5 tips to boost anxiety management at work.

Some psychological keys to learn how to manage anxiety in the professional environment.

The professional context is one of the areas of life in which it is easiest for us to experience anxiety problems.

This is no coincidence: at work, we are often exposed to situations that force us to face new challenges, on the one hand, and/or to adopt a discipline to carry out tasks at a specific pace, on the other. The need to take on responsibilities and carry them out slowly but surely is something that overwhelms some people.

However, in many cases the problem does not lie in a lack of technical or intellectual skills to perform these tasks, but in poor anxiety management. Fortunately, this has a solution, and here we will see different tips that will help you boost your ability to manage anxiety at work.

How does anxiety arise in the workplace?

The first thing we must be very clear is that anxiety is not in itself a problem. In fact, this is one of the basic emotional phenomena for the survival not only of our species, but of a wide variety of animals.

The fact that basically all mammals are prone to develop stress and anxiety makes it clear that these are mechanisms with evolutionary and survival utility. This is because by putting us in a state of psychological arousal and sensitivity to potential dangers or opportunities around us, it helps us react quickly in the face of potential dangers or opportunities, helps us to react quickly at key moments..

However, this does not detract from the fact that on certain occasions anxiety can contribute to general dysfunctional habits and behavioral patterns. In fact, this is relatively common.

For example, it occurs in people who become such perfectionists that they learn that paralysis caused by anxiety at the thought of getting things wrong is the usual way of dealing with the challenges they set themselves. Or in those who assume that interacting with people they don't know well goes hand in hand with anxiety. Anxiety may help to keep us alive in the short term, but that does not imply that in certain cases it does not keep us away from happiness or our goals, if we do not manage it properly.if we do not manage it properly.

How to manage anxiety at work?

As we have seen, anxiety does not have to be a setback, but in certain cases it gives way to a "snowball" effect of psychological problems when our way of dealing with it is not adequate. This happens especially at work and in our way of performing during working hours, since in the professional field time is money, and not using it well because of emotional imbalances produces complications that become big in relatively few days due to the accumulation of pending work.

Although in the face of this kind of problems the ideal is to have individualized psychological support, there are practices and habits that help to better manage work-related anxiety.. Here we will see several of the most important ones, summarized.

1. Assume that it is natural

Both feeling discomfort due to anxiety and tending to experience it more frequently than others is something that does not necessarily represent a problem. There are people who are genetically predisposed to feel anxious, and yet that does not prevent them from living well and being happy; the key is in how that anxiety is managed, the way in which we "give it an outlet". In certain cases, the fact of feeling this way can lead us to take actions that are beneficial for us: moderate exercise, work ahead, etc.

2. Learn to know the origin of your anxiety

To know how to manage anxiety and its effects on your work life, it is important to know the type of situations and experiences that activate anxiety..

For example, it is not the same to feel anxious about the idea of having a lot of work to do, as it is to feel anxious about the need to talk to people we do not know well. To achieve this, it is important that you keep a self-record, like a personal diary that you carry with you, in which you write down what happens when you feel an excess of anxiety: both what happens in your head, as well as what you were doing or what happened to you just before you experienced it.

Once you have done this for several days or weeks, you will be able to get a global view of those patterns of anxiety expression..

3. Keep distractions away

Mismanaged anxiety is a trap that can lead us to constantly seek to distract our mind from those unpleasant thoughts, with the collateral damage of delaying us from dealing with our responsibilities or problems. So keep your work area as free of distractions as possible.

4. Create a clear, written schedule

Following a very clear schedule helps us to focus on completing tasks at an adequate pace and, as a consequence, makes us less vulnerable to anxiety, since this psychological phenomenon appears more frequently in our work when we feel that we are wandering, that we have nowhere to hold on to. The simple fact of concentrating on a task and seeing how we are progressing is a great remedy not only to eliminate anxiety completely, but also to give it an outlet in a constructive way. to give it an outlet in a constructive way..

5. Learn short relaxation exercises

There is an interesting variety of exercises that can help you relax in a matter of a few minutes; they are very useful for breaks (and be clear that if you want to manage anxiety well, you will need several moments of rest throughout the workday). Some are physically and physiologically based, such as those involving conscious breath control, and others focus more on psychological tasks, such as the thought-stopping technique, ideal for interrupting intrusive thoughts and anxiously rooted procrastination.