How To Help Someone Who Is Stressed At Work

Simple Ways To Deal With Stress At Work

• Listen to Music

Research has indicated that the percentage of Americans who are stressed at work is highand its only getting higher. According to a survey of more than 2,000 full-time U.S. employees, ages 18-79, more than half of employees find themselves stressed during at least 60 percent of the workweek.

Work stress has significant health consequences that range from relatively benign to potentially serious .

While stress at work is common, finding a low-stress job is hard . A more realistic approach is to adopt effective coping strategies to reduce stress at your current job. Here are some stress management techniques you can try if you are finding it hard to cope with work stress

How Managers Or Employers Can Reduce Stress At Work

Employees who are suffering from work-related stress can lead to lower productivity, lost workdays, and a higher turnover of staff. As a manager, supervisor, or employer, though, you can help lower workplace stress. The first step is to act as a positive role model. If you can remain calm in stressful situations, its much easier for your employees to follow suit.

Consult your employees. Talk to them about the specific factors that make their jobs stressful. Some things, such as failing equipment, understaffing, or a lack of supervisor feedback may be relatively straightforward to address. Sharing information with employees can also reduce uncertainty about their jobs and futures.

Communicate with your employees one-on-one.Listening attentively face-to-face will make an employee feel heard and understood. This will help lower their stress and yours, even if youre unable to change the situation.

Deal with workplace conflicts in a positive way. Respect the dignity of each employee establish a zero-tolerance policy for harassment.

Give workers opportunities to participate in decisions that affect their jobs. Get employee input on work rules, for example. If theyre involved in the process, theyll be more committed.

Avoid unrealistic deadlines. Make sure the workload is suitable to your employees abilities and resources.

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STRESS At Work Causes of stress at work and how to prevent it.

Coping with Stress at Work Common sources and the steps you can take.

How To Identify Stress In Others

Stress is what happens when the demands placed on someone exceed what he or she can readily cope with.

While a certain amount of pressure is a part of everyday life, and can actually help people to perform better , too much pressure can cause stress to build.

Even if your organization has a policy on mental health and an active HR manager or team, it’s most likely a friend or co-worker who’ll be the first person to notice a change in someone’s behavior that could indicate stress.

Here are a few examples of unusual behaviors that could be signs of stress:

• Snapping at colleagues.
• Erratic behavior.

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Try Aromatherapy To Reduce Stress

If you feel like youre not being heard, the workload keeps adding up or you quickly feel stressed, theres other ways to reduce or even eliminate stress completely. Aromatherapy has been used for centuries as a way to calm down your body and mind to feel more relaxed and at peace. Essential oils are commonly used when people are feeling stressed and when specifically designed to deal with stress, these aromatherapy products can be very effective. Scentereds DE-STRESS Aromatherapy collection includes balms and candles that use a blend of soothing scents to relieve you from stress. By inhaling the scent deeply, the limbic system of your brain gets activated which can help you to transition moods. If youve felt stressed for a longer period of time, we recommend using the DE-STRESS Balm every evening after work. This will help you to remove your thoughts from work and the scent will promote calmness and relaxation.

Is stress affecting your sleep at night too? Then you can combine the DE-STRESS Balm with our SLEEP WELL balm or candle. The SLEEP WELL collection has been formulated specifically to improve your sleep by using an alluring blend to relax your body and ease your mind. A perfect combination to deal with stress, but of course preventing is always better than cure. Gather some courage, talk to your boss and make sure your stress levels are going down.

How To Comfort Yourself When You Live Alone

When you live alone, theres no one to reach out to, and there may be no one to talk to. In other words, you have no handy attachment figure someone close to you to whom you can turn for reassurance.

Depending upon the nature of the stress youre dealing with and how long it goes on, you may be vulnerable. Very vulnerable. To a lack of self-care. To poor judgment. To sending yourself to a dark emotional place.

Psychologist Bella DePaulo suggests that single people may be at risk when receiving bad news or dealing with stress. I came across her 2011 article on the subject just this morning, Can You Be Your Own Source of Comfort and Security, in which she notes several of the helpful options I listed above, and that single people may sit on their stress, or they turn to comfort food, to passionate pursuits, to exercise, and to their pets. They may also seek or need to a broader circle of attachment figures.

