Managing work stress in high-stress professions

Let's take a look at the keys to stress management in demanding professions.

In some jobs and professional projects, work stress is so commonplace that it can become normalized, as if it were part of the office in which one works.

However, the truth is that if this psychological and physiological phenomenon is not properly managed, it often leads to performance problems and even to pathologies of greater or lesser severity. Therefore, it is not convenient to assume that work stress is a simple and unidimensional experience; depending on how we face it, the results we obtain in our work and in ourselves will be very different.

For this reason, in the following article we will see how it is possible to manage work stress by focusing on the work routines with the greatest capacity to push us to the limit, i.e., those that we develop in high-stress situations.that is to say, those that we develop in situations of great tension.

Situations of strong psychological tension generating work stress.

Stress is such an important psychological phenomenon in our lives precisely because it can be triggered by a wide variety of situations. In fact, it is characterized by appearing above all when faced with contexts to which we are not entirely accustomed, those that are beyond our comfort zone.

This is normal: the ability to experience stress is an adaptation produced by natural selection.It helps us to react quickly at key moments, when stopping to decide what to do can cost us dearly by exposing us to too much danger or leading us to miss an important opportunity.

Thus, stress is the opposite of our state of relative relaxation in which we are "by default" when all our most important needs are met. It arises when there is something that disturbs our emotional balance by introducing relevant changes in our present or in our predictions about what will happen. and at the same time we feel that if we are quick we can do something to improve our situation or avoid a problem.

Therefore, stress can take as many forms as there are ways in which our present can be disrupted by problems or unforeseen events. It is a mechanism of adaptation to the unpredictable that in most cases helps us to enhance our behavioral flexibility. However, no adaptation resulting from natural selection is useful 100% of the time, and the stress response is no exception to this. This means that there is a wide variety of situations that can generate a stress problem if we do not learn to manage this psychological element well.

Although technically this range of stress-generating contexts is infinite, in practice, if we stick to the world of work, those that usually lead people to extreme situations are easier to delimit. Thus, those that are most commonly seen in a psychology office are the following.

• Preparation for competitive examinations (although it is not a paid job, there is a competitive aspect and schedules).
• Highly demanding jobs in which human lives are at stake: surgeons, air traffic controllers, etc.
• Development of projects with high workloads and tight deadlines.
• Jobs closely linked to the maintenance of a personal brand on social networks: influencers, designers, youtubers...
• Competition in the field of elite athletes and professional sports.
• Creative jobs in which a blockage of inspiration is a serious problem.
• Situations in which more workload is taken on because there is a lack of personnel.

Stress management strategies associated with difficult professional projects.

These are some of the most commonly used stress management strategies in psychotherapy to help people facing a very demanding professional context.

Mindfulness practice

Mindfulness is a very useful resource for to enhance the ability to maintain an appropriate emotional balanceprovided that we use it as a habit on a consistent basis. It allows us to resituate our attentional focus on the present and stop feeding fears without real support and obsessive thoughts that paralyze us.

2. Practice relaxation techniques

Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing or the progressive muscular relaxation of Jacobson aim to influence the psychological from the psychological, that is, to make the slow rhythms of our body are reflected in our way of processing the present and the stimuli to which we expose ourselves.

3. Establishing guidelines and segmenting tasks.

Many highly stressful jobs produce a lot of discomfort because they expose us to intimidating uncertainty. They raise the question: What to do next? Because everything is so complicated and we are faced with so many tasks, we become paralyzed because we do not see ourselves capable of dealing with it all, we become paralyzed because we do not see ourselves able to cope with everything, the situation overwhelms us..

Therefore, in psychotherapy people are trained in the ability to establish guidelines and segmentation of tasks, so that from the beginning we establish a clear sequence of activities, composed of very short-term goals that serve as references of our progress and are always there to motivate us.

4. Attentional capacity training

The difference between knowing how to concentrate properly on the task and not doing so can mean doing that activity in half the time or not doing it at all.. For this reason, this is one of the aspects of psychological intervention most valued by professionals, elite athletes, competitors...

5. Learning the right rest patterns

Being too indulgent with ourselves in the way we rest between tasks can cause us to lose control of the minutes spent refueling and fall into procrastination constantly, letting work pile up on us..

But at the same time, falling short with the rest time will cause us to reach a point where we are unable to concentrate and end up resting more anyway, but in a chaotic and non-restorative way.

Therefore, it is important to learn to distribute in our schedule the hours of rest that fit the demands of work and our personal characteristics.

Are you interested in having professional psychological assistance?

If you are looking for psychotherapy or coaching services, contact us. At UPAD Psychology and Coaching you will find a team of professionals trained to intervene in all areas of emotional well-being.

We offer services in individualized psychological therapy, couple therapy, coaching for opponents or professionals, sports psychology, sexology, and training courses in various areas of psychology for individuals and companies.