STRESS MANAGEMENT

Managing Stress in Practice

Kamryn M. Mattison

University of South Carolina

SOWK 481: Field Education

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Managing Stress in Practice

Social work is a very heavy profession. You never know what kind of clients and

experiences you will run into. As a result, it can be hard for a worker to manage their daily lives,

stress, and work at the same time. Some tactics can be used to reduce negative feelings,

including stress, and keep social workers away from exhaustion and burnout. Managing stress,

however, looks different for everyone.

Social Workers face many difficulties in practice because this profession can be mentally

challenging. One of the biggest difficulties that social workers may run into is emotion

regulation. In other words, social workers may find it hard to manage their own feelings on top

of the feelings that their clients place on them. This issue is directly related to burnout because

not being able to handle one’s emotions can quickly lead to emotional exhaustion. Exhaustion is

the primary dimension of burnout, so becoming either physically or emotionally/mentally

exhausted can quickly lead to a social worker feeling burnout.

Regarding stress, it can be very easy to assume that when someone is stressed, all they

need to do is take a break and calm down. I feel that whenever advice is given about stress (to

me, at least, from people outside of social work), the only words that people offer are “take a

break. It will be alright.” However, this is quite unhelpful, especially if you are experiencing

chronic physical and mental/emotional stress. It is not always as simple as relaxing and taking a

break; dealing with stress that has become long-term requires action to be taken throughout the

life of the stress, which is why self-care is so important in the social work field. To address the

feelings of stress moving forward, one must find their balance. Everyone has things that help

them relax, so the activities people enjoy are a huge way to self-regulate and care for oneself.

Trying to get rid of stress requires one to actively care for oneself by regularly participating in
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activities and things the person enjoys. This will allow the workers to have time to themselves to

unwind, release their emotions, and gather themselves frequently (rather than once every other

month). Along with that, they must learn how to leave work at work; bringing home the

traumatic emotions and focusing on and/or thinking about work constantly can make it harder to

relax because it causes a continuous state of negative emotions. Overall, reducing stress can be

quite simple if the effort is put into it; it just requires the same passion for oneself as a social

worker gives to others.

Stress can look different to everyone, but it usually involves finding it difficult to

complete daily work/tasks or showing up completely to daily obligations. For me, stress is

usually more physical because it usually has to do with not getting enough sleep. I think others

can probably tell when I’m stressed because I feel I come off as zoned out and unproductive. I

get easily frustrated when I am tired, so my emotions become affected as well, which can cause

problems when dealing with clients. Frustration can turn to anger, or the mix of frustration and

sadness (from traumatic experiences shared by clients) can make me feel helpless and it becomes

harder for me to motivate myself to get tasks done. However, because I know my balance, I am

usually able to recover easily.

The last instance of success I have had against stress is currently happening; with

midterms, assignments, and finally settling into the routine of this semester (class, internship,

job, and other responsibilities), I found myself becoming considerably stressed out. However, to

combat those feelings, I must push myself to take things day by day. Also, I have been trying to

make a schedule for myself. To ensure that I get enough sleep every day, I get in bed at the same

time every night; furthermore, I use my free time to care for myself. I (try) to complete my work

on time and have my tasks done before I plan my self-care days so I won’t have to worry about
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doing assignments when I could have time to myself instead. I (never fail to) take naps when I

feel I need one. I like to take myself out on dates. I talk to my support systems a lot about how I

feel, and I have recently been journaling to let out the emotions that I do not share with others.

Lastly, I try to get out of Columbia whenever I have a break longer than a day because it helps

me put school and work out of my mind. Doing all these things has helped me overcome the

stress and overwhelming feelings of midterms I have had in the last couple of weeks. Even

though I have had a lot of work to do, I balanced everything out because I gave myself enough

time to self-care each week, which helped me go into following weeks feeling calm. I will use

these things to prevent burnout because I know that they will help me calm my feelings of stress

every time. However, I, as a Christian, would like to add more time into my self-care/schedule to

be present in my Christianity because I feel that spending time with God will also help stress

management a lot more.

I am very big on self-care. Even before I switched my major to social work, my first

priority was always myself. I grew up learning from my parents to take care of myself first, and

they still tell me that frequently. I have always known that taking care of myself first was the

way to do anything because if I am okay, then everything around me will be as well. On the

other hand, if I am not okay, I risk affecting everything around me, so those things may not be

okay either. I am very grateful that I found a profession that emphasizes and highlights self-care

so much; social work corresponds to how I live my life, outside of practice as well. I have many

of the same values that are outlined in the Code of Ethics, so I feel that social work is my calling.

Managing stress reinforces my values and priorities because being able to handle my stress deals

with making myself a priority. To manage stress, you must be willing to care for and love
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yourself, which goes along with one of my biggest values (caring for myself first because I am

always my priority).

The biggest thing that I got from the video was learning about the dimensions of burnout.

I never knew about cynicism. I think that I may unknowingly use cynicism as a coping

mechanism when I get too stressed because I tend to distance myself from people in my personal

life when I am going through something. In the video, she said that cynicism usually entails

distancing oneself and coming off as unengaged. Thinking about that, I would not be surprised if

I show signs of cynicism when I am stressed over work. I acknowledge that when I am stressed

the thoughts in my head can be very “snappish,” but I always try to keep them in my head. Going

forward, I will use this knowledge of cynicism to be (more) mindful of how I interact with

colleagues and clients when I have any feelings of stress. I will now be aware of the signs of

cynicism, and I will be able to add to my self-care routine to take care of the distance I have

made from others. In graduate school and my career, I will be able to avoid becoming distant

from my clients and seeming unengaged because I am now aware that it happens and can create

my solutions beforehand. This way, I will not have to worry about figuring out how to manage

cynicism when I go to graduate school and get a real social work job.

The biggest thing I learned from the report is that many agencies and businesses have an

EAP or employee assistance program. Employers have the responsibility of regularly extending

resources to their employees. Knowing this will help me in graduate school and my professional

career as a social worker because I know that I will be under much more stress in those

situations. However, I will have extra support from my job which gives me additional resources

to help me find people who know exactly how I feel (instead of talking to just my friends and

family or journaling).
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To manage stress and prevent burnout short term, my biggest strategy is to sleep. For me,

sleep is the best thing I can do. Getting enough sleep for the next workday makes it so much

easier to take things “day-by-day,” In other words, sleeping sets up my day; as long as I get a

little rest, I will automatically wake up for the next day with reduced stress levels. Long-term

stress management and burnout prevention for me look like journaling and expressing my

feelings to others. I feel that journaling (and letting my feelings out in any way) helps to reduce

emotional exhaustion because it keeps me from letting those emotions sit inside my head to

continuously think about them. Later, I can refer back to the emotions I let out in the journals and

use the same strategies I used to reduce stress and exhaustion in the past.

Social workers can have it hard, but with the correct steps and effort, exhaustion and

burnout can be delayed (and maybe avoided as well). As a social worker, you must be able to

find your balance and pick out the activities and things that will help you manage your emotions.

On top of that, social workers must know when to take time for themselves to relax and unwind.

Participating in one’s favorite activities and taking time for oneself is vital in evading

emotional/mental exhaustion. Lastly, social workers must know when to rest. Sleep and rest are a

huge component of avoiding physical exhaustion.