How To Deal With Stress At Work

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

One of the biggest stressors is stressreceived at work … Maybe the fact is that in any other situation we can afford to react to the situation, or maybe the whole point is that stress tolerance - the condition for hiring. One way or another, any person who decides to make a living faces the most difficult task - to preserve the nervous system.

Even if the work is loved thrice, the resources are not limitless. And you need to have in mind several quick ways to bring yourself back to the state of standing. Let's discuss these ways how to deal with stress, and stop being convicts:)

1. Dosing workload

I understand that having a position implies a number of responsibilities, but should the amount of work really turn you into a horse? Remember the Nautilus song - "Bound by One Chain"? There are wonderful lines: "The measure of work is fatigue." This is about the intrinsic motivation of most hard workers.

The first and most important thing that is important for you to understand is that if you are tired, you need to dose your functions. You can clarify how much work needs to be done at a minimum and allow yourself not to do more. I assure you, friends, without this "dispenser" you daily perform half of the work that no one else needs, other people's functions.

So, how will we dose the load to reduce stress levels?

1. Find out your job responsibilities.
2. Specify the actual amount of work required for today.
3. Select from all the tasks with which you have been loaded with 3 important ones and allocate enough time for them, the rest - as far as possible.
4. Provide yourself with a break between tasks in any way.
5. Refuse to those who overload you with not your functions.

I suspect workaholics will have a hard time on the last point. But I am sure that everyone has a sufficiently strong Adult (the part of the personality that is responsible for making rational decisions based on needs and requirements - the concept of transactional analysis). From this rational part, you are able to politely and without unnecessary "aftertastes" (like feelings of guilt or self-criticism) weed out unnecessary tasks and take care of yourself.

2. Delegation and distribution of responsibilities and tasks

As I wrote above, you are definitely doing more workload than you need to. Of course, this causes fatigue and provokes chronic stress state … And this brings the body into a mode of survival, not life. Who will stand in such a rhythm?

The reason for this state is the inability to distribute and delegate tasks, the inability to ask for help from someone who is easier. Always and everywhere there are those who are not yet exhausted. Learn to transfer some of the functions to them. This, of course, is not about exploitation.

We are talking now about asking a colleague to throw off her successful presentation so as not to sit and reinvent the wheel. We're talking about asking for advice from a more experienced employee, so as not to rack your brains out of principle. How to deal with stress, if you are constantly looking for obvious solutions?

When it comes to deligation, it is important to understand the difference between it and shifting responsibility. If in your subordination there are people who receive money for some sector of responsibilities - give them this sector. What happens in practice? Having subordinates, we take on half of their work. It seems like for the sake of quality, but in fact - out of habit.

At the same point, it is worth mentioning how to navigate your functions and not take on someone else's.

3. Proper rest and breaks

What do you do during your lunch break? Eating sandwiches? Are you in the smoking room? Are you working?

You will be surprised, but an hour off can really save your nerves if you change your classic scenario. Rest is, first of all, a change in the "working" hemisphere.

To feel better after your lunch break, do the following:

• leave the room with monitors and computers, they dry the mucous membranes and the eyes get tired more;
• do a simple eye exercise: rub your palms together for a few seconds, and then slide them to your eyes, the eyes under the palms should be open. Do this 3-5 times - your eyes will feel better;
• if possible, leave the office for fresh air and take conscious control of your breathing - a slow deep breath, natural exhalation - this will provide the brain with oxygen and help "wake up";
• call a pleasant and easy-going person and talk about something distracted;
• take time for irrational activities (creativity), for example, paint for a few minutes (there are excellent anti-stress coloring pages, they really work);
• provide the body with nutrients and something tasty for mood (coffee with office cookies does not count);
• if possible, take a nap for 10-15 minutes.

To overcome stress, you need to get out of stressful conditions from time to time. And for this purpose there is a break at work. Relax in it, you deserve it. And excuses are not accepted:)

4. Normal motor mode

Movement works very well against stress. Even if you are very tired and you are not enough to run during the break, you need to at least just walk at a calm pace. It is possible with music, it is possible without.

A walk is a way not only to relieve stress (after all, stress is also energy), but also to get additional resources. For example, chat with new people or vice versa - take a break from people and take time for yourself and your needs.

Another way to cope with stress at work is the office charging complex. Choose a couple of exercises for the eyes, neck and back, against leg swelling. Most can be done without getting up from your chair.

