My Job Gives Me Anxiety. Should I Quit: 7 Essential Solutions

Introduction

Anxiety is excessive and persistent worry or fear of a stimulus – a person, situation, event, etc. Job being an important aspect of our life, it can cause anxiety. We may attribute this anxiety to some perceived insufficiency in ourselves or to external factors like perceived threats at work or upcoming changes.

My Job Gives Me Anxiety

  Our job has an important role in our well-being, bringing in an identity and helping in continuous self-growth.  A workplace can be a place to collaborate, learn new skills, and build a support system, bringing a sense of purpose to life. At the same time, it can be anxiety-provoking because of the continuous need to adapt to new changes, performance demands, and the hierarchical nature of the organizations we work in. The job anxiety that is observed is most frequently due to elevated levels of cognitive anxiety, such as existential worries and ideas of exploitation at work (1). Certain specific professions can bring in specific types of anxieties, such as performance pressure in artists and post-traumatic stress anxiety in healthcare providers, as they may be first responders to mass disasters like the recent covid 19 pandemic.  Studies have found that workplace anxiety may sometimes present solely and at other times with other primary anxiety disorders. (1),(2)

Work Anxiety

 Job anxiety has many domains. Sometimes, it may be more like a persistent worry and apprehension about the workplace. At other times, it may be regarding perceived insufficiency in us against the standards at work. We may also have a specific fear of being scrutinized by senior colleagues, giving rise to specific social anxieties towards them, and may sometimes suffer from the fear of persecution by rival colleagues. We may have an excessive fear of working under certain conditions. We may then try to avoid such situations and events by taking sick leaves. This avoidance behavior may momentarily decrease the anxiety, which in turn can lead to more avoidance, thus giving rise to a cascade of maladaptive behaviors.  Moreover, this perception of being ill, leading to functional impairment, may give rise to function-related anxiety. 

My Job Gives Me Anxiety – Symptoms of Work Anxiety.

1. Negative appraisal of working place:  There would be a negative appraisal of working place, task, consistent worrying about the stressors. The ability to focus at work for long may be impaired. 
2. Workplace anxiety: The anxiety is accompanied by physical symptoms like feeling lightheaded, palpitating, headaches, sweating, hot flashes, etc., along with feelings of nervousness or restlessness. These symptoms are more prominent when approaching the workplace and absent when not at work.
3. Workplace-induced anxiety spike: Sometimes, arousal of anxiety might happen suddenly when confronted with workplace-related stimuli like colleagues or supervisors. The symptoms may reach a crescendo within minutes of confronting the trigger and may mimic a panic attack.
4.  Persistent anxiety: Demands for achievement may provoke generalized existential worrying, which may continue even when physically not in the workplace. (3) 
5. Stress response: Absenteeism can be a coping mechanism to deal with stressful job demands (3).  
6. Undermines performance: Leader workplace anxiety may affect subordinates’ performance by decreasing their task-related performance and contextual performance (4)

My Job Gives Me Anxiety – How To Manage Anxiety At Work (7 tips)

1. Emphasis: As an organization may have a complex hierarchical structure and interactional process, conflicts arise between individuals. Emphasis must be given to open conversation and face-to-face resolution of such conflicts.
2. Encouraging employees: Bringing in more transparency while bringing changes to the organisation and encouraging employee participation brings in more organisational awareness.
3. Work-life Balance: We are working on maintaining work-life balance by effectively distributing time in a healthy routine, giving enough space for self-care, which minimizes work-related anxieties.
4. When an Organization is an ecosystem: Because an organization is an ecosystem of interdependent individuals, improving social skills like empathy, cooperation, sharing, and effective communication can help.
5. Workplace Uncertainties: Accepting workplace uncertainties is necessary. At the same time, upgrading one’s core skills would help during difficult times. 
6. Support network: Periodically opening up to a support network at and outside of work helps curtail work anxiety.
7. Mindfulness techniques: Taking regular breaks at work and practising mindfulness techniques like breathing exercises, mindful eating, and keeping gratitude journals is helpful.

Conclusion

As work models change and jobs have become more performance driven, a certain amount of existential anxiety is more commonly seen . We must not only continuously work on enhancing our work specific skills but also improving our coping skills to changes at workplace which are not in our control .

References

1. B. Muschalla, M. Heldmann, and D. Fay  The significance of job anxiety in a working population.  Occupational Medicine 2013;63:415–421 Advance Access publication 15 June 2013 doi:10.1093/occurred/kqt072
2. Linden, M., & Muschalla, B. (2007). Anxiety disorders and workplace-related anxieties. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21, 467-474
3. Workplace Phobic Anxiety as a Mental Health Phenomenon in the Job Demands-Resources Model. Biomed Res Int.2017; 2017: 3285092.Published online 2017 No 29 doi: 10.1155/2017/3285092 Michela Vignoli,Beate Muschalla,  Marco Giovanni Mariani 
4. Zhang S, Chen L, Zhang L, Stein A. (2022) The ripple effect: How leader workplace anxiety shapes follower job performance.Front. Psychol., 20 October 2022Sec. Organizational Psychology Volume 13-2022 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965365.