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SOS! Workplace Stress!
Sure Signs It’s Getting To You.
The daily grind of work is difficult enough, especially as many of us have been facing more than a year of COVID-19 quarantine adjustments, financial uncertainties, and shifts in working styles. But despite those challenges, one of the most stressful situations many people face in their day-to-day experience is an overly demanding, abusive, or bullying boss.
There is a growing body of research on workplace aggression, especially at the hands of supervisors. Every day, millions of employees are targets of ridicule, embarrassment, threats, or demeaning treatment by their manager. The result is decreased job satisfaction and productivity, diminished commitment to the job, and decreased satisfaction with their workplace.
Because employees look to learn from, and be mentored by, their managers and supervisors, when they are mistreated instead, the interactions can be truly traumatic. According to the Academy of Management, “the more employees experience abusive supervision as extraordinary, uncontrollable, and overwhelming, the more likely they are to experience changes to the content of their self-concept, which leads to posttraumatic stress (PTS), a state characterized by alternating states of intrusive thoughts and avoidance.”
