Managing Workplace Stress: The Cognitive Behavioural Way

124 Pages·2013·0.42 MB·English

by  Koushiki Choudhury (auth.)

Managing Workplace Stress

Koushiki Choudhury
Managing Workplace Stress
The Cognitive Behavioural Way
Koushiki Choudhury
Department of Marketing
Indian Institute of Management Calcutta
Kolkata, India
ISBN 978-81-322-0682-8 ISBN 978-81-322-0683-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-0683-5
Springer India Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012946641
© Springer India 2013
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Dedicated to
My Mother
For her love, inspiration and
support

Preface
This book is offered with the hope that it will shed light on the many anxiety- and
stress-inducing events that we face in the workplace and the ways to cope with
them. The book is based on my experience, studies and research in the areas of
internal marketing, psychological counselling and workplace stress and is the
fallout of years of surveys and thousands of hours of talking to professionals in
industry and academia, in the country and abroad. I have included snapshots of
actual anxiety-producing situations that we all face in the workplace.
The book’s objective is to enable people to change the way they view any unpleas-
ant, disturbing and stressful situation and emerge more calm, con fi dent and happy.
It is offered with the understanding that even one entire lifetime is not enough to
learn everything about such an extremely challenging area. I hence rely on the
feedback from my readers to enable me to expand the frontiers.
I would like to thank my parents for their unfailing support at all times. To my
father, for encouraging me to write and for always being there at the crucial moments
with the right words. To my mother, who is my greatest source of inspiration and
hope and to whom I owe everything.
vii

Introduction
This is a self-help book that has been written for all those who are working and
those who are about to enter the workplace. Workplace is de fi ned as “any environ-
ment enabling work to be done”. This broader de fi nition will make the workplace
include any situation and place where people interact to exchange knowledge,
services and information.
The book discusses the various anxiety- and stress-inducing events that we
face in the workplace and the ways to overcome them. The book is based on my
extensive experience, research and studies in the areas of internal marketing,
workplace stress and psychological counselling. I have included real-life scenar-
ios of actual stress-, tension- and anxiety-generating situations that we all face in
the workplace and have delineated the ways to address and resolve them using
cognitive therapy (CT) and rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT). These
therapeutic techniques are the most widely used and powerful psychotherapeutic
techniques, and their effectiveness has been thoroughly tested scienti fi cally
throughout the world. Brie fl y, cognitive behavioural therapy (also referred to as
CBT – the umbrella term for CT and REBT together), which deals with identify-
ing irrational negative thinking and replacing it with rational, realistic and health-
ier thinking, has been found to be effective for a wide range of emotional problems
including anxiety and depression. The advantage of using psychotherapeutic tech-
niques in addressing workplace stress is that it makes the approach scienti fi c and
therefore more reliable, robust, rational and effective. The book discusses the
concepts of REBT and CT and attempts to show how these techniques can be used
to challenge and overcome workplace stress by realistically and accurately inter-
preting events at the workplace. It also discusses irrational thinking and rational
thinking, demanding rules and dogmas and the various techniques used in cogni-
tive behavioural therapy (CBT). It sheds light on the multifarious cognitive errors
that we suffer from, which results in faulty perception and interpretation of situa-
tions, thus enhancing anxiety. The objective is to achieve cognitive restructuring
ix
x Introduction
and move away from negative, distorted cognitive (thought) processes and towards
more positive, realistic and rational thoughts. Hopefully, reading and practising
these c o gnitive behavioural therapeutic techniques will enable the readers to over-
come stress and anxiety at the workplace, emerge more attuned to reality and
more calm, confi d ent and happy.