Are You Feeling the Pressure at Work? Identify and Manage Stress Symptoms With These Helpful Tips

Do you know what is causing your stress?

Often when one feels overwhelmed and overloaded at work, they begin to stress. How someone deals with high-stress work environments determines how one will feel about their current job role or company. There are many stress techniques to try to help deal with stress.

In order to determine how to cope with your stress, you must first identify your stress. 

Some factors of stress can include not being paid enough, having too much work, having little to no growth in the company, or having no support. These factors can cause a lack of effort, attendance, and poor attitude in the workplace. Once you identify your stress, you need to try to manage it.

Managing stress is more important than one would think.

Stress can take a person’s mood from happy to miserable. Stress can also take a big impact on one’s mental health. Signs of this include dwelling about work, not wanting to go to work, feeling sad or angry, and poor attendance. On top of mental health, there is physical health. Sometimes employers work their employees past their normal hours creating overtime. Overtime could be both negative and positive. The positive aspect is the company is knocking out extra work and the employee gets compensated for their extra hours. However, if an employee is constantly being forced to work overtime there is a risk of injury and just not feeling well.

Often when someone is looking for a company to work for, money matters. Employees care about how much their starting pay will be, any bonus provided, and future raises. If any employee starts to do extra work, have perfect attendance, and meet company goals, they are going to want a raise. Employees create that stress for themselves to prove they deserve that raise. If one has mentioned a raise multiple times and went through extra efforts and does not get one, they will resent the company. This is where it backtracks back to one’s mental health wondering why they could not get a raise after all their hard work and time. Sit down with your boss and explain why you deserve a raise and even ask why you did not get one or were denied.

Growth and support are two very important factors. An employee does not put themselves through the extra hours and tasks not to want to grow or have a supportive team. If one person is pulling all the load on the team, they will not feel supported, and if one does not work as hard and gets a promotion, it will devastate the hard-working employee. In this type of situation whether it is a lack of support or growth, sit down with a supervisor, manager, or leader and discuss feelings. When discussing how one feels, be sure to mention the impact you have had. If that does not work, continue to go up the chain and talk about how the team seems to lack support. Try to gain support to help lessen the stress.

How one responds in a stressful situation is important. 

Set boundaries for yourself whether it is not accepting an outside task of your job or cutting work hours. Try to set a normal schedule and have a routine. When you get home from work, try not to bring your stress-filled day home. Try some exercise whether it is going for a walk, yoga, or meditation. 

Sometimes stress is not always manageable. There will be times you have presented great reasons as to why you deserve a raise and not get one. If the work environment does not change and one has done all they can do, it never hurts to look around to find a career you can fall in love with.

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Katherine “Kat” Reel currently is a Merchandising Coordinator currently residing in Virginia. During my career, I’ve learned to find a job that makes me feel excited. 

What’s your no. 1 piece of advice for identifying and managing stress? Share your answer in the comments to help other Fairygodboss members!