BE 397: How to Talk About Your Work Stress with Your Colleagues
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This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 397. How to talk about your work stress with your colleagues.

Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English. Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business. For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is Real Business English with your favorite American hosts, Lindsay and Michelle, coming to you from New York City and Colorado, USA. Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English.

Hey, listeners, we're happy to have you with us as we explore business and sharpen your English language skills. If you're looking to take your learning even further while gaining invaluable business insights, we highly recommend a podcast that we love called TED Talks Daily. This show delivers daily TED Talks from some of the world's brightest minds covering topics like technology, career growth, education, and beyond.

It's the perfect way to improve your English, fuel your curiosity and get inspired. Listen to TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Lindsay, how are you? Doing great, Michelle. What's going on with you? Not too much. Let's see. When is the last time you were stressed out? Oh, wow, Michelle. Well, what I can say is I'm usually not stressed out when I'm on the microphone with you. So that's good. I'm here.

I guess there were moments when we were building our brand new course, Professional English Level 1, which by the way is coming out very soon. There were moments that got a little stressful. I'm not going to lie.

because anytime we're creating courses, we're on a tight schedule. We are working with our editors, our video editor, our audio editor. Yeah, I will say, I'll admit it, there were stressful moments, but I'm excited. I'm excited to launch it. Yes. Good, good. That's great. So today we are going to answer a listener question about stress.

Yes. And before we get into it, go ahead guys and get on this list. Go to allersenglish.com slash professional to get on the list to hear about Professional English Level 1 when it comes out. You will be hearing about it very, very soon.

Good stuff. Perfect. All right. So this question is from Faye. Lindsay, would you like to read the question? Yes. Here is Faye's question. Hi, dear All Ears English friends. I'm Faye from Wuzhi, China. I'm not sure if I pronounced that town right. So my apologies if I did it wrong. Here we go. I love your energy podcast so much. And I have a request for an episode about stress.

What are some useful expressions or slang expressions to say that you have stress or you have a burden or something about tiredness, like fatigue? Thank you so much. Best regards, Faye. Good question, Faye. Great question.

Yeah, very good. This is, I mean, this is perfect. It's a really good, good question for work. I mean, people get stressed at work. It's just kind of a fact of life. It's super common. So this is a connection skill to be able to talk about it. So we're going to teach some expression. We're going to go more with the stress side than the

tired side. We're going to focus a little bit today. So let's go over these. So Lindsay, what's the first one? Yeah. So when you're in over your head, I think we, did we talk about this on the water episode maybe or touched on it? No, I don't think we did, but

This is related. It makes me think of that episode that we just did about water. Because we did keep your head above water. Keep your head above water. It does feel related, right? It does feel related. But to be in over your head, super common. It just means maybe you're a little outside of your skill set. You are doing things. It's either too much you have to do or the skills required, maybe you don't have them. Right.

- Right, right, right, right, exactly. So I'm really in over my head on this assignment. I thought it would be easy, but it's taking me forever. - Mm.

That's kind of scary right when you get into something and you assume all this will be easy I can handle this I'll get it done quick and then you unravel it and you realize oh, there's actually more to this than I thought right? Yeah, exactly or what's another one Lindsay to be on edge? Now this is kind of an uneasy feeling where you're nervous about something maybe you have a sense of doom and gloom and

Right? You're just nervous, like you're a little jittery, like you had too much coffee. Right? Right. You might like and you might snap, right? You might maybe maybe you're talking in a different way to people. But shouldn't, right? It could be. I'm just sorry. I'm on edge, right? Yeah. Sometimes when people are anxious, they start talking like from the throat up rather than from deeper in their belly, that kind of thing. You might notice their pitch goes up in a different way.

is if we really pay attention to how people talk. - I think like that it sounds like, what they're saying sounds more like tighter. - Yeah, tighter, less air. - Yeah, yeah, that's true. - So again, here's an example. My boss seems really on edge about the project. She doesn't seem to trust the team yet and puts it all on herself. Yeah, that's a stressful place to be, right? - Yeah, yeah, for sure. - This episode is brought to you by Indeed.

