Tips for managing workplace stress and anxiety during Covid 19 with Ann Gleeson

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Welcome back to Zevo Talks. I’m your host Ashlyn. As a leader in workplace wellbeing, we want to try exploring new avenues and areas to keep you up to date with all that is going on in the world of wellness.

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I will now hand you over to one of our team of experts to explore all things wellbeing. Hello there, Anne here from Zevo Health. Hope you’re doing well and staying safe. Very glad to be with you today.

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For the theme of this podcast, we’re going to be putting our focus on something that we’re all no doubt experiencing at the moment and that is stress. So what we’re going to do is explore the current situation that we find ourselves in, the effect that that can have on our stress levels.

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We’re going to talk about why we feel stress and how we feel stress and we’re going to go through some top tips on how to look after ourselves when we feel stressed. So what do we find ourselves in now at the moment?

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Well, with the current situation with COVID-19, obviously it’s unprecedented as I’m sure you’re hearing everywhere. It’s something that is affecting us in a global sense. It’s something with an outcome that we don’t know, an uncertain timeline, constant barrage of information, messages, updates and a lot of this information that we’re taking in is causing a lot of panic, a lot of fear and a lot of stress.

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So that’s on a kind of a global perspective and what’s happening to us in our own lives, let’s say. So perhaps you’re working from home at the moment, maybe your routine has turned on its head. I know mine is and I’m trying to kind of navigate my way through that.

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Maybe you’re wearing many hats at once. Maybe you’re dealing with a workload. Maybe you’re dealing with a partner who’s getting on your nerves. your homeschooling and all of these things at once so that can be very difficult and that can cause a lot of stress.

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Perhaps on the other side of things you’re separated from loved ones and that’s causing you some worry and some stress and obviously you’re missing out on social connections and this is something that we would have taken for granted really.

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You know there’s no more knocking into somebody next door or running into somebody in the shop down the road so a lot of that kind of bonding social bonding that we would be used to is missing so that can be stressful as well and also perhaps you’re in an unfortunate position where you’re dealing with a lot of conflict and a lot of confrontation in your home life and that of course can cause very very high levels of stress.

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You could also be dealing with health issues. Maybe you’re dealing with health issues at the moment. Maybe you’re recovering from health issues either way, or maybe you’re caring for somebody and you’re feeling stress on behalf of somebody else.

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All of these situations can cause a lot of stress. And the thing as well with the situation like COVID-19 is that there’s a big loss of control. There’s very little that we can do for the greater situation, for the greater context, so that can cause a lot of stress in itself as well.

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But why do we feel stress in the first place? Well, basically it comes down to our brain’s way of minding us, our brain’s way of protecting us. When we feel stress of any kind, our body goes into something that’s called fight or flight activation.

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And this could be a phrase that you’re very familiar with, but basically it’s our way of searching out for threat and danger. It’s our brain’s way, like I say, of looking after us. And the idea behind it is that it’s better to prepare for a threat that might not happen, than not prepare for a threat that might happen.

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So being on guard, being braced, and being ready to deal with threat, facing it head on or avoiding it altogether. So how does this manifest in our bodies then? So think about this and see if you’ve had any of these experiences of late.

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The way that our body reacts to stress is that heart rate increases, blood pressure increases. You might feel your hands shaking or your face shaking. You might feel like your stomach is a nut. That’s because the intestines are slowing down.

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Maybe you find you have a shortness of breath or you feel quite flushed, or you could also go pale as well. These are all activations around the body that are caused by stress hormones that are centred.

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when the brain gets signals that there is threat but the thing is that the brain hasn’t evolved over time to differentiate between psychological threat and physical threat so when we feel something like psychological stress it sends us into overdrive to prepare us for actual physical danger.

