3 Steps to Manage Stress When You Work in a Lab

For National Stress Awareness Month, Jillian Goldstein, LCSW, director of the Counseling and Wellness Center at Gladstone Institutes, describes the unique stressors that can stem from working in a lab, explains how your body might respond, and provides tips to help manage stress.

Recognized each April since 1992, National Stress Awareness Month raises attention to how stress impacts everyday wellness, and is an opportunity to build coping strategies to mitigate its effects.

Since launching Gladstone’s Counseling and Wellness Center last year, I’ve been struck by my clients’ passion, drive, and the rigor with which they approach their scientific research, and their academic and career pursuits. Biomedical research is a competitive, demanding, and high-intensity field, so not surprisingly, it’s common to experience high levels of stress, both acute and chronic. I’m confident that Gladstone’s commitment to fostering a culture that values wellness will encourage more conversation, awareness, and ease to discuss and manage the stressors that many scientists experience, given the very nature of their field of work.

Stress in the Lab

Something I've learned from my clinical practice at Gladstone is that being a scientist comes with both the excitement of innovation as well as managing uncertainty and failure. Coming up with bold ideas and pioneering uncharted territories brings about risks, unknowns, and unintended outcomes. No matter your role in the lab, you'll have to confront your ability to cope with and manage the uncertainties that are inescapable in biomedical research.

The scientific community experiences a wide range of stressors, and each stage of your development as a scientist brings unique challenges—disappointment with failed experiments, working on weekends to tend to cell cultures, navigating difficult interpersonal and supervisory relationships, preparing for a qualifying exam, managing multiple projects and grant deadlines simultaneously, feeling the pressure for first authorship, and securing an academic position, to name just a few.

These external stressors may make it difficult to set boundaries at work, say no to projects, manage your workload effectively, take time off, and impact your self-confidence and motivation.

The Stress Response

Both acute and chronic stress trigger the sympathetic branch of your body’s autonomic nervous system—the “fight-or-flight” response—releasing several hormones, such as corticotropin-releasing hormone, adrenocorticotropic hormone, epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. The stress response can cause symptoms such as:

• Physical: difficulty breathing, racing heart, muscle tension and pain, headaches, sickness, indigestion, or fatigue
• Mental: negative thoughts, irritability, inflexible thinking, or a short-temper
• Emotional: feeling anxious, fearful, angry, frustrated, sad, overwhelmed, or difficulty focusing and lack of motivation
• Behavioral: sleep problems, lack of exercise, overeating, social withdrawal, or substance use

When stress becomes chronic, it can have long-lasting effects on your entire body, and is associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma, cancer and infectious disease, obesity and metabolic syndrome, chronic pain, insomnia, anxiety, depression, and substance abuse.
 

Jillian Goldstein, Gladstone's in-house therapist is hopeful a culture that values wellness will make conversations about stress easier.

How to Cope with Stress

Step One: Be Aware of Your Stress

The first step in stress reduction is being aware that you’re experiencing stress. The pace and intensity of the biomedical research field may make it difficult to slow down and notice how you’re doing. Take a moment to check in with yourself and ask:

• What symptoms of stress do I experience?
• How does stress impact me physically, emotionally, mentally, and behaviorally?
• Are there ways to improve my stress management?

Step Two: Find Techniques to Cope with Stress

Many well-researched techniques can reduce the effects of stress. So the second step is making time to put them into practice!

These recommendations can help you if you’re struggling with acute or chronic stress, especially if you can integrate them into your day-to-day routine:

• Relaxation techniques: try deep breathing, visualizations, or progressive muscle relaxation.
• Meditation and mindfulness: practice mindfulness, meditation, yoga, or tai chi.
• Exercise: make it fun and something you’ll look forward to doing alone or with a friend. Try the gym, walking, dance class, or hiking.
• Time management and prioritization: develop an organizational system to help track your projects and tasks. Use a planner and calendar, pause Slack and phone notifications, don’t overbook yourself, prioritize tasks depending on their importance and urgency.
• Realistic goals: make a list of goals for the day and week, break down your to-do list into manageable stretches, take 5–10 minute breaks in between tasks to reset, and focus on one task at a time.
• Quality sleep: get 6 or more hours of sleep each night, minimize screen use an hour before bedtime, keep to a regular sleep schedule, and reduce caffeine and alcohol intake.
• Healthy eating: don’t skip breakfast, eat three meals a day plus healthy snacks, and try batch cooking: cook a few items over the weekend that can last you throughout the week for easy and cost-effective meal planning.
• Social support: reach out to friends, family, and trusted peers for support and social engagement. Remember you are not alone in your experience of stress and it’s important to talk about it.
• Hobbies and leisure time: keep investing in your interests as a means for fulfillment and as a stress reliever—reading, photography, hiking, sports, spending time with friends and family, or whatever you enjoy!

Step Three: Get Help When You Need It

The third step is recognizing when clinical intervention like psychotherapy or medication management might be helpful. When stress goes unmanaged, it can lead to more significant mental health concerns such as anxiety and depression.

Cognitive behavioral therapy, self-compassion, and mindfulness are approaches that I find very effective in helping clients foster positive mindset shifts and tame the negative thinking, anxiety, and depression that can arise from stress.

For Gladstone employees, sessions at the Counseling and Wellness Center and through Gladstone’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP) are free and confidential, and I’m always happy to provide consultation and referrals to external providers.

If you are not receiving benefits from Gladstone, I recommend contacting your HR department or your university's student health center (sometimes called CAPS or Counseling and Psychological Services) to learn about your mental health benefits.