The 2 Types of Stress

In the workplace, stress comes commonly through 2 forms, that of the physical type and mental type, while both comes from different directions, they still have a common final destination, you. So in this blog, with the help of statistics published by the NT gov's 2022-23 Work Health and Safety, we hope to help you better identify and manage your own stress.

Physical stress

This type of stress, refers to the pain or pressure placed on your body due to physical activities or environmental conditions, which if left un-controlled, can result in muscle strain, joint pains, and worst case scenario, injuries and death, as shown by the NT gov's statistics, this type of stress covers 62.2% of all serious injuries.

Normally, physical stress can be identified by symptoms that would typically be muscle pain and tension around the body, increased fatigue, decreased work effectiveness, headaches, sleep disturbances, and other painful signs given by your body.

After identifying them, we should learn how to manage them. The steps that we can take to do so, revolves around giving the body less workload and more time to rest, these steps include taking more breaks, adjusting our work schedule to get more sleep, or even something as simple as doing stretches as we work.

 

Mental stress

On the other hand, mental stress refers the emotional and physiological strains caused by work load and work expectations beyond what they are able to cope with. This can come from various sources such as work load, and personal relationship and social problems. According to the NT gov's stats,this type of stress covers 14.6% of all serious injuries.

To identify this type of stress, you can look for symptoms which covers things such as increased emotional stress through anxiety, the inability to focus, indecisiveness, increasingly unhealthy eating/sleeping habits, possible use of addictive substances such as coffee and alcohol.

As far as managing them goes, you can do so via simple things like getting adequate rest, talking to your friends and family, and if it gets too severe, we can also consider professional services such as counseling, and a psychologist.