Based on your answers to the quiz questions, your best path through work stress is the:
Based on your answers to the quiz questions, your best path through work stress is the Body Path.
Women walking the Body Path benefit from stress relief approaches that calm the negative impact stress is having on one’s body.
When it comes to how work stress might show up for you, no body part is off limits from its terrible effects. Muscle tension is a sign of stress frequently felt in the neck and shoulders. While long hours at a computer screen may be partially responsible for this type of tension, many women carry work stress in the neck and shoulder area. Just the thought of work can trigger problems for those parts of your body most vulnerable to carrying tension. Many women experience headaches or even migraines with their work stress.
Work stress also leaves you feeling restless. It’s like the stress gets under your skin and you just can’t sit still. You’re constantly on edge at work. During your time off, reminders of work can bring on that all too familiar and edgy feeling.
Women on the Body Path are prone to disruptions to their usual healthy routines when stressed out from work. Stress can actually make us lose our appetites. Many of us are familiar with “stress eating” as well. Other times we’re just too tired to work out. You know exercise would help you let off steam, but your exhaustion from work stress is too high to even think about showing up at the gym. It really gets a vicious cycle going.
It also doesn’t help having work cultures that glamorize stress. We have to wear stress like a badge of honor or our coworkers think we’re just not dedicated to the job. A great deal of suffering comes with that sign of prestige you’re wearing though.
Women on the Body Path deeply feel the negative impact of work stress. It seems impossible to experience the peace you truly desire when you can literally feel work stress hurting your body.
Here’s some good news: there are lots of ways to use the power of your body to comfort and soothe the enormous toll that stress has been taking. Women on the Body Path benefit from stress relief techniques like deep calm breathing and progressive muscle relaxation.
Many of the ways stress shows up in our bodies – whether that’s muscle tension, feeling on edge, or an upset stomach – can be understood as automatic responses of our threat defense system. This happens because your body is perceiving work stress as a threat from which you need to protect yourself and automatically kicks into fight or flight mode. The opposite of the fight or flight response is the relaxation response. Deep calm breathing helps us make the shift from the fight or flight response to the relaxation response.
Progressive muscle relaxation is a stress relief technique that directly targets those tense muscles. Women using this approach learn to tense and then release different muscle groups in a step-by-step fashion. Some women describe feeling like they’ve just had a massage after trying this stress relief tool.
WHAT’S WORK STRESS LIKE FOR YOU?
Your work culture glamorizes stress. You need to be stressed out all the time so your colleagues think you’re dedicated.
You have a demanding boss with unreasonable expectations. You need to work beyond natural limits as an employee.
You go to work early and stay late. And when you’re out of the office, you still get calls and emails expecting immediate follow up like it’s no big deal.
Work pressures never let up and you can barely catch your breath. Even a moment to yourself is not peaceful because all those work worries and “shoulds” keep you constantly in stress mode.
You beat yourself up mentally about snapping at loved ones, words you know in your soul you never would have uttered were you not so stressed out from work.
You’ve been hearing about the Great Resignation and wish you could quit, too. The work stress has gotten that bad, but quitting just isn’t a practical option for you. This leaves you feeling stuck and worried about the consequences of long-term work stress to your overall health and well-being.
If you caught yourself nodding along to any of these and don’t know what steps you can take, then the on-demand video workshop I created, Your Path Through Work Stress, is for you. This workshop will enhance your understanding of the impact of work stress AND help you get started with using stress relief tools!
By dedicating time for this quiz, you’ve already taken the first step down your best path through work stress!
Would you like to step further and gain an even deeper understanding of your stress relief path? Plus, get answers to questions like:
What if some of my choices to the quiz questions were a close call between two responses? Would I benefit from that other stress relief path, too?
What are the other paths through work stress anyways?
Is all work stress bad?
Are there any other stress relief tools for my path?
How do I even get started using the stress relief tools for my path?
All these questions and more are answered in my on-demand video workshop, Your Path Through Work Stress. This workshop is valued at $77, but as a thank you for taking the quiz, you can grab it for $27!
Hi there!
At different phases of my career I, just like you right now, found myself burdened by work stress. It got to a point where I could no longer deny the enormous toll work stress was taking on my emotional well-being and physical health.
I had to face a difficult truth about my own work stress: I was often my own worst critic and held myself to unreasonable standards of perfection. Showing myself compassion both with how I spoke to myself and treated my body were essential to managing those peak times of stress throughout my career.
I currently operate a private psychotherapy practice that specializes in helping women find relief from work stress. Before that, I spearheaded a stress management initiative for an entire hospital workforce to help my fellow employees in that fast-paced, high pressure work environment. I want to share more than just my credentials with you though.
I want you to know that I had to find my own path through work stress to reclaim my peace. And now, I’m confident that my on-demand video workshop, Your Path Through Work Stress will get you further down your path to stress relief, too.
I’m Dr. Jennifer McManus
What psychologists and therapists are saying about Dr. Jennifer McManus:
During the Your Path Through Work Stress workshop, you will:
Go Deeper Down Your Path to Stress Relief: Learn more about your path to stress relief, better understand how you experience work stress, and review which stress relief tools are best suited for you.
Learn About the Other Paths to Stress Relief: To quench your curiosity about those close call quiz questions, the Mind Path, Body Path, Spirit Path, and Harmony Path will all be explored in greater depth.
Discover How the Stress Relief Paths Can Work Together: There are many paths to the same destination and so too for relief from work stress. This workshop provides guidance on taking a balanced approach to stress relief by tapping into other paths when you may need them.
Get Familiar with Different Types of Stress: Not all stress is the same. This workshop introduces you to the difference between healthy stress, acute stress, and chronic stress so you can better understand where on the continuum your experience of work stress falls.
You’ll also be invited to participate in a…
Guided Stress Relief Exercise
During the last portion of the workshop, I will lead you through a guided stress relief exercise that incorporates all the paths. Whether you’re on the Mind, Body, Spirit, or Harmony Path to stress relief, the guided stress relief exercise will include pieces designed specifically for women on your path. After guiding you through the exercise, I will demystify the process and breakdown the stress relief value of each piece so you will know exactly why it helps with work stress. You can come back to re-experience the guided stress relief exercise whenever you’d like with your lifetime access to the workshop.
You might be thinking...
“I don’t have time for the type of lifestyle change that’s needed to help with my level of work stress. Just the thought of it’s overwhelming.”
What if we shifted our thinking from a lifestyle overhaul to daily 5-minute commitments to trying something new that can help reduce our stress level? Just like you did by taking the quiz.
Most people would agree they can try anything that’s potentially helpful for 5 minutes. Dedicating 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there gradually adds up to some serious lifestyle change that can help you better manage work stress.
