How to manage 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.

Why is it that Jane, 42 years of age, suddenly has difficulty going out with her husband? When she goes to parties she hides away from everyone. This behaviour seems to stem from her workplace where she feels everyone is critical of her. She was stressed at work. She feels she doesn't have her colleagues' respect. She believes that her boss is overly critical.

Jane's problem is that she is experiencing work stress. She feels constantly worn down and tired. Physically she feels nauseous and sick. Emotionally she feels depressed and terrified of making mistakes and she reports feeling unable to cope with work demands.

Jane is not performing well at work. She can't manage the stress and her system is overloaded. You feel the same way sometimes too? Can you understand her level of stress? Have life's events overtaken you? Are you constantly tired and mildly depressed? Do people ask what is wrong with you? Are you tired of life? Are you coping well? Has all of this made it much less effective at work?

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.

We need to know what causes this workplace stress. What are the factors that create problems for research work? There are many of them as you will soon see.

These include excessive workplace demands. Poor management and poor communication in the workplace cause stress. Oddly enough, poor relationships at home can cause workplace stress as much as interpersonal conflict with colleagues.

How do we cope with all these stresses in the workplace? This depends on you. Job changing is one solution but not a good one. A devious strategy for a bad boss is to list the boss' name with a headhunting agency in the hope that your boss will get a job elsewhere. Poor role specification in my view is a major problem for workplace stress. If you and your boss have different views of your job, stress and conflict will emerge. The first step in dealing with stress is to outline ways of controlling the situation.

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.

What I am going to say sounds simple but it is true. We are our own worst enemy because we constantly criticize ourselves. The ratio of negative to positive thought is 10 to 1. Our constant self-criticism causes stress. Our situation can be made worse if our friends and loved ones criticize us. To start to manage workplace stress and personal stress we need to begin by eliminating negative self talk and increasing positive self regard.