Mental Health
How to Cope with Unpleasant Emotions and Chronic Stress at Work
A structured framework to deal with emotional dysregulation and prolonged stress
Introduction & context
Stress is classified as the health epidemic of the 21st century by the World Health Organization. Chronic stress adversely affects both physical and mental health. Toxic emotions can ruin our lives.
The American Institute of Stress reports that more than 73% of people regularly experience physical and psychological stress symptoms, and 33% live with extreme stress. Significant causes of stress in the US are money, health, relationships, poor nutrition, media overload, and sleep deprivation.
Stress is essential to respond to our environment. The purpose of our stress system is to keep us safe. It creates a hormonal cocktail to prepare us for life-threatening situations. Our survival system is hard-coded to generate stress hormones when it senses a threat to our safety.
This ancient system helped us in the evolution process. However, this same old system exists in the modern world as is. Even though there is no real-life threat, the reptilian and emotional part of the brain sees some contemporary life issues as a threat and produces the same stress hormones.
For example, as simple as a negative social media comment or a stern look from a boss can be perceived as a threat to some of us.
These hormones are vital in the short term to energize us and enable us to take necessary actions. It is essential for our work performance.
However, when these hormones are frequently and excessively produced as high alerts, they can imbalance our biological system and pose life-threatening risks.
Emotions are critical for our survival. They tell us what is going on, right or wrong, in the body. However, excessive negative emotions can be toxic for the body and mind. Our mental health is significantly impacted by toxic emotions.
Emotional stress puts us in a neuro-chemically disadvantaged position. We experience an emotional roller-coaster. Constant experience of emotional stress can be poisonous for the body and the brain.
When the body is in fight or flight mode, it deactivates functions that are not critical to survival. For example, well-known functions affected by emotional stress are digestion and sex drive. So, if we experience digestion issues and low libido, these symptoms can be valuable indicators of our stress levels.
There are many symptoms of emotional stress. For example, emotional stress might manifest as anxiety, irritability, depression, or compulsive behavior.
The crucial points to stress management are self-awareness and self-care.
At a high level, we can classify stress into two broad categories: macro and micro-level stress. Macro stress refers to significant stressors, including critical events such as chronic illness, losing a job or a loved one, facing bankruptcy, divorcing, or widowing.
Macro stress requires a systematic approach and help from healthcare professionals such as physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational therapists, dieticians, sleep therapists, and nutritionists.
We all have different stress tolerance stressors. Our tolerance depends on our genetic makeup, health conditions, overall resilience, and mindset. However, macro stress is beyond the scope of my article.
Dealing with micro stressors
This article is about micro stressors, which are small incidents irritating our brain and causing spikes of major stress hormones such as adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine.
However, for the mobilization of energy sources and to adapt to new circumstances, several other hormones are also secreted to respond to constant stress. For example, the level of glucocorticoids, catecholamines, growth hormones, and prolactin increases.
In this post, I focus on preventing toxic emotions and chronic emotional stress using a practical framework for effectively managing micro-stressors.
Upon wake-up, we experience many events releasing stress hormones during the day. Every incident and how we react to them can trigger our stress system and create different stress responses. Each response releases some of the hormones that I mentioned before and generates some emotions.
To make my points, let me walk you through a brief scenario of how micro-doses of stress hormones turn into macro doses at the end of the day.
Let’s say we start the day with an alarm clock that wakes us up. As a result, the body experiences some cortisol surge. For a short time, this might not be an issue, and it is even good for vitality.
Imagine we are going to work, experiencing traffic jams, and getting late for work. This undesirable situation activates the stress system instantly and releases more stress hormones.
If our response to this situation is terrible, more hormones are created, and we experience emotions such as anxiety, fear, annoyance, frustration, and even anger.
When we arrive at the office, our boss gets angry because we have just missed an important client meeting. This situation creates more stress hormones and several more negative and unpleasant emotions such as guilt.
While feeling these emotions, we keep ruminating. Many negative thoughts create more feelings, and our emotions get mixed and tangled.