If the work schedule allows, it makes sense to devote time to aerobic loads. This is a type of exercise in which the heart is trained and the amount of oxygen in the blood increases. This contributes to an increase in stress tolerance and improved brain activity. You don't get tired so quickly. Running, dancing, climbing the hill at a leisurely pace helps a lot. Try it!

5. Optimize your diet

Your well-being during the working day depends on what products you choose in your daily diet. Eating small, frequent and varied meals is enough to maintain blood sugar levels while maintaining energy and focus, and to avoid mood swings. When your blood sugar drops, you may feel anxious and irritable.

Here are some helpful tips on how to how to deal with stress by optimizing the diet:

• Minimize your intake of sugar and refined carbohydrates. They are needed, but should not form the basis of the diet. Slow carbohydrates are still the best source of energy.
• Cut back on foods that can negatively affect your mood, making it unstable. These are foods such as caffeine, alcohol, foods high in trans fats and artificial preservatives or hormones.
• Increase your intake of omega-3 fatty acids to maintain a stable mood and not waste energy fighting uncomfortable emotions. The best sources are seafood, flaxseeds, and nuts.
• Avoid nicotine. Smoking (both active and passive) at first really calms the raging nerves, but after 10-15 minutes, the opposite effect occurs. As compensation.

As a snack, mixes of nuts and dried fruits are suitable. Both tasty and healthy and high in calories to overcome hunger. It is better to drink green tea or water. Chronic dehydration is one of the causes of poor health and fatigue. It just so happened that coffee and black tea "pull" water from the body and cause this most chronic dehydration. Water and green tea retain water.

Case from practice

My client, let's call her K., is an office worker in a management position. She turned to me for the reason that she could not sleep because of the continuous flow of thoughts in her head, analysis of work plans and other unnecessary … information. K. looked exhausted and twitched, she could not stop the flow of thoughts and constantly looked at the phone (the file should have come there), then at the clock (she had to pick up the child from school).

In the process of work, I saw a real need to give K. the opportunity to slow down and breathe calmly (when K. spoke about her condition and described her daily routine, she did not breathe and at the end of the sentence she took a break to take a breath). According to her personal feelings, the volume of functions at work has greatly increased and she simply cannot cope with this volume. K. for several minutes stubbornly criticized herself for lack of focus, and with every minute her shoulders sank lower, and her voice became quieter). This is how the very Controlling Parent manifests itself, which I wrote about in the article Transactional Analysis: Briefly and to the Point.”Of course, an already tired person will not benefit from unnecessary pressure.

It took us several sessions to explore the deeper causes of exhaustion and find factors that we can actually influence. After that, we worked together to work out a plan to improve the state of affairs.

First of all, we decided to deal with this awful inner critic, who finished off K. Every time she allowed herself the thought of taking a break. In the course of the work, we determined that K. had been subjected to similar criticism in childhood from her grandmother.

The family was in a difficult financial situation and K.'s mother was forced to work two jobs. There was no father and K. spent almost all of her childhood in the company of a very strict grandmother, who did not allow the girl to rest. This little and very tired girl took root in K.'s mind along with the image of a strict grandmother. And in K.'s head, at every opportunity, an internal conflict between a little tired girl (her "remarks" sound like a feeling of fatigue, sadness, fear of dismissal) and a strict grandmother (she literally says in K.'s mind "there is no time to rest, stop whining, you have to work it's hard otherwise it's hack "). To cope with this internal dialogue, K. took an additional amount of energy and plus to that - the mood spoiled.

Then we worked to strengthen another personality structure - the Caring Parent - the part of the Self that is able to take care of our needs. This part eventually began to successfully resist the Criticizing Parent, not to the detriment of the workflow. In order to "raise" this part of the personality, K. and I investigated the needs of her Inner Child (which remained from the time when K. was a child and which appeared as a result of difficult reality today).

Next, we needed to enlist the support of the Adult part of the personality K. It was to this part that the recommendations for tracking sleep, nutrition and dosing workload were addressed. It was a difficult test for K. Her inner critic tried to push through the protest against the exploitation of K. at work and the additional burden of other people to her. But when K. was able to politely and maturely refuse this additional load - Her health, mood and even sleep improved within a week. Energy appeared.

Working with Adult K. (the analytical rational part of the personality), we have found many ways to be effective and at the same time take care of ourselves. K. learned how to organize time (it turned out to be a matter of one week, when she planned the day in her diary and set reminders on her phone about breaks from work, water and warm-up). Then she found several options for painless refusal to other people and encouraged herself for it.

All the work on this part of her life took us two months, as a result of which K. became more confident and learned to take care of herself. It has been a long journey for K. and she has gone well.