Empower Your Brain to Tackle Your Work Stress

Are you feeling stressed at work and don’t really know what to do about it?

Are you finding it difficult to set boundaries between your home life and your work life?

Are the expectations for you at work set way too high?

Are you frustrated with a boss, supervisor, or other colleague at work?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then you need to empower your brain to manage your stress at work. (Take this 1-minute survey to get more specifics)

Work stress, as is true for most stress, can come from many different sources.

When you experience something that makes you feel stressed, or otherwise emotionally escalated, your brain and body begin to work together to try to make sense of the stressful impact and how to handle it. This may happen frequently during your workday and will repeatedly activate your stress response system.

Your brain and body respond to different types of stressors all day long.

Some stress is positive and challenges you to grow and learn. Other stress is moderate and helps you build resilience. Some stress begins to become toxic and wears down your brain and body’s ability to calm itself.

You can empower your brain to better control your body when your stress response system is activated. The part of the brain that first recognizes any incoming stress is called the amygdala, which is in charge of your brain’s emotional response. Knowing how and when your brain’s amygdala reacts to stress can empower you to handle it better.

Your amygdala will react to incoming stress in nanoseconds, and will cause your brain to go into fight/flight/freeze protection. At this point, your body sensations change — perhaps an increased heart rate, breathing rate, or other nervous system reactions.

Your brain then floods your body’s adrenal glands with hormones (like cortisol) to help regulate the stress response system. Now, your emotions may begin to overwhelm you. Your brain states shift and your thinking becomes distorted as your brain’s functional IQ at that stressful moment decreases.

Decision-making and problem solving will become difficult. Fear, shame and or anger may begin to dominate your thoughts. You may become irritable, impatient, or even aggressive.

There is a lot you can do to empower your brain.

You can disrupt this common and repeated sequence of your stress response system activation. The key to managing any stressor is to catch your brain’s and body’s response early and identify it quickly to be able to manage it.

The more aware of how your amygdala reacts in certain situations at work and its reaction to interacting with certain work colleagues can help you create strategies to regulate yourself when emotionally flooded. The earlier you can feel your body sensations change when getting emotional gives you a better chance of doing something to calm down sooner.

The way to calm down is sensory regulation and engaging your brain’s prefrontal cortex, which will help calm your amygdala. Your prefrontal cortex will add time, space and reasoning to how you’re feeling in any given situation, countering your emotional response, and improving your clear and rational thinking.

This is the fast and slow processing of stress on the brain. The amygdala reacts quickly to a stressor and the prefrontal cortex manages other parts of your brain, slowing things down to interpret, reason and regulate.

Knowing how your amygdala becomes enraged during stressful times will help you become empowered as to what to do about it early. Once you feel your body sensations changing, you can be sure your amygdala has activated your stress response system.

That is the time to begin to take action!

What can you do to meet the needs of your stress-enraged brain and your changing body sensations? You first need to address your amygdala and other needy lower brain regions.

Things like movement, music, breathing, tapping, essential oils or other sensory stimulation can help calm your anxious amygdala.

Then other brain regions can join to help. What self talk or short mantras can you recite to yourself to engage your prefrontal cortex to help you regulate your brain? Soothing self-talk, calming visualization and/or mindfulness will help calm your amygdala and effectively engage your prefrontal cortex.

To whom are you be able to reach out for social support when you feel stressed or emotionally disconnected?

Healthy relationships will release brain hormones (like oxytocin) that help regulate your brain and body. When feeling stressed or emotionally dysregulated your brain needs connection, so seek out a trusted friend who comforts you to chit-chat with, or share a laugh, and can help you de-escalate your simmering emotions.

Avoid those around you who may exacerbate your stress and escalate your toxic emotional response. This may be challenging when you are in your work environment, but setting relational boundaries can be a form of effective stress-busting self-care.

Taking control of your brain becomes a superpower!

You’ve now started to create your work stress personal safety and self care plans with internal and external strategies to advocate for yourself when you feel your stress response system activated. Understanding the ultra-quick reaction of your amygdala and catching your changing body sensations early when you begin to feel stressed at work (or anywhere else) will empower you to control your thoughts, rather than your thoughts controlling you.

How stressed are you at work? Take the 1-minute survey and get your FREE Work Stress Personal Safety and Self Care Plans!

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Marty Wolner is a certified mentor trainer and trauma and stress impact coach for Lakeside Global Institute in Philadelphia, PA, providing trauma and stress awareness for sports organizations and teams, business professionals, continuing education for early childhood educators, professional development for K-12 educators, social workers, clinicians and college courses focusing on trauma and stress. For more information, visit http://mybrain.tools