What is stress?
This is taken largegly from a paper on stress created by Sarah Naimzadeh (2002), while an undergraduate student at Bryn Mawr College, which was published on the internet @ http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f00/web3/naimzadeh3.html
We all know how stress feels and that stress can affect people differently but there are actually four different types of stress: survival, internally generated, environmental and job and fatigue and overwork.
Survival stress generally involves a life-threatening situation in which you experience "fight or flight."
The second type, internally generated" results from a situation beyond your own control or fast paced lifestyle.
Environmental and job stress is due to working conditions or home location (i.e.- one who hates noise and dirt should not live in a city).
Finally, fatigue and overwork stress occurs when the stress builds over time and "can occur where you try to achieve too much in too little time or where you are not using effective time management strategies."
Being in “hardcore mode”. The focus is not on health, or even stress reduction, the task is getting the job done, whatever it takes.
What can happen if stress gets out of control
Where you are under excessive levels of short-term stress, then you may find that your performance goes to pieces. Afterwards, however, you will be able treat this as a learning experience and can adopt stress management strategies to avoid the problem in the future.
The effects of long term stress going out of control can be much more severe. If you do not take action to control it, this can lead to fatigue and exhaustion, depression, burn out, or breakdown.
I think that internally generated stress along with fatigue and overwork, characterize the lives of many folks in the mental health field. We may be in what some have called "hardcore mode;" the number one priority is not health or happiness but finishing a paper. But by ignoring our other needs, such as quality socialization, the stress just increases.
How to deal productively
Internal Self
Recognize irrational thoughts and feelings
Establish realistic expectations
External Self
Set priorities
Ask for help
Time management
Private time
Physical self
Fitness
Nutrition
Sleep
· Time Management:
Both fatigue and overwork and internally generated stress are elements of long term stress and calls for effective time management techniques. First, it is very important to learn to set realistic goals. Another strategy is to set priorities. Decide early what is important to you. Finally, learn to write everything, all goals, professor-imposed deadlines, extracurriculars, etc., in a planner or notebook. ·
Private Time:
It is also a good idea to enjoy time alone, relaxing instead of worrying about classes. Common methods of relaxation are taking a bath, reading a book, walking and jogging and listening to music. Dinner time should be a social time; instead of comparing workloads, try to talk about something more relaxing, like fond memories.
Fitness and Nutrition:
Another excellent way to keep, or put, stress in check is to exercise. A regular fitness routine of thirty to forty-five minutes per day three to four times per week will "strengthen your heart and lungs. These two vital organs - especially the heart - bear the brunt of the body's physiological stress response, constantly being called upon to 'fight or flee' from job, school, family, financial, relationship and every other kind of stressor we confront daily. Other benefits include a change in metabolism and an ability to sleep better at night. Along with this fitness regimen, a balanced diet is also crucial.
· Sleep:
There is general agreement that adults need to average eight hours of sleep/nite. Short sleeping--and 4 hours is for most people the tipping point--will progressively cause changes in our daily habits and work efficiency. Enough bad sleeping can elicit easy anxiety, depression, agitation, confusion, and eventually, disorientation. . Sleep rejuvenates. An excellent way to get quality sleep is to exercise.
Stress can easily become out of control and snowball into much larger and much more serious problems such as depression. A big myth about stress is that only extreme symptoms require attention. "Minor symptoms of stress are the early warnings that your life is getting out of hand and that you need to do a better job of managing stress.
Making an Action Plan to Manage Stress
Once you understand the level of stress under which you work most effectively, and know precisely what is causing you stress, the next stage is to work out how to manage stress effectively.
The best way of doing this will probably be to make an Action Plan of things that you are going to do to manage stress. Some elements of this action plan will be actions you are going to take to contain, control or eliminate problems that are causing you stress. Other elements may be health related such as taking more exercise, changing your diet, or improving the quality of your environment. Another part of the plan may cover stress management techniques that you will employ when stress levels begin to build.
A range of stress management techniques will be explained later in this article series. Different techniques are will be effective for different situations and causes of stress.
The contents and structure of your plan are for you to devise - it will depend entirely on your circumstances.
