Work Stress And It’s Management

Work Stress And It’s Management

Excessive workload, constant pressure of meeting deadlines, long work hours, increasing competition and career concern at work can make you exhausted and affect your mental as well as physical health. Though showing concern and urge to accomplish tasks is important to some extent because it keeps you motivated to achieve more. Excess of any of that emotion can make you overwhelmed which will automatically affect your productivity in all the bad ways in the long run.

Identification and symptoms
A question may arise in your mind as to how to discriminate between healthy stress and how to tell if it is a warning sign.
Self-negligence, no relaxation, depression, worrying, lack of interest, concentration problem, wanting to give-up and anxiousness are some of the psychological and emotional indicators.
As for the physical signals, irritability, sleeping problem, decreased energy and fatigues and even some cardiovascular disorders can be the cues that you are taking too much on your mind.

Management strategies:

  • Workplace environment and culture can be huge stressors. An idea could be to stay away from negativity, avoid conflicts and care less about what and how much your co-worker is doing, instead focus on improving the quality of your work.
  • Choose to do something you enjoy and is actually your field of interest.
  • Take care of your physical health too. Adequate sleep and workout play a huge role in keeping you fresh and pumped to stay on your toes on long and stressful workdays.
  • Plan and prioritize each task and avoid self-imposed stress.
  • Adopt mindfulness; improve your problem-solving strategies instead of procrastinating.
  • Take time to relax and recharge yourself. Participate in some activities you enjoy doing or that works as de-stressor for you like any sport so that it can freshen you up and prepare you to keep going.
  • Create a balance between personal and professional life.
  • Ask for help if you feel the need.

Role of organizations:
The organizations can also play a role to make sure their workers are able to work their full potential because of the lack of productivity of an employee will automatically affect the company’s outcome.

  • The workload should be according to the potential and skills of the worker.
  • Realistic work hours.
  • Recognition of employee’s performance.
  • Providing opportunities for growing and achieving.
  • Create flexibility, set realistic goals and demands
  • Create an employee-oriented environment.
  • Create a fair and unbiased environment.
Work-Life Balance

Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance means creating harmony between your personal and professional life. It is often very difficult to maintain the balance with the fast-moving world, but the reality that both aspects are equally important in a person’s life and a balance between both domains is what makes life peaceful. Where professional life gives you a sense of productivity, independence, financial stability and success, personal life is important for relaxation and emotional stability and personal well-being.

As much as this concept is appealing to senses, it is not very easy to implement especially when companies nowadays are offering amazing salary packages, bonus, promotions and what not, they also make the most of the employees’ potential and we see people stuck with extra work hours, over-time and even bringing work to home in order to achieve more and more. At the end of the day, your family, your health, social life and most importantly, your SELF gets neglected.

On the other hand, bringing your personal life and problems back home to your workplace can cause unsatisfactory performance and lack of motivation.
For women, creating work-life balance is difficult because of lack of support and facilities from both ends and they are usually considered to take care of the house and family more than men. For men, they have to be the bread earner for which they are expected to work more to earn more.

IMPROVING WORK-LIFE BALANCE:

The most important key to maintain the balance is through time management and. Dedicating time to each task, planning and scheduling can make it easier to understand and then get done with the work. Most people make journals and add reminders for this purpose.

Understand that office and home are two different worlds and collision of the two will only create disturbance in your life. Take out time for social life, focus on self-care like working out and get an adequate amount of sleep, for fun and activities you enjoy because they boost energy and help you stay fresh and active.

Employers and co-operates should understand that employees are humans too and their productivity will automatically affect the company’s outcome. Their responsibilities include inducing manageable workload, providing flexible work hours, leaves and off-days if required. Some organizations also provide the facility of the home office, child care and restrooms so that their employees can work easily.

And last but not least, it is okay to not be perfect in every domain of life because it is often difficult to achieve and the failure in doing so can disturb you mentally. Also, people in surrounding should understand that a person is not always perfect and can be struggling sometimes in maintaining the balance. Hence one should be supportive and helpful during that time.

How to identify If your pain is psychological in nature?

How to identify If your pain is psychological in nature?

Unexpected ways you hold emotional pain in your body

Psychological pain manifested in the form of physical/bodily pain is termed as Somatic pain.

1. Some of the signs that indicate you might have somatic pain?

  • Tension or pain in certain body parts such as headache or pain in the limb which mimics a physical pain but no medical reports support the physical reason of pain.
  • No medications seem to relieve the pain.
  • Physical symptoms/bodily pain elevated after stress, tension or emotional trauma.

2. What can a person do to address these physical signs?

  • If the pain is persistent then firstly, visit the medical doctor who may recommend some of the suitable required tests. Supposedly, the doctor might suggest a CT Scan for a severe headache. If the test reports show normal results and the pain persists while no pain reliever is effective then there is a high time to address the psychological nature of physical pain.

3. What should a person do when a medical doctor or neurologist suggests that person is fine? While the person still experiences pain.

  • When it is ruled out by medical doctor/neurologist that the pain is not physical in nature, the person must find psychological causes. Somatic pain must be addressed by a mental health professional.
  • The person can enhance understanding of somatic pain with the help of a specialist (Psychologist/Psychiatrist) who provides psychotherapy. This is a proper way to obtain an understanding of Mind-Body link through unconscious psychological mechanisms.

