Mental Health Awareness Month
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. We will be featuring some insights through out the month from members who are advocates in promoting mental wellbeing in our community.
Member Corrine Wise, MA:
"Our jobs and careers are a huge portion of our lives and can be a significant source of negative stress. According to the American Institute of Stress 83% of workers suffer stress from their work and up to 25% of workers name work as their top stressor in life.
Unfortunately, this stress, if not managed well, can affect our mental health in very significant ways. Workplace stress has been directly associated with increases in levels of anxiety and depression. There are many factors that can contribute to these increases including conflict with our co-workers, a difficult supervisor or boss, long hours, overwhelming work load, general unhappiness in our position, and poor working conditions.
We may not be able to eliminate all of the stress of our work but we can definitely work to find ways to manage the stress in healthier ways. Learning how to set internal and external boundaries is one way we can manage our stress levels. Internal boundaries have to do with those things within ourselves that we set limits on. For instance, saying yes to working overtime hours. Internal boundaries look something like only picking up one day of overtime in a week versus any time you are asked. Internal boundaries involve us looking inside ourselves and being honest with what our limits really are and saying to ourselves that we are going to stick to these particular “rules”. External boundaries are also an important part of decreasing our stress. Learning how to say no when a co-worker asks you to help them with a project when you are already overwhelmed. Another way to decrease your stress level at work is to regularly check in with how you are feeling and identify your level of stress followed by some calm breathing, performing a body scan to see where you are tense and purposefully relaxing those tense muscles, or going outside and taking a brief walk. There are of course other times when the stressors are external and somewhat out of control like a difficult co-worker or boss. In these cases, it may be helpful to talk with a neutral person and brainstorm some healthy ways of dealing with this person. Learning and identifying what we are able to control and letting go of those things we cannot alone is a practice that can decrease our stress levels. Outside of work engaging in at least 30 min. of exercise which increases your heart rate daily or several times a week will decrease your stress levels and increasing feelings of well-being. Also, making sure you are spending a good amount of time on hobbies and activities that you enjoy and finding a healthy balance between work and life will decrease your stress levels overall.
Of course, if you are finding that your work stress levels are beginning to affect your mental health, such as an increase in anxiety, depression, low self-worth, or other significant relationships outside of work, finding a trusted counselor should be considered. Counselor’s are trained in providing solutions to decreasing anxiety and depression, and can also help identify ways to increase healthy cope skills to decrease overall stress levels, deal with difficult co-workers, and even aid in achieving a healthier balance between work and life.
