Is the quality of your life away from work affected by your job?  Managers are in the middle:  on the one hand, you must answer to the "higher-ups", and on the other hand, keep peace with those whom you supervise.  The effect of being in the middle often creates a high level of inner conflict.  There is a challenge to your personal loyalty between the staff you supervise and those to whom you must answer.

          We manage inner conflict or not, based on our own inner resources.  By this, we mean our coping skills.  We don't often see "coping skills" in our academic curriculum, nor are they a part of in-service training.  Rather, we learn them by observing others.  This is referred to by psychologists as "social modeling".  This is what we do growing up, looking at the primary relationships in our lives, such as parents, teachers, relatives and friends.  How we observe these others coping helps form the pattern for our own coping behavior.  For example, for many, the ability to minimize the extent of a situation is the way one copes with feeling overwhelmed.  What we know about life and death situations, or other crisis situations, is that this style of coping is ineffective, and amounts to denial of the truth of what we are seeing.  If those in our primary relationships had poor coping skills, we likely will also.  On the other hand, if those whose social modeling we followed had good coping skills, our chances are better to have them ourselves.  Whatever these skills were for our social modeling growing up, we can, of course learn better coping skills as adults, with resources and effort.

          In order to develop a healthy strategy to cope well in a supervisory role, it is most important to review the internal resources you have in dealing with conflict.  One thing is certain:  conflict is part of the job. We believe that conflict is directly related to feeling stress.[1]   If you have never looked at your own coping style, nor spent any time hearing feedback about it, conflict may be taking a greater toll on you than necessary. Conflict at work contributes to conflict at home, and the reverse is equally true.  Therefore, to develop a healthy coping style to manage conflict at work, we need to insure that we examine what is going on in both domains of our lives.  If you find yourself drinking a bit too much, overeating, or skipping the normal, healthy stress-relievers such as exercise, it will be quite challenging to effectively handle the stresses of conflict at work. 

          We start looking at our coping skills by taking a personal inventory of our own stressors in our lives.  Taking the time to examine what gives us personal discomfort at home reveals how high our stress level is before we get to work.  A next step is to develop a concrete plan for addressing the stressors on the home front.  What can we do to minimize or alleviate stressors at home?  Some things, such as an ill parent, a disabled family member, or money worries can be outside our reach to change.  However, other stressors, such as challenging relationships[2], poor health habits, procrastination, and parenting conflicts can be addressed.

          Mental wellness is the effect of learning to balance the ways we can effectively cope with personal stressors against the stressors themselves[3].  This necessarily includes adding into our lives each day things that bring joy and personal satisfaction. No one should be on a "starvation diet" from things that give us any small measure of joy.  Things we love to do are like a vaccination against stress. They strengthen us, and indulging in them is a coping skill.  In a society that tends to value work more than relaxation, it is easy to forget that fun, and diversions are an essential part of maintaining the quality of our lives with mental wellness.

          In a workaholic society, value is placed on working hard, overworking, and not taking breaks.  How many executives brag that they haven't taken a vacation in years?  It is likely that these individuals are not exercising good coping skills, and it is very likely that their work and personal relationships both suffer. The media and our general value system tend to put a positive spin on hard, and even excessive, work.  It is nothing to brag about. 

          Coping skills include a variety of things, which may seem like indulgence, but in reality, they are like preventive medicine for the psyche[4].  Structure, a sense of purpose outside work, and having a sense of community are among the cornerstones of mental wellness. While work itself may provide plenty of structure, community and purpose for us as professionals, the often intensely stressful environment may not nurture our mental health. Therefore, we must protect our emotional well being with the part of our lives outside the workplace. Walking, cooking, gardening, talking to a friend, sharing with co-workers, reading, listening to music, meditation,[5] expressions of sexuality, affection and learning something new unrelated to working (taking a class for fun) are all examples of coping skills.  Savvy managers who employ these coping skills are far ahead of those who do not.  These diversions enable us to dissipate the internal conflict inherent in the job.  They also help people who tend to internalize others' problems and pain to have a constructive outlet for those problems and that pain.  As our work lives are about addressing others' difficulties, it is a healthy choice to recognize how the daily habits of taking on the problems of our patients and those we supervise can affect our own mental health adversely.  Though we may sometimes feel that we are expected to be "superhuman", no one can get through a stressful day of clinical work without some effect internally.  Looking within and being proactive with our mental health is in order.

          Planning structure for time away from work, and carefully using one's time off with meaningful and enjoyable activity provides the needed framework and sense of purpose that keep us healthy mentally. Sometimes our non-work chores seem to occupy every spare moment.  However, there is a kind of discipline attached to using time off with purposeful intent.  Organizational skill is perhaps one of the ways managers get into positions of leadership.  The same skill set is needed at home, for finding time to do the things that fill us with moments of joy.  In other words, organize your non-work time as skillfully as you manage others at your job.  You will find time for good mental hygiene if that is what you intend.  The best leaders lead by example.  Consider being an example of good coping skills to those whom you lead by insuring good mental health habits in your own life. 

          The "take-away" from this is that maintaining mental wellness is making your own mental wellbeing as important a priority as your career and your family.  Nurses already possess the knowledge, generally, about what mental wellness means for patients.  Managers especially need to make their own mental wellness a priority, starting today.

[1] Handbook of Stress Theoretical and Clinical Aspects, Goldberger, Leo, Breznitz, Shlomo, The Free Press, New York, NY, 1982.

[2] Stress and the Family Volume 1, McCubbin, Figley, Charles, Brunner/Mazel, Inc, New York, NY, 1983.

[3] Principles and Practice of Stress Management, second Edition, Lehrer, Paul, Woolfolk, Robert, The Gilford Press, New York, NY, 1993.

[4] The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook, 4^th ed., Davis, Martha, Eshelman, Elizabeth, McKay, Matthew, New Harbinger Publications, Inc., Oakland, CA, 1995.

[5] Calming Your Anxious Mind, Brantley, Jeffrey, New Harbinger Publications, Inc., Oakland, CA, 2003.