Professional Stress – All you Need to Know to Beat it

There are many kinds of stress, but professional stress, or that stress that is related to your job or profession is of a very special type.

If professional stress is not managed, and allowed to remain to torment you, it easily deserves its name, “the silent killer”

Below find all you need to know on how to manage professional stress.

Professional Stress

Professional stress is the stress that occurs within the workplace, or while performing professional activity, and is nothing more than a person's physio-psychological response to various stimuli that sets off our inbreed fight-or-flight reaction.

The stimuli can be caused by one’s superiors, co-workers, tasks, workplace environmental factors, and a host of other conditions.

These stimuli give rise to stress and this stress, if constant, can and will affect ones immune system, mental health, and overall physical well-being.

How Professional Stress Affects Us

In its basic form, stress and the fight-or-flight reaction is meant to protect us.

It causes physical reactions, such as the endocrine glands secreting hormones and enzymes to prepare our bodies for combat or a quick removal from the stress stimuli.

Once resolved (either through a fight or flight), our bodies return to normal.

In the workplace, where these stimuli are constant, our bodies are continually in a state of stress.

It is now a well accepted fact that this kind of stress is one of the greatest causes of all illness.

This stress is responsible for both stroke and heart attack; it daily destroys the immune system, in lighter forms cause’s migraine headaches, eczema, complications in pregnancy, and high susceptibility to any infectious disease.

Professional Stress Management

These are the techniques designed to give a person effective mechanisms for coping and dealing with professional stress.

The first step is to identify the stressor.

If it is a boss, a co-worker, environmental factors, whatever it is, it must first be identified if it is to be managed. It is not very difficult and some few moments of serious thought will give rise to what that stressor or stressors are.

The next step is to do a clear self-examination, away from the workplace, and when in a relaxed state.

This self-examination will eventually reveal how you react to stress, which psychologists determine as Type A or Type B. Whatever you are, you must know it, accept it, and then you can begin to manage the stress that is tormenting you.

This examination will tell you what you have to do, when you compare it to the stressor.

You may need to be more organized, change your outlook, your attitude, force yourself to relax, change your diet or other habits, develop a better sense of humor, force yourself to relax (as in meditation or massage). Whatever it is, you will understand it from your quiet analysis.

There are lots of remedies, even changing your work, or profession in the worst case. However, there are also some very good habits to develop which will reduce or eliminate the average and usual work stressors.

They are

1. Learn how and when to say, ‘no’. Remember people seldom walk on you unless you lie down first.

2. Strive to become perfectly organized

3. Reduce your anxiety by setting priorities and sticking with them.

4. If your stress is environmental, attend to eliminating it, whatever the source.

5. Learn the relaxing breathing techniques offered in any course of yoga.

6. Do not take yourself or your job too seriously.

7. Buy a stress ball, and play with it in times of stress. Imagine the stress going into the ball, and out of your body

8. Manage your time well. The more professional you are, the more you need to manage your time professionally. This will reduce unnecessary stress.