With everyday life causing us to hurry in and out, work hard, stay enthusiastic, and constantly reminding us of our responsibilities and pressures, it can be difficult not to be emotionally affected. Anxiety and stress are often demands from our bodies letting us know that we are overwhelmed. Unfortunately, more often than not, these feelings are repressed, and instead of asking for support, helpful resources, or the help of a friend, we accept the negative consequences.

It is normal to have stressful days, pressing concerns, and overwhelming moments but what is important is to learn about the right way to address these feelings. Mental health is one of the body's most important tools, and we tend to neglect it with unhealthy coping processes like alcohol and drugs. Acknowledging the importance of sleep, food, family and friends, and a supportive work environment is an important step forward in decreasing anxiety stress and negative coping processes.

Difference Between Anxiety, Stress and Coping

Stress

Anxiety is characterised as a feeling of fear and worry that can happen as a direct reaction to stress or other factors. There are a number of different definitions when it comes to identifying the main factors that cause stress.

Causes

Experimental and field studies provide different causes and coping mechanisms for different people. Although anxiety, anger, sadness, irritability, frustration, and depression may be signs of stress, they are not the cause of stress. Life events such as separations, losing your job, money issues, and bereavement are examples of lead causes for stress.

However, increasingly more clinically significant research reports and experimental and field studies have found that work-related stress is an important factor in mental health. In fact, according to the Mental Health Foundation, around 1 in 6.8 people are experiencing problems with their mental health in the workplace.

Anxiety

Anxiety can result from stress and can cause significant mental and physical effects. Mental symptoms of anxiety include dread, fear, worry, panic, detachment, irritability, and difficulty concentrating. Physical feelings include dizziness, wobbliness, restlessness, hyperventilation, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, nausea, sweating, sleeping problems, panic attacks, and heart palpitations.

All these factors can influence someone’s behaviour. If you are suffering from anxiety, you may want to withdraw from your everyday life with family, friends, and work. This withdrawal can provide a short-term sense of relief which causes an unhealthy cycle because the stress and the negative feelings return once put in the situation again. 

Anxiety disorders

Anxiety can also lead to anxiety disorders. Different anxiety disorders include generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and phobias. While generalised anxiety disorder means feeling worried or anxious, a panic disorder involves regular panic attacks, more often than not, for no apparent reason.

Factors

Despite the high statistics of people having anxiety disorders, many people fail to get diagnosed and, as such, have little to no understanding of their mental health and the appropriate coping processes. Anxiety disorders like PTSD and OCD are often associated with particular events or experiences in mainstream media and society.

In reality, PTSD can arise after experiencing any sort of frightening or stressful event. While OCD is often associated with cleanliness, it is actually a disorder. It is characterised by theoretical papers, researchers, and scientific research, as having recurring unpleasant thoughts, otherwise known as obsessions, and having to perform routines to relieve anxiety, known as compulsions.

Causes

There are different causes of anxiety disorders. Factors include long-term health conditions, genetics, trauma as children or adults, and alcohol or drug misuse and abuse. Difficult current life instances can also increase the likelihood of making an anxiety disorder, such as money problems, household issues, work-related stress, bullying, a difficult personal relationship, unemployment, and more. Anxiety dimensions are vast and very different from one person to another.

Coping

Coping has been defined as behaviours and thoughts to help manage stressful situations. The term cope has been theoretically important in describing a conscious way of acting, which contrarily to 'defence mechanisms', is fully voluntary. However, both coping and defence mechanisms are present to reduce stress in one way or another.

While some people cope by spending time with family, others cope through misuse of substances such as drugs.

Categories

An article published by a scientific journal proved that there are four major categories associated with coping.

1. Meaning focused coping: Use of cognitive techniques to manage and derive a situation's meaning.

2. Social coping: Emotional or instrumental support seeking by someone's community to reduce stress.

3. Emotion focused coping: Reducing negative emotions associated with a situation or problem by using humour, religion, or acceptance, amongst more examples.

4. Problem focused coping: Addressing the stress-causing issue by active coping, suppression of completing tasks, planning, and more.

Psychological and Physiological Processes

Each person's psychological and physiological processes are different. Through new research, theoretical papers and articles published, scientists and researchers have discovered different challenges depending on someone's personality and lifestyle. Although one person may be comforted by taking deep breaths, another could require extra support to decrease anxiety stress and negative coping mechanisms.

