You close your laptop, but the day stays in your head. There’s the email you haven’t answered, the conversation you wish had gone differently, the project that is now somehow yours. Someone asks how you are and all you can think to say is, “A bit stressed,” because dinner needs making and you haven’t quite found the right words for everything else.
It’s a useful word, stressed. It can hold so much. The anxious feeling before a meeting. The frustration of another moveable deadline. The loneliness of being the person everyone comes to while wondering who you can turn to yourself. Sometimes we know we’re stressed long before we understand what is contributing to it.
For Stress Awareness Week, I’ve been thinking about a framework from the Health and Safety Executive. Its Management Standards identify six areas of working life that can contribute to stress: demands, control, support, relationships, role and change. These are areas for employers to address; employers have a duty to assess and act on work-related stress risks. You can read the HSE’S guidance here.
Below we get into the emotional side of these stressors. Perhaps one of these will help you find a little more language for what’s happening.
Demands: when everything needs something from you
There’s the work you’re paid to do, and then everything else that gathers around it. The messages, the organising, the remembering. You begin the day already behind and end it thinking about what you didn’t manage. This is when we can start to experience a feeling of overwhelm, alongside guilt about stopping for the day or anxiety about letting someone down.
Before asking how you could become more organised, it might help to ask: What is being asked of me, and what capacity do I actually have? Include the things that don’t appear on your calendar but still take time and energy.
Control: when you have responsibility without much choice
Perhaps you’re accountable for something but have little influence over the deadline, the process or the decisions affecting it. Or you’ve built your own business for greater freedom and discovered that clients, finances and expectations can make that freedom feel surprisingly small.
There might be frustration here, or a sense of being trapped. You may recognise anxiety in constantly anticipating someone else’s next decision. Where would having more say make a difference? It could be a substantial change, or something smaller that just needs articulating in a conversation.
Support: when being capable becomes being left to cope
If you’re usually the person who manages, people can stop checking whether you need help. And you might have become so accustomed to carrying things that you don’t think to ask until you’re exhausted. Even then, explaining what you need can feel like another task.
Feeling disconnected can happen in a busy workplace, surrounded by people. Support might mean practical help, clearer guidance or someone listening without immediately offering a solution. What would help, and who might be able to offer it?
Relationships: when the conversation follows you home
You’re replaying a comment while brushing your teeth. Rewriting an email so nobody could possibly misunderstand it. Saying yes because you can already imagine the discomfort of saying no. The work itself might be manageable, but the relationships around it leave you watchful and tired.
This is somewhere to notice anger, hurt, apprehension or resentment, without deciding you’re being too sensitive. What happens between us that I keep holding onto afterwards? Sometimes the answer points towards a boundary or conversation. Sometimes it points towards behaviour that needs addressing within the organisation.
Role: when you no longer know what is yours
Your responsibilities have grown, but nothing has been taken away. Two people want different things from you. You’re praised for stepping in, then find that stepping in has somehow become your job. It gets harder to know when you’ve done enough.
Feeling lost can begin here: unclear expectations gradually affecting your sense of yourself and your work. What am I responsible for, what am I assuming responsibility for, and where do I need clarity?
Change: when you’re adapting before you’ve caught up
A new manager, a restructure, a colleague leaving. Change can bring possibility and still feel unsettling. You may be learning new ways of working while missing something about the old ones, without much opportunity to say so.
Uncertainty needs room in this conversation. What do I need to understand, what have I lost, and what support would help me adjust?
You don’t need to explore all six today. Start with the one you recognised most quickly. Notice what comes with it: anxiety, overwhelm, disconnection, uncertainty, feeling lost, or exhaustion that has you wondering about burnout?
If you need more support for what you’re experiencing, what you need and what choices might help explore our 1:1 coaching sessions here.