Understand Stress
Goal: Pinpoint where the anxiety is coming from.
A certain amount of daily stress is normal. Stress, after all, is simply your reaction — either positive or negative — to change, according to the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine. When stress places prolonged or extreme pressure on your coping mechanisms, it can become a clinical problem that requires professional help. Continually high levels of stress can wreak havoc on the digestive and nervous systems, leading to irritable bowel syndrome, recurrent headaches, and heart attacks. The psychological symptoms often come in the form of burnout (losing interest in work) and depression. The tips below are designed to help you prevent stress from taking a serious toll on your health — and your career.
There are two leading, complementary perspectives on the sources of workplace stress. Understanding the difference between the two is the first step in learning how to cope.
Internal: Stress comes from how you perceive your
situation. The very thoughts you have can worsen your
stress reaction, says Dr. Jeff Brantley, director of the Mindfulness Based
Stress Reduction program at Duke Integrative Medicine. For example, one day
your boss emerges from a long, closed-door meeting looking upset. Then she
e-mails you requesting a meeting. Do you immediately think you’re
facing the ax? “Your mind starts spinning a catastrophe, and it’s
enough to trigger your body to go into a stress reaction,” Brantley
says.
Coping strategy: You may not be able to
eliminate the stimulus, but you can learn to change your response and calm your
mind. Start keeping a list of everything in your day that causes stress. Is
there something new or different in your work life? Do certain colleagues make
your blood boil? Pinpoint how every item on the list makes you feel and then
ask yourself, “Is my reaction appropriate or over the top?”
This step is key, because once you understand where your emotions are coming
from, you can find a healthier way to deal with them.
External: This school of thought holds that outside factors,
like toxic work environments, predominantly drive workplace stress. Common
characteristics of stress-inducing environments include authoritarian or
noncommunicative supervisors, socially isolating work, and jobs that require a
lot of effort but offer little reward. Dr. Peter Schnall of the University of
California at Irvine’s Center for Occupational and Environmental
Health says these factors can produce biological responses such as higher blood
pressure and could possibly contribute to more serious conditions like heart
attacks and depression.
Coping strategy: Eliminating the source of the problem
(i.e., finding another job) may be the most effective solution in the long
term. But until the job market improves, find ways to regain a sense of control
over your time and your surroundings. For example, if you must endure a
two-hour commute in rush-hour traffic to arrive at the office by 9 a.m., start
your workday earlier so you avoid the worst time to travel. If you can’t
stand your colleagues, shut your office door or take your work to a conference
room for part of the day.
Go Ahead and Vent — but Find the Right Listener
Goal: Blow off steam without damaging your reputation at work.
Understanding how stress works will only get you so far. You need cathartic relief, right? Don’t hesitate to seek the empathetic ears of a colleague, but do choose your confidant wisely, says Matthew Grawitch, an organizational psychologist and professor at Saint Louis University. “The more you say to a person you work with, the more likely something will slip out at work.” Grawitch says. You don’t want co-workers using your misery to their advantage, so find someone with a sterling reputation whom you know and trust.
As counterintuitive as it sounds, in some cases your boss may be your best confidant. Sure, you don’t want to make much ado about the minor, daily stresses of your job, but if you’re struggling with something major that affects your performance, talk to your boss, says Grawitch. After all, managers are invested in the success of their employees. A brief explanation (keep the hairy details to a minimum) is not only fair, it’s also a way to build trust.
One district manager at a global pharmaceutical company recently survived a round of layoffs. Still reeling from the stress of nearly losing his own job, he faced the task of cutting 20 percent of his own employees, many of whom he had worked with for more than 20 years. He asked his former and current bosses for advice because both of them had been through the same experience. The two empathized but, more importantly, offered some concrete tips on how to make the cuts and give employees the support they need. The conversations didn’t make the task any easier, but they did help the manager cope with his own internal struggles.
If you’re going to go to your boss, schedule a time to talk instead of dropping by unexpectedly when she may be in the middle of grappling with the demands of her own job. Regardless of whom you talk to, vent once, then let the issue rest. Constantly rehashing the story will force you to relive your emotions.
Don’t want to vent? Relieve some tension and clear your head by doing something physical. Wear yourself out on the treadmill, go on a strenuous hike, do laps in the swimming pool — whatever you need to do. The activity will get your endorphins pumping (the brain chemicals that make us feel good) and focus your mind on your body instead of your stress.
Learn to Change Your Reaction to Stress
Goal: Stop being tyrannized by your emotions.
After you’ve blown off some steam, you can work through stress in a more logical, clearheaded way rather than making decisions based on emotions. “Don’t just be lost in negative feelings,” says Brantley.
The Mayo Clinic offers a few tips on how to retrain your reaction to stress:
Rethink your standards: If your failure to achieve perfection causes continual guilt and frustration, redefine what success means. For example, if you always feel inundated with work, ask yourself if you’re spending more time on tasks than they require. Adds Dr. Barbara Gray, a professor of organizational behavior at Penn State, often “we actually shoot ourselves in the foot by making the task harder than it needs to be.”
Reframe your situation: Weather delays your flight to an important business meeting. Instead of stewing about the disruption to your schedule, which you can’t control anyway, take advantage of the extra time to prepare for your presentation or catch up on sleep.
Reassess the significance of the problem: Will it matter tomorrow? Next week? A year from now? Emotion magnifies the difficulty of a problem in the moment; perspective shrinks it. So make sure you give yourself a steady dose of the latter.
Additional reporting by Tyler Kearn.