4. Some of the thought processes related to somatic pain?

  • A person believes that the pain is physical yet the medical doctor’s opinion and the test results differ.
  • The person does doctor shopping for any clue that could suggest a physical cause of pain.
  • Person’s unconscious conflicts are the reason behind somatic pain such as the defence mechanism of Internalization turns psychological symptoms into physical ones.
  • Another associated feature of somatic pain is attention seeking. When the person feels ignored by others or has such childhood experiences related to negligence or emotional trauma, it triggers somatic pain.
  • Such conflicts also increase or decrease the intensity of pain. Also, the need to seek attention in the given situation may trigger pain.

The above-mentioned facts are generally not accepted by the person who suffers from a somatic pain disorder. By reading this article, you are now more aware of your internal pain symptoms. Hence, if you find any somatic symptoms in yourself or among people who are near and dear to you then just visit a psychologist for a detailed insight into your somatic pain symptoms.

KNOW YOUR WORTH IN A RELATIONSHIP

KNOW YOUR WORTH IN A RELATIONSHIP

 

How to Decide Its Time to Move On

You don’t plan to fall in love it just happens, it’s the most beautiful experience in the world only if the next person is ready to hold you back, it is a mutual relationship where there is a partnership, No ego! Where you have a strong trust that if I get mad the next person knows how to calm me down, where you know if I ever lose hope he/she will become my strength.

Where, your promises mean.

Where your hearts belong to each other.

Where you live for each other.
But! If you feel like not belonging to that person or that person is holding you back from achieving what you want, you should plan to move out because you can’t live every single day of misery and blaming yourself for every kind of fault.

Moving on is not an easy road. There are a lot of emotions attached to that person who is not easy to let go. But living the life where you die each day is even worst.

At that stage of life, your friends advise you

“He/she is not the right one”

“You deserves better”

These are the most annoying pieces of advice because you can’t forget the person in a day or two with whom you had thousands of memories attached. There are traces of moments which remind you of that person again and again if you think of throwing the gifts and things they gifted you will help you out, might be you are wrong because on trying too hard to forget them you are actually sharpening those moments more.
Now what you actually need to do is “ACCEPTANCE”.

Accept the pain you are having, that you care but at the same time accept that person is not the one you can spend your whole life with.

Do you want to spend your whole life with the person who doesn’t let you do what you want, who make you feel miserable about you daily, who loves you only when he gets the time? Obviously, no one wants such kind of life.

Accept the fact that you both aren’t meant for each other, let them go and soon you will get the one who actually cares, wants you in his/her life, who makes you feel special, who will make your rest of the life beautiful.

Yeah. That is it. You are on the right path now….!

Good luck with the healthy relationship you have.

Written By:

Aqsa Yaseen

Psychology Department

Institute of Professional Psychology (IPP)

Bahria University

 

Stress Management: An Effective Way to Prevent Psychological Disturbance

Stress Management: An Effective Way to Prevent Psychological Disturbance

Stress is defined as any kind of strain, tension or load in your mind and body. The reasons behind this kind of stress are various but one thing is common, whatever thing is causing you to stress it must be psychological in nature. People generally report having tension headaches, body pains, ulcers, allergies, and many medical problems. When they go to a doctor for the checkup, their medical test reports show normal results. This is a big indication that stress is psychological although it may manifest in form of physiological/bodily symptoms.
Stress is a kind of psychological problem which needs management. When someone is going through stress for a longer time, generally it ends up in self-medication or physician prescribed medication. This is the biggest culprit in increasing problems. Researchers now show that medicines are not always an effective treatment for psychological problems. Therefore, evidence based psychotherapeutic methods are now practiced which seem to be very effective in dealing with stress related problems and a variety of other mental health issues.
Stress management is a form of counseling method and people go to a psychologist in order to learn stress management techniques. It is mandatory to deal with your stress before it turns into a psychological disorder. Psychologists teach various strategies of stress management during a detailed counseling session. Some simple tips are described here for your understanding.

Tips on Stress Management:

  1. Relaxation or deep breathing exercise which seems to improve your concentration, alertness, and freshness of mind.
  2. Take a good sleep because it is a natural way to heal daily wear & tear process of our brain & body.
  3. Eat healthy food low in calories which is also beneficial in maintaining weight, skin tone, and figure.
  4. Take some time out for yourself, out of your busy schedule. Do exercise, cycling, or physical activity which requires movement of your body and muscles.
  5. Go out into nature since it provides you with inner peace and serenity.
  6. Watch your favorite movie, drama, comedy, or anything which visually fascinate you. If nothing possible for the time being just sit in a relaxed position, close your eyes and image a favorite scene or your favorite place where you enjoy the most.
  7. Listen to calming music or your favorite voices. Consequently, you feel relaxed.
  8. Eat your favorite food or things you find tasty because it gives you ultimate enjoyment.
  9. In addition, smell the delicious food or use your favorite perfume or aromas.
  10. Play with natural stuff like clay, smooth surfaces, touch and feel your pets like cat, rabbits etc. or any of your favorite textures which provide you a calming effect.
  11. Do whatever makes you happy. It may range from a recitation, travel, keeping a hobby, exercise or a dance.
  12. Spend time with your loved ones, friends, or someone you can share your feelings with.
  13. Find out the reasons of stress. It may be due to workload, difficulty in managing time, or any negative experiences of life. Work out the reason for stress

Finally, if you find it difficult to reason out, just take help of the psychologist who will help you effectively work out the reasons for tension/stress and guide you to deal with your stress successfully.

Written By:
Mehwish Mursaleen
Ph.D. Clinical Psychology

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