Men's Health

Tools & Resources

This article is from the WebMD Feature Archive

Font Size

Coping with Workplace Stress

Male-specific problems when dealing with workplace stress.

By Cathy Lu
WebMD Feature

As a magazine editor, Chris Charla is faced every day with multiple deadlines, meetings, and all the other demands of putting out a quality product -- demands which in his case led to some destructive coping mechanisms.

"I used to take my wrist rest and slam it against the keyboard, or take my phone and slam it down on the receiver a few times," recalls Charla, a 28-year-old San Franciscan. "But I've tried to calm down since then. I still want to smash things, but what I do now is tell myself not to slam anything and instead to take a walk."

Recommended Related to Men

Going Bald: It’s All in Your Head

Sitting in high school biology, listening to the teacher drone on about genetics, I snapped to attention when she used male pattern baldness as an example of a dominant trait. My heart started pounding with fear - with bald men on both sides of my mother's family as far as the eye could see, I was doomed to have a chrome dome. I remained anguished about the prospect of being bald for the next 20 years as my hairline retreated and my hair steadily thinned. Bald men seemed disfigured to me....

Read the Going Bald: It’s All in Your Head article > >

Charla can talk himself through times when emotions run high. What he can't do, though, is talk with others. "If I go to my supervisor," he says, "not only is it an admission that I screwed up my time management, but it's an admission that I can't do my job."

Though he's made progress, Charla's mindset is typical of men in the workplace -- one that makes handling stress difficult, and admitting to it taboo.

The High Cost of Workplace Stress

Workplace stress has extreme consequences in Japan, where the suicide rate among men has risen over the last 15 years. According to the Japanese government's Statistics Bureau, the highest suicide rate occurs in men from 35 to 44 years old, making it the 13th most common cause of death for men. (It's 21st for women). Take the triple suicide in March 1998, when three Japanese men -- all heads of car part companies -- took their lives on the same night. They reason they gave? Poor company finances.

In the United States, men's suicide rates have actually declined over the past few years. But the suicide rate for men is still nearly four times higher than for women, according to 1997 data from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. (In the United States, the age group with the highest rate is from 75 to 85 years old.)

Why Work Is Often the Culprit

Much of the problem, says Glenn E. Good, PhD, stems from the way men's identities are so closely tied to work. "If you ask a man who he is, the first thing he says is his work -- I'm an executive, I'm a doctor, I'm a housebuilder," says Good, who is an associate professor of educational and counseling psychology at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

In Japan, says Good, that role is even more profoundly defined. Women are expected to serve men, and since a woman's role is in the home and with the family, the man's role -- and his self-esteem -- is tied nearly exclusively to work. And in Japan, says Good, showing emotion is practically forbidden.

Suppressing feelings and internalizing stress are learned, male traits, says Good -- traits that keep men from telling their bosses that they're feeling overburdened or need help. "On some inner level, it comes down to: If I can't tough it out, then I'm not much of man."

1 | 2

Next Page >