In some jobs and professional projects, work stress is such a common element that it can become normalized, as if it were part of the office where you are going to work.
However, the truth is that if this psychological and physiological phenomenon is not managed properly, it usually leads to performance problems and even pathologies of greater or lesser severity. Therefore, it is not advisable to assume that work stress is a simple and one-dimensional experience; Depending on how we face it, the results we obtain in our work and in ourselves will be very different.
Therefore, in the following article We will see how it is possible to manage work stress by focusing on work routines with the greatest capacity to push us to the limit that is, those that we develop in situations of great tension.
Situations of strong psychological tension that generate work stress
Stress is such an important psychological phenomenon in our lives precisely because it can be triggered by a wide variety of situations. In fact, it is characterized by appearing above all in contexts to which we are not completely accustomed, those that are beyond our comfort zone.
It is normal for it to be like this: The ability to experience stress is an adaptation produced by natural selection since it helps us react quickly at key moments, when stopping to decide what to do can cost us dearly by exposing ourselves too much to danger or leading us to miss an important opportunity.
Thus, stress is the opposite of our state of relative relaxation in which we are “by default” when all our most important needs are met. It arises when there is something that disturbs our emotional balance by introducing relevant changes in our present or in our predictions about what will happen, and at the same time we feel that if we are quick we can do something to improve our situation or avoid a problem.
Therefore, stress can take as many forms as there are ways for our present to be disrupted by problems or unforeseen events. It is a mechanism of adaptation to the unpredictable that in most cases helps us enhance our behavioral flexibility. However, no adaptation resulting from natural selection is useful 100% of the time, and the stress response is no exception to this. Which means that there is a wide variety of situations that can generate a stress problem if we do not learn to manage this psychological element well.
Although technically this range of stress-generating contexts is infinite, in practice, if we stick to the world of work, those that usually lead people to extreme situations are easier to delimit. So, Those that are usually seen most in a psychology consultation are the following
Stress management strategies associated with difficult professional projects
These are several of the stress management strategies most used in psychotherapy to help people who face a very demanding professional context.
1. Mindfulness Practice
Mindfulness or Full Attention is a very useful resource for enhance the ability to maintain adequate emotional balance , as long as we use it as a habit consistently. It allows us to reposition our attention focus on the present and stop feeding fears without real support and obsessive thoughts that paralyze us.
2. Practice relaxation techniques
Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing or Jacobson’s progressive muscle relaxation They aim to influence the psychological from the psychological point of view, that is, to make the slow rhythms of our body reflected in our way of processing the present and the stimuli to which we are exposed.
3. Establishment of guidelines and segmentation of tasks
Many highly stressful jobs cause a lot of discomfort because they expose us to intimidating uncertainty. They beg the question: What to do next? Since everything is so complicated and when we face so many tasks, We remain paralyzed because we do not see ourselves capable of facing everything, the situation overwhelms us
For this reason, in psychotherapy people are trained in the skill of establishing guidelines and segmenting tasks, so that from the beginning we establish a clear sequence of activities, composed of very short-term goals that serve as references for our progress and They are always there to motivate us.
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4. Training of attentional capacity
The difference between knowing how to concentrate properly on the task and not doing so It may mean doing that activity in half the time or not Therefore, this is one of the aspects of psychological intervention most valued by professionals, elite athletes, opponents…
5. Learning the correct rest patterns
Being too indulgent with ourselves in the way we rest between tasks can cause us to lose control of the minutes dedicated to regaining strength and cause us to constantly procrastinate, letting the work pile up
But at the same time, falling short of rest time will reach a point where we are unable to concentrate and we end up resting more, but in a chaotic and non-restorative way.
Therefore, it is important to learn to distribute the hours of rest in our schedule that adjust to the demands of work and our personal characteristics.
Related article: “The 7 main sleep disorders”
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