How can we tackle stress in the workplace

According to recent surveys (IPSOS) almost two in five workers have had to take time off work due to stress in the past year.

If this was a disease we could fight with a vaccine, it would have been declared a pandemic and vaccination enforced.

There are approximately seven and a half million people in the UK living with a diagnosed mental illness right now. That is almost one and half times the population of Scotland.

The NHS itself estimates that one in four will experience a mental health problem at some point. The NHS budget in 2023 at around £190 billion is about the same as the total income tax collected in the UK in 2021.

How does the NHS cope? It can’t. Instead, we must equip people with the knowledge and resources to help themselves. Currently we are doing the exact opposite. We are dis-empowering people.

Let’s blame the workplace

It is all too easy to just blame the workplace. Human nature is to never look to ourselves for the cause, always to something outside of ourselves. The workplace is an easy target.

If you are doing something you want to do, you don’t feel stress. If you are being compelled to do something you don’t want to do, then you feel stressed.

If you are doing something willingly, that is your heaven. If you are doing something unwillingly, that is your hell. The old adage that if you love what you do for a living then you’ll never work a day in your life is true, isn’t it. You’ve experienced that, haven’t you?

When we think of something that we don’t like, or don’t want to do, or are afraid of doing, it triggers a fight or flight response that releases chemicals such as cortisol and adrenaline into the body (I am very much simplifying things here). These jittery chemicals may be okay in small doses, they may even help us get off our backside sometimes and get moving, but in large quantities they can be very harmful. These jittery chemicals can lead initially to bodily reactions such as sweating, butterflies and shaking. If allowed to continue they may lead to exertion of the heart, troubled breathing, upset stomach and sickness. If not stopped then ultimately it can lead to what we know are amongst the biggest killers in the UK; heart-attack and stroke. Yet that all started because you were constantly thinking of something that you don’t like, or don’t want to do, or are afraid of doing.

With our minds we can create our own heaven or hell right here on earth.

There is no such thing as an idle thought.

We carry into the workplace stresses that are going on elsewhere in our life. We carry into our life the stresses that are going on in the workplace. I don’t really believe that giving a day off work is much of a solution for mental health issues.

How can we empower people

Thoughts create things.

The mind runs the body. How else could you wiggle your toes? The body can influence the mind. If you hold a smile it will start to affect how you feel (smiling takes less muscles than frowning) and physical exercise does undoubtedly release endorphins and can even create what some athletes would call a ‘high’. There is a clue in the word ‘emotion’.

However, the main driver is the mind. It is with our thoughts that we create our world. Everything you have thought has brought you to this point. You are not so much what you think you are, more, what you think…..you are.

When you think about it, feelings of wellbeing come from the same place as feelings of anxiety or fear. Both hope and anxiety are born of thought. We make up a story in our heads, one has a good ending and the other fable has a bad ending. One creates good feelings, the other creates bad feelings.

Our thinking is creating the ‘event’, but we think the event is the cause of the stress. Chances are that event either hasn’t happened yet or has already happened and the event is in the past, it’s over, you have just been dwelling on it because you weren’t happy with the way it turned out.

If you want to test whether what I am saying has any merit, then try a little experiment for yourself. For a few moments think about something or someone you love. See if you can get a picture in your mind of that something or someone and notice how that makes you feel. Now scrub that picture and think instead about something or someone you really don’t like, See if you can get a picture and notice how differently you feel. Did you notice the difference? Who did that, me or you? You did. I don’t run your mind, you do. How long did that take? You changed the way you felt by changing your thinking, you did it yourself, self-empowered, and you did it instantaneously.

Awareness is progression

Everyone is doing the best they can (for them) with what they know. Regardless of what you think of someone else’s action or behaviour, they are doing the best they can with what they know. To help them make different choices we need to widen their understanding and options.

This includes helping people to take responsibility for their own mental health. In exactly the same way as we do so with physical health. We know some will, some wont, but the point is that some will.

Responsibility is a big word, but we can break it down into response-ability. Let’s empower people by giving them the knowledge they need to allow them to respond, rather than be at the mercy of their thoughts and the subsequent physical symptoms that arise as a consequence of those thoughts.

When we blame someone else, we don’t grow.

When we blame a higher power, we don’t grow.

If we accept responsibility, then we get an opportunity to grow.

Don’t mistake difficult for impossible.

Difficult helps us to learn and to grow.

It’s all too easy to just to blame the workplace. If we continue down that road then the mental health pandemic is going to overwhelm our health services and it will have the breakdown.

We must learn to self-medicate, not with external drugs, but with the ones we create within ourselves. We can all learn how to do this.

Happiness is only ever one thought away.

The author

Gordon Berry is a Master Practitioner in Neuro-Linguistic-Programming, Certified Coach, Certified Hypnotherapist, and Time-Line-Therapist and also a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Tax Adviser.

The Armadillo solution

Many years ago when I ran a busy accounting practice I too was stressed and harassed. I used to drive to work every day imagining all the problems I was about to face. I was practising stress before I even got to the office. I became pretty good at it!

But things change. I learned new things. I changed my thoughts. I changed my Mind.

This is why we built the Armadillo Wellness portal for our accountants and all of their team.

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