WORKPLACE ANXIETY
Well endowed with inheritance
Won a sizeable amount in lottery
Provided for by parents, spouse, children, relatives, friends
Provided for by charity, altruistic agencies
In receipt of benefits, pension, life savings, annuity income, royalties
Consigned one's life to monastic existence or minimalism
Unless the above conditions exist human beings have to get out of bed and go to work or some vocation to earn their living. It is an irrefragable truth.
THOSE, NOT FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT YET,
HAVE TO APPEAR AT THE WORKPLACE / BUSINESS
THE PRESSURE BUILDUP
Financial well-being is one aspect, people also work for intrinsic pleasure, a sense of creativity, thrill of surmounting challenges while accomplishing goals and for professional growth. It however comes with leadership challenges, deadlines, target pressures, multiplicity of tasks, deliverables, sales quotas, travel, long hours of work, project milestones and similar push oriented requisites, all of which put inordinate demand over one’s time, efforts and skill levels.
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STRESS IS ALWAYS AT THE CUSP
One has an adaptive brain and it can cope with these pressures. Most plough through, but some languish at the work place with chronic stress & unmanaged anxiety. It can be a killer.
Stress, anxiety and depression now make up 43.8 per cent of all workplace illness.
NOTHING IS STABLE ANYMORE AT THE WORK-PLACE.
THERE ARE TOO MANY PARAMETERS, VARIANTS, ASPIRATIONS AND DYNAMICS AT PLAY.
WORK PLACE ANXIETY IS ON THE RISE
STRESS vs. ANXIETY
Stress generally is a short-term experience and body’s reaction to a certain event or incident and can have both polarities positive and negative. Some level of stress is needed for creativity, deadline completion (positive) but if stress eventuates into insomnia, fatigue, irritability, loss of concentration (all negative) then it becomes a dysfunctionality and must be managed forthwith. Anxiety is an over-enveloping dread that prevails even after specific stressors have subsided hence it is also categorised as chronic anxiety or free-floating anxiety or generalised anxiety.
AT WHAT STAGE OF BUCKLE IS IT CONSTRUED AS A BURNOUT?
Job burnout does not have an elastic point where one fine day one suddenly debilitates into it. Most people do not recognize its occurence, they just get astounded when it occurs.
BURNOUT IS THE SHUTDOWN OF PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL SYSTEMS OF THE BODY
It is a result, a manifestation, invoked by unmanaged stress, systematic catastrophisation and daily disempowering thoughts that one scripts to one's own head without adequate inference filters. One day the engine just doesn't start, the emotional and physical exhaustion, becomes too overpowering.
INDIVIDUALS & ORGANIZATIONS OUGHT TO RECOGNISE THE TELL-TALE SIGNS
OF WORK-PLACE STRESS / ANXIETY
AND MUST PUT INTO PLACE REMEDIAL STRATEGIES PRIOR TO THE BURNOUT.
WORKPLACE STRESS/ ANXIETY
Stress prepares the body for action, we know about the The ‘fight, flight, freeze’ concept and the functioning of Autonomous Nervous System (ANS).
It is the body’s way of heightening itself to a state of action and upon the task being accomplished, restore it to homeostatic equilibrium. Stress need not be altogether avoided. Normal healthy levels of stress is useful in performance, sporting accomplishments and many aspects of life such as avoiding dangerous situations, adventure endeavours, extraordinary courage before war etc.
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INORDINATE STRESS AND AT SUSTAINED LEVELS IS DETRIMENTAL
IT CAN EVENTUATE IN ILLNESS & IN CERTAIN CASES, FATALITIES.
WHY DO PEOPLE SILENTLY ENDURE STRESS/ ANXIETY AT THE WORKPLACE ?
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STIGMATISED
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FEAR OF APPEARING VULNERABLE
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FEAR OF OTHERS PERCEPTION
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WANT TO PROJECT A ROBUST IMAGE
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IN DENIAL OF ITS OCCURRENCE
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SOLDIERING ON DESPITE ACUTE STRESS, HOPING IT WILL SUBSIDE
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LACK OF AWARENESS AS TO WHERE TO SEEK HELP FROM
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AFRAID TO CONFRONT THE STRESSORS (if it happens to be other people)
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FEAR OF CAREER DECELERATION
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LACK OF AWARENESS OF ITS DESTRUCTIVE CONSEQUENCES
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UNAWARE OF COUNSELLING/ COACHING/ PSYCHOTHERAPY/ MENTAL HEALTH FRATERNITY
the tradeoff for this silence
can prove to be catastrophic
Silently enduring workplace anxiety could make the sufferer lose
one's affect regulation capacity and attain breaking point.
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IT CAN EVEN LEAD TO SUICIDE
A REORIENTATION
WORK - RELATED SUICIDES
Chronic dysfunctional anxiety can be a killer. It can drive people to suicide. Cafe Coffee Day Founder V.G. Siddhartha, Swisscom CEO Carsten Schloter, Zurich Insurance Group CFO Pierre Wauthier, Enron Executive John Clifford Baxter and others are examples of people with work-related financial anxieties that led to suicide. At the moment of committing suicide, these people unadaptably construed that they cannot be any more resourceful. Perhaps yes, perhaps no, we do not want to make a value judgment over their decisions but our proposition here is to re-examine the experience of anxiety and the meaning attributions of the sufferer.
WHAT IF A SOLUTION EMERGES THAT IS BETTER THAN ENDING IT ALL ?
SHOULD I KILL MYSELF OR HAVE A CUP OF COFFEE
- Albert Camus
HEADSTRIDE WELL-BEING PLAN
HEADSTRIDE CAN BE A PORT OF CALL
IF INCURSIONS NEED TO BE MADE INTO WORKPLACE ANXIETY
THE ENVELOPED DREAD
Work-Anxiety is an enveloped dread about one’s career/ career growth. It begins with specific stressors at various points in time and has now become a huge cloud of alarm and apprehension. Career is construed as the most important mode of sustenance and survival by most and an almost imperishable relationship is established with work. Technology, consumer preferences, competition all of these change the playing terrain hence specific job is a perishable component. One is forced to transition from one job/role to the next and perhaps even made redundant. Financial well-being is threatened, anxiety is amplified.
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The program ‘The Anxious Being’, delves into the way we appraise ourselves of threat, the identity with work that we establish, how we construe financial anxiety, our early conditioning & fear disposition and the strategies to extricate from dysfunctional anxiety.
WORK PLACE ANXIETY
MOST DEAL WITH IT, MANY LIVE WITH IT
WE BEGAN WITH ENERGY, DRIVE & A SENSE OF EXPEDITION
WHAT IF WE COULD REDISCOVER IT ?
