Reclaim your life to help with job stress

Dear Mar­i­ann: What are some ways to deal with high-stress jobs?

Mariann’s response: My first sug­ges­tion would be to set bound­aries or time lim­its for your work­day. Are you stay­ing late and bring­ing work home? Stop now. Burnout is not far behind if you con­tinue. Have you sac­ri­ficed after-work or week­end activ­i­ties that you once enjoyed? Try to reclaim at least some of your per­sonal time or find hob­bies that are com­pat­i­ble to your busy work sched­ule. Any type of exer­cise is a great de-stressor and can give you renewed energy and focus.

And finally, tak­ing some time dur­ing your work­day to de-stress is essen­tial to be more effec­tive for the remain­der of the day. Instead of a high-calorie lunch, how about tak­ing a walk or going out­side, spend­ing a few min­utes prac­tic­ing deep breath­ing or med­i­tat­ing on a nearby bench? Also tak­ing this time to jour­nal about the demands of your job might be help­ful. In our com­put­er­ized age, there is still some­thing very ther­a­peu­tic about putting thoughts on paper. Along with the jour­nal­ing, mak­ing a list of pri­or­i­ties for the remain­der of the work day is a great moti­va­tor when items are checked-off as to what you have accom­plished and how you spent your on-the-job hours. Then before depart­ing the work site at day’s end, make a list of next-day pri­or­i­ties. This will give you a bet­ter per­spec­tive as to man­ag­ing upcom­ing tasks and what to expect, ver­sus feel­ing over­whelmed and dread­ing the return to work.

My final sug­ges­tion is once monthly take a week­end trip, even if just for a day. See new sights, do some­thing you haven’t tried pre­vi­ously. Reclaim your life, and your on-the-job stress will become more manageable.

Dear Mar­i­ann: Can men­tal ill­ness be pre­vented and what are some of the warn­ing signs of men­tal illness?

Mariann’s response: Pre­ventable, maybe, but only in lim­ited cir­cum­stances. Men­tal ill­ness has a strong genetic com­po­nent, espe­cially for depres­sion, bipo­lar and schiz­o­phre­nia. Tak­ing care of our “men­tal health” is equally as impor­tant as being vig­i­lant about our phys­i­cal health. If we ignore our men­tal well-being, we can become stressed, depressed, over­weight from self-medicating with food or using other sub­stances to “dull the pain.” Amer­i­can anti-depressant usage is astro­nom­i­cal in com­par­i­son to other devel­oped coun­tries. Instead of address­ing prob­lem­atic areas of our lives, often a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal is pre­scribed to cor­rect our per­cep­tion of the sit­u­a­tion and make it more tol­er­a­ble. Anti-depressants and other psy­chotropic med­ica­tions are def­i­nitely help­ful, but using them as a quick fix to “get happy” is flawed thinking.

If you think that a loved one might be suf­fer­ing from a men­tal ill­ness, con­sult­ing a local coun­sel­ing agency is a good first step. Is there a sud­den change in their behav­ior such as not eat­ing or sleep­ing? Are they iso­lat­ing them­selves or have they stopped doing activ­i­ties they once enjoyed? Do they become angered eas­ily or are they sad and tear­ful? All of these are clas­sic signs of depres­sion. If you are fear­ful that this per­son might end their life, tak­ing them to the near­est emer­gency room for men­tal health assess­ment could be nec­es­sary, and life-saving.

Bipo­lar is another diag­no­sis that has recently received much pub­lic­ity. Is your fam­ily mem­ber fluc­tu­at­ing from eupho­ria and lim­it­less energy, going days with­out sleep, to being melan­choly, life­less and unable to get out of bed for extended time? These two dras­tic extremes are clas­sic bipo­lar ten­den­cies. This is where med­ica­tion is nec­es­sary to return the per­son to a bal­ance in mood, and must be taken daily, usu­ally for the remain­der of their life.

As men­tioned above, if a loved one is “self-medicating” with exces­sive alco­hol or drug usage, this could be mask­ing an under­ly­ing men­tal health issue such as depres­sion or a bipo­lar diag­no­sis. If the sit­u­a­tion becomes too extreme, an inter­ven­tion for this loved one by a men­tal health pro­fes­sional in tan­dem with con­cerned fam­ily mem­bers might be nec­es­sary to cir­cum­vent an increas­ingly prob­lem­atic sit­u­a­tion. If noth­ing else, talk to this per­son and express your con­cern. Admit­ting that you have a prob­lem is the first step toward recov­ery, as rec­og­nized by any 12-Step recov­ery pro­gram. Attend­ing the appro­pri­ate 12-Step pro­gram for that issue and real­iz­ing that oth­ers are deal­ing with the same prob­lem, is a great uni­fier and a start toward the recov­ery process.

Mar­i­ann Main is a licensed coun­selor and a Delaware native. Her col­umn appears weekly on Sat­ur­days. To sub­mit a ques­tion and have Mar­i­ann answer it anony­mously, visit delgazette.com/life-questions-with-local-answers or send mail to the Delaware Gazette office, 40 N. San­dusky St., suite 203, Delaware, OH 43015.

Posted by Mariann Main on Aug 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.