How to Cope With Your Job Stress

By Kyle Roderick
ThirdAge Staff

Job stress has reached epidemic levels in the United States, according to the American Institute of Stress (AIS). How do you know if you're suffering from job stress, and what can you do about it?

Start by using the Stress-O-Meter, a self-evaluation tool designed to measure the amount of stress caused by your work environment.

Typical signs of job stress may include loss of mental concentration, insomnia, anxiety, over- or undereating and depression. Job stress may also lead to substance abuse, extreme anger and frustration, family conflict and physical illnesses such as migraine headaches and stomach or back problems.

"Job stress symptoms vary from person to person, depending on the particular situation, how long the individual has been experiencing stressors, and the intensity of the stress itself," says San Francisco clinical psychologist Christopher J. McCullough, Ph.D., author of Managing Your Anxiety (Berkley, 1994).

"If your job is your life, it might be normal to feel stressed out all the time," says McCullough. Yet science has repeatedly shown that chronic stress can be dangerous to mental, emotional and physical health. In fact, two studies published in the February 1997 British Medical Journal revealed that job stress may increase a person's chances of developing coronary heart disease.

You can begin to exert more control over your job stress by seeing either a therapist or a life coach for support and career guidance.

1-800-Therapist.com offers nationwide referrals to therapists specializing in job stress. The College of Executive Coaching can match you with a licensed psychologist coach trained in helping businesspeople identify areas for improvement or make career moves.

Here are some of McCullough's other suggestions for managing job stress:

Whenever possible, try to assert your needs so that your workload remains manageable.

If your self-assertiveness fails to improve your workload and stress levels, start interviewing with companies that have some interest in addressing human needs.

Insist on making time (about two hours a day) to meet your mental and emotional health needs -- even when no time seems to present itself.

"Relaxation is what makes working possible," says McCullough. "Your heart can't do its job unless the muscle first relaxes, and it's the same thing with your body -- it needs regular rest."