| STRESS |
By David Fontana
From Managing Stress, The British Psychology Society and Routledge, Ldt., 1989
| The stress faced by professional workers is substantial. For many
professionals, it is intrinsic to the job itself, where competing demands and
pressures cannot be escaped. The sheer volume of work can also be overwhelming
at times, whether one is a social worker, teacher, doctor or manager. Anyone
in this kind of job knows, either from their own direct experience or from
observing colleagues, that stress can have very serious consequences. It can
develop into a living nightmare of running faster and faster to stay in the
same place, feeling undervalued, feeling unable to say 'no' to any demand but
not working productively on anything. The signs of stress can include
sleeplessness, aches and pains and sometimes physical symptoms of anxiety about
going to work. What is more, people who are chronically stressed are no fun to
work with. They may be irritable, miserable, lacking in energy and commitment,
self-absorbed. They may find it hard to concentrate on any one task and cannot
be relied on to do their share.
And yet, some people seem to have the ability to stay in control of their workload and to handle job frustrations without becoming worn out, irritable or depressed. These people are able to handle stress, having ways of taking the rough with the smooth, keeping a sense of humor and renewing their energy and resources so that working life continues to bring pleasure and reward. Here's a little story. This story concerns a man (it could just as well be a woman) who is chased by a tiger and falls over a cliff. To break his fall he is lucky enough to catch hold of a small shrub growing on the cliff face, and there he hangs, poised precariously between life and death. Above him the tiger prowls, and looking down he sees another tiger at the bottom of the cliff. Even were he to survive the fall, there would soon be nothing much left to him to be found by his rescuers. As he hangs there, he sees two small mice busily gnawing away at the stem of the shrub on which his life depends. Simultaneously he sees some wild strawberries growing just within reach, plucks them and pops them into his mouth and thinks to himself, 'Ah how sweet these strawberries taste!' It isn't easy to find a generally acceptable definition of 'stress.' Doctors, engineers, psychologists, management consultants, linguists and lay-person all use the work in their own distinctive ways with their own definition. A useful definition for this handout is that stress is a demand made upon the adaptive capacities of the mind and body. If these capacities can handle the demand and enjoy the stimulation involved, then stress is welcome and helpful. If they can't and find the demand debilitating, then stress is unwelcome and unhelpful. This definition is useful in three ways; (1) stress can be both good and bad, (2) it isn't so much events that determine whether we're stressed or not, it is our reactions to them, and (3) the definition tells us that stress is a demand made upon the body's capacities. If our capacities are good enough, we respond well. If they aren't, we give way.
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| The Holmes-Rahe Social Adjustment Scale | ||||
Any change in the routine of our lives -- even welcome ones -- can be stressful, both in terms of the way in which we perceive them and in terms of the increased incidence of physical illness and death that occur during the following 12 months. The Holmes-Rahe Scale assigns values (based upon the sample being told that marriage represents 50 points) attributed by a sample of 394 individuals to the life events concerned.
Don't attempt to add up a 'score' on this scale. The values are there simply to show the relative impact of stressful events and to give some indication of the wide range of stressors in our lives. And the list is by no means complete. Most people can add items to it, many of them likely to carry high values. |