Stress Management for PR Professionals

Earlier this week I was joined by Tammy Barter and Nina Stephenson-Camps, and they shared some excellent advice for managing workplace stress. Here are my top 9 takeaways.

Suffocation and self-talk

Suffocating. Overwhelming. Relentless. Exhausting. Emotional.

These were the words that PR and comms professionals used to describe their current day-to-day feelings in terms of workload during our webinar on managing stress last week.

Hard to listen to and to read.

But feelings are information and they give great signals. Feeling suffocated, overwhelmed and exhausted are early warning signs of burnout and we should take heed.

The problem is that the environment we work in creates high expectations and we also set high standards for ourselves.

Nina Stephenson-Camps, a mindset coach and one of my expert panellists last week, offered a great tip for tackling these high standards: “We should speak to ourselves as we do to a 7yo child.”

Most of us don’t.

That can lead to feelings of failure and exacerbate the environmental factors that pile on the stress.

Box breathing

Your brain doesn’t want you to be happy. It wants you to be safe.

If you are under stress, it will put your body into fight, flight or freeze mode with the release of hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol.

These cause your heart rate to go up and your breathing to become shallow.

If you’re feeling like this in the middle of the working day with meeting after meeting ahead of you, is there a quick fix?

30 seconds of box breathing is enough to reset. Three minutes is even better. Here’s a little guide on how to do it.

Move every hour

Stop ignoring the movement notifications on your smartwatch!

I’ll admit to feeling seen when Tammy Barter (Cooksley) offered this piece of advice on my recent webinar on combatting stress. I’m the world’s worst at sitting down at my desk, only getting up again three hours’ later having absorbed myself in a task.

But movement is an excellent stress-buster. And note the word “movement” rather than “exercise”. This isn’t about running a 5k in your lunchbreak.

Rather, it’s about getting up once an hour to walk to the kitchen and make a cup of tea. Stepping outside to listen to the birds and take a few deep breaths. Or having a little bit of a stretch at your desk.

Are you energising your body in the right way?

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

For many of us, it’s a sugary cereal and a massive coffee that leaves us feeling washed-out and reaching for snacks by 11 before grabbing lunch on the run later on.

Our resident nutritionist, Tammy Barter (Cooksley), talked about the importance of the right fuel in combatting stress at my last webinar. As she said, the problem with sugary and convenience foods is that they give us a huge energy boost followed rapidly by a crash. This a cycle can last all week, leaving us feeling depleted by the weekend.

I am very much not a nutritionist(!) but I liken this to maximising productivity by mixing up tasks. I’m not keen on Mondays that are typically filled with planning meetings and a load of admin. I try to give myself a bit of balance by ensuring I have some social time with other people, which I know will restore my energy levels that have been decimated by spreadsheets.

In other words, what are we fuelling our bodies and minds with?

Whether it’s food or the balance of tasks during your day, the key, as ever, is being intentional rather than saintly. It’s worth experimenting with what works for you.

Use your support network

If you’re feeling LESS than raring to go then here’s a tip for you…

Use your professional support network.

Colleagues, managers, mentors and friends can offer a release valve when everything threatens to overflow: whether you’re talking shop, letting off steam or having a bit of a laugh. This point was underscored by Tammy Barter (Cooksley) at our latest free webinar: From stress to strength.

Research on resilience shows that small and benign interactions act positively on your unconscious brain too. A wander to your local coffee shop and a short conversation, even with a stranger, will tell your subconscious that all is right with the world.

So if the week’s off to a wobbly start, don’t go it alone. A quick chat might be exactly what you need to reset and move forward, and it's worth making time for.

Gold stars

What have you done today to make you feel proud? (As Heather Small said a few times)

Aside from showing my age, this is a GREAT question to ask yourself at the end of every day.

Recent guest Nina Stephenson-Camps said, if you ask yourself that question regularly, you’ll build a mental “library of gold stars”. That’s the place to go in your mind when you’re having a less than perfect day.

Normalise celebrating successes

If you’re not feeling super-motivated at the moment, have you asked yourself why?

Sure, it’s going to be another hot day and most of us would rather be at the beach with an ice cream/beer/book (delete as appropriate).

But sometimes we can feel undermotivated because work feels like a treadmill that never stops. That’s especially true in PR and comms where we’re juggling lots of projects, moving quickly from one thing to the next and never feel like we’re able to stop.

So pause that treadmill! Stand still for a second and celebrate the progress you’ve made. Focus less on outcomes and results and recognise the effort you and your team-mates have put in. Even better, do it with an ice-cream!

If you do this often, it can really help to boost motivation and foster a sense of belonging within a team.

Switch off, give yourself permission to rest 

I’m giving you permission to rest this weekend.

Because if I don’t, maybe no one else will either. And you’ll “just” do that one thing you ran out of time for this week. And that other little thing. And look over that costing. And send that email.

Before you know it, you’ll have done four hours’ extra work during a precious evening or over the weekend.

Our bodies have a habit of making us rest if we’re not careful. So take action before it’s too late!

You could block out the time now so it doesn’t get eaten up by work or decide to treat resting like it’s your job. Because sometimes, it is.

Work vs work when anxious

Not everyone is on a beach with a margarita!

Perhaps you’re up against it as you prepare to go off on annual leave or you’re one of the ones left holding the fort while everyone else jets off into the sunset. Either way, you might be feeling a bit stressed or overwhelmed.

This is a great illustration to show what happens when our workload increases, depending on our state of mind.

If we’re feeling cool, calm and collected, it’s easy enough to slot in another task.

When we’re feeling overwhelmed? Not so much!

Two tips:

1. Visibility is your friend. Be clear on what’s coming up, where the big jobs are and when you’re going to do them.

2. Don’t just automatically say “yes” to everything else that comes in. Figure out where the new task would fit in, how much you can do and by when.

Most of us don’t spend enough time thinking about managing our time as we do actually doing our tasks. But it’s soooo important for avoiding unnecessary stress!

Hat-tip to Liz Fosslien, I’m always recommending her book, co-authored by Mollie West Duffy, called “No Hard Feelings” which is brilliant for navigating emotions at work.