Managing Stress. . .

A nurse-colleague asked what she should do when, much to her dismay, her husband got angry and distant because she talked too much each evening about her trials at work. She is employed on a high-stress unit, where death of a patient is a frequent reality. She works hard, loves her job but acknowledges, the stress can suck her down by the end of the day.

What follows is what I told her as a nurse who has also worked in high-stress, high-death jobs with patients who had AIDS or ovarian cancer (both very deadly in the day I worked those kinds of cases).

Also, I explained, I speak as a nurse who is on my second marriage. My first one ended amicably enough, but I was married very young and hardly understood the kind of maturity I needed to bring both to my job and my relationship at the time – how could I? There was no one to teach or advise me.

I still haven’t heard back from her to know if she appreciated or hated my response to her question.

Here’s what I said – you tell me, was it a fair and balanced response?


As nurses, we work in a field where so much is at stake.
Two things to take into consideration --
A. We're not the only profession in this predicament.
B. We certainly have job choices within a wide range of high-to-low stress.

When you choose a high-stress job (even when it is a position you love) you owe it to yourself and to others in your family to develop effective strategies to deal with your job-stress. I think it is unrealistic to expect your spouse to grasp, appreciate and help you manage your own distress, especially when s/he is not working in the same sort of capacity. And, even if your spouse were also a nurse, it probably isn't fair to "dump" your day on the other person, just because you need a compassionate ear.

What can you do to manage your stress and remain in the marriage and the job you love?
You might try:
-- A support group (sometimes a grief group is useful, especially if you work in an area where death is a prominent feature).

-- A "girls-night-out" where your friends from work gather to get the stressors of the job out of their systems without taking it all home to the family who also needs their full attention.

-- A threapist. Yep, someone you PAY just to talk to! Sometimes a therapist can help you reframe the situation that stresses you out and help you re-establish a sense of control and equilibrium in your life and relationships.

-- A self-care technique like exercise, meditation, guided imagery, music, a power-nap, etc. that you can rely on to dissipate the effects of stress and return to a "normal state" before you try to interact with a loved one who may also have had a trying day!

You might also want to re-examine your belief-system about marriage. Since when did we come to believe that one's spouse can meet every need we might enounter? We need lots of people in our lives to meet the many needs that we as humans experience. Your spouse is only ONE of those supportive-persons and should not be asked to bear the brunt of every negative emotion you carry around with you, whether the result of your job or your personality.

Take good care of yourself AND your marriage. A good marriage is hard to come by and requires a serious investment of time, energy, effort and understanding on each participant's part. That's the only way to sustain the relationship, grow it through a life-time and build a solid foundation that can withstand the hardships that will naturally come your way!

Cherish the love you have.

--p

PS -- Don't talk casually about your marriage challenges at work. It is an easy, lazy thing to do. It can cause greater harm than any other choice you make. If you have a good friend, with whom you can speak in confidence, that's one thing. But do not risk your marriage becoming a topic of idle gossip at the workplace -- there is nothing more disrespectful to your spouse than that.