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In the articles I have been writing on stress, I notice that people seem to be more interested in workplace stress than other types of stress. This is perfectly understandable as we have to spend a lot of time at work. In fact, very recent research demonstrates that the average American worker is spending more time at work than ever before. And often without extra remuneration.And, as my colleague Rowena French tells me, weight increases as stress increases!

So what causes stress at work? What is it that makes people anxious, worried, uncertain, unfulfilled, and even depressed? And why do we let work stress overcome our lives and make us miserable? Why do we spend so much time replaying a nasty incident between ourselves and a work colleague or boss? Why do we talk about work so much when we go out to party? Can’t we leave the work pressures and incidents behind and discuss healthier topics?

I know the answers to most of these questions and my first thought is this – it is hard to separate out the different parts of our life so that one does not overlap into the other. Life is about work and work can consume our life. But I also know as a therapist that we bring many of our personal issues to the workplace and this can add to the work stress we are experiencing.

When I used to provide Employee Assistance Counseling a year or two ago, I was amazed to note the research that 76% of the ‘problems’ employees sought to discuss with the organization’s psychologist were NOT work stressors but personal problems. Most therapists, including me, review a constellation of factors when identifying either personal or workplace stress. These include family concerns, finances, addictive behaviors, relationships, and work. We know that many people that we see have failed to develop and maintain a healthy and nurturing life-work balance.

So what is there about work, stress, and life-balance disorders that provide too much tension and too little stress relief? I could provide more than 20 factors in the workplace that can create organizational and personal malaise.

But, in this article, I do not want to list the obvious workplace stressors. Instead, let me tell you the very WORST workplace stressor – it is what YOU tell YOURSELF. Self-talk, the conversations we have with ourselves in our head, is what turns a workplace event into a persistent anxiety or stress. We have hundreds of these internal conversations per day, and guess what – most of them are negative and unproductive.

Negative self talk is extremely dysfunctional. Through our self-talk we convince ourselves that we are incompetent, unattractive, ineffectual, and so many other NOT-GOOD words. A simple event like a sharp or a thoughtless comment from a colleague can lead to critical self-talk, elevated self-criticisms, and a negative mood. The negative mood could be internalized (sad, anxious, worried, fearful, feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, and so on) or externalized (anger, resentment, sharp retorts, criticism, socialized aggression in the form of gossip).

So how do we reduce and relieve stress? How do we stop burnout? How do we halt increasingly low morale? We convert negative thoughts into positive energy and actions. We block these negative thoughts. We replace them with positive and healthy thoughts. Sound simple doesn't it?

We can respond to workplace stress by refusing to engage in negative talk and self-blame. We can interrupt the downward spiral of the self-criticism IF WE WANT TO! Positive thought diminishes negative energy and provides stress reduction and stress relief. For more strategies on stress relief refer to some of my other articles: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr_Jeff_Bailey

Warm regards

Dr Jeff

For the team at mightydigitaldownloads.com 

 Dr Jeff Bailey, psychologist, helps stressed patients. Why put up with stress? Learn stress management skills now.  Click here for the free What is Stress by Dr Jeff. Don’t waste another minute stressed and burnt out. Act now – learn how to relieve stress.

Tags: anxiety, burnout, Dr Jeff. Dr Jeff Bailey, managing stress, reduce stress, relieve stress, stress, stress at work, stress relief, work stress, workplace stress

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Dr Jeff on Emotional Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.