The professional context is one of the areas of life in which it is easiest for us to experience anxiety problems.
This is no coincidence: at work, it is very common to expose ourselves to situations that force us to face new challenges, on the one hand, and/or to adopt a discipline to carry out tasks at a specific pace, on the other. The need to take on responsibilities and carry them out slowly but surely is something that overwhelms some people.
However, in many cases the problem is not a lack of technical or intellectual skills to perform these tasks, but rather poor anxiety management. Luckily, this has a solution, and here we will see different tips that will help you enhance your ability to manage anxiety at work.
The first thing we must be very clear about is that anxiety is not a problem in itself. In fact, this is one of the basic emotional phenomena for the survival not only of our species, but of a wide variety of animals.
The fact that basically all mammals are prone to developing stress and anxiety makes it clear that these are useful mechanisms from the point of view of evolution and survival. This is because by putting ourselves in a state of psychological activation and sensitivity to the potential dangers or opportunities that exist around us, helps us react quickly at key moments.
However, this does not mean that on certain occasions anxiety can contribute to general dysfunctional habits and behavior patterns. In fact this is relatively common.
For example, it occurs in people who become so perfectionistic that they learn that paralysis caused by anxiety at the idea of doing things wrong is the usual way of facing the challenges they set themselves. Or in those who assume that interacting with people they don’t know well goes hand in hand with suffering from anxiety. Anxiety may help keep us alive in the short term, but that does not mean that in certain cases it does not take us away from happiness or our goals.if we do not manage it properly.
How to manage anxiety at work?
As we have seen, anxiety does not have to be a setback, but in certain cases it gives way to a “snowball” effect of psychological problems when our way of dealing with it is not appropriate. This occurs especially at work and in our way of performing during work hours, given that in the professional field time is money, and not using it well due to emotional imbalances produces complications that become great in relatively few days. the accumulation of pending work.
Although in the face of this type of problem the ideal is to have individualized psychological support, there are practices and habits that help you better manage anxiety related to work. Here we will see several of the most important ones, summarized.
1. Assume it’s natural
Both feeling discomfort due to anxiety and tending to experience it more frequently than others is something that does not have to represent a problem. There are people who have genetic predispositions to feel anxious, and yet that does not prevent them from living well and being happy; The key is how that anxiety is managed, the way in which we “give it an outlet.” In certain cases, feeling this way can lead us to take actions that are beneficial to us: moderate exercise, moving forward with work, etc.
To know how to manage anxiety well and its effects on your work life, It is important to know the type of situations and experiences that activate it.
For example, feeling anxious about having a lot of work accumulated is not the same as feeling anxious about the need to talk to people we don’t know well. To achieve this, it is important that you keep a self-record, like a personal diary that you carry with you, in which you write down what happens when you feel excessive anxiety: both what is going through your head, and what you were doing or what happened to you just before experiencing that.
Once you have done this for several days or weeks, you will be able to have a global vision of those anxiety expression patterns.
3. Keep distractions away
Poorly managed anxiety is a trap that can lead us to constantly search to distract our mind from those unpleasant thoughts, with the collateral damage that it delays us when it comes to facing our responsibilities or problems. Therefore, keep your work area as free of distractions as possible.
4. Create a clear schedule that is written down
Following a very clear schedule helps us focus on completing tasks at an appropriate pace and, as a consequence, makes us less vulnerable to anxiety, since this psychological phenomenon appears more frequently in our work when we feel that We digress, we have nothing to hold on to. The simple act of concentrating on a task and seeing how we progress is a great remedy not only to completely eliminate anxiety, but to give it out in a constructive way.
There is an interesting variety of exercises that can help you relax in a matter of a few minutes; They are very useful for rest periods (and keep in mind that if you want to manage anxiety well, you will need several moments of rest throughout the work day). Some are based on the physical and physiological, such as those that have to do with conscious control of breathing, and others focus more on psychological tasks, such as the thought stopping technique, ideal for interrupting intrusive thoughts and Anxious root procrastination.