We keep working with these negative thoughts for a while. During that time, imagine our computer crashes, we lose a document, and the phone rings simultaneously. Our negative emotions hit the roof, and the cocktail of hormones starts spilling into the skull and organs.
We start feeling hungry and thirsty. A friend invites us to lunch. Since we are stressed, we start craving sugary foods. So, we eat some comfort foods.
During the conversation, our friend mentions a piece of bad news. With prior emotions and hormonal load, now we have another hormone (increased insulin) to deal with the elevated blood sugar from the comfort food. And more stress hormones are released to cope with the bad news and blood sugar.
We check our mobile phones and notice some disturbing text messages. Another microdose of stress hormone is generated. As a relief, we open the news app or Facebook and see some catastrophic events, creating more stress hormones.
I exaggerated events a bit to make my points. Some of us face these sorts of stress triggers daily. These events do not stop at work as we might face more challenges at home and in social situations.
If we are unaware of these triggers and associated hormone releases, these microdoses of hormones all day long keep accumulating. As a result, some of us can easily pass the stress threshold.
Passing the stress threshold brings new issues. The toxicity of stress hormones and destructive emotions can occur when we exceed our stress threshold.
What if we experience these microdoses of stress hormones constantly every day and don’t address them timely? Various parts of the brain change by creating more stress-related neural pathways to adapt to the stress. These pathways are the initiators of chronic stress and toxic emotions.
Even though these small events generate tiny amounts of stress hormones, the accumulation of these hormones and associated negative emotions transform into chronic stress after a while.
The molecular mechanism of chronic stress can cause almost every health condition and disease, such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, skeletal issues, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, immune deficiency, and even cancer.
What can we do?
Stress management requires awareness and coping strategies. Awareness of stress can help us manage our micro-stress triggers in time.
In the above scenario, if we become aware of each stress trigger and respond to each situation with a positive mindset, we can control the release of stress hormones.
The stress hormones are released and sustained when the amygdala and limbic system sense threat. However, we have the power of the cognitive brain. Our thinking brain can affect the primitive parts to settle.
For example, after each stress trigger, if we become aware and remain mindful, our thinking brain can send signals informing the emotional brain that we are under control.
The most effective way of creating control signals is breathing. Using an effective breathing method, we can reduce the stress signals significantly. This is a scientifically proven technique and has been used by professionals, athletes, and religious people for centuries. There are many breathing practices.
In addition to breathing exercises, other effective techniques are positive self-talk (aka psychological programming) and movement. These techniques work because they help us use our cognitive brains.
During self-talk and moderate exercise, we use our thinking brain with functions such as memory, attention, concentration, and task switching.
These functions can send control signals to the primitive brain. When the primitive parts of the brain sense that we are under control, it stops producing stress hormones. Our body can digest the release of stress hormones more efficiently as they don’t accumulate.
These techniques look very simple. Yes, they are simple and easy. However, when done consistently, they can address micro-stress issues effectively.
Suppose we become aware of each stress trigger, starting with a string of thoughts, and respond by taking slow and deep breaths, having positive self-talk, and doing moderate exercises. In that case, we can significantly reduce the effect of the instant stress triggers.
Breathing is the easiest and most effective one as it relaxes the body and mind and hence can work the fastest. So is self-talk. When we make compassionate self-talk, we can also understand our emotions better. Self-conversations can increase our emotional intelligence and be therapeutic too.
Supplementing these mindfulness exercises with a 15-minute meditation can produce optimal results for chronic stress prevention.
Conclusions and Takeaways
Only by using these two simple techniques (breathing and self-conversations), can we control almost every micro-stress trigger at work. Workouts and meditation can be bonus techniques for sustainability.
When we apply these simple and effective techniques every day and make them lifestyle habits, we can keep our daily stress level under the threshold and prevent toxic emotions and the manifestation of chronic stress.
Emotional and chronic stress, especially at work, can adversely affect our physical health, mental health, relationships, work performance, well-being, and overall life satisfaction.
Toxic emotions can ruin our lives. However, we can significantly decrease our emotional stress and keep it under the threshold by addressing our micro-stress triggers with awareness and mindfulness practices.
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