How to Manage Job Stress

The stats aren’t good. Large percentages of people are feeling stressed at work, many at acute levels or for prolonged periods. Stress affects the quality of your work, your interactions with your customers or colleagues, and your sense of physical and mental well-being. It’s worth paying attention to how you manage job stress. In this post, we’ll talk about how to recognize stress and deal with it in the moment. Next time, we’ll work on reducing the root causes of job stress.

What is Stress?

Stress is the body’s response to real or perceived threats. It can be a positive force that provides the energy and motivation to act, like when the stress of being late for the bus helps you to run a little faster. Of course, stress becomes unhealthy when you feel vulnerable but not in control, like watching your kid’s soccer team go down 3-0 in the first half.

In the workplace, stress has the same pluses and minuses. When you have control over the situation, a moderate amount of stress helps you get moving. When you don’t have control, either because you don’t have the authority, skills, or time to respond effectively, stress moves beyond the healthy level and erodes your performance and your state of mind.

It is important to manage your stress to keep it in that useful, moderate range.

Recognize Stress

To give yourself a chance to curtail your stress before it becomes overwhelming, you need to learn to recognize it early. Doing so requires self-awareness and a strong connection to what’s going on in your body and your mind.

Your stress response is personal (and probably also situational), but be on the lookout for one or more of these patterns.

Fight

Is your body responding to the perceived threat by gearing up for a fight? Notice:

Racing heartClenched fists and jawFlushed skinShallow breathingCombative thoughtsHyper focusFlight

Is your brain preparing you to escape the threatening situation? If so, you might experience:

Rapid heartbeatIncreased sweatRestlessness and fidgetingRising nauseaExcessive worryDifficulty concentratingFreeze

Has the situation immobilized you and left you unable to act? Indicators that you’ve gone into a freeze response include:

Slowed breathingTense musclesBlank staringZoning outFeeling numb or detachedFawn

Is your brain telling you to defer and play small to appease the threatening person? You might notice:

Nervous laughterForced smileDropped eye contactPeople pleasingDeference to authoritySelf-criticism

You likely have one of these default reactions to job stress that you recognize better than the others. Learn to recognize your stress response quickly so you can implement the following stress management techniques.

Dealing with Job Stress in the Moment

When you feel your stress response kick in, try the following:

Pay Attention

Many of us have become experts at ignoring our stress response and pushing through. That’s not healthy. Nor does it allow you to learn from the stress in a way that makes you safer. Notice when your body or mind throws up red flags and take steps to manage the stress constructively rather than ignoring and suppressing it. Try giving your stress response a label or even the stress-addled version of you a nickname. “Ok, Tiger, settle down.”

Breathe Deeply

In a stressful moment, you want to reverse the breathing pattern that has you in fight or flight mode. You can use different patterns to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, such as box breathing or the 4-7-8 method. In each, the idea is to change the ratio so you’re exhaling for longer. At the start, you might not be able to exhale for long, but after a couple of cycles, you’ll be able to increase the gap between the length of your inhale and exhale. This is helpful because it’s a technique you can use in the middle of a meeting without anyone noticing.

One thing I learned after many years of being stressed and out of breath on the stage is that the instruction “take a deep breath” is both infuriating and futile. When your breathing is shallow, it feels like there’s no room to take a deep breath. The secret is to go the other way: exhale for as long and fully as possible. Once your lungs are empty, your body will naturally fill them back up.

Ground Yourself

Grounding is a technique that’s helpful to some people because it shifts your attention away from the stressor and lessens anxiety and panic responses. It’s a quick exercise to bring you back into the present moment. Stop and notice 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.

Reframe the Story

Earlier, I shared the definition of stress as your body’s response to real or perceived threats. Once you’ve calmed your breathing and grounded yourself in the moment, you can ask whether your brain is feeding you bad information about the nature or magnitude of the threat. Explore the possibility that the stressor is less scary than you initially perceived.

What’s really going to happen if this doesn’t go as well as planned? What are the stakes? Will this matter in four days, four months, or four years? As you ask these questions, many of your answers will include some kind of interpersonal discomfort (they’ll think I did a lousy job, they’ll be upset with me, they’ll give me harsh feedback), but nothing that will be memorable in four days or four months. That’s helpful perspective.

Find an Action

The antidote to anxiety is action. Once you’re clear on the source of your stress and the importance of the issue, you can choose one thing to do that will meaningfully change your situation. That might be as simple as walking around the block before sitting back down to meet your deadline. Alternatively, it could be resolving to have a conversation with a colleague who has been violating your boundaries by expecting you to respond to messages in the evenings. Taking one meaningful step will help you move beyond your short-term stress response.

Stress is normal and often even helpful. But when your stress triggers unhelpful fight, flee, freeze, or fawn reactions, your performance and relationships can get in the way. Learn your stress signals and practice to find the techniques that can quickly get you back on an even keel.

Stress Versus Burnout

It’s important to note that stress is different from burnout. Although we often use these words in the same sentence, they reflect very different states. When you’re stressed, your body summons resources to help you protect yourself. Your heart rate increases, you release adrenaline, and you prepare to take action. In contrast, once you reach the point of burnout, you give up, lean back, and check out. Burnout results from long-term stress going unmanaged. The good news is that if you’re still stressed, you’ve got time to change your trajectory before you burn out.

In the next post, we’ll talk about what you can do to address some of the root causes of job stress so you’re less likely to be in a threatening position in the first place.

Additional Resources

Good and bad stress

Bolster your stress reserves

Helping a Coworker Who’s Stressed Out

 

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