My aim in this article is to explain to you how people respond to stress. To manage stress you need to overcome negative self talk. I will explain how one person has trouble in the workplace.



Jane is 42 years of age; she has had no previous problems, no previous stress attacks, and no mental health episodes. Lately, she has been very distressed at work and has fears that everyone thinks she's incompetent. She has become over-sensitive to her leader's feedback and to the looks of her colleagues. You could say that she is slightly paranoid. The outcome of all of this is that she has become socially phobic. She finds it very difficult to go to parties with her husband. She tends to hide in another room so that she doesn't have to socialize with people.

Jane is suffering extreme work stress. She has reached the point in her work life where everything is weighing her down. Her physical responses include feeling being physically sick, and even nauseous. She says that she is depressed, reports that she is afraid of making mistakes at work and feels that she cannot cope with work demands.

It is clear that Jane is not very productive or effective at work. She has limited stress management skills and she feels that her system is overloaded. Does this sound like you? Can you empathize with Jane? Do you feel as though things are on top of you? Have you lost the zing in your life and feel tired all the time? I your friends worrying about you? Is your life meaningless? Have you lost the ability to cope? Is your work suffering from how you feel?

If you believe that this fits you, you are having problems with stress at work. We seem to be working longer and being stress more. Some people think this is acceptable. Reported cardiac illnesses increased after the 9/11 attack. High blood pressure, strokes and related disorders increased. With emotional trauma comes physical ailments. When people are unwell emotionally they don't function well at work.

What are these workplace stressors? That is, what are the events that elevate stress? They include a long list of things.

These include excessive workplace demands. Poor management and poor communication in the workplace cause stress. Oddly enough, poor relationships at home can cause workplace stress as much as interpersonal conflict with colleagues.

How do we deal with these pressures? Obviously, the solutions depend on you and your context. Changing jobs is a reasonable but not totally effective alternative. If your Boss is causing you problems, why not list his or her name with a 'headhunter' and perhaps they'll get a job somewhere else? From my experience working in Employee Assistance Programs, the major problem is poor role definition. I think I have a specified list of things to do but my role description doesn't clarify this and my boss has other idea about what I should be doing. Obviously, confronting the issues with the individuals concerned is one simple approach but there are many other ways of resolving this tension, especially if you are committed to taking responsibility for your feelings and actions.

One way to control workplace stress is to recognize the role of negative thinking. There is an old saying that you are what you think so you have to consider your negative thoughts. If you are stressed you can deal with the problem if you try. You must realize that you have to confront negative self talk. How we feel is shaped by how we think. Self talk occupies much of our day.

This sounds simple but it's a fact of life. We create our own problems because we run ourselves down all the time. We probably have 10 times the amount of negative thought to positive thought. We increase our tension and stress by constant self-criticism. The situation is exacerbated if our friends and family constantly criticize us. If we want to manage workplace stress we have to work on becoming more positive about ourselves.