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Okay, Michelle. So we are back for a couple of more, a couple more examples, because again, I just want to reiterate how important it is to be able to talk about stress at work. Yeah. I mean, do you think it's okay to tell someone at work that you're stressed? I think the right person at the right time in the right place, it's okay.

I would just be careful who you're talking to. But yeah, I think we need to. The most stressful thing is not being able to talk about stress, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, and it depends, like, can something productive come out of this? If it's just, you know, if it's just venting, I would definitely save it for a trusted coworker.

who you know maybe you're really close with or outside the office yeah your partner right but if it's something that can be there something can be done about this that's when it's more of okay do I bring this up to my supervisor do I talk to another co-worker I see how see how they're doing with it maybe we can find some solutions yeah totally agree Michelle we need to be smart and strategic about any topic that we share at work we're always going to be thinking and

Is this, should I wait and talk to my partner about this later or a friend, or should I share this at work? What is going to come of this? Right. Yeah. Yeah. So what's another expression about stress? Okay. Feeling the heat, right? Um, we don't mean physical heat. Maybe sometimes it is actually, our temperature can go up, but you're feeling the stress or the heat of the situation. Are you feeling the heat? I'm so stressed out about this.

Yeah, maybe your boss said you have to give a presentation and that's in two days, for example. Right. It's a little intense and something you could even say it in kind of a funny way, right? Oh, I feel the heat. I'm feeling the heat now, right? Sure. Yeah, you could. You mean in a sarcastic way or? Yeah. Yeah. In kind of a right in our sarcastic way or just maybe something maybe there's

maybe somebody gives you a lot of assignments and you're not too, you're not actually stressed out about it, but you might just say, whoa, I feel the heat, right? Or if you work in a workplace that's very low stress and nothing ever happens, and then someone asks you to do one thing, you kind of, you're pointing to the fact that it's not a stressful workplace and you're adding sarcasm to this.

Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So or another one is spread or stretched too thin. So this is a little bit different, but this is just a way of talking about a form of stress where you can't really focus on one thing because there are so many things and so nothing is getting your full attention. I completely get that. Yeah.

I'm really stretched too thin right now. I can't get anything done and it's stressing me out. Right? So that would be a time if you're feeling that to talk to your boss about maybe getting an assistant, right? Having someone come on board to help.

Right, right. So, Lindsay, I mean, what makes you feel stress either in work or out of work? I think overwhelm for sure. When especially in higher levels of organizations, we're often responsible for a lot of things. But there are so many it's all these rabbit holes exist. And if we go down any of them, all the others are just going to be getting ignored.

Right. So, yeah, for just having a lot of plates spinning in the air, Michelle, at the same time. Did you ever learn how to spin a plate? Never did. Still working on it, though. I actually I was in a play and yeah, when I was a kid and we learned how to spin plates and I used to be it was really fun, actually. Wow. That's kind of cool. I haven't thought about that in years. Yeah. Interesting. What about you, Michelle? What makes you feel stressed?

What is it? Also overwhelmed, definitely. But when I don't know what's going on, right? Like when I'm uninformed of what's going to happen. That's why like for all these English, our meetings are really good and like learning what's going on with the company. But if I don't know what's coming at me, I can get a little, my mind can go, oh, wait, what am I doing?

Yeah, no, interesting. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And that's good. And by the way, these are important conversations to have with your coworkers. I mean, hopefully when you join a company, there is this is part of an orientation plan where you kind of talk about your style. You know, we did strengths finders to measure our style of work, but that would be something important to kind of share if you had the forum to do it.

in a company with your direct coworkers. So they know what you need, right? Yeah, exactly. So this can be a huge, huge connection as we talked about, you know, definitely think about is your stress, like, is there something productive that you can do with your stress? And so that can be a way that you decide who am I going to talk to about this?

Is it worth bringing up to someone in the office? Do I just need to vent to someone out of the office? Right. We have to think of all these things. Yes, I love it. Oh, my gosh. This is an incredibly important topic. I love it. So good. Shall we jump to a role play here? We shall. Here we go. We are co-workers talking about our upcoming month. All right. Here we go. Here we go.

I'm really stressed out, actually. Oh, no. Why? Well, Trish seems on the edge about something, and I just don't feel like my job is secure. Maybe it's in your head. I don't know. I've been feeling the heat with all these extra projects.

