It destroys your relationship with your children and your spouse: How do you avoid bringing the psychological stress of work home?

What you should know

You finish a hard day's work, you're out of energy, you just turned in late reports, you have a meeting in the morning, and you know the work will not be finished, it will multiply.

You come home feeling drained as if you can't stand hearing an extra word from anyone else, but you go back to your kids/family - people you care about and love - and you're stressed out from work.

Well, the feeling of pressure is normal due to the responsibilities placed on the shoulders of the individual at different ages. The pressure is nothing but a natural psychological reaction to life events.

We are all exposed to stress and tension on a daily basis for various reasons (1).

Our bodies are equipped to handle a certain degree of stress that helps us get things done quickly and effectively.

But when it intensifies or lasts for a long time, this may negatively affect our bodies, which prompts the body to send signs indicating that the pressure is excessive, which ultimately leads to symptoms and effects that appear on the body, and affect your psyche, your body and your whole life, starting with anxiety and emotion. rapid, depression and headache, up to insomnia, to turn stress from a tool for survival into a destroyer of your health (1).

For information, the central nervous system is responsible for a defensive response latent in our behavioral system, called the fight-or-flight response, which is a response that our bodies produce when we feel threatened or stressed, either to flee or to respond to this threat.

Your body helps you face this danger by feeling pressure to act.

There are three main points that help us understand the occurrence of stress in humans:

• The human body responds with a defensive reaction to confront the danger by simply imagining it, thinking about it, or mentally evoking it.

• The physical response depends on our interpretation of the external event as a threat or a source of fear.

  Therefore, a person may feel that the Russian mountain game in the amusement park is a fun and exciting experience, and another person may see it as a source of fear and terror.

  Notice that the same situation was interpreted by one person as a source of danger, and another person interpreted it as an exciting experience.

  The former stimulated his fear system as a result of defining this game as a danger, while this did not happen in the other.

• The human body does not discern the form of the threat you are anticipating, even with the magnitude of the situation or the danger resulting from it. The body responds to the danger of a ferocious lion appearing in front of you in a forest, in the same way - but with varying intensity, of course - that it responds when you are worried about an email sent to you A task that you would very much like to avoid.

Why do we feel pressure and psychological and physical exhaustion?

Medically speaking, the body responds to a threat by releasing the hormones adrenaline and cortisol.

The blood rushes to where you need help, your muscles and heart, and as a result of these secretions your muscles spasm;

It is your body's way of protecting you from injury and pain.

When the danger is gone, signals are sent to your nervous system that everything is back to normal, your muscles relax and your heartbeat calms down.

When no signal reaches your nervous system that the threat or danger has passed, such as if you continue to work or stop taking any breaks, your body continues to respond and alert, and periods of stress and convulsions extend for a longer time than normal, and your body rushes to a second reaction , such as headaches or migraines, which are closely related to the spasm of the shoulder and neck muscles caused by working for extended periods of time.

Not only that, but stress affects your respiratory system;

Your breathing accelerates in an attempt to supply your whole body with oxygen when your body responds to it, secreting its hormones, and if you already suffer from respiratory problems such as asthma, the pressure will make it difficult for you to catch your breath more and more.

In the long run, these hormones affect the immune system, so it is true that they save you in a particular situation, but over time, they weaken your immune system and reduce its response to any external attack.

Research indicates that those who are exposed to acute stress are more likely to catch a common cold and flu, and take longer to recover from injuries and diseases, and it may extend to type 2 diabetes.

(1)(2).

A study conducted by the American Psychological Association indicates that anxiety about money and work matters is ranked first and second, respectively, among the most common stressors in American society.

In fourth place came family responsibilities.

From what has been scientifically agreed upon, the results of this pressure are not limited to the individual himself, but extend to those around him in various forms, such as psychological confinement, rapid anger, emotion and excessive protection;

All the emotions that can cause you to take stress home with you and pass it on to your family members (2).

What can I do to protect myself and my family from the pressures of the job?

• First: limit your work to specific times and places that do not go outside its scope

Work matters overlap with home affairs, specifically for those who occupy jobs that need to make quick decisions or urgent tasks to complete, and studies indicate that 50% of employees bring work with them to the house, which leads to more pressure and spending longer hours at work (3).

Bringing a work computer with you home will take the time allocated for rest and other tasks away from work, so you have to leave work and its files and devices used in it and everything related to it in the work office, and if this is not possible, you should allocate specific hours for family members;

At the dinner table or before bed.

If you work from home, you should not bring the phone or computer to the sofa or the family meeting place, but leave it in your designated work space;

Which will help you finish your work psychologically before leaving the room, and motivate yourself to work on your tasks efficiently, which will make it easier for you to focus on the time allotted to your family (3).

• Second, monitor your phone usage

The smartphone is perhaps the greatest distraction of our time.

A statistic published in 2019 indicates that the American individual checks his phone an average of 96 times a day, that is, once every ten minutes.

