Does anyone deal with stress really well? What's the secret?

[2764mice]

I made the mistake of opening my work emails this morning and received some news that upset me and has caused me anxiety all day, basically ruined my Saturday, I had to call our EAP for mental health support and speak to several friends /cry down the phone. My work has a lot of responsibility attached to it so all the problems land on my doorstep. I feel like I'm constantly on a emotional rollercoaster. When things are going well, I'm mostly just waiting to the next horror to come round the corner.

Is anyone else dealing with a lot of stress but managing it really well? What's the secret? How can I stop these various crises from getting to me? I hate feeling like this.

I resuscitate people regularly, including children, and when I fail I have to tell their families. Sometimes in a 12 hour period this involves telling multiple people that someone they love is dead. In some ways the nature of the work helps, as it provides perspective. I’m never stressed over an email or a meeting - if nobody’s had a cardiac arrest, there is no crisis.

The things that help me most are exercise, and debriefing with a psychologist once a month.

For me it was realising that “my job” was not to “solve the problem and guarantee a successful outcome.
my job was to do my job and to give information advice and options - after that the problem was not “my problem”!

I have found compassion based therapy helpful for dealing with anxiety. It helped to me to understand why we tend to ruminate on problems and enabled me to give myself permission to park things.

apathy. I would read the email and then deal with it later
and smoke a fag

💯 compartmentalising to the extent possible. Disengage emotionally. I learned to do this once the penny dropped that any organisation I worked for would not hesitate to make me or any other employee redundant if there was a reshuffle/ headcount reduction. Equally I do work hard, and appreciate it when I get recognition for it.

Am in a similar position to you @2764mice but this isn't my first rodeo at a stressful senior management role. There is something uniquely difficult in charity/public sector roles at the moment. Lots of MH issues in the staff groups, funding uncertainty and lots of pressure across the system which is making it very challenging to feel like we are on top of things. Have been working across sectors for a very long time and this is the worst I have ever known it.

As a senior manager you ending up holding not just your own stress but that of your team too. And they are also struggling with all the life things that feel pretty acute at the moment too (eg Cost of Living, mortgage rares rising, etc). Keep your boundaries as others have advised but also be kind to yourself. It is a brutal sector at the moment and everyoneis struggling.

It has got to the point that I am seriously thinking of giving up and taking time out for a few months before looking for another job.

I’m about to retire from a senior role. There is the potential for lots of drama and firefighting. I became very boundaried quite early on as it was becoming all consuming. I turn my works phone off at the end of the working day and I don’t check emails outside of working hours.

Love all these!!

Great advice on this thread.
for me it came to a head at Christmas - barely slept for three days then fainted.
I have found metacognitive therapy helpful for the overthinking/too clever for my own good thing

Like others on this thread, to an extent I do think dealing with personal tragedy can help to reframe stress and put it in perspective.

By the time I was 28 I'd lost both parents, one to suicide, 1 to a long painful terminal illness, had been a parent to my brothers and ran a family business while at uni and working nearly full time in my own job.

Very little is worse than any of that and I survived that, so work doesn't really register as being bad.

15 months ago we thought we were going to lose my son.

that week I had blinding clarity on how unimportant work is.

son is now fine and I’m back to thinking about work!
so the “getting perspective” thing can be temporary unfortunately.

Following.

I cannot imagine what this is like to deal with on a regular basis. I often think about those jobs where it is life and death or emergency services where they have to face unimaginable stressful circumstances - it helps me to put my work into perspective. If the worst that can happen is that someone is annoyed or complains then it really is not worth loosing sleep over.

I just do my best and accept some situations are out of my control and work isn’t everything.

To be honest I never used to have this attitude, but a very close friend committed suicide a few years ago and changed me. Put some things into perspective. I wouldn’t recommend it though!

I'm good at dealing with stress and in panic situations where others are running around flapping.

I ask myself: "will it matter in a 100 years time or even next year?" (Answer usually no)

"Is there anything I can do to change or influence this?" If so, I do it otherwise no point worrying.