In other words, we need to reach out to more people and create those necessary connections and supports that serve as a safe haven. And from personal experience, I would add this: Try to be kinder to yourself if you possibly can.

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Just About To Drop Off Cookies At Your Door

As Dwyer says, you might also want to send a non-committal text like this one, as a way of offering support, without adding to a friend’s stress.

Simply send the text, set the food down outside, and go on your merry way. It’ll be a godsend for anyone who needs a little love, but you think doesn’t want to hang out IRL right now.

Look For Satisfaction And Meaning In Your Work

Feeling bored or unsatisfied with how you spend most of the workday can cause high levels of stress and take a serious toll on your physical and mental health. But for many of us, having a dream job that we find meaningful and rewarding is just that: a dream. Even if youre not in a position to look for another career that you love and are passionate aboutand most of us arentyou can still find purpose and joy in a job that you dont love.

Even in some mundane jobs, you can often focus on how your contributions help others, for example, or provide a much-needed product or service. Focus on aspects of the job that you do enjoy, even if its just chatting with your coworkers at lunch. Changing your attitude towards your job can also help you regain a sense of purpose and control.

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Suggest Practical Ways Forward

If the root of your co-worker’s stress does fall into once of the three sources above, use these strategies to offer some practical solutions:

Workload

People with challenging workloads often struggle because they’re unable to see an end to what they have to do. What’s more, stress can cause people to become even more disorganized and confused, and the whole cycle begins again.

Start by helping your co-worker to get organized. First, sit down with her and draw up a To-Do List . Then assign a number to each task, based on its priority . If she has any large, time-consuming jobs that she finds overwhelming, try breaking them down into manageable chunks. This will make it easier for her to achieve “quick wins .”

If there are any low-priority tasks on the list, you could offer to help out if you have the capacity or suggest delegating the work to someone else on the team.

Note:

Assigning work is the responsibility of your co-worker’s line manager, so always check with him or her before you rearrange workloads. If possible, encourage the person experiencing stress to do this. If he feels unable to, discreetly raise the issue with his manager.

Competency

When someone feels “out of her depth” at work, it can be seriously debilitating and demoralizing, even when it’s not true.

Relationships

However, if the behavior is unacceptable , encourage him to be assertive , and to seek help from his line manager or from HR.

Note:

Find A Way To Help Others

Oddly enough, when you help other people, you feel great.

An American Journal of Public Health study found that when someone was dealing with stress, but helped others, they reduced the physical dangers associated with stress.

It sounds crazy â when youâre super stressed, who has time to help someone else? However, turning your attention from yourself to someone else can relieve the self-feeding negativity that serious stress creates.

If youâre feeling stressed, help someone else.

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Stress At Work: What It Is And Possible Causes

We tend to think of stress equals workload and that always means discomfort, but its not exactly like that. What we mean by stress doesnt have to be a negative thingIn some ways, it can activate us and allow us to function better.

On the other hand, what we usually mean by stress with negative connotations usually happens when there is an imbalance between the tasks that we have to do or that we ask of us and our possibilities, that is to say that we do not feel capable of responding to certain requests. . This is why in the work environment it is very common for this type of discomfort to occur.

In addition, stress at work it is usually associated with other factors which in turn cause it indirectly, Such as the following.

There may be other additional causess depending on the context in which you are working.

Accept The Things You Can’t Change

Changing a difficult situation isn’t always possible. Try to concentrate on the things you do have control over.

“If your company is going under and is making redundancies, for example, there’s nothing you can do about it,” says Professor Cooper.

“In a situation like that, you need to focus on the things that you can control, such as looking for a new job.”

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Ways To Support Someone Who Is Stressed

We will all have different responses to the pandemic as it has affected each of us in a number of different ways. As well as learning to support yourself at this time, you may find you need to support your loved ones who are feeling the strain.

When someone close to us is feeling overwhelmed or anxious, it can be difficult to know how to help. Sometimes we may even find ourselves avoiding that person for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. But withdrawing like this can actually make things worse.

Effects Of Uncontrolled Stress

Work-related stress doesnt just disappear when you head home for the day. When stress persists, it can take a toll on your health and well-being.

