Managing Stress at Work
In order to understand stress and how to manage stress, you need to know how people respond. Specifically, people need to know how to overcome negative self talk. To make this practical, I will describe how Jane operates in the workplace.
Jane is 42 years of age; she has had no previous problems, no previous stress attacks, and no mental health episodes. Lately, she has been very distressed at work and has fears that everyone thinks she’s incompetent. She has become over-sensitive to her leader’s feedback and to the looks of her colleagues. You could say that she is slightly paranoid. The outcome of all of this is that she has become socially phobic. She finds it very difficult to go to parties with her husband. She tends to hide in another room so that she doesn’t have to socialize with people.
Jane is experiencing work stress and this is a major problem. Everything seems to be too much of a burden for her. She is having physical reactions of nausea and illness. Her work demands are too much for her and she can’t cope and she feels depressed and anxious all the time.
There is no doubt that she is much less productive and accurate with her work. In sum, HER SYSTEM IS OVER-LOADED with worry, concern, anxiety, fears, and she has lost most of her self-confidence. Does this sound familiar to you? Can you put yourself is Jane’s place? Can you begin to understand how stressed she is? Do you feel that life’s events have over-run you and you can’t cope? Do you feel constantly under threat, tired and unresponsive? Are your friends and/or your partner asking you what is wrong with you? Are you dissatisfied with your life? Do you feel you can’t cope the way you used to? Is your work constantly suffering from your emotional state?
If you believe that this fits you, you are having problems with stress at work. We seem to be working longer and being stress more. Some people think this is acceptable. Reported cardiac illnesses increased after the 9/11 attack. High blood pressure, strokes and related disorders increased. With emotional trauma comes physical ailments. When people are unwell emotionally they don’t function well at work.
There are many stresses in the workplace. But what in particular elevate our stress levels? Unfortunately there are many workplace stress triggers.
In the workplace: overload, new load, long hours, pressures and even no ability to control your workplace or your workload. Organizational issues: poor management; lack of leadership; poor communication; political interference; transfers; redundancy. Inter-personal Conflict: your supervisor at work; a work colleague; your partner; your children; your family.
What is the best way to cope in the workplace? In large measure its up to you. You can change jobs but this is not very effective. One clever way to solve the problem of your boss is to list his or her name with a headhunter in the hope that someone else will employ your boss. From my experience the major problem with stress at work is poor role specification. Different perspectives on your work responsibilities will cause stress. The question remains how to solve this problem appropriately.
One way to control workplace stress is to recognize the role of negative thinking. There is an old saying that you are what you think so you have to consider your negative thoughts. If you are stressed you can deal with the problem if you try. You must realize that you have to confront negative self talk. How we feel is shaped by how we think. Self talk occupies much of our day.
This sounds simple but it’s a fact of life. We create our own problems because we run ourselves down all the time. We probably have 10 times the amount of negative thought to positive thought. We increase our tension and stress by constant self-criticism. The situation is exacerbated if our friends and family constantly criticize us. If we want to manage workplace stress we have to work on becoming more positive about ourselves.