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Workplace Stress Management for Employees

If you find yourself taking drugs or drinking to relieve stress related to your employment, it is a clear sign that you are struggling to manage the pressures related to work. While your employer has a role to play in ensuring that your working conditions are not contributing to stress and adjusting the nature of your work if it is adversely affecting your health, there are effective steps you can take yourself for managing stress at work. Among the measures you can take are:

  • Learning to manage your time and prioritise your work. Make a list of all the tasks you need to do, phone calls you need to make and emails you need to send at the start of every day, prioritising those that are essential, identifying those that you want to do and the remainder that can wait. When timetabling these in, remain realistic about what you can achieve and always factor in time for those inevitable interruptions.
  • Only taking on as much work as you can physically handle. Learn to politely turn down extra work when your current workload doesn’t allow for it. If persistently heavy workloads are an issue, this is an issue you will need to raise with your manager.
  • Checking you are not adding to your own stress. Examine the situation and ask yourself whether you are being realistic about the importance you are placing on it and its outcome.
  • Taking up new opportunities. If concerns about promotion are an issue for you or the mundane nature of your work is contributing to the way you feel, discussing opportunities for additional training or adapting your role may help as long as this does not add to any other pressure you might be under.
  • Taking a mini break. Each hour let yourself stretch out your back, neck and shoulders to relieve physical tension, which can itself improve mental stress. However, you must also make sure that you take your full entitlement to lunch and any other breaks you are allowed.
  • Discussing your worries with family and friends. Their distance from work may help to place your concerns into perspective, but they are ideally placed to encourage you to speak to your employer about issues that only your workplace can address, such as unmanageable workloads.
  • Learning breathing, relaxation and visualisation exercises can all help.
  • Adopting a healthy diet that is rich in unprocessed foods and limits sugar and caffeine places you in a better position to manage stress, as does taking regular exercise. If you are a shift worker these healthy practices may slip, particularly if you find yourself reaching for a coffee or sugary snack bar to help you keep awake, but these habits will only see your stress levels rise.

When alcohol or drug abuse in the workplace have arisen as a result of stress, it is essential that you seek professional help to overcome your reliance on these substances and learn less destructive coping mechanisms. While you may have concerns about the disruption this may cause for your employment, flexible outpatient programs can fit around your working commitments.

This is an extract (cut and paste) from a larger article  which can be found at http://stepstorecovery.com/workplace-stress-addiction/

About David Lawson

Finding the Light is a locally owned and operated counselling and life coaching business based in Bundaberg. We seek to empower our clients to find their way forward to a better life by using the approaches of counselling or coaching. If this blog article has raised more questions please contact us by email or call us on 0407 585 497 to arrange a time for us to discuss the article. Mention this blog and we will give you a FREE 30 minute session to discuss.

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