How To Handle Recession Job Stress

The office grapevine is rife with rumors of yet more layoffs. Your workload has increased exponentially. Since your office confidante got axed in the last bloodbath, you can't call her up and complain. And your new supervisor expects you to meet a crushing deadline by month's end.

American workers have never had to cope with so much anxiety and confusion on the job. "Everybody is as stressed as I've ever seen," reports Joan Kane, a Manhattan psychologist who has worked as a therapist for 22 years. "The stress level is off the charts."

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Is there any way to stay calm amid the chaos?

According to Kane, the usual therapeutic approaches do not apply right now. "In therapy, we try to help patients discover who they really are," she explains. "In this environment, it's more helpful to not necessarily be your authentic self." Instead, she says, you need to show that you can adapt. "Even if things are horrible and morale is low, you do not want to go in and say so to your boss. Instead you want to describe how what you're doing is positive and talk about what you've created and why you're successful."

An added challenge is wondering whether your boss will survive the next round of cuts. "You have to try to be strategic about whom you please," Kane says.

Many workers whose central focus in life was their job have had to set their sights elsewhere. Patients who complained about their work for years are suddenly clamming up. "They feel they have no right to complain, because they've got a job," says Paul Browde, a New York psychiatrist. "Underneath, they are more stressed than ever before. It's like living with a continual chronic stress disorder." Many shift their conflicts to the home front. "People are starting to have marital and health issues," Browde observes.

Browde encourages his patients to be aware of their anxiety. Know that eventually this phase must pass. Meanwhile, find time for relaxation and exercise, even if you must engage in a shorter than optimal routine. "Even if it's just five minutes of relaxation exercises a day, it's important," he counsels.

Billie A. Pivnick, a psychologist who teaches in the clinical psychology doctoral program at Columbia University's Teachers College, breaks stress responses into categories, depending on personality type. There are people who get overwhelmed and then withdraw, logging multiple sick days and absences. There are others who manically dive into workaholic mode while displaying irritability and picking fights with their colleagues.

Some freeze as though caught between the impulses of fight and flight. "Those are the folks who wind up getting into trouble with substance abuse, sex on the job or other inappropriate things that make them less functional," says Pivnick, who designed a pioneering stress management program for cardiac rehab patients back in the 1970s.

A fourth category includes the most well-adjusted people, who exhibit what Pivnick calls a "secure response." They hang back for a moment and assess the situation before moving forward in a judicious way.

Pivnick suggests different coping techniques for each personality type. People with a tendency to withdraw should find an exercise routine that keeps them active. For manic workaholics, Pivnick prescribes deep breathing, meditation and diverting their attention from work by socializing or going to movies. "Those people need a life," she says. For those who freeze, it's important to find a mentor or attachment figure at work who can help them move forward.

Dorothy Cantor, a psychologist in Westfield, N.J., says that beleaguered workers should realize that it's normal to feel anxious at times like these. "Don't add to your own discomfort and anxiety by being self-critical," says Cantor. "Too many people pathologize what they're feeling. You just have to tolerate it. Time will heal it.
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