Managing Anxiety in a High-Pressure Environment
A high-pressure environment involves making rapid decisions, performing complex tasks, and high-stakes outcomes. Constant pressure and a high risk of failure lead to overwhelming stress and anxiety. If left unmanaged, anxiety affects work performance, and job satisfaction, and has a major impact on a person’s quality of life altogether. Since mental well-being is essential, this post focuses on the most effective approaches to managing anxiety in high-pressure environments and situations.
Table of Contents
Managing Anxiety in a High-Pressure Environment
Recognize Symptoms of Anxiety
In order to manage anxiety successfully, you need to recognize the signs and symptoms associated with it. The most common symptoms include:
Physiological symptoms: increased heart rate, palpitations, rapid breathing, shortness of breath, chest pain or pressure, dizziness, choking sensation, hot flashes, chills, upset stomach, weakness, dry mouth.
Cognitive symptoms: fear of losing control, frightening or racing thoughts, perception of unreality or detachment, confusion, poor focus and concentration, overanalyzing situations, and fear of failure.
Behavioral symptoms: avoidance of threat situations or cues, restlessness, agitation, hyperventilation.
Affective symptoms: feeling fearful, terrified, impatient, frustrated, nervous, and tense.
Practice Deep Breathing
Deep breathing is a technique that helps strengthen the diaphragm and fill the lungs with air more efficiently. This technique is an easy way to relax and calm down. It helps minimize symptoms of anxiety in high-pressure environments or situations.
Evidence confirms that breathing practices can effectively reduce stress and anxiety. Breathing exercises involve voluntarily changing the rate, pattern, and depth of respiration. As a result, it can improve symptoms of anxiety, depression, addiction, trauma, inattention, and compulsion, studies show. Since breathing improves heart rate variability, it helps minimize the fight-or-flight response in a high-pressure environment, which allows a person to feel better.
There are several deep breathing techniques that you can perform when feeling anxious or stressed out. A good example is box breathing which involves inhaling for four seconds, holding the breathing for four seconds, exhaling for four seconds, and holding again for four seconds.
Another option is diaphragmatic breathing where you fill the lungs from the bottom up, expand the diaphragm as you breathe in, and slowly exhale.
Change Your Focus
High-pressure environments oftentimes make it look like things are spiraling out of control. The sense of losing or not being in control can worsen symptoms of anxiety. One way to manage anxiety in these environments is to focus only on what is within your power.
Ask yourself what you can do to improve the situation or what steps to take in order to address the immediate concerns. As you focus on specific actions, you shift the attention from overwhelming perception to things you can actually control.
When you’re dealing with urgent issues or too much pressure at work, use this strategy to bring down your anxiety to a minimum.
Use Positive Affirmations
Positive affirmations are short statements that help people deal with negative thoughts, feelings, and situations. Using positive affirmations on a daily basis may help overcome fear and self-doubt and decrease self-sabotage. These short statements are excellent tools to use in high-pressure environments as they boost confidence and increase the sense of worth. Research suggests that positive affirmations can improve problem-solving performance in underperforming chronically stressed people.
Think of a short statement that you can repeat every day or whenever you feel pressure and tension. For example, you can say, “I can handle this,” or “I have faced challenges and pressure before, and I succeeded”. Another option is to say, “I can control how I respond to this situation”.
The main goal is to repeat your positive affirmation regularly, especially in a high-pressure environment. Doing so can calm you down and help beat anxiety.
Practice Mindfulness
High-pressure environments feed anxiety, which is why irrational thoughts keep multiplying. Staying present and fully aware of every moment is crucial. Mindfulness can keep you grounded and reduce mental clutter. As a result, it reduces your anxiety and promotes calmness. Meditation is a good example of a mindfulness practice. Studies show that meditation helps control the mind and helps you develop healthy coping mechanisms.
Besides meditation, you can practice mindfulness in other ways. Deep breathing can also be considered as a mindfulness practice. Other examples include yoga, walking in nature, mindfulness apps, and focusing on your senses. For instance, you can focus on what you see, hear, feel, or smell at the moment. As you focus on your senses, irrational thoughts that feed anxiety will start losing their power.
Other Ways to Manage Anxiety
As seen above, you can manage anxiety in a high-pressure setting in several ways. All these strategies are quite simple and easy to implement, but they’re not the only approaches you can take. You can also do the following:
Take breaks to reset: Short breaks can boost productivity and reduce anxiety. Step away from your workspace for a few minutes, stretch, or take a short walk.
Plan ahead: Anxiety often results from uncertainty or the fear of the unknown. Planning ahead can relieve stress and reduce anxiety. For instance, if you’re anxious about a project deadline, try breaking it into smaller steps and creating a timeline with reasonable milestones.
Practice self-compassion: Anxiety in high-pressure environments often stems from fear of criticism or failure. The problem becomes worse when people are too critical of themselves. Practice self-compassion and acknowledge that perfection is unattainable and mistakes are bound to happen at some point. Self-compassion allows you to grow and learn from your mistakes without judging or criticizing yourself.
Conclusion
Anxiety is a natural response to stressful situations. High-pressure environments can pave the way to anxiety, which can be particularly serious if not managed properly. While anxiety causes various symptoms and problems, it isn’t unmanageable. This post listed different ways to manage anxiety in a high-pressure environment and feel better instantly. The best results occur when you combine several strategies. With these approaches, you can reduce stress and anxiety and improve your quality of life. Think of a positive affirmation to repeat every day and practice deep breathing in stressful situations, you’ll notice how calmer you feel.