How can we manage Code Review Anxiety?

If you’ve ever felt anxious, you probably know that anxiety doesn’t just influence how we feel. Anxiety also influences how we think and what we do. In the psychology world, we conceptualize this using something called the cognitive-behavioral model (see Figure 1). This model shows that our physiological (“how we feel”), cognitive (“how we think”), and behavioral (“what we do”) symptoms of anxiety all interact and combine forces to create the multi-system swirl that is code review anxiety. [2]

Figure 1. Cognitive-behavioral model of code review anxiety

This is why, when managing code review anxiety, we don’t just want to target how we feel. We also want to target how we think and what we do. In the next section, we’ll do this in four major steps:

1. Create Awareness

2. Reduce Physiological Arousal

3. Challenge Biased Thinking

4. Proactively Engage