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So I would invite you now if you have a moment to think about if you’ve been going through a stressful time how has that been for you and also how has that been showing up in your body can you identify with any of these symptoms of stress that I would have described there so not pleasant very uncomfortable to go through these things I think that it is a difficult thing to know on a rational sense that the stress is something that you know it’s not a physical threat it’s not a physical danger but the effect is very much the same,

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you know? And when we think about what we see, the way we see ourselves now at the moment, reacting to stressful situations, whether that be that we are taking in the emotional effect of the stress in our own daily interactions or the stress that we are facing by taking in information around COVID and taking in the messages that we’re given, a lot of these are causing the kinds of stress reactions that make us feel overwhelmed,

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can be hard to really ground ourselves, to center ourselves within that situation. So what I’m gonna do now is I’m gonna go through some tips that hopefully will ease the stresses that you find yourself experiencing in your life at the moment.

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Now I would say with these that it’s not a one size fits all situation, but they are worth trying to see if it’s something that resonates with you, it’s something that works for you in your own life, it’s obviously gonna be unique to everyone, but it’s no harm in trying these things anyway.

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And if they don’t work, all well and good, try the next thing. So the first thing when you’re going through a stressful situation is to acknowledge the fact that you’re going through stress, that you’re feeling stressed, that you’re having a stress reaction to something that’s happening in your life.

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And this might seem very simplified, it might seem like the obvious thing to do, but the thing is that we can often minimize our own needs with regard to our own experiences with stress and other kinds of emotional reactions.

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But the thing is that by acknowledging it, that’s your starting point, that’s your step one to go forward and then to progress down the road of minding yourself and hopefully dealing with the stress in a way that suits you.

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And when I say about acknowledging what’s happening, there’s two parts of this that I really wanna focus on is that there is always going to be somebody that is experiencing something that is more difficult than your own experience.

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You’re always gonna find someone, whether they’re in your own life, a pile of yours, or somebody on the news or something like that, that is going through a situation that is tougher than the situation that you find yourself.

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That doesn’t take away from the fact that you are struggling yourself on some level, in some shape or form. So you can’t really look to others and say, well, they have it worse. That’s not going to help them.

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That’s not gonna take away your own challenges and your own difficulties as well. There’s no hierarchy of suffering. is what I mean so that you don’t have to compare yourself to anybody else. I would say if you can just focus on the the experience in the here and now and leave the comparison behind because like I say there there will always be somebody that is finding a situation more challenging than you or has more on their plate and of course while that is awful and while we obviously feel for those people it doesn’t take away from the fact that you need to give yourself time to look after your own needs as well.

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The second part of that would entail leaving the shoulds and the shouldn’ts behind. I would always say that if you’re going down the roads of saying I should feel like this, I shouldn’t be experiencing this, I should be able to handle this.

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Shoulds and shouldn’ts belong in an imaginary world. They’re fictional so they’re actually stopping you from progressing in your journey and again like it all it adds more pressure to the stressful situation that you’re already dealing with.

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So if you say if you look at it like you have a stressful situation that is an emotional weight and then you tell yourself on top of that I shouldn’t be feeling like this, I should be able to handle it.

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What is that going to look like? That’s going to be more of an emotional weight on top and a more complicated situation that you have to deal with then. So leave the shoulds and the shouldn’ts behind and like I say make your current experience your starting point by acknowledging what you’re going through and how it’s affecting you.

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So even reflect now and just tune into your own experience and try and see if you could acknowledge what your own experience looks like without entering into the worlds of the shoulds and shouldn’ts and without entering in the world of somebody has it worse off than you.

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Just focus on yourself for the moment. Another thing that you need to do to e-stress is to allow yourself to express emotions. Now this could be something that we find difficult because again we minimize our own needs and we feel like we don’t deserve to have a place to open up and express and allow ourselves to even have emotions in the first place.

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Whereas that’s the way to kind of bolster yourself emotionally. All emotions have their place. Some are more uncomfortable than others. Of course it’s the more uncomfortable ones that tend to feel like they’re hanging around that bit longer but they’re all coming, they’re all going and they will all leave as quickly as they came as well.

