Do you feel irritated at the office? Do you find it hard to concentrate on your work? Are you not achieving your goals even though you are spending more and more time on them? Are your work worries keeping you awake at night? It is likely that, like 42% of the population, you suffer from work anxiety.
The increased pace of work, constant changes in the market, job insecurity, and higher levels of stress mean that more and more people are suffering from this pathology. The coronavirus crisis has not helped either, as it has added uncertainty, fear of contagion, and work-life balance problems to the equation.
In fact, if burnout affected one in ten professionals in 2019, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), by 2021, this percentage will quadruple, according to the report Resetting Normal: redefining the new era of work, by Adecco. Without going any further, burnout has entered 2022 as an occupational disease in the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases.
The truth is that, although it has traditionally remained invisible, work anxiety is not uncommon. Fortunately, however, mental health awareness is now growing and professionals do not have to suffer from it in silence for fear of being seen as weak or incompetent. Moreover, the good news is that you can cope with and overcome work anxiety on your own and regain the motivation to go to work every morning.
What is work anxiety?
A common misconception about work anxiety is to confuse it with stress at work. Stress in itself is not a negative thing. In fact, coping with a moderate level of stress is even advisable to keep you active and motivated. In fact, according to the WHO, good mental health does not mean that there is no stress, but rather that you know how to respond appropriately to these situations. And you surely know professionals who are able to carry a dizzying pace of work without affecting their emotional or physical well-being, while others are overcome by much less.
Work anxiety as such arises in the latter case, that is, when the response to the demands or problems of the work environment is not the right one. In this sense, anxiety disorders are mental pathologies that generate emotional stress and physical pain in people, which is prolonged over time and affects them to the point of blocking them and limiting their ability to act. When this symptomatological picture is caused by work, we speak of work anxiety.
However, the reasons that can give rise to this pathology are very varied and will depend on each professional. Thus, there will be workers who may suffer from work anxiety due to work overload, the high demands of their job, the lack of conciliation, the lack of skills to cope with the job, a bad relationship with their superior or a colleague, or cases of mobbing. Feel free to check out the best cbd for anxiety uk to get more important information.
However, it can also be caused by poor participation in decision-making, poor internal communication, confusing assignment of tasks, frustrated vocation, excessive perfectionism or control, or simply a pathological fear of making mistakes or not meeting expectations.