An example plan is shown below:
Improve co-ordination with John Smith
Train Michael Brown to be able to take on low level quotation
Set work goals for what I want to achieve this year
Ask for more feedback from my boss
Buy an ionizer to improve the office air quality
Tidy up my office area to reduce distraction
Take breaks every two hours at work
Go to sleep at 10pm each night to get adequate sleep
Reduce the amount of caffeine I drink
Plan home goals with my partner for how we will spend the next month
Use deep breathing whenever phone interrupts important work
Techniques for Reducing Long Term Stress
The main emphasis in management of long term stress is on adjusting your working methods and your lifestyle. Formal relaxation techniques do have a part in this, but equally important are time management skills, a positive attitude, a healthy diet with sufficient exercise and adequate rest, and a pleasant environment.
Adjusting these things will improve the quality of your life as well as increasing your resistance to stress.
Time Management
Time Management is a set of related practical skills that help you to use your time in the most effective and productive way possible. Time management helps you to reduce work stress by being more in control of your time and by being more productive. This ensures that you have time to relax outside work.
The central shift of attitude within time management is to concentrate on results, not on activity. To this end it embraces a range of skills that help you to:
- Assess the value of your time, and how effectively you are using it
- Focus on your priorities so that you know which tasks should be done, which ones can be delegated, and which ones can be dropped
- Plan projects so that they are done properly, with adequate resources
- Use the time you have more effectively
- Create more time
- Manage and avoid distractions
- Increase your productivity and personal effectiveness
This helps you to reduce long-term stress by:
- helping to put things in perspective when you feel 'drowned' in work
- ensuring that you are in control of where you are going and what you are doing
- helping you to be highly productive, and secure because of this
- improving your enjoyment of your current role, and increasing your prospects of promotion to more interesting jobs
- giving you more quality time to relax and enjoy life outside work.
Your attitude and it's effect on your stress
Attitude is fundamental to long term stress management. Where your attitude is negative or hostile, you will create problems out of opportunities and cause stress by alienating and irritating other people. Where you have a positive attitude, you can maintain a sense of perspective and draw the positive elements out of each situation. You will find that people will be more helpful and co-operative as they find you a pleasure to work with.
This next series of articles discusses the attitudes that will help you to maintain perspective, stay in control and get the best out of other people.
Keeping things in Perspective
When you are under stress it is very easy to lose perspective. Problems that are relatively minor can take on an apparent size that makes them seem difficult and intimidating. Naturally this feeds your feeling of stress, which makes your problems feel worse, which feeds your feeling of stress....
If you take a positive approach to life, trying to find a good side to every situation, then you will find that you are much less prone to stress. You will worry less, sleep better and enjoy life more. You will probably also find that you do better as people enjoy working with you more.
An important part of this is learning to view mistakes as learning experiences - if you have learned something from a mistake, then it has a positive value.
When you face what seems to be a huge and overwhelming problem, ask yourself the following questions:
- Is this really a problem at all?
If you view it in a different way, is it actually an opportunity to do something well. If it really is a difficult problem, then most other people will probably fail at it or give up. If you can deal with the situation, then this will be a major triumph for you. If you take the problem on, then what will you learn from it, whatever the outcome. That said, at a certain point you can be overwhelmed by "learning opportunities". That's where distress appears.
- Is this a problem anyone else has or has had?
If it is, find out how they deal with it or just talk to them to share the problem - this is a major intent of this website, and we hope you will contribute to our blog. Consider talking to older or more experienced colleagues whom you trust. They will probably have seen the problem before, and may be able to help to put it in perspective. They, too, may want someone to talk with.
- Can you break it down?
With a little thought you can usually reduce seemingly huge and impossible problems to a number of smaller, more manageable problems or tasks.
- If you are facing a lot of problems, can you prioritise them?
This helps you to work out the order in which you should approach tasks, and helps you to distinguish between important jobs and jobs that can be deferred. A good way of doing this is to use a priortized to-do list.
- Does it really matter anyway?
If everything goes wrong, will it really matter anyway? If it does, will it matter in six months or a year? Bear in mind that you will probably have plenty of opportunities to correct any failure, or to shine in other ways if things go wrong. As long as you have done your best, and learn from any mistakes you make, then you cannot do any better.
Being in Control
When you are in control of your life, you can control the level of stress you face. When you are out of control and unable to schedule events, then you cannot prevent stress building on top of stress. You will experience unpleasant peaks and troughs of stress. The feeling of being out of control is unpleasant and stressful in its own right.
Being in control of your life is largely a matter of attitude.
Often the difference between being in control and out of control comes down to making an investment of a little of your free time in planning. An effective method of doing this is to use personal goal setting. By planning you can anticipate problems in advance. This helps you to work out how to prevent or avoid a problem, or anticipate and exploit the positive elements of a situation.
Some of the most satisfying and enjoyable work you can do is work that you choose to do to meet your own long term goals.