I find a cup of tea helps. I also play online scrabble and solitaire to de-stress and clear my head and go on at least one daily walk.

I think you’ve had some great advice and have taken it on board

The one thing I would add is you need to dump the idea that you care a lot = you can’t switch off from work.

The idea that caring a lot means you work or think about work all the time is a very junior mindset. Anyone senior (and not psychopathic) knows that taking time out preserves you energy and mental health and gives you perspective - and they know that people who don’t take time off make bad decisions and eventually burn out.

Oh and either CBT or a monthly session with a work coach might be useful too.

@MissTrip82 I have nothing but admiration for you. Amazing, I could never do it

Don't do what I did. Suck it up, power on through and have a heart attack at 53.

I moved job after that. Life got easier.

Sorry to hear this.

I had a 7 year period of one piece of bad news after another and I actually got to a point whereby if things were going well I'd be anxious.

What I've done is taught myself to take control of the things I can manage and control and accept that those things out of my control are just that. Out of my control. That by worrying about them I not change anything. I'll just be doubly affected.

So far it's working well for me.

But I'll be honest I was coping when shit was constantly hitting the fan - it was afterwards I struggled and it's taken me 18 months to control the worry that something else will happen.

The work situations I've found stressful were when I didn't have a good support network.

Generally I find I can weather anything so long as I have good support and maintain some boundaries eg I never look at my laptop at the weekends and make sure I don't work excessive hours.

My boss logs on at the weekend to do god knows what, and complains bitterly about it. He was a bit taken aback when I said "don't do it then....". Personally if I need more time to do something, I do - but I'd rather work longer days in the week than have it invade my weekend, I'll pick a couple of hours early morning when other people aren't logged on yet and be super productive in that time.

Also it's just work to me, so generally I just don't think about it when I'm not there. Out of sight, out of mind. I have a very busy senior job where some of what I'm doing is really high stakes to the organisation, but that doesn't mean I need to care so much about it that it takes over my life - in fact, in the grand scheme of things, I actually don't care about it at all. I do a bloody good job though as I take a lot of pride in being good at work, my lack of caring doesn't result in slacking.

It sounds like we have similar roles, OP. I see others burning out around me and so have reflected quite a lot on why it doesn't happen to me. Partly it's because my life experience set my threat level at life and death, which is not something I can advise you undergo.

But from that bad stuff I learned good things, so here are some useful places to start:

Impose healthy boundaries. Don't check your email outside of work. If you can't get there yet, install Inbox When Ready and put a long waiting time on. Timebox your calendar. Book all your holidays. Go to a dance class.

Cultivate humility. Your work matters, but someone else could do it. This idea that only you can save mankind is endemic in the third sector but it is actually self-aggrandising and silly. Realising this helps everyone long term.

Be a friend to yourself. Treat yourself at least as well as you would any stranger. In time, work towards treating yourself as well as someone you love.

I've been you in a similar role. Gave it my all and work became a huge part of my identity. I was very successful. The business I worked for encouraged all of this with tripe like "bring your whole self to work". Then the Truss budget happened and I was out. After 13 years no one said goodbye and no one said thankyou. I was devastated and realised what a fool I had been, and I'd wasted so, so much mental bandwidth to that role and company. When I get another role my standards will be high, but I will never again allow myself to care like that for something that isn't a friend or family.

It's. Just. Work.

Care less, and build yourself a good life outside of work. I didn't, and I regret it.

Something that has helped me is realising that I tend to automatically feel obliged to be worried and anxious about stuff - and feel guilty if I'm not. I bet you are like that - you'd feel that you didn't care as much as you should - that you were being cold and unfeeling - if you didn't get stressed and anxious. I get this with the news as well as work. Since I realised this I'm trying to re-condition myself - that it's OK not to be worried - it's not compulsory.

It's a great idea to talk to a therapist to help unpick it all. I do think I take things very personally and it might be helpful for me to think about why this is.