Just Stress Relief

Your job can be a source of stress. Managing your stress at work is a real challenge.

The phrase ’stress at work’ has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it simply refers to stress experienced while on the job, usually because of some aspect of it. On the other hand, it can mean that stress is at work on you – stress is working on you, and usually in ways that are extremely unpleasant.

These two meanings are not completely unrelated. When you endure work-initiated stress the results are harmful to your physical health and your mental well-being. As with any problem, it helps to look at the fundamental causes in order to work towards a long-term solution.

There are a hundred immediate possible causes for job-related stress. Employees and managers alike are often given unrealistic deadlines to make near-impossible goals. Competitive fast-paced business can be fun. But when the intermediate goals don’t serve valid business ends – improving sales, optimizing work flow, enhancing communication – they are generally resented.

Add to that the all-too-common unreasonable boss or uncooperative co-worker. In companies large and small there are too frequently people in charge who are disrespectful and poorly qualified to lead others. They are generally more interested in flattering their manager than improving productivity and getting the job done.

Those two factors – mis-directed goals and unfair managers – explain the response that most people give when asked if they experience work-related stress and why: absence of control over their lives.

Many individuals have well-developed problem solving skills.

Women in the workplace who are also mothers know very well how to manage time, multi-task multiple demands and innovate new solutions. They practice those skills every day at home. They also know a bit more than most about how to settle disputes among individuals, all of whom may be partly wrong and partly right.

Men, too, have ample experience in prioritizing resource expenditures, responding to complaints and deciding when to push and when to compromise. They practice that at home every day.

But the workplace often fails to mirror the freedom to use one’s thinking skills and the power to enact a workable solution. More often, goals come from above and little debate is allowed. Individuals employed in organizations of that kind experience obligations without authority – a guarantee of stress.

The single most-often cited reason for stress in the workplace boils down to that – demands, but without the resources to meet them. When an individual is placed in conflict between “I must” and “I can’t”, stress is the inevitable result.

Fortunately, some organizations are beginning to recognize this and are taking steps to change. With luck, you may be employed by one.

[tags]stress, stress management, stress causes, stress relief, job stress, stressed out[/tags]

Whether you have a spouse, a domestic partner or just someone who is the current live-in love of your life, living with someone close can cause stress.

Note, the ‘can’ not ‘must’. Interacting with someone with whom you have that kind of relationship introduces a variety of potential problems, but those don’t have to lead to stress – for either party.

Stress results when someone feels caught in a perceived, unresolvable conflict between “I must” and “I can’t”. They feel there is something they have to do, but are blocked from or don’t have the resources to do.

Close relationships, such as those with a spouse or ’significant other’ inevitably bring many such problems. Individuals have unique values and interests, preferred lifestyles and even basic differences in pace or approach. Some men are very stoic, even when they’re not repressed. Some let the difficulties life presents ‘roll off their back like water off a duck’, others attack them head on.

Adjusting to the style of another person and dealing with the dozens of daily choices living together presents – especially when the preferences of one party conflicts with another – can be very difficult. But stress results most often when one or both of the two parties is unrealistic, unwilling to communicate or compromise, or are even downright unfair.

Sometimes the only solution is to part ways. But long before that happens, if the relationship is valuable, there are several ways to resolve conflicts that avoid chronic stress.

Acute stress is something of a misnomer. It generally refers to a stress that is short-lived, even though the word ‘acute’ can make the event sound severe. But whether minor or major, such episodes are all but inevitable in close relationships. Health problems, money concerns, conflicts with other family members, disagreements over child-rearing… there’s no end of possibilities.

But acute stress isn’t very harmful. The episode fades or a resolution is found and life returns to normal. When a series of problems occurs, and most importantly when individuals believe they don’t have what it takes to solve them, chronic stress can result.

But the way out, though not easy, is simple. There are, in fact, very rare circumstances that place us in situations that have no resolution. Very few people have no potential resources for resolving them.

No single, concrete event in raising children is all-decisive – with few exceptions. Many couples have worked successfully through times of low income or high debt, and often developed stronger relationships as a result. Most health problems are temporary. If life were nothing but a series of disasters we couldn’t cope with, insurance companies would go broke.

Reducing stress in relationships can be achieved by a series of techniques almost anyone can adopt. Evaluating problems objectively, looking long-term, reminding oneself and each other of the values that formed the relationship initially can go a long way toward lessening the perceived severity of problems.

That also helps build the awareness that sometimes the resource you need most to solve a problem is looking at you across the dinner table.

[tags]stress, stress management, symptoms of stress, managing stress[/tags]