Strategies to Cope with Work Stress

As many of you have experienced, feelings of stress in the workplace can occur for a variety of reasons. It could be the result of short deadlines, unattainable expectations from yourself or superiors, lack of job satisfaction, and more recently, related to health and safety concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. When you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed at work, it can have a very serious negative effect on your health if you don't handle it properly. Especially because workplace stress tends to follow us home and not stay at our office. For those of you working remotely, able to work anywhere and any time, it is even MORE important to know what the stressors are and know how to manage them properly becaue the lines between workplaces and personal lives are blurred. Identifying the causes and effects of stress in the workplace, and having strategies in place to reduce and manage stress is important for your mental and physical well-being.

Here are some of our suggestions to manage stressful feelings:

1) Maintain a clean and organized workspace

Maintaining a clean and organized workspace can help to relieve any additional stress that may be caused by clutter or misplaced items. Even if you don't have a green thumb, having nice plants in your office can make your space look more vibrant and clean, and it's shown to reduce stress!

2) Maintain and enforce personal boundaries

Too often, we get sucked into others’ personal lives, causing us to internalize their stress. We suggest establishing clear boundaries with colleagues to prevent the expectation of shouldering others’ stressors and adding to your own.

3) Take frequent breaks from the work at hand

Sometimes it's hard to take breaks during work, especially if you are from a work culture where people think that best employees work non-stop. Perseptions could be that taking breaks is not good use of your time. However, understand the necessity to take short, frequent breaks from your work to allow for some rest and to prevent burnout. Taking breaks is actually shown to boost productivity throughout the day.

4) Learn techniques to relax yourself

Prepare for stressful situations. Learn about yourself and what relaxes you. Research techniques and exercises suggested by qualified professionals that you can learn and implement when you find yourself becoming stressed. Relaxation strategies such as, going for a quick walk, listening to music, or having a self-care kit at your work space can help reduce anxiety symptoms.

4) Seek support

Seek support from those that you trust or feel comfortable with. Sometimes talking with your family, coworker, friends, roommate, or support programs at your job can help you offload some stress.

The feeling of being stressed and overwhelmed is natural, but we can take steps to prevent these feelings from taking over.

What strategies do you use to cope with work related stress? Leave your comments below!