Dealing Effectively with Workplace Stress for Better Well-Being

Most adult Americans spend at least a third of their day at work. Work takes up a significant portion of one’s life, and trying to nurture that space to make it as fruitful and joyful as possible makes a lot of sense. Work, however, is often a challenging place, for many different reasons. The predictable result of these challenges is workplace stress, which can affect one’s health and overall well-being.

Facing Workplace Challenges

Why is work so stressful? Every environment that you’re in is challenging for one reason or another. With work, there may be specific reasons why it’s challenging. Those reasons may be related to the work itself or the conditions in which the work is performed.

One thing that makes the workplace challenging and stressful is that the choices you make can affect your company’s bottom line. If you make a bad call, you could cost your company anything from hundreds of dollars to millions. College and high school are stressful, but if you fail, the impact of that failure is often quite localized to you and the people who care about you. A company could be liquidated because of a mistake, costing others their jobs.

The work that you do may itself be stressful. Some jobs have literal life-or-death stakes, or they carry a lot of pressure, like being responsible for a city’s electrical grid or being the one responsible for others’ well-being and success. You might find the work enjoyable, but because the work affects others in significant ways, it ramps up the pressure. If there is a lot of work, that too adds to the stress.

Workplace relationships also play a role in whether work is stressful. If your relationships with colleagues, subordinates, or your boss are fraught with conflict or significant misunderstandings, that can create a stressful work environment. Such a situation can make you feel overwhelmed and anxious. Stress is a typical physical and emotional response to circumstances like that.

Lastly, needing to perform well to keep your job and your life as it is might be another source of workplace stress. Your job most likely provides you with the income you need to take care of your family and other financial obligations, and it might also provide you with other intangible goods like status. Fear of losing those things can elevate your stress levels, especially in a bad economy or when things shift in your organization.

There are many different reasons why you might experience stress while you’re in the workplace. Stress induces the release of hormones that prepare your body to fight or flee. This can strain your body as well as undermine your overall wellness and sense of delight in your work. That’s not the only way workplace stress can affect you.

The Impact of Workplace Stress

When your job is causing you stress, you can feel the effects of that at work, but it doesn’t end there. Stress isn’t all bad. It can help you to focus on specific tasks, especially deadlines that require single-minded attention. Beyond a certain point, stress becomes more of a hindrance than anything else. It prevents you from focusing, from being creative in solving problems, and from being calm enough to make clear-headed decisions.

Apart from making your work difficult and possibly undermining your creativity and productivity, stress has other effects as well. If you’re stressed for a long time and don’t deal with it, it can affect your health. The stress hormone cortisol can affect you in many negative ways if you don’t find ways to eliminate excess amounts of it from your system. It can weaken your immune system and increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.

Workplace stress affects how you do your work, but it impacts you beyond work, too. Not only does stress affect your health, but it can also affect your relationships. When you’re stressed, you can become irritable and withdrawn. That can affect how you relate to your loved ones, whether you are present for them, and it can damage the relationship. Workplace stress doesn’t remain contained at work; it can spill over into the rest of life.

How to Deal with Workplace Stress

Workplace stress can affect your well-being in various ways. There are many different ways to cope with stress and reduce it before it becomes a problem at work and in the rest of your life. Some effective ways to deal with workplace stress include the following:

• Planning and efficient execution. Breaking tasks down into smaller, clear steps can help make challenging projects manageable. If you make good use of your time, which includes not procrastinating and staying on task, you can complete work on time and avoid a time crunch.
• Setting boundaries and resting. It’s good to know your limits and avoid committing yourself beyond what you can manage. Workplace stress can be the result of taking on too much or taking on tasks beyond your area of competence. Be willing to say “No” and hold others accountable to their commitments and roles. Boundaries might also include taking time off to rest and create a sustainable work-life balance.
• Self-care and support. Apart from taking time off to rest, taking care of yourself includes sleeping well, eating a healthy and balanced diet, and getting regular exercise. Exercise, in particular, helps to reduce stress and boost your mood. You can also seek support from a counselor or coach who can help you develop coping strategies and new patterns that help you keep stress to a minimum in your life.

Connect with a counselor through this site to learn more about how to effectively deal with workplace stress. A counselor can help you with specific strategies that apply to your situation so you can improve your overall well-being.