Over the past years, we have discussed the medical and emotional risks of excessive or consistent worry. For employees with a workplace injury, occupational disease or disability, stress and anxiety can add a significant burden on the body. Below we discuss some steps for reducing stress and worry—and perhaps avoiding them altogether.
Often, treatments for workplace anxiety and depression are simply prescription medications that can wreak havoc on the body’s natural endocrine functions. Traditional psychological therapy is prescribed less and less often these days and depends upon insurance coverage.
Third-Party Injury
Yet there are many measures that individuals can take on their own to address the physical and mental effects of excessive anxiety and worry; these can help workers recover from a third-party injury or disability and can boost success in vocational retraining.
Workplace Anxiety And Depression
In some unfortunate cases, worry and anxiety can become a chronic aspect of a worker’s professional and personal life, and the outcome can even result in ratable permanent partial disability. But most of the scientific literature lists non-pharmaceutical steps to alleviate worry, fear, and anxiety to a manageable level.
The following summary features six tips cited in the literature to help reduce worry without medication:
- Separate out “toxic worry” from normal or constructive worry: good worry essentially equates to planning. Toxic worry, on the other hand, is unnecessary, unproductive, paralyzing, terrifying, and defeating.
- Focus on facts rather than allowing your imagination to get the best of you. Analyze the actual problem at hand and take appropriate corrective action.
- Keep socially connected with family, social, information and ideas, organizations, and institutions. Never worry in isolation.
- Stay physically connected as well: get regular massage therapy, and seek out hugs and laughter. Being around children or family is particularly helpful.
- Be kind to yourself. Exercise, eat well, get plenty of sleep, meditate, and moderate behaviors that are detrimental to your health, such as tobacco and alcohol.
- Sing, read, take a walk, do what you love, and focus on the positive aspects of your life.
Seattle Employment Attorney
Finally, if you suffer from chronic depression and anxiety as a result of your working condition, or if you have a labor and industries injury, contact a Seattle Employment attorney at Emery Reddy. Call now!
