Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Poetry as Work Therapy

Few jobs today are stress-free or even low-stress: not enough resources, not enough people, normal organizational politics and conflicts, reorganizations and layoffs, clashes between work and family demands, the speed and volume of information (and how it’s delivered). Workplace stress has been the new normal for at least the last two decades (I’m old enough to know it wasn’t always this way).

We relieve stress in different ways. We exercise. We pursue unusual hobbies or avocations. We travel (involving its own kind of stress, especially at airports). We quit organizational work life. And we drink, overeat, get sick and sometimes die from stress. Recently, I had the painful experience of a ruptured disk in my back; my doctor connected it directly to stress in my job.

We cope as best we can. One way I’ve found that helps is poetry, and in five specific ways.

To continue reading, please see my post today at TweetSpeak Poetry.

 Photograph by Frits Ahlefeldt via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

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