Stress and the Workplace
Welcome to the first blog entry for Alliance CBT. We are pleased to begin addressing some issues we notice are pervasive in our society. We hope our readers will find our ideas to be helpful and constructive.
In my internet perusals the other week, I came across this article on workplace stress:
In summary, this article reports on the dissatisfaction American workers have with their occupational life. Specifically, the article cites a study which found that 42 percent of American workers have changed jobs to the pressures of their workplace while also citing that an additional 35 percent have considered changing their job in response to the stress of their work. In regards to stress, the top workplace stressors cited were: supervisor relationships, amount of work, work-life balance, coworker relationships, and deadlines.
The article does not go into much detail but does provide some interesting figures. Clearly, many are unhappy about their work situation, and the unhappiness appears to stem from a number of sources including a combination of interpersonal and productivity-prioritization related demands.
I then spotted this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/10/work-stress-jobs-americans_n_3053428.html
This article speaks to the more stress related aspects of work, specifically mentioning the role of anxiety in working life. The article emphasizes that work-related stress contributes to a variety of problems, including raising risk of heart attack, speeding up the aging process, and raising risk of diabetes in women. These consequences exist given the reported lack of proactive coping in which many workers engage. The article mentions how we often overeat, are physically inactive, and sleep poorly due to fighting a deadline or ruminating over the demands of work.
Am I sensing a theme?
Workplace stress is pervasive. And it seems as if many issues are going on in our work environments. Do you find yourself stressing about work? Do you find yourself thinking about it constantly and are you finding it difficult to let go of these thoughts at the end of the day? Is the mental chatter interfering with your productivity and/or affecting your personal life? Might work stress be affecting your physical health?
We pride ourselves on staying busy, putting out metaphorical fires, rushing around. Yet our bodies and minds hunger for rest. We can’t turn off, we can’t relax. We feel as if there is always something to do. While we might not actually be facing a life or death situation such as coming across a bear in the woods, it can feel as if this is happening all the time. Our bodies react with increased heart rate, perspiration, shallow breathing. Our mind races with anxious “what if” thoughts. We are perpetually in the future and rarely in the present moment, dealing with what needs to be done right now.
We cope by overthinking, by putting off self-care, by sacrificing sleep to meet a deadline or by not being able to shut off our thoughts. We overeat or eat poorly. We drink too much. We end up fighting frequent colds/illness. We are plagued by chronic feelings of unhappiness and irritability.
So what can we do about it?
Yes, we might be able to change our job situation. We might not. We might be able to move to a different office or cubicle. We might be able to avoid or work around certain stress-inducing aspects of our jobs. But what if we still find ourselves stressed?
We must first realize that we can only have so much control or influence over our work environment and the rest becomes up to us. With effort and practice, we can take some steps to harness the power of our minds and make concrete behavioral changes to help rebalance our lives.
I wanted to share some workplace stress management tips we commonly work on in psychotherapy. For purposes of this blog, I will concentrate on time management and anxious thinking. While the nuances of these tips are individually negotiated in a psychotherapeutic space, I think many can benefit from reviewing and attempting to implement the ideas below. Many of these concepts are addressed and can be further individualized in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
1) Prioritization and Letting Go: If you find yourself feeling scattered and unproductive at work, try creating a new “prioritization” to-do list. The key with this type of to-do list is to rate each item on your list according to importance. Try creating three categories: vitally important, moderately important, and less important. Then reorganize your list placing the items in descending order from vital to less important. Consider letting go of the less important tasks or at least putting them off to another day or week.
2) Cultivate some Breathing room: Consider implementing a set time for a pause in your day to breathe and re-center. Set aside a few minutes at a set time each day to take some deep, diaphragmatic breaths (breathing from your belly rather than from high up in your chest). The act of diaphragmatic breathing immediately triggers a relaxation response in your body, moving you out of the fight-or-flight mode of anxiety and stress. Consider setting a timer to practice this daily, perhaps by even setting a reminder timer on your phone.
3) Monitor your triggers: Sometimes it is difficult for us to pinpoint exactly what it is that is stressing us out. Keep track of your moods and thoughts for one week in the following manner. Write down stress-triggering events, how you felt emotionally, and then try to write down the thoughts that popped into your head about these events. See if you notice any emerging patterns such as thought-spirals regarding worrying about unlikely worst-case scenarios or black-and-white thinking. For example, I might notice that I felt very anxious (emotion) after hearing about some upcoming changes at work (triggering event). I might notice I have thoughts such as “oh no, this means everything will change and I won’t be able to handle it, more will be expected of me and I won’t be able to cope with it, and then I will get fired.” Over the week, I might notice that I tend to engage in catastrophic thinking, always jumping to the worst-case scenario when I encounter an ambiguous situation or uncertainty. This kind of thinking might predispose me to feeling stressed.
4) Focus on what you can control and let go of the rest: In the above example, it might be constructive for me to realize what I can control and what I can’t control. While I might not be able to do anything about the upcoming changes planned in my work environment, I do have some influence about how I interpret these changes and also my own behavior. A more helpful interpretation of the above scenario might be “while I am feeling a bit anxious about not knowing exactly what these changes might mean, I can find out some more information and talk through my concerns with my supervisor. If I clarify my role and ask for help with things I don’t understand, it is unlikely my company will fire me just like that.” Such interpretations and behaviors are more likely to reduce overwhelming anxiety to something more manageable and enable me to engage in more constructive coping/planning.
5) Schedule your worry: Although this may seem counterintuitive, consider setting aside time daily for “worry time.” This is a time when you explicitly make time to worry intensely about all of the things nagging at you. I usually recommend writing down your worries and spending a significant chunk of time doing this, usually about 15 minutes. It’s helpful to set the same time daily for this activity. For example, as I go about my day and a worry thought comes into my head such as “I don’t know how I’m going to handle it if I mess up that work presentation next week,” I say to myself, “It’s not helpful worrying about this right now. I will think about this during my worry time later” and then I refocus my attention on something else that is right in front of me, such as a conversation with a coworker, taking my walk, or eating my dinner. Then during my “worry time” I have total permission to write about the scenario of me messing up the presentation. The reason why this technique is so helpful is that it begins to train my mind to let go of unproductive worrying while engaged in other aspects of my life and to mindfully face my worries during specific times. With practice, people often forget what they were worrying about earlier and/or find themselves actually engaging in more productive problem solving during worry time. Perhaps after intentionally worrying about my work presentation, I might feel more centered and be able to proactively take any steps I can to effectively plan for the presentation.
If you try some of the techniques listed above you may notice some patterns emerge which might be more difficult to manage. I always say if we find ourselves engaging in the same unhelpful behaviors over and over, then it might be useful to talk to a therapist in order to gain another perspective and obtain assistance in navigating our most entrenched thoughts and behaviors.
There are other contributions to workplace stress than time management and worry thoughts. Interpersonal life in the workplace, including conflicts with coworkers and supervisors, is a whole other topic. I will most likely write about workplace relationships in a future blog.
Dr. Liza Guequierre