A stressful work environment can contribute to problems such as headache, stomachache, sleep disturbances, short temper, and difficulty concentrating. Chronic stress can result in anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, and a weakened immune system. It can also contribute to health conditions such as depression, obesity, and heart disease. Compounding the problem, people who experience excessive stress often deal with it in unhealthy ways, such as overeating, eating unhealthy foods, smoking cigarettes, or abusing drugs and alcohol.

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Lend A Helping Hand To Your Stressed Out Friends

When your friend is stressed out, you are the person they can rely on the person to offer a shoulder for them to lean on. Failing them during this difficult time is the last thing you would want to happen. The memory that you helped them get back to their feet will forever remain with them. Which is the reason why you should gather all the information you need to offer the help and be a friend indeed.

How We Can Help

We speak to lots of people whose relationships are affected by work-related stress.

Relationship Counselling can be a great way of starting to talk again, especially if things have been difficult for a little while. Your counsellor wont take sides or tell you what to do, theyll simply listen and help you figure out a way forward together.

• Talk to a trained counsellor
• Private and confidential

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Make Wellness A Part Of The Workplace

Since stress can create physical illness, doing what you can to keep your employees healthy can combat stress. There are several ways employers can encourage wellness:

• Gym memberships. You can give gym memberships to employees.
• Wearable technology. Give devices like the FitBit or JawBone Up, which measure steps, heart rate, and activity. Have competitions in which employees compete to be the most active to win prizes.
• Provide healthy snacks. Make healthy snacks available in the breakroom instead of junk food and sugary soda.
• Free checkups. Partner with a local clinic to offer free tests for employees, such as blood sugar, cholesterol, or blood pressure.
• Encourage breaks. Make sure your employees take their breaks and take the time off coming to them.

Healthy and rested employees are less stressed and do better work. Itâs that simple.

Write Down Your Stressors

Identifying and recording stressful situations can help you understand whats bothering you. Some of these can be subtle sources of tension, such as an uncomfortable workspace or a long commute.

Keep a journal for 1 week to track your stress triggers and your reactions to them. Make sure to include the people, places, and events that gave you a physical, mental, or emotional response.

As you write, ask yourself:

• How did this make me feel?
• What was my reaction?
• What are some ways of resolving it?

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How Does Your Body React To Work Stress

Imagine for a moment that your boss has emailed you about an unfinished assignment . Your body and mind instantly respond, activating a physical reaction called the fight-or-flight response. Your heart beats faster, your breath quickens, and your muscles tense. At the same time you might say to yourself, Im going to get fired if I dont finish this. Then to manage your anxiety and negative self-talk, you work late into the night to complete the task.

Over the course of our evolutionary history, humans developed this coordinated fear response to protect against dangers in our environment. For example, a faster heart rate and tense muscles would help us escape from predators. In the modern era, fear continues to serve an important function. After all, the fight-or-flight response can provide the necessary energy to pull an all-nighter and keep your job.

But what happens if you encounter stressful experiences at work every day? Over time, chronic work stress can lead to a psychological syndrome known as burnout. Warning signs of burnout are overwhelming exhaustion, cynicism, and a sense of inefficacy. Certain work-related stressors are closely linked with burnout. Examples are having too much work or too little independence, inadequate pay, lack of community between coworkers, unfairness or disrespect, and a mismatch between workplace and personal values.

Things To Say To Someone When Theyre Stressed

At this point, it seems like stressed is a permanent state of being. Whether youre stressed about the current state of the world, work, school, finances, relationships, or anything else, it can be overwhelming and, frankly, exhausting. Luckily, having a support system you can count on is one way to lighten the load.

Part of being a good support system is just being there. The next part is knowing what to say. Thats the trickier of the two because everyone responds to stress differently. Its not a one-size-fits-all solution.

To help you get started, weve compiled a list of 8 things to say to someone when theyre stressed.

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Start Your Day Off Right

After scrambling to get the kids fed and off to school, dodging traffic and combating road rage, and gulping down coffee in lieu of a healthy breakfast, many people arrive to work already stressed. This makes them more reactive to stress in the workplace.

You might be surprised by how affected by workplace stress you are when you have a stressful morning. When you start off the day with planning, good nutrition, and a positive attitude, you might find that the stress of your job rolls off your back more easily.

Tell Someone You Are Struggling With Stress

It helps to tell someone that youâre struggling with stress, whether thatâs a manager or a coworker. They may be able to help you, or point you to someone who can.

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