Is Work Stress Becoming Bigger Than the Facts?

A Small Email Becomes A Spiral

0:21 SPEAKER_00: This great story teaches us something about being human. I'm Cheryl Parris and this is Work Stress Anxiety. Together, let's borrow a little wisdom from a story to help us navigate a very modern world.

0:43 SPEAKER_01: I want you to picture my friend Marcia reading a short work email. It's about 4:45 in the afternoon. By the time she gets home, she could still be thinking about it. What it meant, whether she had disappointed someone, whether this is the beginning of a much bigger problem. Remember, the email may have only been a few lines, but the meaning she carries home could take considerably longer to explain. And perhaps you recognise that.

Cheryl’s Background And The Series

1:52 SPEAKER_01: Anyway, who am I? I'm Cheryl Parris, right? Yes, I am Cheryl Parris. I'm a clinical hypnotherapist and stress recovery coach. And guess what? This is my podcast, and it's called Worst Work Stress Anxiety. I can't even say it. Work, stress, anxiety. Um, and before we go any further, you know, I want to say a particular thank you to the listener in Stamford, North Carolina, who listened to burnt out recovery, work stress, and burnout prevention strategies for women. Thank you for spending some of your time with me.

2:35 SPEAKER_01: Wherever you're listening from today, I'm really glad you're here. You know, this is an episode in what I call my work stress evidence bank series. You can listen to it on its own because we're beginning with something small here, noticing what happens when a difficult experience becomes a much bigger statement about who we are.

When Work Performance Feels Like Worth

3:05 SPEAKER_01: Now, I remember being younger and feeling very insecure, particularly around how I looked. If I'm honest, I'm still pretty insecure about how I look, if I'm honest. And I remember at the time I worked for a marketing research company, and part of my um part of my job involved uh conducting telephone interviews for a very well-known coffee brand. Hint hint. Anyway, I had a quota of interviews to complete, and I would meet them, right? In that shift. And looking back, I think that work helped me develop my telephone skills.

3:54 SPEAKER_01: Now, am I saying I'm the best speaker? No, I'm just saying that it made me more confident in doing what I'm doing now, speaking into a microphone. You know, people often tell me I have a warm voice, a warm way of speaking. I remember my uh a friend of mine saying to me, Cheryl, you always really engage with people and use it when you're talking to someone, you I noticed that you use their name a lot. And I said, Do I? And I and and they said, Yeah, you do. And they go, it all you always bring that conversation back to that person.

4:33 SPEAKER_01: And I went, oh wow. So I think the way I engage with people, I tried to be empathetic. It's I think it's helped me with the job. That's what I'm saying. Um, there was something I could do, something I was doing, yet I also remember working for at the time for a manager around who I felt increasingly unsure of myself, and then my competence. It felt to me as though my insecurity was something they could probably use to exert control over me. I can't know exactly what the intention was at the time, and I'm not making a judgment here.

5:26 SPEAKER_01: I'm just I'm just doing I'm just remembering what I remember, and I do remember how much time I spent wondering whether I was good enough. And I remember there was an uncomfortable part. I could meet my quota and still doubt myself, and the evidence that I was doing the work didn't automatically become a feeling that I was capable. And you know, and I remember spending a lot of time ruminating, going over things again and again and questioning myself. And for me, the more I did that, the worse I felt, the worse I felt, the more I doubted myself, um, the more I wanted someone else to actually reassure me that I was doing alright.

6:13 SPEAKER_01: That was the loop. It wasn't simply a question of whether I had completed the interviews. Somehow my sense of worth had become involved. That is quite a lot to ask of market research, right?

Real Workplace Problems Versus Self Verdicts

6:30 SPEAKER_01: Perhaps your version may look different. You may be perfectly aware of what you of what you've completed. You know, you've completed the work. You can see the finished report, you know you prepared for that meeting or that presentation. Then someone's response leaves you uncertain, and suddenly the completed work seems to count for very little. You find yourself thinking about their expression, their tone, the part they didn't acknowledge. There may be a real problem in that interaction. You may need to leave the room for that.

7:11 SPEAKER_01: That's happened to me. The amount of times I've made excuses to go to the loo. Well, I didn't really want to go to the loo, I just wanted a few minutes to reset. You know, someone can be undermining. Feedback can be vague, unfair, and unnecessarily personal. You know, a workplace can arc too much and then behave as though your difficulty keeping up is some surprising character flaw. And for me, no amount of careful journaling makes that reasonable. What I'm interested in here is that additional conclusion you may find yourself carrying that something difficult happened.

8:03 SPEAKER_01: And then perhaps this proves I'm not good enough. They are completely different statements, both deserve attention, but they need different kinds of attention. One asks us to understand an event or a pattern of behavior, and the other turns your whole competency, perhaps your whole feeling of worth, into the subject under discussion. You know, when I look back at that younger version of myself, I can see how much importance I gave to whether someone else appeared to approve of me. I wanted that reassurance.

8:50 SPEAKER_01: There is nothing shameful about wanting encouragement, particularly when you feel already, you know, maybe a little bit unsure. But my own experience was that going over the same doubts didn't give me the steadiness I was looking for. It made those doubts feel more central to me.

