How to Recover from Work Stress, According to Science

While implementing these strategies can go a long way in helping you recover from work stress, sometimes we need additional support to truly thrive. That’s where LifeAt.io comes in – a revolutionary platform designed to provide a holistic approach to stress management and recovery. In our fast-paced and high-pressure work environments, stress has become a constant companion. Various factors, such as tight deadlines, heavy workloads, conflicts with colleagues, and job insecurity, contribute to this mounting pressure. Although some stress is unavoidable, chronic, unmanaged stress can result in negative outcomes, including anxiety, depression, burnout, and physical health problems like hypertension and a weakened immune system.

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  • But exercise also increases the demand for energy and cortisol, so if we desire to relieve stress, we may benefit more from lower-intensity exercises, like walking, swimming, or yoga.
  • This could be spent by taking a short walk away from the desk, eating a snack, talking to a friend or even meditating.

For people, operating in “low power mode” involves doing what you need to do while preserving what little energy you have left, says Sargent. Typically, that looks like knocking off not-totally-necessary items from your running to-do list and limiting any passive tasks (like mindless swiping or scrolling) that can contribute https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/dealing-with-internal-and-external-relapse-triggers/ to draining your battery power. You might’ve suspected that taking some time away from work would be the number-one item on this list—after all, an unmanageable workload is a primary cause of burnout. And granted, taking a full-scale vacation is an amazing thing to do when dealing with burnout, if you can swing it.

The Science of Weekend Recovery

Whether it’s cycling, salsa dancing, learning a musical instrument or a language—studies show that the mastery process can shut off stress activation even in the middle of work, at lunchtime, as well as at home. Identify things you want to learn, potential passions, and you crowd out negative affect with the positive vibe that comes from autonomy and competence. A passion can add eight hours of joy to your week, the ultimate antidote to stress. Research shows that mastery experiences are one of the best ways to promote recovery and knock out stress.

How To Actually Recover From Burnout Without Quitting Your Job, According to Burnout Experts

How to Recover from Work Stress, According to Science

“In these cases, the ‘social good’ approach may be a powerful alternative,” says Tsai. The idea had yet to be backed by scientific investigation, so Tsai and her team, alongside Gabrieli, saw an opportunity to rigorously probe this strategy. One emotion regulation strategy is “distancing,” where a person copes with a negative event by imagining it as happening far away, a long time ago, or from a third-person perspective.

daily recovery activities to overcome burnout and chronic work stress

The MIT team found that distancing and social good approaches helped diminish negative emotions. Participants reported feeling better when they used these strategies after viewing adverse content compared to when they did not, and stated that both strategies were easy to implement. When stress is hitting you daily, the idea of relaxation may seem impossible.

Sonnentag authored a 2018 study published in Research in Organization Behavior that helped to explain why the paradox is so hard to escape. People who were more stressed out at work how to destress after work tended to get less exercise and worse sleep, an ideal scenario for feeling less than great. In other words, stressful work can disrupt the very fundamentals of healthy living.

How to Recover from Work Stress, According to Science

Even more so, since it’s so easy for them to just keep going without self-boundaries at home. Each group was asked to use their assigned cognitive strategy to respond to half of the negative images. For example, while looking at a distressing image, a person in the distancing group could have imagined that it was a screenshot from a movie. Conversely, a subject in the social good group might have responded to the image by envisioning that they were a first responder saving people from harm. For the other half of the negative images, participants were asked to only look at them and pay close attention to their emotions. The researchers asked the participants how they felt after each image was shown.

  • Coping with and learning how to recover from burnout can feel difficult, but it’s important to keep in mind that it is possible to recover from burnout (without quitting your job) if you embrace certain habits and tap into the right tools and resources.
  • She does feel confident saying that most workers will need at least occasional breaks that are longer than just a weekend, especially if that weekend is largely eaten up by household chores and other non-work obligations.
  • Typically, that looks like knocking off not-totally-necessary items from your running to-do list and limiting any passive tasks (like mindless swiping or scrolling) that can contribute to draining your battery power.
  • So it may be helpful to try meditation for stress relief and see if it’s a good fit for you.
  • The study also tracked mindfulness, the degree to which people are conscious of their present emotions and circumstances.

The timeline for burnout recovery depends on the person and the situation, says Sargent. At the same time, according to research conducted in on person-job fit and physical well-being, experiencing burnout can also result in physical symptoms, much like how other forms of prolonged (and unmanaged) chronic stress can affect the body. You can tell you’re burned out when you’re encountering ongoing physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress, says burnout coach Erayna Sargent, founder of workplace wellness organization Hooky Wellness. That’s to say, burnout is an all-encompassing experience and takes place over a period of time.

How to Recover from Work Stress, According to Science