Dealing with Work Stress
Tips for dealing with work stress.
Are you a stressed employee? Decreasing work stress starts with you and your actions.
5 Simple things you can do that will decrease your work stress.
- Stop complaining. Complaining does not help fix the problem, and often brings those around you down into a stressed place. There is nothing positive that can come of this,
- Stop wishing people would be who they aren’t. People ( collegues and bosses) are who they are. Confessing all of their sins to everyone else and your self isn’t going to assist alleviate your stress. It generates a negativity that can cause more stress. Inisisting that reality should be different is a recipe for disaster. Help yourself out by brainstorming a solution to someone who is difficult.
- Practice assertiveness. Assertiveness is the ability to clearly communicate your expectations and feelings in a respectful way. It helps you feel heard, accomplish tasks when you are working with others, and also helps others to trust you because they know where they stand. Learn more here.
- Examine resentful feelings. Feeling resentful can only happen when you allow it. Don’t put yourself in a postion where you are doing things at work and expecting recognition or special accolades if you will become angry and resentful if it doesn’t happen. Making choices based on what your job requires and your own standards rather than for appreciation is a better strategy.
- Practice kindness and give people the benefit of the doubt. Being thoughtful and kind to your coworkers and superiors will go along way towards decreasing your stress and increasing your support network. People respond to kindness, and overall it’s a good strategy for interacting with others. Giving people the benefit of the doubt means you don’t attribute false intentions without evidence. This will help you to be more postive and motivated and will help your work relationships to be more satisfying.
Some other more complicated but worthwhile strategies to take when dealing with work stress have to do with examining how your thoughts and emotional response may be adding more stress. Below are another three ways of dealing with work stress.
Dealing with work stress. Learn how to stop reacting emotionally.
Learn how about your own emotional reactions. Recognize how your desire to avoid unpleasant emotions, such as conflict, may get in the way of you doing your job.
Dealing with work stress entails examining your normal stress responses and attempting to work on how you manage stress overall. We define stress as your emotional response to events that are triggers.
If you have trouble with emotional responses, you may have trouble with managing stress. Set a goal to learn how to identify you emotions, and make choices based on what the right thing to do is in the circumstances rather than avoiding conflict, expressing anger inappropriately or making otherwise emotionally driven choices.
Dealing with work stress. Work on unhealthy thoughts that produce stress. Get mindful.
We create our own stress. I know you haven’t been taught to think about stress this way. It’s frequently described as something external that happens to us. It’s not your fault that you create your own stress. Our mind when left unattended will frequently get out of balance and create all kinds of trouble for us.
Thoughts are not true. Thoughts are words inside your head. That is all. Often we make the mistake of believing our thoughts are true just because they are there. They aren’t.
How to do this?
- Practice noting and observing your thoughts. They are separate from who you are.
- Say to yourself “ I am having the thought that…..” Watch your thoughts come and go like luggage on the baggage claim at the ariport.
- See if this practice over the week doesn’t yield some important information about how you are reacting to your thoughts and causing yourself distress. If you enjoy this exercise explore some more mindfulness practices, these are incredibly helpful tools to give yourself a different perspective on your life.
Dealing with work stress. Acceptance
You don’t have to run from feelings of unhappiness. Fear, anger and sadness are just emotions. They cannot harm you. In accepting what you are experiencing, paying attention and not struggling against it, you open up to the possibility of changing your experience. Its counter intuitive but it works.
Spending time arguing about how people or situations should be a way they aren’t or shouldn’t be a way they are creates feelings of frustration and anger inside you. If you can change it, do. If you can’t, don’t spend mental energy struggling.
If you practice these changes and strategies and still experience a tremendous amount of stress, it may be that you need to leave your job.
Dealing with work stress. Do you need to leave or change jobs?
Research suggests that workplace satisfaction and career satisfaction produce positive mental health and self esteem.
Research also suggests that greater values-consistent living is negatively related to depression, anxiety, stress and burnout, and positively related to overall health. .
Figure it out this way.
Explore your values.
Now that you have observed your experience, and allowed yourself to truly see what you are experiencing, you are in a much better place to start to explore your stress. On your deathbed what would you like to have accomplished?
Your funeral
- What would you want your children to say about you at your funeral?
- Your grandchildren?
- Your wife?
- Your family?
- Your neighbors?
- Your colleagues?
This exercise is different for everyone and there are no wrong values. Write it down, keep it handy. Often when people do this they are surprised to find that the choices they make every day are in contradiction to their values and are taking them further away from what they would like to accomplish.
cognitivie defusion for stress
Stress and Generalized anxiety disorder
Medical information obtained from this website is not intended as a substitute for professional care. If you have or suspect you have a problem, you should consult a healthcare provider.