Rumination Versus Useful Reflection

9:13 SPEAKER_01: And perhaps that's a useful question for you too. When you return to a work problem in your mind, are you learning something new about it? Or are you arriving at the same painful conclusion, but you just have a little less energy this time? You know, reflection might help you identify a specific mistake, a question to ask, or something you may want to do differently. But if you keep returning to what is wrong with me in your head, it can be difficult to find a useful stopping point. What answer would even feel sufficient?

9:56 SPEAKER_01: You may begin to examine one conversation and end up questioning whether you belong in the job at all.

10:05 SPEAKER_01: And repetition can feel like a a bit like confirmation. You have a thought, it's so often that it seems familiar, and that familiarity may make it harder to question. Now, there is something very useful about familiarity that you can use to your advantage, and that's what uh I talk about in my ABGW method. But moving on, because I'm gonna digress otherwise. I want you to think about it this way. Having the same thought again does not by itself give you another piece of evidence. There is an image I'd like you to play with for one moment, right?

The Chameleon Lens And Absolute Words

10:58 SPEAKER_01: I think they live in the desert, okay? A chameleon. I want you to imagine what a chameleon looks like. Imagine seeing it in one color, then picture that same creature in another. Now your impression of it might change, even though you are still looking at the same creature. Now bring that idea gently to a work situation. Perhaps your mind has coloured it with embarrassment or uncertainty, or perhaps the words around it, you know, those uh universal words of always, never, everyone. I always get this wrong.

11:51 SPEAKER_01: They all think I'm incapable. And once those words are there, it may become difficult to see a particular event beneath them. We're not going to insist on painting everything a cheerful colour, right? Some experiences, especially in the workplace, can be genuinely unpleasant. You don't have to make them attractive here. All I'm asking you to do is simply to notice the colour that is already there. What have I come to believe this event means? How certain am I? And does the wording describe what happened?

12:35 SPEAKER_01: Or does it describe what I'm afraid it proves? So here's one experiment for your journal or your evidence bank.

The Two Line Journal Experiment

12:46 SPEAKER_01: When you have a quiet minute and it's safe to write, choose one manageable work moment, something recent that you keep returning to in your mind. Write two lines. The first is what happened, keep that as specific and as factual as you can. And for Marcia, depending on what that email actually contained, that might be I received an email asking me to revise part of my work. If it contained an insult, the fact would need to include that. Accuracy doesn't require you to soften someone else's behavior, okay?

13:31 SPEAKER_01: The second line is what did my mind immediately make of it? Perhaps the your immediate thought was oh, they think I'm failing at my job. Then look at the two lines beside each other. An email asking for revision, a conclusion about your ability to do your job. They may be a considerable distance between them. Circle any absolute words you notice. Absolute words are like universal words, like always, never, everyone, ruined, impossible. You don't have to argue with every thought. I want you to start by noticing how much certainty those words contain.

14:24 SPEAKER_01: You might change I always get things wrong, too. I'm having the thought that I always get things wrong. You know, that small change doesn't establish what's true, but do you guess what it does? It simply identifies the sentence as a thought you can examine. Now, someone might say something to you and you still feel quite upset by it. The aim here is not to demand that you have an immediate change in those feelings, right? Most of the time, the way we initially feel about something is the right reaction to have.

15:03 SPEAKER_01: And I'm not trying to take that away from you. For me, it is to make what happened and what you fear it meant a little easier to actually distinguish. And keep this exercise small. Two lines are enough. And if you find yourself writing another lengthy case against you, you can stop, you can stop that because this is not an invitation to produce more in you know information or material for any more rumination. You may discover that you you may discover, right, that there is something concrete when you do this to address.

15:49 SPEAKER_01: Maybe you need to clarify something or a mistake to correct behavior you need support with. Or you may discover that you don't yet have enough information to reach a conclusion, and that's okay too. Saying, I don't know yet. I wish more people would actually say that. I think uh the workplace would be a lot more simpler to navigate. But the thing is, saying that I don't know yet, can be a more accurate place to stand than saying everything's falling apart here.

What To Do With What You Find

16:28 SPEAKER_01: And if you're a distress that you feel is severe or getting worse or affecting your health, please seek appropriate support. You know, the idea of the journal is that it can accompany that support, it doesn't need to come first. You know, looking back at my own experience, meeting my quota did not answer every question about that workplace. It did, however, matter. I was engaging with people, I was completing interviews, those facts deserve a place alongside my perceived doubts. Perhaps some facts in your own work life deserve to be included again.

Support, Evidence, And Listener Call In

17:18 SPEAKER_01: Very much so. And if there is a work stress question you would like me to explore in a future episode, you can suggest it at podcastfeedback.com forward slash work stress anxiety. I'll say that again, podcastfeedback.com forward slash work stress anxiety.

Closing Reminders And Takeaways

17:42 SPEAKER_01: You know, a difficult moment can be real without becoming a description of your whole work in life. Today, if you notice yourself going over one moment again and again, I want you to try those two lines. What happened? What did my mind make of it? Let them sit beside each other before deciding they are the same thing. The feeling deserves care. The verdict deserves a closer look. And remember, every step you take, no matter how small, is a step towards a brighter, more balanced future. So trust your journey and remember, progress is progress, no matter the pace.

18:47 SPEAKER_00: Now finish your coffee, take a breath, and remember progress is progress no matter the pace. Until next time, bye for now.