Work Place Stress

No-one is immune from an invis­i­ble killer which stalks silently through every office, fac­tory floor and work-place. It doesn’t dis­crim­i­nate against age, sex, race or occu­pa­tion and its grip tight­ens as the social and eco­nomic pres­sures of 21st cen­tury life increase.

An epi­demic of stress-related ill­nesses has dri­ven unprece­dented num­bers of the pop­u­la­tion to bail out of the work­place. Count­less oth­ers resort to anti­de­pres­sants to help them face the day. So, just what is going on in this age of unpar­al­leled pros­per­ity and comfort?

Heart dis­ease, stroke, hyper­ten­sion, irri­ta­ble bowel syn­drome, migraines, crohn’s dis­ease, pso­ri­a­sis, aller­gies, insom­nia, depres­sion, anx­i­ety and even can­cer can all be trig­gered or aggra­vated by stress. It com­pro­mises the immune sys­tem and symp­toms like exhaus­tion, mus­cu­lar ten­sion and an increased heart rate all put tremen­dous pres­sure on the body. Health is fur­ther under­mined by mood swings, poor eat­ing habits, lack of exer­cise and an inabil­ity to con­cen­trate, which all take their toll on emo­tional wellbeing.

Most employ­ers now recog­nise the com­mer­cial ben­e­fits of keep­ing employ­ees happy and leg­is­la­tion goes some of the way towards offer­ing pro­tec­tion from stress fac­tors like over­work and poor work­ing con­di­tions. But cor­po­rate cul­ture often demands long hours and there is no such thing as a job for life any more. Add to that our ‘buy now pay later’ credit-funded lifestyle and you have a recipe for stress overload.

On the one hand, stress gives us our drive and moti­va­tion to get out there and achieve our poten­tial but too much of it has the oppo­site effect. Once there is a gap between our abil­ity to cope with stress and the amount of pres­sure we are under, prob­lems appear over­whelm­ing, con­fi­dence shat­ters and per­for­mance goes into melt­down. Job secu­rity is com­pro­mised, rela­tion­ships suf­fer and habits can eas­ily turn into addic­tions.

Ask around among friends and col­leagues and you will find this grim sce­nario is all too com­mon­place. Being in a job which doesn’t make the best use of your skills, work­ing for a com­pany which doesn’t pro­vide ade­quate train­ing and being given too much respon­si­bil­ity causes stress (too lit­tle causes bore­dom which is also stress­ful). And so do ‘toxic’ com­pa­nies where bul­lies thrive and staff are moti­vated by fear. It only takes one or two inse­cure, unsu­per­vised per­son­nel in key posi­tions to make the work­ing day an absolute mis­ery for their colleagues.

Throw into the mix poor inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and exclu­sion from rel­e­vant decision-making and a busi­ness could be severely com­pro­mised by de-motivated under-performers miss­ing tar­gets. And, of course, the most tal­ented will get out quick, adding the expense of high staff recruit­ment costs to the bur­den of fail­ing productivity.

So whether you’re a credit-crunched boss or debt-laden worker, work­place stress is unremit­ting tor­ture, with days spent in frus­tra­tion and despair often fol­lowed by bro­ken nights of sleep­less worry. I see many exam­ples of this in my hyp­nother­apy clinic at Helios in Tun­bridge Wells, peo­ple with dif­fer­ent jobs, dif­fer­ent issues and expe­ri­ences seek­ing solu­tions to their dis­tress. They share the same sense of hope­less­ness in many guises, vary­ing from nail-biting or teeth-grinding to the heart-pounding ter­ror of panic attacks or gut-wrenching urgency of IBS.

Their recov­ery can be rapid with the use of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Pro­gram­ming) and CBT (Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioural Ther­apy) strate­gies and tech­niques. These can take the form of coach­ing in meth­ods of deal­ing with a dif­fi­cult man­ager, hon­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills to deflect bul­ly­ing behav­iour, set­ting goals for career devel­op­ment, build­ing con­fi­dence and encour­ag­ing assertive behav­iour. All these changes become embed­ded in a pos­i­tive mind-set with the sup­port of hypnosis.

My final job before becom­ing a hyp­nother­a­pist was at a big pub­lish­ing firm. I was bul­lied by a mediocre middle-manager in a dead-end job whose career had peaked many years before. He took great plea­sure in humil­i­at­ing and under­min­ing me at every turn. I didn’t deserve this treat­ment and did noth­ing to invite it. I car­ried out my duties to the best of my abil­ity but it made no difference.

He was vile to me and if I bumped into him tomor­row I would shake his hand. This nasty piece of work gave me the drive and impe­tus to take the plunge into a com­pletely dif­fer­ent career, to take a risk with no guar­an­tee of suc­cess. I may never have done so if I’d been in a nice cushy num­ber with sup­port­ive colleagues.

Now, I help peo­ple learn to avoid becom­ing vic­tims, achieve the best they can and cre­ate the right cir­cum­stances for suc­cess. Some­times, I’ll coach them in job-seeking skills so they can escape from sit­u­a­tions which give them lit­tle reward and no respect. They then have the oppor­tu­nity to find their ideal career, just as I have. My work is inspir­ing, fas­ci­nat­ing, chal­leng­ing and stim­u­lat­ing. The job sat­is­fac­tion is immense when I am able to help those who come to me achieve pos­i­tive changes. My neme­sis is still a mediocre middle-manager in a dead-end job.