'I feel overwhelmed at work': possible causes and what to do

Many people develop a conflictive relationship with their job, or with the environment or company in which they work.

Sometimes the main cause of this has to do with problems in the work context: simply, too much pressure is put on workers or responsibilities are not well assigned, for example. But in other cases, this kind of malaise has more to do with the worker's tendency to self-sabotage.

• Related article: "Types of stress and their triggers"

The need to combine work with emotional well-being

There are companies and even workers who assume a very harmful idea for health: that in our work aspect, it is normal to be constantly subjected to strong stress that makes us suffer for prolonged periods. Although it is true that unfortunately this is a common situation due to precariousness, that does not mean that we should normalize it or forget that it is a problem to be solved.

It is clear that where there is paid work there are certain demands and objectives to be achieved by following some productivity criteria, but to focus solely on that is to have a totally biased and partial view of the affair. Without a worker there is no work, and it has been shown that in the medium and long term it is necessary to find a balance between the abilities and potential of the person, on the one hand, and the production goals to which he aspires, on the other. And beyond the logics of production and provision of services, people's well-being has value regardless of the economic gear in which it participates.

These two facts, that the happiness and well-being of the worker has a positive impact on long-term performance and that it is also a goal in itself, make it essential to know ways to manage stress and emotions at work, as well as to know what In this way we can improve working conditions so that they are not limited to "burning" employees, freelancers, etc. This means that the most functional and leading companies always dedicate part of their efforts to offering courses and training programs in management. emotional for their workers, and to carry out research to find out if there is something in the workspaces or in the workflow that results in discomfort.

"I feel overwhelmed at work": possible causes

When a feeling of the type "I feel overwhelmed at work" passes through our head, normally what we are referring to is excess work stress. Stress is a normal phenomenon present in all healthy people, and it is almost always a resource that we helps us adapt to day-to-day challenges by becoming faster when it comes to acting on problems.

However, sometimes they give rise to situations of the "vicious circle" type, generating in itself a problem that fuels this predisposition to stress. This happens many times at work, where the worker himself participates in the creation of the work pressure that affects him. For example, not managing distractions well, leaving your responsibilities for later for fear of facing them, etc.

In this way, more times than it seems, the experience of being overwhelmed by our work is the consequence of that tendency to self-sabotage ourselves, which contributes to the responsibilities accumulating and our discomfort increases because of that, and vice versa.

Some of the possible causes that lead to this are as follows.

1. Fear of reporting mistakes

Avoidance of awkward situations With colleagues or superiors, it leads some people not to report failures that affect production, which creates a problem that becomes bigger and bigger like a snowball. In such cases, it is clear that good anxiety management can make a difference.

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2. Poor management of distracting elements

Working with an eye on social networks, leaving the radio on, getting up every ten minutes to drink or have a bite to eat... habits that in addition to leading us to lose time, cause us to feel physically bad, and then also psychologically bad because of the wear and tear of the body itself.

3. Hourly chaos

This is a problem that particularly affects those who work from home. The fact of not having a fixed schedule makes them sometimes tempted to do nothing for many minutes and even hours, and that they find themselves in the situation of having to deal with many things in the last hours of the day, which causes stress and even causes problems falling asleep.

4. Dysfunctional perfectionism

It is also possible to see ourselves overwhelmed at work due to the fact that have unrealistic expectations as a reference.

This generates stress and even feelings of guilt and frustration when seeing small imperfections in many of the phases of the work process.

What to do when faced with excess work stress?

Of course, not all solutions to work stress have to do with managing emotions: material working conditions matter a lot. That is why part of the ways to overcome these kinds of problems go beyond the individual and have to do with with improving the work environment and the way in which the objectives are set and set in the calendar.

But it is also true that how we handle stress and anxiety greatly influences how we feel at work. In this sense, you can always make use of useful tools like Gurumind, app full of meditation and Mindfulness content designed so that you can apply them in a wide variety of situations and for which you do not need previous training in Psychology. You will find more information about Gurumind at this page.