Part of this process of planning and goal setting should include self-improvement goals. If you have identified areas of your personality that you should improve, then you can set goals to do this. This can include work on improving your self-image, being realistic about your faults, thinking positively, learning from mistakes and taking satisfaction from your successes.
Change
It is important that you learn to welcome change - otherwise you will expose yourself to intense stress. You will be aware that we are currently in the middle of a huge information revolution. As this runs its course, its impact on ways of life and society will be at least as great as the Industrial Revolution.
As with the Industrial Revolution, people who resist change will be crushed by it. People who welcome change will be able to exploit the new niches opening up on a constant basis. Success depends on adaptation to, or anticipation of, change.
Attitudes to Other People
Relations with other people can be either very satisfying or very stressful and unpleasant. While a certain amount of this comes down to their personalities, your attitude has a surprisingly large effect on the way that other people respond to you.
It is important when you are trying to improve the quality of relationships that you understand the difference between managing them and exploiting them. When you manage a relationship you are improving it for mutual advantage. When you exploit a relationship you are improving your results at the expense of the other person. If you exploit other people, then you will probably get a reputation for this and suffer in the medium and long term. It will also cultivate an unnecessarily cynical attitude to other people.
The following are important factors in forming harmonious relationships with other people:
- Take a positive approach:
People enjoy working with and relating to happy, optimistic people. When things are getting difficult, a smile or positive approach to a problem can make the difference between success and failure of a project.
- Project a positive image:
Take care over personal grooming. Wear good quality, well cared for clothes that project a suitable image. Learn about body language, and learn how to adopt a good, open posture.
- Be assertive:
When you deal with other people, you should confidently project your right to have your views taken into consideration. This does not mean aggressively insisting on getting your own way, which irritates other people and tramples on their rights. If you are not assertive then you will probably not be noticed, your triumphs will not be given their due weight and your needs will not be given proper attention.
- Pay compliments where they are due:
If you notice something good about someone, or they have done something well, compliment them. This costs you nothing, and helps to build their confidence. It is obviously important to be sincere - no-one likes an obvious flatterer.
- Try to leave people pleased to have spoken to you:
This can be an extremely useful maxim, providing that you do not allow other people to exploit you as a result. When you are dealing with well-adjusted human-beings, the more you give, the more you get.
An extremely powerful technique when dealing with other people is to try to understand the way they think. Try to think yourself inside their mind. See life through their eyes, feel what they feel, and understand their background, influences and motivations.
Sometimes things can go wrong. Some people are not intelligent in the way they conduct relationships. Where you face relationship problems, your attitude will often determine the amount of stress you experience:
- If you are facing a frustrating situation:
where unnecessary obstacles are put in your way, or people you are dealing with are being indecisive or unhelpful, then using relaxation techniques can be useful. This helps you to remain calm with people.
Health, Nutrition and Exercise
You should be aware of the effects of the following:
- Caffeine:
Caffeine is a stimulant. One of the reasons you probably drink it is to raise your level of arousal (i.e. stress). If you are drinking many cups of coffee a day, then you may find that you can reduce a lot of stress by switching to good decaffeinated coffee for a portion of your daily intake.
- Alcohol:
In small amounts alcohol may help you relax. In larger amounts it may increase stress as it disrupts sleep (and causes hangovers!). In large amounts over a long term alcohol will damage your body.
- Nicotine:
While in the very short term nicotine can cause relaxation, its toxic effects raise the heart rate and stress the body. If you smoke, try taking your pulse before and after a cigarette, and notice the difference. After the initial period of giving up smoking, most ex-smokers report feeling much more relaxed on a general basis. If you are ready to give up smoking, then an excellent book to read is Alan Carr's 'Easy Way to Give Up Smoking'.
- Sugar:
Sugar-rich foods can raise energy in the short term. The problem with this is that your body copes with high levels of sugar by secreting insulin, which reduces the amount of sugar in your blood stream. Insulin can persist and continue acting after it has normalised levels of blood sugar. This can cause an energy dip.
If you eat a good, well-balanced diet then you should be able to minimise this sort of chemical stress. Your body will be receiving all the nutrients it requires to function effectively. As with exercise, there is a lot of bad advice on diet available. You will normally be able to get reliable information on diet from your doctor or your government's department of health.
Eliminating Stress From Your Environment
If your living and working environments are badly organised then they can be a major source of stress. If your environment is well organised and pleasant, then it can help to reduce stress and increase productivity. Remember though that while it may be important for people under stress to have a calm environment, others may enjoy the raised levels of arousal associated with the 'buzz' of a busy office.
