You’re Stressed at Work. Is It the Job, or Is It You?
Photo by Layla Bird via iStock
Before becoming a therapist, I worked in several large financial services firms where stress was a common theme: people working long hours, engaging in conflict, and pushing against urgent deadlines.
Now in my clinical practice, I find myself drawing on past experience to help a number of stressed-out clients with a frequently asked question: How do I know when it’s time to leave my job?
Four out of five American workers experience work-related stress, and one in four Americans say that work is the number one stressor in their lives. While low levels of stress can usually be managed and may even have benefits, chronic workplace stress can have significant negative impacts on your mental health, leading to decreased productivity and reduced job satisfaction. High stress levels can even impact your physical health, causing significant damage to your cardiovascular system and raising your risk for heart attack.
We call this burnout: the overwhelming feeling of emotional and physical exhaustion related to stress at work. You may have heard of a lot of self-care strategies that can help with this, such as taking mental health days or vacations, making sure you get better sleep, and creating stronger boundaries. Those can be very helpful in some circumstances, but it’s also important to know when to just walk away.
Self-Care Won’t Solve All Workplace Stressors
Most workplace stress falls into two categories: personal stressors and environmental stressors.
Your time management skills, response to feedback, and ability to remain agile in an ever-changing work environment are personal and within your control. Engaging in therapy can help you develop positive coping strategies to manage these sources of tension. Techniques like taking a break, practicing mindfulness, self-esteem building, boundary-setting, or communication role-playing can really be helpful in managing personal stressors.
It’s also important to learn and practice these strategies for your career because otherwise you may be doomed to repeat the same personal stressors in any job you go to.
Environmental stressors, on the other hand, are outside of your control. Other aspects of work, like how your boss evaluates you, the workload you are given, and the support and training you receive, won’t be solved with self-care strategies.
Workplace stress is significantly impacted by how the organization is structured and managed. Often someone’s inability to cope with high stress levels and anxiety is not a lack of their personal resilience. Rather it’s a product of unrealistic expectations and toxic work cultures.
“Often someone’s inability to cope with high stress levels and anxiety is not a lack of their personal resilience. Rather it’s a product of unrealistic expectations and toxic work cultures.”
If the stress arises from a short-term situation that you can resolve, then good boundaries and self-care can bring you back into balance. But when it’s the organization that’s the root of the issue, it may be the time to consider a move.
Identifying Personal vs. Environmental Stress
Understanding if workplace stress is stemming from personal challenges or from your company can be determined by asking yourself some questions related to four specific work areas:
Work-Life Balance
Is it a personal stressor?
Reflect on your work/life balance and hours worked. Do you find yourself frequently checking email or responding to messages that aren’t urgent? Ask yourself whether that drive to work comes from expectations others have placed on you or ones those you’ve placed on yourself.
Is it an environmental stressor?
If you answered yes to these questions, it’s your employer. Organizations that reward excessively long hours often mistake long hours for hard work and create unhealthy pressure that impedes a healthy home life and outside interests. This belief is often reinforced by suggesting that those with a healthy work/life balance are lazy or unmotivated. Exceptions exist where employees sign on to do shift work, or special assignments that require abnormal work hours, but for most workplaces, research suggests that reasonable and flexible working hours that leave time for outside interests actually increase creativity and productivity.
Decision-Making Processes and Collaboration
Is it a personal stressor?
- Do you refrain from speaking up?
- Are you uncomfortable sharing your ideas out of fear of rejection?
- Do you try to do everything yourself instead of including others?
- When others seek your input, do you hold back from sharing feedback honestly?
If these questions resonate with how you approach collaboration, you may need to work on your self-confidence, and seeking mentorship could help in this situation.
Is it an environmental stressor?
Research rejects the “leadership myth” where it is assumed that the best decisions are achieved by a single experienced leader who gets involved in the organization’s details. In reality, a small group of people who collaborate well nearly always produce better decisions than the most talented individual leader.
Performance Measurement
Is it a personal stressor?
If you feel stressed about something in your work or feel that it’s too much for one person to manage, have you shared this with your manager? If not, they might not know that you feel overwhelmed, and this mismatch in knowledge could lead to a frustrating performance review. Reflect on what agency you have to seek clarity and support to do your best work.
Is it an environmental stressor?
Effective performance measures have to be objective. Many, however, become merged with personal judgments by managers, which can result in stressful efforts by employees to be seen favorably instead of achieving clear goals. When employees spend time guessing what will impress their managers, it creates workplace stress – and collateral damage from its impact on morale and people’s sense of fairness.
Tools and Support
Is it a personal stressor?
Asking for help isn’t always easy, but it’s a crucial skill many of us need to learn. Asking for help at work might look like speaking up when a project isn’t going as expected, asking for additional mentoring or training, or bringing your manager in to help brainstorm solutions.
Is it an environmental stressor?
Stress levels inevitably rise sharply if we are asked to do a task where the associated systems are not working effectively. This is made worse if you don’t have quick access to support – or get pushback for asking too many questions. Where organizations have decided to reduce costs by not providing practical training and support, there tends to be chronic stress despite a talented workforce.
Make an Informed Decision
These four key areas are ways you can identify whether your stress level can be resolved by personal action or whether it’s chronic and inherent to the organization. Of course, there are many financial and personal reasons for considering a job change. But asking the right questions is the way to start evaluating your options and figuring out next steps that will truly improve your well-being.
Octave therapists can help you determine if your work stressors are environmental or personal.