in a meeting. As Dr. Marques put it, “Avoidance works, but long term gets us stuck.” The next morning, you’re in damage-control mode.
If you retreat, you move away. You close the email and “just check” social media. You stay late reformatting a deck instead of asking for clarity. At home, you pour a second glass of wine or binge a show because you’re too keyed up to face how you feel.
If you remain — freeze — you do nothing. You stare at the screen, your mind goes blank in a meeting, or you sit on an idea you know would help your executive because you can’t get the words out. You’re not lazy; your survival system has temporarily shut down your thinking brain.
Recognizing your go‑to R in real time is the first step toward making a different choice the next time your calendar, inbox, or executive sets off alarm bells.
You don’t beat avoidance by willing yourself into fearlessness. You beat it by working with your brain. Dr. Marques shared three everyday strategies — Shift, Approach, Align — that admins and executive assistants can use without waiting for a perfect moment.
Shift: Talk to yourself like you’d talk to a friend.
Thoughts like “My team hates me,” “My initiatives will be stupid,” or “I’m a failure” act like a magnifying glass on your anxiety. They’re not facts; they’re predictions. Dr. Marques asks clients to grab one recurring thought and ask, “What would I say to my best friend in this situation?”
When Anna tried this, her inner script changed to: “I’ve worked hard, and perhaps my skills are sufficient for me to at least interview for this job.” Same situation, different lens, dramatically lower stress.
Approach: Take the opposite action of what anxiety orders.
Your anxiety will always tell you to avoid: don’t ask for the raise, don’t correct your executive, don’t speak in that leadership meeting. Opposite action means doing the smallest possible version of the thing you’re tempted to dodge.
For Anna, jumping straight into a CEO interview felt impossible. So she designed a ladder: mock interviews with her current manager, then an interview with her manager’s boss, before finally sitting down with the CEO. Each step trained her brain that she could survive — and grow from — discomfort.
Align: Match your calendar to your values.
Stress spikes when your daily actions don’t match what actually matters to you. Dr. Marques had Anna look for “flow” moments at work — times she felt energized and fully herself. For Anna, ambition and impact were big values. Avoiding the promotion talk kept her completely out of alignment.
When you’re debating a move, ask: What value of mine is this serving? And does the way I’m spending my week reflect that value, or contradict it?
Being bold as an administrative professional isn’t about never feeling afraid. As Dr. Marques said, “Being bold does not mean being fearless.” It’s about choosing not to let avoidance make the decisions that shape your career.
Her own story is proof. She grew up in poverty in a small Brazilian town, remembers a mushroom growing out of her leaking bedroom floor, and coped by retreating into food — a pattern that led to lifelong struggles with weight. Moving to a huge city as a teenager, she went from extroverted to painfully shy, hiding behind schoolwork instead of friendships.
Her grandmother became her first coach in opposite action. At a mall food court, she pointed to a stranger and said, “Why don’t you go sit over there with that gentleman? He looks like he needs some company.” Dr. Marques went straight into fight–flight–freeze. Her grandmother didn’t let her off the hook. That tiny, terrifying act of approaching instead of avoiding eventually paved the way to graduate school in the U.S. and, after one more bold application, a role at Harvard.
Later, when she was invited to run for president of a national professional association with a three‑month‑old at home, a senior colleague told her she’d be “a horrible mother” if she said yes and that she was “too junior.” That night, she drafted an email withdrawing her application — classic avoidance dressed up as “it’s not the right time.”
Her husband stopped her: “Since I’ve met you, you wanted this.” She hit send on the application instead of the withdrawal and became the first Latina and the youngest president of the association. The fear never fully disappeared. She simply refused to let it drive.
For you, a bold move might be asking to support a higher‑level executive, applying for an internal promotion, or finally having the hard conversation about a role that no longer fits. The test is simple: does it move you toward your values, or away?
Check the price tag. A real break leaves you more grounded and better able to take the next step. Avoidance lowers discomfort in the moment but moves you away from something that matters — like a promotion, a boundary conversation, or sleep — and often creates more stress later.
Not necessarily. Anxiety is the “fever,” not always a sign you need a whole new workplace. Start by asking where your actions and values are misaligned. Can you change how you respond — shifting your self‑talk, taking opposite action, or redesigning responsibilities — before deciding the job itself is the problem?
Dr. Marques is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and still hears, “You’re not good enough. You can’t do this.” The goal isn’t to erase those thoughts; it’s to treat them as mental noise, not instructions. Talk to yourself like a friend, then take one concrete step that proves the thought wrong in real life.
Bold moves are most sustainable when they’re aligned with a clear “why.” Stress is highest when your calendar and your core values clash. Before you say yes or no to a big step — an internal shift, a new credential, a leadership role — name the value it serves (growth, stability, impact, family) and design boundaries that protect what matters most.
Ready to go deeper? Watch the full conversation with Dr. Luana Marques in the Admin Awards Institute library and map out your next bold move with her step‑by‑step guidance.