While the points listed may each contribute only in a small way to creating a more pleasant environment, taken together they can have a significant effect in reducing stress:
This section explains how you can reduce stress in your environment by improving:
- Air quality
- Lighting
- Decoration and tidiness
- Noise
- Furniture & Ergonomics
- Personal space
- Air quality Poor air quality can make life unpleasant. The following factors can contribute to the problem:
Smoking
- Air conditioning
- Heating
- Ionization by electrical equipment
- Overcrowding
- Pollution
- Solvents in e.g. carpets and furniture
- Excess humidity or dryness
You can do a number of things to improve air quality and reduce the stress caused by it:
- Ban smoking
- Open windows
- Use an ionizer. This helps to freshen the air by eliminating positive ions created by e.g. electric motors powering computer fans.
- Use dehumidifiers where humidity is a problem
- Introduce plants where the air is too dry. Evaporation of water from the plant pots or from the plants themselves will help to raise humidity. Plants also raise the amount of oxygen in the air and reduce stuffiness.
Bad lighting can cause eye strain and increase fatigue, as can light that is too bright, or light that shines directly into your eyes. Fluorescent lighting can also be tiring.
What you may not appreciate is that the quality of light may also be important. Most people are happiest in bright sunshine - this may cause release of chemicals in the body that bring a feeling of emotional well-being. Artificial light, which typically comprises only a few wavelengths of light, does not seem to have the same effect on mood that sunlight has.
Try experimenting with working by a window or using full spectrum bulbs in your desk lamp. You will probably find that this improves the quality of your working environment.
Decoration and tidiness If your environment at work or home is dirty, uncomfortable or neglected, then this can cause stress. Similarly if your living or working area is untidy and chaotic, then this can be distracting.
It is important, however, not to be dogmatic about tidiness: while it is very difficult to successfully co-ordinate many tasks in an untidy work area, it is perfectly possible to work on one task successfully. The recent trend of 'clear desk' thinking arrogantly ignores one of the most important lessons about human beings: that people work in different ways.
Noise can cause intense stress.
In a working environment a high level of background noise can severely impair your ability to concentrate. In an open plan office, the sound of people talking casually, of office machinery, or of meetings going on can seriously undermine the quality of work done. Ringing telephones disturb not only the person to whom the call is directed, but also other people in the same area.
Large amounts of background noise during the day can cause irritability, tension and headaches in addition to loss of concentration.
Solutions to noise at work can involve:
- installation of partitions,
- Use of white sound machines; a colleague mentioned to me recently that a really cheap fan will give the same benefit at a fraction of the price.
- use of meeting rooms separate from the main work area,
- use of quiet rooms when concentration is needed,
- and, if all else fails, use of earplugs.
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In a home environment, unwanted noise can be even more stressful and irritating as it intrudes on private space.
Where noise comes from neighbours or someone sharing the house, it may be effective to try a pleasantly assertive approach. Ask that music is turned down or that a different room be used as a child's nursery.
Where noise comes from outside the home, double glazing may be effective in reducing it.
Furniture & Ergonomics
Another source of stress is muscular tension and pain caused by bad furniture, or by bad use of good furniture.
This normally shows itself in backache caused by badly designed chairs or by bad seating positions in properly designed chairs, although it can show itself in other ways. It is important to take the time to arrange your working environment so that it is comfortable. For example, when you consider that you may spend a large proportion of each day sitting in a particular seat, it is worth ensuring that it is not causing you pain or damaging your body.
If you work at a computer, then it is worth ensuring that the monitor and keyboard are comfortably positioned, and that you are well-positioned relative to them. If you find that tendons in your hands get sore when you type for sustained periods, then it may be worth experimenting with a 'natural' keyboard. If you find that your eyes get sore when looking at a monitor, or that you start to get headaches, then try taking breaks periodically.
If you feel that you are experiencing pain from your environment, it may be worth looking into ergonomics in more detail.
Personal space
It is important for people to feel that they have sufficient personal space at work and at home. You may have experienced the dissatisfaction, stress and irritation of working at a different desk each day, or of sleeping in a different hotel room each night. This unpleasant situation is largely caused by the lack of power to organise and control the space in which you operate.
Other people can also cause you stress when they impose themselves on your personal space, perhaps entering it uninvited.
The ideal way of establishing personal space is to have a room or office of your own, into which you control access. If this is not possible, you can block off areas with furniture, screens or blinds.