Of course, you have already peeked at your email during dinner, or on an evening spent with your family and found a message from work or an alert that raised your tension and awakened your desire to complete tasks, which will move you from enjoying a quiet time with your family or alone;

to the work atmosphere (4).

The average person spends about four hours on their phone on average, which turns the phone into a tool that binds you.

So;

You have to set strict rules that limit its use, mail checks, or what connects you to work.

And because we live in an age where the phone plays a pivotal role, it is better to allocate one phone for work and another for personal use, if available, while keeping the work phone off at night and on weekends.

It is worth noting the dangers of using the phone right before bed and its negative impact on your brain, as it is a major reason for increasing the rate of preventing complete relaxation and getting the necessary rest, which contributes to sleep deprivation, which leads to being considered a major catalyst for more stress, fatigue and insomnia. (3).

• Third: Do a separating activity between work and personal life

Just as you get ready for work in the morning by waking up on time, having coffee and getting dressed for work, you need to be prepared for downtime and family time, even if you're working from home, to reduce stress.

Rest is not complete, if your mind is preoccupied with work and its suspended and postponed tasks. Rather, it is a mutated form of work and its exhaustion.

So, give your brain a signal or practice to end your work day and start your break time with it, such as going for a brisk walk, taking a warm bath, listening to music, preparing dinner, or any other activity that helps you relax, while allocating space and time for these. Habit after a long day at work (3).

• Fourth: Allocate a third space outside the family and work area

You may think that anything unrelated to work or family is of no use.

Self-care is not a pampering or a luxury, because it is in the interest of those around you in the same way.

Employed parents put their focus on work and family responsibilities, so once the work is over - that's if it's over - housework jumps out, from kids' training, groceries, cooking, laundry, and all that has to do with the house, which can add to your stress throughout the day.

Here comes the importance of the third space, away from family and work, in reducing stress.

This space varies according to each person's interests, hobbies, and free time, but it is important for self-communication, satisfaction, and recreation, no matter how many responsibilities are.

It is important to revive a lost hobby, visit the gym regularly, play a favorite sport, time to read or meet friends in a café, or take care of a group of plants. Then on those around him (3).

• Fifth: Ask for support from your partner and those close to you

Your partner and close friends play an important role in your handling of your job duties and the stress that comes from it.

It is important to discuss and share these pressures from time to time;

Ask for support, and for your partner to understand what you're going through, as the build-up of unreported tension will create problems that could threaten your relationship (5).

Surrounding yourself with a social network of friends or acquaintances in your field who act as mentors for advice or help will reduce your stress, boost your independence, and sharpen your ability to deal with problems you may encounter in the future, while being careful not to over-complain;

Because a friend will still be a friend, not a therapist or functional counselor (3).

• Sixth: Share the positives of your work with your family members

It is not advisable to completely hide the nature of the work and pretend that it does not involve any pressures or difficulties.

There is a recently published study entitled "Murder at the Dinner Table" that looks at the effect of fathers' jobs on their children, especially those related to human trauma. (7)

The study indicates the importance of children not listening to work matters, especially if your work is of a tense nature, such as being a doctor, lawyer or paramedic, for example, but it is important to include children in an appropriate dialogue for their age that explains how the work is going, rather than imposing Security measures on them or overprotection of them due to events you encountered in your work.

The studied family participation regarding thorny jobs contributes to positively affecting children. Rather, the study indicates that children often tend to choose their parents’ jobs or related jobs because of their great understanding of their nature and their awareness of the role their parents played in society and their sympathy with its duties, which helps to To transform the job from a source of anxiety and pressure to a source of inspiration and awareness (6).

Tools that will help you

• Instrument

Focus Mood: This feature is available in many smartphones, and helps you stop certain applications for a specific period of time, which will allow you to focus with your family or with your work, as you choose.

• video

In this clip, mental health professional Kelly McGonigal explains how we redefine work stress and turn it from enemy to friend, and from hurdle into opportunity (translator).

• video

In this animated clip, Dr. Sharon Bergwist gives you a detailed insight into the responses and effects of stress in your body (translator).

• Book:

  Why don't zebras get stomach ulcers?

The title of the book may seem a bit strange, as what does stress and work pressure have to do with a zebra?

In this book, professor and researcher specializing in behavioral biology, Robert Sapolsky, provides an interesting approach to the impact of psychological stress on our bodies, and on organic diseases and their role in destroying our immunity.

According to Sapolsky, the zebra does not have a bank loan to worry about, does not wake up early and rushes to get dressed so that it can reach the company early before it gets stuck in a traffic crisis, and it will also not be very nervous if it is exposed to a situation in the morning that will prevent it from completing its tasks at work.

The absence of all these pressures and many other pressures of daily life, no matter how simple they seem, makes the zebra healthier than the rest of the humans exposed to stress, and the pressures cause them to weaken their immune system and make them more susceptible to disease.

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