How to Get a Grip on Stress in a Stressful

Economy
By Alice Chen
published on BNET.com 7/13/2009

If you haven’t lost your job, you worry that you will. And while you wait, you’ve seen your
workload increase, your downtime vanish, and your duties expand beyond your expertise (and any
conceivable 40-hour week). If all that’s not enough to make your blood pressure rise, a new Florida
State University business school study shows that bosses have become more demanding, and that
politicking, sucking up, and backstabbing in the office are on the rise. Stress test? The office these
days is giving you your own personal version, and, in short, you’re barely passing.

Stop and take a few deep breaths. In, out. OK? Now read this. You’ll feel better.

Things you will need:

• Time: Start setting aside enough hours for a full night’s sleep, plus extra time each week for tension-relieving
activities and self-reflection.

• Social Support: Single out a few good friends and family members to lean on. Research shows that when
lonely people are stressed, they experience higher blood pressure and more insomnia than those who have
a strong social network.

• Self-Awareness: Don’t avoid the problem. That will only make it worse. Failure to change your surroundings
or manage your stress level can contribute to long-term health issues like clinical depression, anxiety
disorder, and heart disease.

Understand Stress
Goal: Pinpoint where the anxiety is coming from.
A certain amount of daily stress is normal. Stress, after all, is simply your reaction — either
positive or negative — to change, according to the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine. When
stress places prolonged or extreme pressure on your coping mechanisms, it can become a
clinical problem that requires professional help. Continually high levels of stress can wreak
havoc on the digestive and nervous systems, leading to irritable bowel syndrome, recurrent
headaches, and heart attacks. The psychological symptoms often come in the form of burnout
(losing interest in work) and depression. The tips below are designed to help you prevent
stress from taking a serious toll on your health — and your career.

There are two leading, complementary perspectives on the sources of workplace stress.
Understanding the difference between the two is the first step in learning how to cope.

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Internal: Stress comes from how you perceive your situation. The very thoughts you have can
worsen your stress reaction, says Dr. Jeff Brantley, director of the Mindfulness Based Stress
Reduction program at Duke Integrative Medicine. For example, one day your boss emerges
from a long, closed-door meeting looking upset. Then she e-mails you requesting a meeting.
Do you immediately think you’re facing the ax? “Your mind starts spinning a catastrophe, and
it’s enough to trigger your body to go into a stress reaction,” Brantley says.
Coping strategy: You may not be able to eliminate the stimulus, but you can learn to change
your response and calm your mind. Start keeping a list of everything in your day that causes
stress. Is there something new or different in your work life? Do certain colleagues make your
blood boil? Pinpoint how every item on the list makes you feel and then ask yourself, “Is my
reaction appropriate or over the top?” This step is key, because once you understand where
your emotions are coming from, you can find a healthier way to deal with them.

External: This school of thought holds that outside factors, like toxic work environments,
predominantly drive workplace stress. Common characteristics of stress-inducing
environments include authoritarian or noncommunicative supervisors, socially isolating work,
and jobs that require a lot of effort but offer little reward. Dr. Peter Schnall of the University of
California at Irvine’s Center for Occupational and Environmental Health says these factors can
produce biological responses such as higher blood pressure and could possibly contribute to
more serious conditions like heart attacks and depression.
Coping strategy: Eliminating the source of the problem (i.e., finding another job) may be the
most effective solution in the long term. But until the job market improves, find ways to regain
a sense of control over your time and your surroundings. For example, if you must endure
a two-hour commute in rush-hour traffic to arrive at the office by 9 a.m., start your workday
earlier so you avoid the worst time to travel. If you can’t stand your colleagues, shut your office
door or take your work to a conference room for part of the day.

Go Ahead and Vent — but Find the Right Listener

Goal: Blow off steam without damaging your reputation at work.
Understanding how stress works will only get you so far. You need cathartic relief, right? Don’t
hesitate to seek the empathetic ears of a colleague, but do choose your confidant wisely, says
Matthew Grawitch, an organizational psychologist and professor at Saint Louis University.
“The more you say to a person you work with, the more likely something will slip out at work.”
Grawitch says. You don’t want co-workers using your misery to their advantage, so find
someone with a sterling reputation whom you know and trust.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, in some cases your boss may be your best confidant.
Sure, you don’t want to make much ado about the minor, daily stresses of your job, but if
you’re struggling with something major that affects your performance, talk to your boss,
says Grawitch. After all, managers are invested in the success of their employees. A brief
explanation (keep the hairy details to a minimum) is not only fair, it’s also a way to build trust.

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One district manager at a global pharmaceutical company recently survived a round of layoffs.
Still reeling from the stress of nearly losing his own job, he faced the task of cutting 20 percent
of his own employees, many of whom he had worked with for more than 20 years. He asked
his former and current bosses for advice because both of them had been through the same
experience. The two empathized but, more importantly, offered some concrete tips on how to
make the cuts and give employees the support they need. The conversations didn’t make the
task any easier, but they did help the manager cope with his own internal struggles.

If you’re going to go to your boss, schedule a time to talk instead of dropping by unexpectedly
when she may be in the middle of grappling with the demands of her own job. Regardless of
whom you talk to, vent once, then let the issue rest. Constantly rehashing the story will force
you to relive your emotions.

Don’t want to vent? Relieve some tension and clear your head by doing something physical.
Wear yourself out on the treadmill, go on a strenuous hike, do laps in the swimming pool —
whatever you need to do. The activity will get your endorphins pumping (the brain chemicals
that make us feel good) and focus your mind on your body instead of your stress.

Learn to Change Your Reaction to Stress

Goal: Stop being tyrannized by your emotions.
After you’ve blown off some steam, you can work through stress in a more logical,
clearheaded way rather than making decisions based on emotions. “Don’t just be lost in
negative feelings,” says Brantley.

The Mayo Clinic offers a few tips on how to retrain your reaction to stress:

Rethink your standards: If your failure to achieve perfection causes continual guilt and
frustration, redefine what success means. For example, if you always feel inundated with
work, ask yourself if you’re spending more time on tasks than they require. Adds Dr. Barbara
Gray, a professor of organizational behavior at Penn State, often “we actually shoot ourselves
in the foot by making the task harder than it needs to be.”

Reframe your situation: Weather delays your flight to an important business meeting.
Instead of stewing about the disruption to your schedule, which you can’t control anyway, take
advantage of the extra time to prepare for your presentation or catch up on sleep.

Reassess the significance of the problem: Will it matter tomorrow? Next week? A year from
now? Emotion magnifies the difficulty of a problem in the moment; perspective shrinks it. So
make sure you give yourself a steady dose of the latter.

Additional reporting by Tyler Kearn.

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