When Work Stress Overshadows the Rest of Life’s Facets

For some people, work is almost indistinguishable from a hobby or passion with creative capacity. For others, it is just a means through which to obtain what is needed to live.

But there is a third possibility that combines elements of both ways of experiencing work and that gives rise to many problems.

It is about obsession with work linked to work stress in which one desperately seeks to achieve professional goals, and on the other hand these “invade” the person’s mind throughout the day, also in their private life.

Anxiety and work stress as psychological problems

The first thing to highlight is that neither anxiety in general nor the stress generated by work contexts in particular are in themselves a problem that we should avoid. Both are natural emotional responses to situations that present us with challenges and that require us to adapt to a series of limitations to achieve goals.

And this is what happens in environments where we dedicate hours of the week to paid work: We have efficiency and profitability objectives that we aspire to achieve to satisfy needs. Virtually no one can “make a living” by constantly staying in their comfort zone, we always have to apply effort and dedication to a series of tasks that allow us to maintain or improve a certain pace of life, all while dealing with the uncertainty of what will lie ahead for us. the future professionally speaking.

And thanks to our ability and predisposition to experience stress in complicated situations, we are better at reacting quickly to the moments in which we must take action to generate value; It is part of the set of psychological elements that allows us to be motivated to progress in our careers or improve our economic situation, among other things. Without stress, this interest in not being “left behind” in the face of the changes that the labor market and business ecosystems are going through would not be understood.

However, there are situations in which stress stops being a help and becomes a problem, an obstacle that Not only does it lead us to have a bad time, but it erodes our quality of life and, of course, our work performance in the medium and long term.

Furthermore, this kind of problem usually appears in the form of a paradox; We feel very stressed because there is something that we believe is beyond us, and that leads us to obsess over it in a dysfunctional way, which makes us less prepared to deal with it.

Furthermore, people with high work stress are unable to mentally disconnect from their professional side when their work day ends, which generates high psychological exhaustion.

Elements of work stress that make work invade our lives

These are the main sources of work stress that predispose people to become obsessed with their work.

1. Mental workload

Mental workload is the set of psychophysical demands associated with a task. When we spend too much time concentrating on complicated tasks, we are most likely to that we have no “strength” left to perform any other psychologically complex task: read a book, talk with family, etc.

2. Poor management of leisure or rest time in the workplace

Many people with work stress feel so worried that almost without realizing it, They get psyched up with the idea of ​​spending a good part of their free time at their workplace. so as not to stray too far from the place “where they have to be.”

On other occasions, stress causes the person to be too distracted during hours when they should be working (as a strategy to avoid anxiety-inducing situations, such as eating without hunger), and this causes free time to mix with the day. labor, so the work is accumulating.

3. Psychological rumination

Psychological rumination is the cyclical, automatic and unwanted appearance of intrusive thoughts in a person’s mind. It is one of the consequences of anxiety and stress, and normally the thoughts on which it is based are unpleasant or disturbing, and have to do with what the person is worried about.

Due to the predisposition to attract stressful or distressing images to consciousness, people with work stress are constantly reliving unpleasant memories associated with their job, catastrophic predictions about their future work, etc.

4. Sleep schedule imbalances

As a consequence of the above, It is common for work stress to make it difficult to fall asleep at the right time.

On the one hand, disorganization appears when carrying out tasks, and on the other, intrusive thoughts make it difficult to relax while in bed.

5. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

On the other hand, the widespread use of smartphones and tablets with an Internet connection means that some workers develop fear of missing out on important information shared by colleagues or superiors outside of work hours which leads them to constantly check group chats, email, etc.

To do?

The key to preventing your work aspect from completely overshadowing the rest of the aspects of your life is combine a series of learnings regarding the management of emotions, on the one hand, and adopt new behavioral patterns in terms of how you relate to your workspace and those in it.

Furthermore, in some aspects it is advisable to adopt a broader and more strategic vision of the problem and, taking a step back, first question whether this job suits us.

Thus, any attempt to reduce the causes of work stress and work obsession to purely emotional or material variables will probably be simplistic and will not generate positive long-term results. We must intervene both in internal psychological processes and in externalizable actions. and the management of work spaces (and even in the spaces where our private lives take place).

Achieving this is not easy, because you have to maintain a balance between both aspects of the problem, but it is not impossible, and with professional help, it is much easier.

• Related article: “5 emotional management techniques to control stress”

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I am a psychologist specialized in the cognitive-behavioral intervention model and I help both individuals, couples and companies. You can count on my services both in person in Madrid or online by video call.