Your anxiety may be exacerbated by your employment.
According to Annia Palacios, a licensed professional counselor (LPC) at Tightrope Therapy, there are some telltale indicators of anxiety at work:
- Your anxiety decreases and you feel generally well on your days off.
- Your weekend is overshadowed by feelings of dread and anxiety if you work Monday through Friday, especially when you consider work.
- Speaking with coworkers is difficult for you, yet conversing with individuals outside of work comes naturally to you.
How can one determine whether symptoms are indicative of generalized anxiety disorder or another anxiety illness?
According to Emme Smith, a certified psychotherapist and the CEO of GraySpace Counseling Group, symptoms of anxiety disorders are “persistent, consistent, and negatively affect several aspects of your life.”
According to licensed psychotherapist and Kind Minds Therapy co-founder Alexandra Finkel, LCSW, the main distinction between the two is that workplace anxiety typically arises as a reaction to stress at work. On the other hand, anxiety disorders typically arise and continue regardless of your work environment.
Signs of workplace anxiety
According to Palacios, you might:
- feel better at night, but when I think about work or receive work-related emails or calls in the morning, I feel physically nauseous.
- find it difficult to concentrate on work-related duties
- observe how your motivation is declining.
- put off doing chores relating to your job.
- stay away from business events, meetings, and new initiatives.
Anxiety at work can also manifest physically. These could consist of:
- neck and head ache
- your body’s tension and sweaty palms
- persistent nausea or stomach pain
What causes workplace anxiety?
Anxiety at work can be caused by a variety of circumstances, and each person may experience them differently.
According to Palacios, for instance, work-related stress might result from:
- Imposter syndrome, or the propensity to doubt oneself and feel profoundly inadequate, managing a relationship with a challenging supervisor, feeling a lack of purpose in your profession, or having to finish an urgent project or present at a meeting
An organizational psychologist and therapist named Kimberly Wilson, PhD, LMFT, claims that you may also experience workplace anxiety if your job:
- has a hostile workplace culture, unreasonable demands, a shortage of employees, intense competition, inadequate training, a failure to pay overtime, and a disregard for your safety, wellness, or health.
In certain instances, there may be a more profound and subtle underlying cause or contributing factor to your work-related stress.
Additionally, Palacios notes that “having a pre-existing anxiety disorder or being an anxious person can make us more likely to experience workplace-specific anxiety.”
For instance, she says, you can jump directly to the worst-case scenario if you already deal with worry. As a result, your job could become a major source of stress if you (erroneously) believe:
- you’ll overlook important deadlines.
- your boss believes that you’re performing poorly and that you’ll never meet expectations.
The takeaway
Managing anxiety at work can be challenging.
See our guide to managing job anxiety for coping strategies.