Clinically significant research reports show that anxiety stress and coping involve similar symptoms including troubled sleep, muscle tensions, overwhelming thoughts, food issues, concentration problems, and anger amongst others. Although stress and anxiety can sometimes be motivational tools, if it is unmanaged and gets difficult to deal with, then they can lead to mental health issues. What is important when it comes to anxiety stress and coping is to have an understanding of physiological processes by being informed.

A publication on anxiety stated that it is not only psychological state but also physiological and behavioural. It comes out as a reaction to a threat to well-being or survival, or both, whether potential or actual.

Anxiety can involve a number of symptoms but can also include an neuroendocrine and autonomic activation, higher arousal, and person-specific behavioural patterns. Meta analyses on anxiety stress and coping report the benefits of this sense of anxiety and stress at times, but also report the importance of knowing how to manage it.

Experimental and Field Studies

According to a recent publication, real-life and experimentally-induced anxiety have no effect on someone's goal-directed behaviour, whether it be professional or personal. However, a person's relationship with their career goals, children or relationship can provoke different factors of stress.

Articles and journal publications show that a person's stress does not impair goal-directed interest. However, the diversity of anxiety stress and coping can have an effect on how a person will cope with it. Interpretative literature reviews have provided different contributing factors to anxiety stress and coping depending on the situation, reinforcing that each person will react and respond differently to stress.

Work-Related Anxiety Stress and Coping

Although everyone is expected to work hard, it is important to not let your work lead you into stress and anxiety because of overworking, causing you to burn-out. If this happens, it is at the expense of both your physical and mental health and can cause strain on your relationships. With more and more companies outlining the importance of a positive work environment, both the number of employees and employers have reported better business cultures.

In a diversity of articles and journals with scientific influence, it was found that stress related to fulfilling a deadline or a project isn’t necessarily negative. However, if it becomes a constant source of stress anxiety and coping it can have detrimental consequences so, if possible, it is crucial that you seek help as soon as possible.

High Performance Working

High Performance Working is an organisation-management approach which aims to stimulate efficient commitment and involvement to achieve high-level performance in work.

Companies like HeadClear, are helping other businesses create high performance working and engaged workforces through proactive employee wellbeing. It is important to highlight the link between business strategy and a proactive and motivated workforce. It is in the best interest of employers to consider how productivity, employee turnover reduction, and employee engagement goes hand in hand with a strong employee satisfaction culture in a company.

Engage, Motivate, and Support

Journal and article pieces, novel findings, and theoretically important scientific publication have all supported the importance of a supportive, inclusive and high performing work culture to build a business constructively and steadily. Such citations have found that breaking down communication barriers within a company leads to high functioning teams.

Research from specialised businesses have found that out of 100 people in the workplace, 17 struggle with mental health issues, which results in 430 lost work days a year due to stress, anxiety, and depression. This amounts to £130,000 in annual cost of mental health issues in the workplace, highlighting the importance of mental health attention in the workplace.

Wellbeing in the Workplace

More often than not companies are primarily interested in revenue and costs. However, in recent years researchers have disclosed novel findings in the importance of mental health and wellbeing for the functioning of a company. Journals with international readership such as Harvard Business Review and more have highlighted managerial issues in dealing with stress or other related topics in the workplace.

Technology and Mental Health in the Workplace

Technology has opened many doors both in professional and personal sectors of everyday life. Many companies have taken advantage of the cost-effective, time-efficient, and positive aspects of technology in the workplace. It is also important to take into account journal publications and methodologically sound research reports which support that "remote and hybrid employees are 22% happier".

What Companies can do to Improve Employee-Wellbeing

Firstly, open the discussion on the topic. Talking about mental health in the workplace is an effective way to increase job performance, job satisfaction and reduce sickness. Anxiety, stress, coping and related topics should be openly addressed in order to make work a safe space for discussing mental health, eliminating the idea that it needs to be a 'taboo' subject.

There are growing discussions within businesses that are offering advice on how managers, employers, and employees can support each other to optimise performance and create a better work environment. From daily wellbeing habits to home working, there are a number of positive mechanisms and coping processes to limit anxiety and stress. For example, employee focus groups, fun team bonding sessions such as group games or yoga or even some offices introducing 'therapy animals', used to bring comfort and fun into the workplace.

But the most effective way to support employee mental health is through widescale preventative support. HeadClear is an online platform that provides just that.