There are a ton of projects. I promise you'll be fine. You're just spread a little too thin right now, but I can help you really. Oh, wow. Thank you so much. I'm just really in over my head at this point. I'm your coworker and friend. I can help. It's a curious situation because what am I doing? I'm just standing around twiddling my thumbs. I have no work and you have all the work. Right. Does that make any sense? Oh, I can help. I'm just here. I'm available.

It doesn't make any sense. Very poor use of resources, right? Yeah. We really have some sort of system here. All right. But, but exactly. See, like here we're like coming up with solutions. So this is really good. I mean, and you're, you're very, even though you have nothing to do, you're very helpful and friendly about it. Um, so I said, I'm really stressed out actually. Yep. So you are very upfront.

around how you're feeling. You're very clear, not hiding anything. Sometimes people do try to hide their stress too, which makes it even more stressful. Right? Yep. Yep. And then I said, oh no, why? What's going on? And

And you said, I said, Trish seems on edge about something. So it sounds like our boss is stressed. So maybe she's talking to me in a different way. There's something I'm getting some sort of feeling from her that maybe something's not right. Got it. And then you said, maybe I said, maybe it's in your head. And you said, I don't know. I've been feeling the heat with all these extra projects. So

uh, in addition to the vibe feeling different, you're also getting assigned all this extra work. And I still, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just standing there not getting any assignments. I don't know why. Yeah. Maybe you should be the one who's worried. Yeah. I want to give you anything to do. That's a good point. That's a good point.

Yeah. You want to find that sweet spot of stress at work, right? Not too stressed, not totally under stress. Yeah, we need some stress. We need that good stress. To push us. Yeah, push us for sure. And then I said, there are a ton of projects. I promise you'll be fine. You're just spread it a little too thin right now.

And we learned that one in this episode, you're spread too thin, meaning your energy is spread across like 17 different projects, right? It's too much. And then I said, I'm just really in over my head at this point.

So stressed. Yes. Interesting. Now, what was another episode our listeners could check out, Michelle? All right, guys. Recently, we did 391 on the Business English podcast. It was how to save, how to skim to save your colleagues time in English. Hmm.

- Love it, how to skim to save your colleagues time. So talking about reading a little bit, right? I remember that one, skim, skim over, skim through. Yep, we're gonna listen to that one. - Really good. Where should we leave our listeners? I mean, this is, stress, there's no way to deny stress is, stress can be really bad for our bodies over time if we don't deal with it, right? Some stress is good, but this kind of stress, the cortisol spikes, it actually affects your blood pressure.

everything in your body. So what do we think about stress at work, Michelle? Where do we want to leave our listeners? Yeah, try and try and find something outside of work that makes you able to de-stress, right? Or think of some techniques even during the workday. I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, okay, I'm gonna, you know, just take a walk for a few minutes. Listen, I don't know everybody's work situation, but think of what are ways

that you can de-stress small ways, even at work, just maybe sitting and just breathing deeply for a few minutes or even just taking a bathroom break and hanging out in the bathroom for extra two minutes. Don't get in trouble. I don't want to get anybody in trouble.

No, I love what you said. I love what you said, especially going outside. I recently read that science has proven that if you go outside, just step outside your building, maybe you have to take the elevator down to the ground floor. Or if you work from home, go for a little walk. If you expand your field of vision, it actually does reduce stress because it makes you realize that you're smaller. There's more out there. There's more out there. For me, that really helps. That's my go-to. Just step outside. Yeah.

Yeah, it is true. It's amazing how different even like a five minute walk or just seeing the light of the day can make you feel. It's amazing the shift and then you can come back in and it doesn't mean that those challenges won't be there, but maybe you could then open up a conversation or a connection with a coworker by sharing a few things that could then help you start to get out of it. Right.

Right? Love it. All right, Lindsay. Well, I'm glad we talked about this. And thank you again to Faye for this wonderful question. And we hope everybody has a very relaxing day. No stress. No stress. All right, Michelle, you have a good one. I'll talk to you soon. All right. Bye, Lindsay. Bye. Bye.

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