How to Cope with Occupational Stress

Why Occupational Stress is So Harmful for Students

Chronic stress causes diseases of the cardiovascular system, aggravates current problems in the body, and finally leads to so-called professional burnout.

Occupational or emotional burnout is a depletion of the organism on the mental and physiological level, as a consequence of stress at the workplace or during study. 

When I was a student, I couldn’t stand some subjects. I always needed someone to write my lab report instead of doing it by myself. I felt anxiety and now I understand that it was because of an emotional burnout. 

Consequences of personal professional stress manifest themselves in several spheres of life activity:

• Physiology: constant loss of strength, physical fatigue, pain for unexplained reasons in different areas of the body.
• Behavior: bad habits appear or worsen, such as smoking, frequent use of alcohol and other drugs.
• Society: conflicts or indifference towards other employees.
• Self-esteem: the meaning of one’s work activity is lost, there is a feeling of inadequacy of one’s position, the results of one’s work are devalued.

As a rule, people-to-people workers are the most prone to professional burnout: they are teachers, doctors, police and other law enforcement officials, social workers, educators, psychologists, etc. That is, those whose position requires them to communicate with a large number of people or representatives of dangerous professions are associated with a risk to life.

 

A plan for dealing with occupational stress

If you have made an internal diagnosis and realized that you have occupational stress, take action immediately:

• Identify the source of the problem.
• Find the cause of the problem.
• Sort out your negative emotions – aggression, irritation, anxiety, confusion, etc.
• Weigh all the negative and positive aspects of the situation.
• Find effective ways of dealing with the problem that will relieve your stress.
• Write down an action plan on paper or electronically.
• Periodically monitor the results.

Some situations are difficult to cope with their efforts. Then it is better to go to a specialist, make an appointment with a psychologist.

 

Methods of dealing with occupational stress

Psychologists C. Cooper and D. Marshall studied the mechanisms of occupational stress and identified several ways to manage it.

 

They can include the following actions:

• Change the workplace environment – psychologically, socially, and organizationally.
• Create a connection between work and family.
• Improve qualifications to realize one’s competence in the field of work.
• Create a comfortable social and psychological atmosphere.

 

Reducing stressors will help the work environment, which includes conditions such as:

• Matching the level of work to the employee’s intelligence;
• activities that are not too tiring;
• Wages commensurate with the work effort;
• Working conditions corresponding to the physiological needs of the person;
• encouragement of the employee, raising his self-esteem;
• improvement of employees’ qualifications.

 

To overcome production stress can be many ways, the main thing in this case – regularity. According to experts, it is necessary to develop emotional stability and develop an anti-stress behavior about external stimuli.

 

One of the most common and effective methods is so-called self-regulation. This technique consists of the conscious regulation by the person of the state of his/her body.

 

One more method is relaxation. With the help of relaxation of the body, it is possible to get rid of tension both physiological and mental. Despite the apparent complexity of the technique, it is quite feasible. Relaxation can be learned if you are interested in it.

 

Because of the stressors, the employee is prone to distraction. He has to deal with a huge number of different tasks, and it is necessary to do everything very quickly. Such a worker works daily at the limit of his abilities, which leads to emotional exhaustion. In this case, exercises on the concentration of attention are very useful. They will help you to strain a little and overcome yourself.

His unstable mood can be regulated by the technique of breath control. As you know, the rhythm of human breathing is completely different during a conversation, singing, or sneezing. This means that it is possible to regulate it consciously, that is, to change its speed and depth. For example, if you consciously take a long, long inhale and exhale, it helps to calm down and relax completely.

 

A person who is under stress and a person in a normal state breathe quite differently. So the emotional state can be easily determined by the rhythm of breathing. The frequency of breathing in and out is very important, as it has a calming effect on the psychological state of a person.

 

It is possible to regulate the resources of the body on your own with the help of installations to yourself. This method has no counteraction and is easy to adjust because no one knows a person as well as he or she does. The self-regulation method combines all the ways to deal with the negative effects of industrial stress.