In the highly undesirable situation where no personal space is available, then you can establish some feeling of ownership by bringing personal objects such as small plants or photographs of loved-ones into the workspace.
Summary
- That the stress you experience is something that is largely under your control
- Stress can come from a range of different sources
- Short term stress occurs where you find yourself under pressure in a particular situation
- A certain level of short term stress is needed to feel alert and alive
- Too much is unpleasant and can seriously damage performance
- Short term stress is best handled using mental or physical stress management techniques
- Long term stress comes from a build up of stress over a long period
- Sustained high levels can lead to serious physical and mental illness if not controlled
- Long term stress is best managed by changes to lifestyle, attitude and environment
- By using a stress diary you can monitor and understand the causes of stress in your life. The diary can help you to evaluate your performance under stress.
- Once you understand what is causing you stress, you can make an action plan for stress management. This gives you positive goals to work towards.
Above all, you should now be able to master stress and make it work for you.
If you view it in a different way, is it actually an opportunity to do something well. If it really is a difficult problem, then most other people will probably fail at it or give up. If you can deal with the situation, then this will be a major triumph for you. If you take the problem on, then what will you learn from it, whatever the outcome. That said, at a certain point you can be overwhelmed by "learning opportunities". That's where distress appears.
If it is, find out how they deal with it or just talk to them to share the problem - this is a major intent of this website, and we hope you will contribute to our blog. Consider talking to older or more experienced colleagues whom you trust. They will probably have seen the problem before, and may be able to help to put it in perspective. They, too, may want someone to talk with.
With a little thought you can usually reduce seemingly huge and impossible problems to a number of smaller, more manageable problems or tasks.
This helps you to work out the order in which you should approach tasks, and helps you to distinguish between important jobs and jobs that can be deferred. A good way of doing this is to use a priortized to-do list.
If everything goes wrong, will it really matter anyway? If it does, will it matter in six months or a year? Bear in mind that you will probably have plenty of opportunities to correct any failure, or to shine in other ways if things go wrong. As long as you have done your best, and learn from any mistakes you make, then you cannot do any better.
People enjoy working with and relating to happy, optimistic people. When things are getting difficult, a smile or positive approach to a problem can make the difference between success and failure of a project.
Take care over personal grooming. Wear good quality, well cared for clothes that project a suitable image. Learn about body language, and learn how to adopt a good, open posture.
When you deal with other people, you should confidently project your right to have your views taken into consideration. This does not mean aggressively insisting on getting your own way, which irritates other people and tramples on their rights. If you are not assertive then you will probably not be noticed, your triumphs will not be given their due weight and your needs will not be given proper attention.
If you notice something good about someone, or they have done something well, compliment them. This costs you nothing, and helps to build their confidence. It is obviously important to be sincere - no-one likes an obvious flatterer.
This can be an extremely useful maxim, providing that you do not allow other people to exploit you as a result. When you are dealing with well-adjusted human-beings, the more you give, the more you get.
where unnecessary obstacles are put in your way, or people you are dealing with are being indecisive or unhelpful, then using relaxation techniques can be useful. This helps you to remain calm with people.
Caffeine is a stimulant. One of the reasons you probably drink it is to raise your level of arousal (i.e. stress). If you are drinking many cups of coffee a day, then you may find that you can reduce a lot of stress by switching to good decaffeinated coffee for a portion of your daily intake.
In small amounts alcohol may help you relax. In larger amounts it may increase stress as it disrupts sleep (and causes hangovers!). In large amounts over a long term alcohol will damage your body.
While in the very short term nicotine can cause relaxation, its toxic effects raise the heart rate and stress the body. If you smoke, try taking your pulse before and after a cigarette, and notice the difference. After the initial period of giving up smoking, most ex-smokers report feeling much more relaxed on a general basis. If you are ready to give up smoking, then an excellent book to read is Alan Carr's 'Easy Way to Give Up Smoking'.
Sugar-rich foods can raise energy in the short term. The problem with this is that your body copes with high levels of sugar by secreting insulin, which reduces the amount of sugar in your blood stream. Insulin can persist and continue acting after it has normalised levels of blood sugar. This can cause an energy dip.
Smoking
- A certain level of short term stress is needed to feel alert and alive
- Too much is unpleasant and can seriously damage performance
- Short term stress is best handled using mental or physical stress management techniques
- Sustained high levels can lead to serious physical and mental illness if not controlled
- Long term stress is best managed by changes to lifestyle, attitude and environment