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So it’s about allowing them to move through you. Now a great way to do that is to give yourself some reflection time on expressing your emotions and people are different in that sense. Thank you. Everybody has their own way of doing things, whether it be that you like to write out things, you like to journal, maybe you like to type on a diary and a laptop, maybe.

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Maybe you find that you express yourself better by connecting with someone, picking up the phone and talking to somebody. Or maybe you find introspection is your best way of really getting in touch with what your experience is and what your emotions look like at the moment.

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Again, reflect on that piece as well. Reflect on what works for you with regard to expressing emotions. And you know, as well, and this is a major thing at the moment, it doesn’t have to be one big giant overwhelming thing for it to be seen as a valid piece of stress or a valid stressful experience.

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There can be many little things because as you know, all these little things add up and it takes one more little thing to kind of tip you over and really make you feel lots of those stressful reactions.

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So just to note that as well that, you know, you don’t have to minimize your experience in that sense as well. You don’t have to talk down your experience by saying, you know, these are only little things.

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Yes, they are only little things by themselves, but if you’re piling them on top of another, one on top of another, they’re really gonna get down on you, okay? When we find ourselves bombarded by information, by stats, by updates on COVID, by what’s happening in other countries, it can be very overwhelming.

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And what I would say about that, if you can limit your intake, absolutely do. If you can filter your intake, absolutely do. And what I mean by that is quality over quantity. So really, if you want to be on top of your facts and figures, if you want to be updated what’s happening from day to day, make sure that it’s from a bona fide source and make sure that you’re really zoning in on these bona fide sources to find your information.

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Because the thing is whether you’re getting quality information from a trusted source or whether it’s from some WhatsApp group and it’s some shared thing that you’re finding, even though rationally you know that one source should be trusted and one should not, the emotional effect is the same.

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So the emotional effect that you’re experiencing is going to be the same. So really mind yourself within that as well. Another thing is that when we’re faced with a situation like COVID-19, it’s so huge, it’s so overwhelming and it’s non-stop, it’s ever changing and we don’t know when it’s going to end.

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So that can be really, really overwhelming to try and even… get our heads around that so if you find yourself being overwhelmed by that and that causing any kind of a stressful experience for you pair it back bring it back to the short term whether that means that you’re focusing on the next couple of days or you’re focusing on the day ahead of you or perhaps you need to pair it back even more and focus on the next hour or the next two hours absolutely do break it down into blocks focus on the block ahead of you the rest of them will look after themselves and just trust yourself that you can take take each block focus on it and then move on to the next lastly for a good tip to work with stress and to ease stress is to give yourself a little bit of switch off time by way of focus now perhaps for you you get into the present moment and you you really tune into the hearing now by meditation or by yoga that’s absolutely perfect but the aim of the game here is just to find something that you can use as a focus that can take you back into the hearing now like i say maybe it’s listening to a podcast maybe it’s having a having a dance maybe it’s art or drawing or watching something on tv whatever it is that suits you that really allows you to just be and to just be still and just to focus on this this task or this thing that you’re getting involved with that is what you need to be aiming for with this and lastly i would say that it really is important to remember that you’re doing the best you can in a situation that you find yourself in that nobody could have seen coming that you’ve just been thrown into that you have no frame of reference for that can change from day to day which means that your way of dealing with it can change from day to day which is bound to cause you to have stressful experiences It’s a very overwhelming situation.

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So if you can, just really try and show yourself compassion, show yourself kindness and show yourself care as well. So that’s it. Hopefully something from that resonated with you and hopefully you find something helpful within that.

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If you want any more information, hello at zevohealth.com. Just get in touch and we’d be delighted to help you out and support in any way. So for now, that’s me. Stay safe, mind yourselves and talk to you soon.

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Thank you for listening to another episode of Zevo Talks. Our team of health coaches are expertly trained to enable you to manage your own wellbeing. Tune in next time to listen to influential people making positive change in Ireland.