While many of us like to have a moan about our boss or complain a bit about the office, for others workplace stress can be a truly debilitating condition that ruins their life.

When left unchecked workplace stress can leave otherwise apparently happy individuals feeling isolated and alone on the inside. The result is intense feelings of stress and anxiety caused by seemingly innocuous things in the workplace environment.

Workplace stress has become more common with the rise of smartphones and push notifications, which is why it’s important to know when you’re chronically stressed, help is always available.

Is stress at work normal?

If you look for help with excessive work stress you will find a lot of articles that tell you to get some fresh air on your lunch break or to workout before you get to the office. While this is all good advice, it’s really for people with low-level stress that needs keeping in check. If on the other hand you find that on a Sunday evening the prospect of going to work in the morning fills you with dread, you are experiencing unhealthy levels of work stress.

How do you cope with workplace stress?

If you have a boss or a colleague you feel comfortable opening up to then it’s really important that you do so. You don’t have to have to go into detail with them at first if you don’t want to, but it will help if you speak to someone you see at work on a regular basis. From there you can address the underlying issues by speaking with a specialist so that you can gauge your perceptions and reactions and make sure that you’re acting in a way which causes you the minimum of stress.

Does counselling relieve stress?

Counselling for workplace stress can be highly effective with sufficient investment on your behalf. What is also important is that you feed any key realisations back into your employer so that they can play their part in helping you to manage your stress and your workload.

If you identify with some or all of the feelings below, you could find workplace stress support beneficial:

• Your weekend is ruined by the prospect of returning to work
• You take your work home with you in a way that detracts from family life
• Push notifications and email alerts out of hours make you stressed and anxious
• There is a compulsion to check your phone so that you appear to be ‘always on’

How can we help you work related stress?

Our approach to online work counselling is to give you a forum in which you can express how you feel while feeling safe from judgements or undue criticism. The idea is to allow you to open up about the way you’re thinking and find new ways to process your emotions in relation to your work.

To discuss how we can help relieve career stress please get in touch with our team. And remember: by asking for help you are working to make this better.