by Daniela Nicol
You may ask, why do almost 70% of workforces develop mental health issues?
Two words – Chronic Stress.
Chronic stress is a state achieved by being stressed a lot of the time. It can be composed of mental, physical and emotional stresses.
Everybody experiences stress at work and ‘good’ stress can help us be more focussed and productive. However, consistently high levels of stress mean that a powerful cocktail of stress hormones is circulating in our blood all the time.
This is not a natural state for us to be in as these hormones are meant to help us get out of life-threatening situations. Having to attend 5 critical business meetings a day certainly would not count as life-threatening -or does it?
Let’s think through the various stresses associated with such a working day:
Mental stress
- absorbing large amounts of data to prepare for each meeting
- staying focussed during meetings
- ensuring that the employee’s other responsibilities are not affected by their attendance at these meetings
Additional stresses here could be unrealistic targets set by managers, lack of clearly defined objectives, ineffective communication, and more.
Emotional stress
- concerned to be meeting bosses and customers’ expectations
- fear of losing job if performance is not top par
- remaining professional even though doubts and fears may be arising
Additional stresses could be humiliation and anger resulting from bullying bosses or colleagues through inadequate anti-harassment policies, feelings of not being appreciated, having little or no control over their area of work, and more.
Physical stress
- feelings of tiredness due to working with insufficient breaks
- working long hours
- getting to meeting venues which could be in different places, even different countries.
Additional stresses here could include inflexible working hours, meaning always rushing to fit in family commitments, and more.
So, potentially just one working day can be filled with a range of stressors. No matter how resilient a person is, if stresses levels are continuously high, they will start to lead to disorders if efforts are not made to reduce them.