Mental Health
How to Cope with Unpleasant Emotions and Chronic Stress at Work
A structured framework to deal with emotional dysregulation and prolonged stress
Introduction & context
Stress is classified as the health epidemic of the 21st century by the World Health Organization. Chronic stress adversely affects both physical and mental health. Toxic emotions can ruin our lives.
The American Institute of Stress reports that more than 73% of people regularly experience physical and psychological stress symptoms, and 33% live with extreme stress. Significant causes of stress in the US are money, health, relationships, poor nutrition, media overload, and sleep deprivation.
Stress is essential to respond to our environment. The purpose of our stress system is to keep us safe. It creates a hormonal cocktail to prepare us for life-threatening situations. Our survival system is hard-coded to generate stress hormones when it senses a threat to our safety.
This ancient system helped us in the evolution process. However, this same old system exists in the modern world as is. Even though there is no real-life threat, the reptilian and emotional part of the brain sees some contemporary life issues as a threat…
