Developing an awareness of health indicators
While a healthy amount of stress can provide motivation and drive, when work commitments are high, stress can negatively impact our health. It's essential to put measures in place to protect our health from the harmful effects of chronic stress.
In situations of chronic stress, we often convince ourselves that we can hold out a bit longer, without making any significant changes to our habits. Taking account of our own needs and limits can prove difficult. Sometimes we only become aware of our limits when they have been exceeded and it has become impossible to cope. This can manifest itself in extreme ways, either physically through illness, exhaustion, back pain and heart problems, or emotionally through anxiety, paranoia or burnout.
Take action
As part of the “Efficiency and caring at work” campaign, the Work Well Feel Well website now offers useful resources that can be downloaded and completed to help to recognise and pay attention to health indicators at work.
This can help to maintain a balance and ensure that the amount of stress experienced is healthy.
The recording of the Micro-Talk from 6 October 2023 entitled “Preventing burn-out in a demanding professional context” is now available, alongside self-assessment tools here (login required), with the presentation in French and slides in English.
In addition, in the light of World Mental Health Day on 10 October, CERN’s Medical Service and psychologists invite you to three interactive sessions on 11, 18 and 25 October to learn effective and useful tools to better deal with stress.
This is the first of a 12-part Work Well Feel Well series, with articles to be published every two months.