10 Ways to Manage Work Stress for Women

Women are more prone to workplace because of the many roles they play in life :  as career woman, wife, mother, daughter, and friend.  Women work way beyond the 9-5 shift, often having to rush home to cook dinner, help the kids with homework, and prepare the next day's office attire for the hubby.  The stress and anxiety caused by endless tasks and impossible deadlines in a high-speed, high-tech world has made women's lives a living web of complexity.

The question is : How can women cope with stress and anxiety?  The first step is to dissect the problem and understand how these psychological and emotional conditions make women's lives more difficult.

Stress is a combination of fatigue, restlessness, depression, over-focusing, and over-all gloominess that is a consequence of overwork and other domestic or personal problems.   The difficulty of trying to balance time between work and the home has caused many women to suffer from stress.  Personal or relationship issues like divorce or separation have also been the cause of anxiety panic attacks among women. Women who own and manage their own business are also prone to stress.  Their high drive for business success cannot always protect them from times of depression and overwork. Career women, on the other hand, have to confront office politics, gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and the fear of being laid-off.

But there's still hope for over-worked, stressed women.   Here are some practical ways for women to reduce and manage work-related stress :

1.        Put up relaxing scenes- It could be a poster or a small painting with beautiful scenery. You can even download screen savers of beaches, waterfalls, clear lakes and other scenes that help create a serene mood.

 2.      The To-Do-List-  Use that Post-Its or other stick-on note pads. Color-code your notes and even put up an  alarm  in your computer to remind you of priority tasks.  The key is to know what to do first.

 3.      Time out - As they say,  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.   Take some time out to take a breather. Do way from reading emails the mostly junk. Do stimulating activities like sudoku or brainteaser. Reading some inspirational books like Chicken Soup for the Soul.

 4.     Rearrange your workstation - Add some  homey  look to your workstation... put up photo frames of your family or favorite pet. When ever you feel stressed out just glance at their happy faces or cuteness ---and you'll find yourself smiling back!

 5.    When a plant isn't just a plant - Having a plant around your workplace is good stress relief. Studies show that looking at something green like a plant helps soothe your eyes after facing the computer monitor all day or after reading for a long time.  Focusing on a green plant will have a soothing effect.

 6.     Exercise - Walking, climbing the stairs, or going out to run helps fight stress. Physical activity help get rid of tension.  During a workout, your body releases endorphins which helps your body to relax.  Endorphins also act as natural pain killers. There are a lot of exercise videos that you can use ranging from the standard aerobics to pilates, tae-bo, and a host of other fitness programs.

 7.      De-clutter- A cluttered workstation like pens,pencils, notepads,tons of papers spread around every inch of your work place adds to your stress.  Make your work environment more appealing by organizing your things and throwing away things you no longer need.

 8.    Set Boundaries- Communicate and assert yourself, make your co-workers know when you are more available for chit chat.

 9.       Go less in your caffeine intake- caffeine even is popularly known as a stimulant, too much of it adds to stress even leads to depression.

 10.   Eat a good breakfast- Don' skip meals even if you are indeed in a hurry. Studies shows that if you make it a practice to eat breakfast every day, you're body gets more the needed proteins to give you an energy boost to face the working day.

Beat work-related stress without beating yourself up. Learn how to relax. Sure...we have duties and responsibilities but if you don't learn to relax---burn out is what you get!  Make an effort to relax. Listen to good music. Try not to smoke. Because if you don't watch out, the results would be hypertension...depression... and a plethora of other ailments that can sidetrack your career and home life.  It's time to regain a sense of balance if you want to stay alive for a long, long, long time. stress and anxiety, anxiety panic attacks, stress relief

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Breaking Point The Factors Behind Insanity

mental health, stress, depression, stress and anxiety, social anxiety,

Insanity is one of those things that most psychological texts attempt to categorize, illustrate, and analyze, but never outright define. Indeed, from some standpoints, insanity and sanity are too relative to the individual and his circumstances to be given any single, all-encompassing definition. There are, however, several key factors to be noted among the various “forms” of insanity known to modern mental health experts.

What can drive someone to insanity? Certainly, insanity is something that is commonly understood (or misunderstood) and usually carries some sort of stigma in the popular consciousness. If you believe in modern psychology and psychiatry, there are literally thousands of forms of insanity that a person can end up developing over a lifetime. Some of them, like depression, are temporary, while others, like social anxiety, require more work for a person to get through. However, there appears to be some commonality as to what actually brings about most of the forms of insanity that people go through. Which brings the question to bear: is there a common, underlying trigger that compromises the stability of a person's mental health?

Things like stress and anxiety are often cited, as most of the common (and several uncommon) mental health issues are triggered by one of the two. Continued exposure to stress can eventually push someone beyond their “breaking point,” with the form of insanity afterwards being affected by external factors. This is often a long, strenuous process because most people have some level of resistance to such things, allowing them to at least survive the stressful period with their sanity intact. Additionally, the process may not even really result in insanity, with most of the population serving as proof of this theory. Prolonged stress can affect a person's behavior and outlook, but it is also known that several other factors can increase or reduce the impact of this. In some cases, stress and anxiety can merely even have the opposite effect, depending on the person's personal outlook.

Emotions are also said to play a critical role in driving or pushing people into insanity, with feelings being so closely tied to mental health. A person's emotional state can often be a reflection of a person's relative state of mental stability, but may also become an effect of fractured sanity. There is no doubting that emotions can disrupt and affect a person's thought processes and make them do things that they normally would not do. It has also been noted that extremely emotional situations and heavy emotional trauma can permanently affect a person's mind, often resulting in a condition that requires therapy to eventually overcome. However, it is rather arguable that emotions are merely augmenting the effects of stress and pressure, not a factor in itself.

Trauma is also frequently cited as having drastic effects on a person's sanity, particularly if it occurs during the formative years. The extreme psychological and emotional impact that trauma victims have to endure can often force some past the breaking point, having permanent effects on their mental health. However, it should be noted that trauma tends to be little more than a combination of stressful and emotional factors, usually mixed in with extreme circumstances. The vulnerability of the person's psyche plays a larger role here than in other potential causes of insanity, which explains why trauma encountered later on in life does not have the same general effect as similar events encountered during childhood.

Ultimately, insanity is something that, like sanity, must be defined on an individual basis. What is sane for one person in a given society may not be considered such by a different person within the same society. Insanity is a matter of context in this case, which is the assumption that some psychological texts make.

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