Stress Coping Ways for Professional Career Women
Category : Women Business
While many women have earned as many achievements as men at professional world, they still often feel stressed more than men. This can be caused by many factors, like juggling between double tasks as a career woman and mother, gender discrimination, or psychological factors like low self-confidence and inability to cope with various obstacles and stress factors.
Some problems sometimes come from our own mind. Many professionals, especially women, suffer from the “imposter syndrome” in which they believe they are intellectual frauds, consider themselves less competent than they really are, do not internalize their successes, and fear being “found out.” Professionals who feel like impostors are more vulnerable to the negative health effects of stress.
Being a professional career woman is not an easy task, especially if she has to create balance between work and family. To avoid getting health and psychological problems from stress, here are some stress coping ways for professional career women.
Problem-focused coping are take-charge strategies that deal with the problem at hand or eliminate the stressors through problem solving. It is often enhances feelings of control and reduces stress and its adverse consequences, assuming that the situation can be changed. Positive forms of emotion-focused coping deal with the emotional reactions one has to the stressful event. When a situation is unchangeable, emotion-focused coping may lead to healthier adaptation.
Negative forms of emotion-focused coping, such as denial, self-blame, and ruminative coping (repeatedly thinking about the problem without trying to change it), are associated with maladaptive health outcomes. While some research suggests that men are more likely to use problem-focused coping strategies and women emotion-focused strategies, when education and career are accounted for gender differences in coping style disappear.
A social-support network is associated with lower perceived work-home conflict, increased job and life satisfaction, enhanced perceptions of control, and fewer stress-related health problems. Women are more likely to seek social support than men and tend to demonstrate greater health benefits from social support. Seek social support from formal sources of support, such as mentoring programs, as well as informal support groups like brown-bag lunch groups and e-mail discussion lists. Seek opportunities to interact with friends, easing perceptions of isolation.
Of course, we must also look for opportunities to relax. Determine what must be done now, what can wait, and what requires consistent small bursts of activity. Allocate your time alongside your priorities: spend time first with your children and then find time for the housework. Decide to let some parts of your home receive less attention. Of course, rely on your spouse and ask him or her to lend a hand every day.
Making time for yourself is as simple as allocating a couple of hours each week without work, family obligations, or chores. It will go a long way in helping you maintain some semblance of balance.
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