'I Feel Overwhelmed at Work': Possible Causes and What to Do

Many people develop a conflictive relationship with their workplace or with the environment or company in which they work.

Sometimes, the main cause of this has to do with problems in the work context: simply, too much pressure is put on workers or responsibilities are not well assigned, for example. But in other cases, this kind of discomfort has more to do with the worker’s tendency to self-sabotage.

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The need to combine work with emotional well-being

There are companies and even workers who assume an idea that is very harmful to health: that in our work, it is normal to be constantly subjected to strong stress that makes us suffer for prolonged periods. While it is true that unfortunately this is a common situation due to precariousness, that does not mean that we should normalize it or forget that it is a problem to be solved.

It is clear that where there is paid work there are certain demands and objectives to be achieved following certain productivity criteria, but focusing solely on that is having a totally biased and partial view of the matter. Without a worker there is no job, and it has been shown that in the medium and long term it is necessary to find a balance between the skills and potential of the person, on the one hand, and the production goals to which they aspire, on the other. And beyond the logic of production and provision of services, people’s well-being has value regardless of the economic mechanism in which they participate.

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These two facts, that the happiness and well-being of the worker has a positive impact on long-term performance and that it is also an objective in itself , make it essential to know ways to manage stress and emotions at work, as well as knowing how we can improve working conditions so that they are not limited to “burning out” employees, self-employed workers, etc. This means that the most functional and leading companies always dedicate part of their efforts to offering courses and training programs in emotional management for their workers, and to carry out research to find out if there is something in the work spaces or in the “workflow”. ” which gives rise to discomfort.

“I feel overwhelmed at work”: possible causes

When a feeling like “I feel overwhelmed at work” crosses our mind, what we are usually referring to is excessive work stress Stress is a normal phenomenon present in all healthy people, and it is almost always a resource that helps us adapt to day-to-day challenges, becoming faster when it comes to acting on problems.

However, sometimes they give rise to “vicious circle” type situations, generating a problem that feeds our predisposition to stress. This often happens at work, where the worker himself participates in creating the work pressure that affects him. For example, not managing distractions well, leaving his responsibilities for later due to fear of facing them, etc.

In this way, more times than it seems, the experience of seeing ourselves overwhelmed by our work is the consequence of this tendency to self-sabotage which contributes to our responsibilities accumulating and our discomfort increasing because of it, and vice versa.

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Some of the possible causes that give rise to this are the following.

1. Fear of reporting errors

Avoidance of uncomfortable situations with colleagues or superiors leads some people not to report failures that affect production, which generates a problem that grows bigger and bigger like a snowball. In cases like this, it is clear that good anxiety management can make a difference.

2. Poor management of distracting elements

Working with an eye on social media, leaving the radio on, getting up every ten minutes to drink or snack… They are habits that, in addition to causing us to waste time, cause us to feel physically bad and then also psychologically bad due to the wear and tear of one’s own body.

3. Schedule chaos

This is a problem that especially affects those who work from home. Not having a fixed schedule means that sometimes they are tempted to do nothing for many minutes and even hours and they find themselves in the situation of having to take care of many things in the last hours of the day, which produces stress and even causes problems falling asleep.