Recent workplace surveys show that at-work anxiety is on the rise despite our ever-growing awareness of the importance of healthy living across all facets of our lives. The most significant and common causes of anxiety at work are unsurprising: Bad managerial practices, long working hours, a heavy workload, and a lack of career autonomy make employees feel powerless, unsupported and overwhelmed.
Regardless of the specific cause of your workplace anxiety, research shows that the following tips for workplace anxiety management really work.
The Keys To Managing Anxiety At Work
1. Remember: Healthy Living At Work Requires Awareness
Anxiety at work has a habit of accumulating gradually over time rather than in response to acutely stressful or traumatic experiences. As a result, many people are not aware of their anxiety until it builds up enough to cause burnout (which manifests as neglect of work duties, a lack of professional development, and venting to coworkers).
Burnout is best avoided through recognition of anxiety triggers and the development of targeted coping mechanisms related to and during triggering experiences.
2. Practice High-Quality Healthy Living Habits Outside Of Work
Who we are and how we feel at work are intricately connected with what we do at home. For example, people who get insufficient sleep (fewer than seven hours per night) tend to be dramatically more anxious, less effective, and less safe in the workplace. This ultimately costs employers approximately $1,967 per sleep-deprived employee in annual productivity losses.
Similarly, employee anxiety has some links with poor nutrition, insufficient immune support, and other unhealthy behaviors. This suggests that practicing healthy behaviors at home — including taking natural supplements derived from healing plants — may help minimize anxiety at work.
So, eat healthy, sleep more, and take natural herbal supplements to keep your immune system working at its best. Don’t forget to exercise!
3. Stay Clocked-Out When Outside Of The Workplace
No matter how out of control things feel at the workplace, if your personal life is healthy and happy, you will have an easier time working. If you’re getting enough sleep, you can breeze through tricky workplace situations and be your productive self.
Workplace anxiety can also bleed into your regular life, so taking healthy restorative measures to stop it from happening helps too.
Recent research supports the idea that being able to fully disengage from work while at home helps minimize at-work anxiety while maximizing at-work engagement and productivity.
To this end, creating healthy boundaries around work behaviors (like checking email) go a long way toward reducing at-work anxiety. Additionally, anxious employees can rely on grounding habits at home (like meditation) and stress-reducing and sleep-enhancing natural supplements to help define a distinct at-home emotional space.
4. Establish A Sphere Of Control At Work
Different workplace environments allow for varying degrees of employee autonomy and flexibility. In spaces where flexibility and autonomy are low, employees may feel elevated levels of anxiety at work as a result of their lack of control over their work experiences and outcomes. It follows, then, that one of the most immediately effective tips for reducing at-work anxiety is establishing a sense of control over working conditions.
Carrying your work with you is a sure road to anxiety and burnout.
If your employer or colleagues insist on contacting you for work purposes outside of the office, clearly let them know you won’t be available. A good idea would be to have a separate phone number and switch off the phone when not working.
5. Identify At-Work Tools For Anxiety Management
Our current cultural trends prioritizing healthy living should mean that people today are more prone than ever to seek help for anxiety. Nevertheless, fewer than 40% of people who self-report feeling anxiety so severe at work that it interferes with their performance speak to a supervisor or seek other at-work anxiety support.
Yet it is in every firm’s best interest to help alleviate workplace anxiety. It interferes with both individual productivity and company morale. That is why many companies now have an Employee Assistance Program offering stress management resources and/or facilitating mental healthcare referrals for anxious employees.
6. Cultivate Soft Skills For Stress Management At Work
For people who self-report a tendency to experience work anxiety, opportunities for recreation and relaxation at work (or recovery at home) are not consistently effective. This means that, if you are prone to feeling anxiety at work, it is important to actively develop your work-coping skills (including boundary-setting, self-management, and career adaptability) to minimize anxious responses to work stress.
Do you know the source of your anxiety? You know it’s due to work, but can you identify the things causing it? Identifying your stressors will help you find solutions to deal with them.
Talking with a professional can help you walk-through situations to understand what caused you to fret. If work isn’t the only source, it might be due to an anxiety disorder. A professional can also help you get proper treatment and medication.
Check if your company has some sort of mental health program.
7. Recognize That Some Stressors Are Outside Your Control
Research shows that certain at-work stressors uniformly increase work anxiety in everyone, regardless of coping mechanisms practiced or personal tendencies towards anxiety. Witnessing or experiencing bullying (or harassment) at work, specifically, has broad negative consequences. This type of anxiety can only be resolved by seeking support from supervisory staff or human resources personnel (people who can exert some degree of control over the situation).
You don’t have to do everything by yourself. Nor are you supposed to know how to do everything from the start perfectly.
Your anxiety could be caused by trying to handle projects alone. This kind of behavior can make work overwhelming all too quickly. When you feel too swamped, ask your colleague and superiors for help.
Canada Kratom Express
As the #1 kratom store in Canada, Canada Kratom Express (CKE), is committed to the constant improvement of people and elevating lifestyles. All tips offered on our blog are our views only and should not be considered medical advice.
Final Thoughts
Sometimes, it’s not work-induced anxiety but the job itself. If you don’t like your job or find your employer’s managing style particularly hard to cope with, it might be time to start afresh. Your anxiety is reason enough to find the ideal job that doesn’t make you dread getting ready for work in the morning.
