Before I proceed to tell you how to deal with stress, I want to give you some idea of how people respond to stress. Then I want to introduce you to the idea of negative self-talk – one of the great enemies of stress reduction techniques. My first example is Jane who is failing to cope at work.

Why is it that Jane, 42 years of age, suddenly has difficulty going out with her husband? When she goes to parties she hides away from everyone. This behaviour seems to stem from her workplace where she feels everyone is critical of her. She was stressed at work. She feels she doesn’t have her colleagues’ respect. She believes that her boss is overly critical.

Jane is suffering extreme work stress. She has reached the point in her work life where everything is weighing her down. Her physical responses include feeling being physically sick, and even nauseous. She says that she is depressed, reports that she is afraid of making mistakes at work and feels that she cannot cope with work demands.

There is no doubt that she is much less productive and accurate with her work. In sum, HER SYSTEM IS OVER-LOADED with worry, concern, anxiety, fears, and she has lost most of her self-confidence. Does this sound familiar to you? Can you put yourself is Jane’s place? Can you begin to understand how stressed she is? Do you feel that life’s events have over-run you and you can’t cope? Do you feel constantly under threat, tired and unresponsive? Are your friends and/or your partner asking you what is wrong with you? Are you dissatisfied with your life? Do you feel you can’t cope the way you used to? Is your work constantly suffering from your emotional state?

If you believe that this fits you, you are having problems with stress at work. We seem to be working longer and being stress more. Some people think this is acceptable. Reported cardiac illnesses increased after the 9/11 attack. High blood pressure, strokes and related disorders increased. With emotional trauma comes physical ailments. When people are unwell emotionally they don’t function well at work.

What are these workplace stressors? That is, what are the events that elevate stress? They include a long list of things.

Some bosses expect far too much of their employees. Transfers, redundancy, poor communication will contribute to workplace stress. In some places interpersonal difficulties with colleagues at work and even partners at home can cause emotional overload.

How do we deal with these pressures? Obviously, the solutions depend on you and your context. Changing jobs is a reasonable but not totally effective alternative. If your Boss is causing you problems, why not list his or her name with a ‘headhunter’ and perhaps they’ll get a job somewhere else? From my experience working in Employee Assistance Programs, the major problem is poor role definition. I think I have a specified list of things to do but my role description doesn’t clarify this and my boss has other idea about what I should be doing. Obviously, confronting the issues with the individuals concerned is one simple approach but there are many other ways of resolving this tension, especially if you are committed to taking responsibility for your feelings and actions.

Negative thinking is one of the greatest causes of unresolved workplace stress. Remember that you are what you think and you have to take responsibility for the changes in your life. If you try you can deal with the workplace stress. First you must understand the consequences of negative self talk. Our emotional states are often determined by what we are thinking. We spend a lot of our time with self conversations.

This sounds simple but it’s a fact of life. We create our own problems because we run ourselves down all the time. We probably have 10 times the amount of negative thought to positive thought. We increase our tension and stress by constant self-criticism. The situation is exacerbated if our friends and family constantly criticize us. If we want to manage workplace stress we have to work on becoming more positive about ourselves.