I have had contrasting experiences of completing stress risk assessments at work.

Completing an assessment with my line manager, once I had been signed off with work-related stress, was a cathartic experience. It enabled us to document all the different aspects of the job which were causing me stress. I felt this was useful because it gave us a shared understanding of what was going on for me. I talked while my manager completed the form. On reading it back afterwards, I felt he had listened and understood what I was thinking and feeling. Capturing all the stressful aspects of the job in one place also helped validate my anxiety; there was a lot to capture, which took the best part of a day. No wonder I was stressed!

Clearly articulating the causes of my stress also enabled me to reflect further on my own. I identified the thinking which was underlying why I was finding things so stressful; I needed to do a good job.

Once I had returned to work, I appreciated being able to talk to my manager and other colleagues about what was going on for me and how I was feeling, without them jumping in to try to fix anything. Instead, they enabled me to reflect and identify what to do next.

I undertook a subsequent risk assessment some time after I had returned to work. I was working on different projects and had survived being re-interviewed for my job. However, I was feeling increasingly anxious and it was suggested that I should complete another assessment; to see if there were things to change at work to prevent my stress from escalating.

I then had an “aha” moment when reading “Mindfulness a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world” by Mark Williams and Danny Penman. I hadn’t realised how powerful emotions could be in transporting me back into the past. The book explains that when we feel an emotion in the present, the brain searches for instances when we have felt that emotion in the past, to help identify any patterns and decide how best to react. However, recalling memories of previous stress and anxiety intensifies these emotions, causing us to think there really is something we should be worrying about, a threat we need to respond to. The logical brain naturally kicks in to try and solve the problem, using rational critical thinking. I had been asking myself: What is wrong with me? Why do I feel stressed?

Mark and Danny explain that this questioning is disastrous because of the interconnection between thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations. The critical thinking and trawling for memories reinforce the feelings of stress and anxiety. This leads to more critical thinking and we enter a vicious cycle. This can mean that a relatively innocuous feeling of anxiety (or any other unpleasant emotion) can “whip up an emotional squall”. In this case, my anxiety and stress did seem out of proportion to the situation.

Reading this had a powerful effect on me because it helped break that cycle. I realised that there wasn’t anything “wrong” with me; what I was experiencing was in fact totally normal. The relief of that realisation reduced some of the anxiety. I also realised that through the process of undertaking the stress risk assessment, my managers and I were basically trying to problem-solve an emotion. And that is why the process was making me feel worse.

I had not been immediately conscious of the associations my brain had made so quickly between my current situation and the causes of my previous stress. As the authors point out “you can’t stop the triggering of unhappy memories, negative self-talk and judgemental ways of thinking – but what you can stop is what happens next.” By becoming aware of the process at play, I no longer needed to try to explain what was going on. The anxiety was no longer a problem to be solved, but an emotion to observe with curiosity until it dissipated on its own.

There are situations where changes to the external environment should be made to alleviate stress and it is important to identify what could be changed and how. However, emotions themselves are not problems to be solved.

I consciously avoid asking why I am feeling anxious as this would open the door for problem-solving and critical thinking. Once I am more fully aware of what is going on, I can make better informed decisions about what I will do next, if anything.

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• Blog post main image: GoodIdeas / Stock.abobe.com
• Image of problem-solving stress: carballo / Stock.adobe.com
• Image of message in a bottle: joserpizzaro / Stock.adobe.com

• Managing anxiety and stress