Effective stress management to help drive better employee mental and physical health

Stress affects everyone, but not all stress is the same. Experts recognize several types of stress, including acute, episodic acute and chronic stress, each of which impacts the body differently.

Acute stress is short-term and often resolves quickly, while episodic acute stress recurs frequently. Chronic stress persists for long periods—weeks or months—and can lead to more serious mental health and physical health concerns if unmanaged.

Stress can also be understood as positive (eustress) or negative (distress). Eustress is motivating, energizing and short-term, while distress impairs functioning, contributes to physical and emotional discomfort and can become harmful when frequent or prolonged.

Common stressors include work pressures, financial concerns, relationship challenges, health issues, major life events and even positive changes like starting a new job or welcoming a baby. Unchecked stress can affect nearly every system of the body.

How unchecked stress affects physical and mental health

Chronic stress is associated with increased risk of hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, anxiety, depression, sleep problems, digestive issues, skin conditions and worsening of existing medical concerns. It may also influence behaviors such as substance use, emotional reactivity, forgetfulness and difficulties with concentration and decision-making.

National Stress Awareness Month

April is National Stress Awareness Month, an ideal time to highlight the effect that unchecked stress can have on your employees’ physical and mental health—and ways they can manage and mitigate stress to minimize its negative effects.

Traditional stress management strategies include:

• Exercise
• Adequate sleep
• Mindfulness
• Deep breathing
• Time management
• Social support
• Setting healthy boundaries

For quick relief in stressful moments, evidence-based methods such as slow diaphragmatic breathing, grounding exercises (like the 54321 sensory method), positive self-talk and brief movement or stretching breaks can help regulate the nervous system and restore calm.

Another way your employees can get assistance with stress is by accessing health coaching experts who have resources that can help them identify stressors and adopt healthy coping mechanisms.

Health and wellness coaching

Health coaching is an integral component of lifestyle “medicine.” It empowers individuals to implement recommendations using proven behavioral strategies.

This can help your employees bridge the gap between the medical “what” and the behavioral “how.” Working one-on-one with a credentialed health professional allows them to create a wellness vision, set specific goals and discuss effective coping strategies, such as reframing or cognitive restructuring.

Cognitive restructuring

Cognitive restructuring (reframing) is an effective technique for identifying and addressing stressors. Cognitive reframing involves changing how you view or describe a stressful situation through positive self-talk. It focuses on shifting from negative thoughts that drive negative emotions to positive, constructive, actionable steps.

Catch, check and change

A health coach can help you reframe how you view stressors using strategies such as the “catch, check and change” exercise.

• Step 1. Catch a negative thought, such as, “This is a disaster; I can’t handle it”
• Step 2. Delve deeper, checking the thought. Ask yourself questions such as the following: Is this based on evidence or emotion? Is there another way to look at this situation? What would I say to a friend?
• Step 3. Replace that statement with a balanced one, based on evidence. An example might be, “This is challenging and unpleasant, but I have handled difficult situations in the past and can do so again”

Instead of helplessness, choose action. Instead of perfectionism or catastrophizing, choose realism. Instead of judgment, choose compassion.

Labcorp health coaches can help

Working regularly with a Labcorp health coach comes with additional benefits. Your employees have unlimited and uninterrupted access to our digital platform where they can track their sleep, mood, step count, weight, blood pressure, calorie intake and more. Tracking this information can help them gain better insight into patterns and, with the support of a health coach, take steps to improve their health, mindfulness and resilience.

They also get access to hundreds of articles and videos on a wide variety of health and wellness topics. Labcorp’s digital platform offers cognitive behavioral health courses that help participants move forward toward healthy, lasting outcomes by focusing on real-life challenges people face every day. For example, the “Managing Stress and Building Resiliency” course helps users respond to stressors more effectively and build resilience over time.

Self-paced lifestyle courses are shorter, flexible options they can complete as time allows. “Stress 101” provides education on stress and basic stress management tools, helping your employees to better understand and identify stressors and adopt healthy changes.