When work stress overshadows all other facets of life

For some people, work is almost indistinguishable from a creative hobby or passion. For others, it is just a means through which to obtain what is needed to live.

But there is a third possibility that combines elements of both ways of experiencing work and that leads to many problems.

It is about the obsession with work linked to work stress, in which one desperately seeks to reach professional goals, and on the other hand, these "invade" the person's life throughout the day, also in her private life.

• Related article: "Burnout (Burning Syndrome): How to detect it and take action"

Job anxiety and stress as psychological problems

The first thing to note is that neither anxiety in general nor the stress generated by work contexts in particular are in themselves a problem that we should avoid. Both are natural emotional responses to situations that pose challenges for us and that require us to adapt to a series of limitations to achieve goals.

And this is what happens with the environments in which we dedicate hours of the week to paid work:

we have efficiency and profitability objectives that we aspire to achieve to satisfy needs. Virtually no one can "earn a living" by constantly staying in their comfort zone, you always have to apply effort and dedication to a series of Tasks that allow us to maintain or improve a certain rhythm of life, all this dealing with the uncertainty of what the future will bring us at work talking.

And it is that thanks to our ability and predisposition to experience stress in complicated situations we are better at reacting quickly to the moments in which we must take action to generate value; It is part of the set of psychological elements that allows us to be motivated to progress in our careers or improve our economic situation, among other things. Without stress, this interest in not being “left behind” in the face of the changes that the labor market and business ecosystems are going through would not be understood.

However, there are situations in which stress stops being a help and becomes a problem, an obstacle that It not only leads us to have a bad time, but it erodes our quality of life and, of course, our job performance in the medium and long term.

Furthermore, this kind of problem usually appears in the form of a paradox; We feel very stressed because there is something that we think is beyond us, and that leads us to obsess over it in a dysfunctional way, which makes us less prepared to deal with it.

In addition, people with high work stress cannot mentally disconnect from their professional facet when their workday ends, which generates a high psychological exhaustion.

• You may be interested in: "Types of stress and their triggers"

Elements of work stress that make work invade our lives

These are the main sources of work stress and that predispose people to become obsessed with their work.

1. The mental workload

The mental workload is the set of psychophysical demands associated with a task. When we spend too much time concentrating on complicated tasks, as much as possible is that we have no "strength" left to carry out any other psychologically complex task: read a book, talk with the family, etc.

• Related article: "Mental workload: what is it, how is it studied and how to manage it"

2. Poor management of leisure or rest time in the workplace

Many people with job stress feel so worried that almost without realizing it, they become mentalized with the idea of ​​spending a good part of their free time at their workplace, so as not to stray too far from the place “where they have to be”.

At other times, stress causes the person to become too distracted during hours when he should be working (as a strategy to avoid anxiety situations, such as eating without hunger), and this causes free time to mix with the workday, so that the job.

3. Psychological rumination

Psychological rumination is the cyclical, automatic and unwanted appearance of intrusive thoughts in the mind of the person. It is one of the consequences of anxiety and stress, and usually the thoughts on which it is based are unpleasant or disturbing, and have to do with what worries the person.

Due to the predisposition to attract stressful or distressing images to consciousness, people with work stress are constantly reliving unpleasant memories associated with your job, catastrophic predictions about your future labor, etc.

• Related article: "What is mental rumination and how to deal with it effectively"

4. Sleep schedule mismatches

As a consequence of the above, it is common for work stress to make it difficult to fall asleep at the right time.

On the one hand, disorganization appears in the performance of tasks, and on the other, intrusive thoughts make it difficult to relax in bed.

5. The FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

On the other hand, the widespread use of smartphones and tablets with an Internet connection makes some workers develop fear of missing important information shared by colleagues or superiors outside of work hours, which leads them to constantly check group chats, email, etc.

• You may be interested in: "FOMO syndrome: feeling that the lives of others are more interesting"

To do?

The key to avoid that your work side totally eclipse the rest of the aspects of your life is combine a series of learnings in relation to the management of emotions, on the one hand, and adopt new patterns of behavior in relation to how you relate to your workspace and who is in it.

In addition, in some aspects it is convenient to adopt a broader and more strategic vision of the problem and, taking a step back, to question firstly whether this job is right for us.

Thus, any attempt to reduce the causes of work stress and work obsession to variables purely emotional or material will probably be simplistic and will not generate positive results in the long run term. It is necessary to intervene both in the internal psychological processes and in the externalizable actions and the management of work spaces (and even in the spaces where our private lives take place).

Achieving it is not easy, because you have to maintain a balance between both aspects of the problem, but it is not impossible, and with professional help, it is much easier.

• Related article: "5 emotional management techniques to control stress"

Are you looking for professional psychological assistance?

If you are interested in having psychology services applied to the world of work and organizations, please contact me.

I am a psychologist specialized in the cognitive-behavioral intervention model and I help individuals as well as couples and companies. You can count on my services both in person in Madrid or online by video call.