How to Deal with Stress

Stephen Palmer, Cary Cooper

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780749467074
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

Straightforward, easy to read and practical, How to Deal with Stress, 3rd edition will put you back in charge of your life. Written by two internationally-recognized experts in the field of stress management, Cooper and Palmer provide a thorough understanding of the psychological causes of stress and the resulting physical effects, enabling you to build your own personal plan, improve well-being and enhance your performance at work.
Full of insight and examples from real people, a brand new chapter provides a practical worksheet to help you develop your problem solving skills and reduce stress day-to-day. Crammed full of techniques on how to deal with stressed employees and colleagues, How to Deal with Stress will help you achieve the ultimate long term goal.

1

WHAT IS STRESS?

So what is stress? It is one of those terms that mean so many things to different people. For the purposes of this book, it may be a good idea if we have a common understanding. In this chapter we shall provide you with a definition of stress, highlight the difference between pressure and stress and explain the biology of stress.

SIMPLE DEFINITION

There are many definitions of stress. The one we have found useful is:

Stress occurs when pressure exceeds your perceived ability to cope.

So it is not just external pressure, such as reaching deadlines, that triggers stress, but whether you believe that you can cope with a situation that you perceive as important or threatening. Obviously, the more experienced or skilled you are at a particular activity, such as giving presentations or completing projects on time, the less likely you are to become stressed.

But in many jobs there is constantly high pressure to perform, and no breathing space at all. Under pressure employees start working longer hours, taking work home and, in extreme cases, work in their holidays to achieve work targets and deadlines. A time may come when, literally, the person passively accepts one project too many and then realizes he or she just can’t cope any more. We often hear the phrase, ‘the straw that breaks the camel’s back’, but this is very relevant to the field of stress prevention, as we will highlight shortly.

Of course, if you do not perceive that the problem is important or threatening, then even if you do not successfully deal with it, you are unlikely to become stressed.

PRESSURE AND STRESS

To state the obvious, each person is uniquely different, for example, in our genetic predispositions to suffer from various medical disorders, our hair colour, height, weight, level of fitness, personality, humour, interests and so on. This also applies to the amount of pressure each of us can take.

Research has shown that there is a real physiological difference between pressure and stress. People experiencing stress have higher levels of the various stress hormones in their bloodstream than people who feel merely challenged. At the right amount of pressure we work at our optimum. We will be effective, creative, decisive, alert and stimulated. We will start the day and look forward to our work, studies or other personal interests or hobbies. The important point to note is that this varies from person to person. One person’s pressure is another person’s stress. Too much pressure can lead to anxiety and burnout. Too little pressure, and we become bored, apathetic, depressed and finally may even reach rustout! The link between rustout, our optimum level and burnout is illustrated in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 The relationship of pressure to the ability to cope

Source: adapted from Palmer and Strickland (1996: 11)

In fact, when people are feeling appropriately challenged they often feel excited about accomplishing a task, whereas when they are stressed they usually experience a range of negative thoughts, feelings and physical sensations.

The key to managing stress is to become skilled at balancing your workload and remaining in your personal optimal zone. However, first of all, we need to become more aware of how pressured we are during our average day or week.

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ACTIVITY 2

Reflect upon how you’ve felt in the past week and then think about the questions below:

• Have you been stressed, relaxed, bored or fatigued?

• Do you regularly work at your optimum?

• On your average day, where are you on the pressure diagram?

• Does your position on the diagram vary throughout the day or on particular days?

• Finally, if you are regularly feeling too much or too little pressure, can you change this situation, assuming you want to?

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COSTS OF STRESS

The costs of stress are immense. Surprisingly, stress has overtaken the common cold as a major reason for absence from work, and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has estimated that absenteeism costs British industry more than £17 billion a year. This is typical of many studies in the Western world. The effects of stress upon ...