Is Your Job Affecting Your Mental Health?

A job can look perfectly fine on paper and still leave you feeling exhausted, tense, or on edge.

Maybe you notice your jaw tightening on the drive to work, or your stomach knots up on Sunday evening when you think about Monday morning. You come home tired, but instead of relaxing, you find yourself snapping at your partner, getting irritated with your children, or losing patience over things that normally would not bother you.

Work takes up a significant part of our lives, so it makes sense that the environment we spend those hours in can affect how we feel physically and emotionally. Australian researchers found that a toxic workplace can do more damage to your mental health than unemployment.

Dr. Gabor Maté explores a similar idea in his book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. When discussing the effects of stressful environments, he points out that when someone says, “This job is killing me,” they may actually be describing what their body is experiencing.

So what happens when work stops feeling manageable and starts affecting the rest of your life?

When Work Stress Follows You Home

You can finish your shift, close your laptop, and leave the office, but that does not necessarily mean your stress stays behind.

If you spend your day dealing with criticism, conflict, unrealistic expectations, long hours, uncertainty, or a lack of control, your body continues responding to those pressures long after the workday ends.

You might replay conversations in your head while driving home. You may have trouble falling asleep because you are thinking about tomorrow. Or you may feel so emotionally drained that you have very little left for the people you care about.

Over time, this starts affecting your relationships as well as your own sense of well-being.

When Your Nervous System Stays on Alert

When a workplace feels unpredictable, threatening, or chronically stressful, your nervous system remains on high alert.

Your brain is constantly taking in information and assessing whether you are safe. When it senses a threat, your body’s stress response prepares you to protect yourself. Your heart rate may increase, your muscles may tense, and stress hormones such as cortisol are released.

That response can be helpful when you need to deal with an immediate threat. But when the stress continues day after day, your body does not get enough opportunity to settle and recover.

Over time, this contributes to exhaustion, anxiety, poor sleep, irritability, difficulty concentrating, and a shorter fuse. You find yourself reacting more strongly to situations that normally would not bother you.

Your Body Knows When Something Is Wrong

Stress is not only something you experience in your thoughts. It can show up throughout your body.

A tight jaw. A knot in your stomach. Tense shoulders. Headaches. Restlessness. Trouble sleeping. Feeling exhausted even after resting. You may also notice that you are more easily startled, impatient, or irritated.

These reactions do not automatically mean that your job is the cause of everything you are experiencing. But when they consistently show up around work, they are worth paying attention to.

This is where approaches such as Somatic Experiencing, developed by Dr. Peter Levine, can be helpful. Somatic Experiencing works with the body to help people process stress and support the nervous system in returning to a greater sense of safety.

The first step is simply noticing what is happening. What do you feel in your body when you think about work? Where are you holding tension? What happens to your breathing when you are under pressure? What do you notice just before your patience disappears?

These are signals, not character flaws.

Rather than judging yourself for feeling tense, anxious, exhausted, or angry, you can become curious about what your body is responding to and what you have been carrying.

What Can You Do When Work Is Affecting You?

Recognizing that work is affecting you does not mean you have to quit your job tomorrow. That simply is not realistic. But there are things you can begin doing to protect your well-being.

Create Space Between Work and Home

If you carry the workday straight into your evening, give yourself some time to transition before moving on to everything else.

Take a short walk before going inside. Sit quietly in your car for a few minutes. Change your clothes when you get home. Put your phone away. Take a few slow breaths and notice how your body feels.

If frustration has been building throughout the day, you might also write down what happened and how it made you feel, talk to someone you trust, or simply take a few moments to notice where you are holding tension.

These small pauses will not fix a difficult workplace, but they can give your body a chance to recognize that the workday has ended. They can also create a little more space between what you are feeling and how you respond.

The goal is not to pretend everything is fine. It is to give yourself enough room to process what you are carrying so that the stress of the day does not automatically spill over into your evening or your relationships.

Pay Attention to What You Can Control

One of the most exhausting parts of a difficult workplace can be feeling like you have no control.

While you are not able to change your manager, coworkers, company policies, or workload, there may be things you can control.

• Can you set clearer boundaries around when you are available? 
• Can you take your breaks instead of working through them? 
• Can you stop checking work messages late at night? 
• Can you ask for clearer expectations or discuss an unreasonable workload?

Separating what you can influence from what you cannot can help reduce the feeling that you are responsible for everything happening around you.

Consider What Needs to Change

As you become more aware of how work is affecting you, it may be worth asking what could make the situation more manageable.

You may need clearer expectations, stronger boundaries, a conversation with your employer, a change in responsibilities, or perhaps a different work environment.

You do not have to figure out your entire future today. Start by identifying what is contributing to the stress and what, if anything, you have the ability to change.

You Do Not Have to Carry This by Yourself

If work has left you feeling constantly angry, anxious, exhausted, or overwhelmed, talking with a counsellor can give you space to understand what is happening and explore healthier ways of responding.

At Moose Anger Management, our counsellors work with men, women, couples, and families dealing with anger, anxiety, stress, trauma, relationship difficulties, and other challenges. Counselling is available online and in person.

If your job is affecting how you feel, how you respond, or how you relate to the people around you, it may be worth taking a closer look.

You deserve support while you figure out what your mind and body have been trying to tell you.

Whether you are looking for online groups, individual therapy, couples counselling, or free resources, there are options available to help you. New groups begin every four weeks, so you can find the right program when you are ready.

Take the next step:

• Call us for a confidential consultation
• Join our group programs for men or women
• Access one-on-one counselling tailored to your needs

Visit angerman.ca or contact us at info@angerman.ca or 604-723-5134 to learn more.