All About Stress, Part III
During the holiday season – Christmas, Hanukkah and others – people will often experience elevated levels of stress. But it need not be so. There are, indeed, many pressures unique to the holiday season.
In many places, the weather makes it more difficult to get around and people are sometimes more physically uncomfortable. Those are minor in themselves, but when they persist over time they become elements in encouraging stress.
The desire and expectation of buying presents, sometimes for individuals you may not be very fond of but feel obligated to buy for, can add to the pressure. This is especially true for people on a tight budget, as many are. Crowded stores, clogged streets and a lack of parking spaces contribute as well.
These facts all bear marked similarities to more common factors in producing stress. Work responsibilities, for example, often bring deadlines that are difficult to meet and a lack of resources to meet them. Physical factors, such as health problems, commonly constitute a large percentage of stressors. Money worries are near the top of a lot of lists for those who experience stress.
Since the holiday factors are similar, they are subject to the same kind of ‘treatment’. Stress results from a perceived, unresolvable conflict between “I must” and “I can’t”. So, tackle these two factors head on during the holidays.
Ask yourself if you really ‘must’. Many families, for example, have a kind of raffle system in which one family member buys for another. That way, no one has the burden of buying multiple presents. Fewer obligations to meet means less chance for stress. The less money you have to spend means less to worry about.
Some people start gift buying and decorating earlier in the season. Others find it difficult to ‘get into the spirit’ long before the event. For the latter, try shopping online or going to more out of the way places. The trip may take a little longer, or require a little more searching, but the lower incidence of stress more than compensates.
Even if you don’t want to start shopping for the holidays in June, you can still do some planning that will help lower the occasion for stress. If your budget is small, start saving well ahead. Put a cap on what you are willing to spend and don’t let unnecessary guilt make you spend more or feel bad about spending less. Gifts should be voluntary, not obligatory.
Having more to do at a particular time of the year, when it may be more difficult to get it done, can represent a challenge. But a challenge only leads to stress when you place yourself in impossible dilemmas. Toss aside those dilemmas and declare your independence from stress.
Work Stress
The phrase ’stress at work’ has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it simply refers to stress experienced while on the job, usually because of some aspect of it. On the other hand, it can mean that stress is at work on you – stress is working on you, and usually in ways that are extremely unpleasant.
These two meanings are not completely unrelated. When you endure work-initiated stress the results are harmful to your physical health and your mental well-being. As with any problem, it helps to look at the fundamental causes in order to work towards a long-term solution.
There are a hundred immediate possible causes for job-related stress. Employees and managers alike are often given unrealistic deadlines to make near-impossible goals. Competitive fast-paced business can be fun. But when the intermediate goals don’t serve valid business ends – improving sales, optimizing work flow, enhancing communication – they are generally resented.
Add to that the all-too-common unreasonable boss or uncooperative co-worker. In companies large and small there are too frequently people in charge who are disrespectful and poorly qualified to lead others. They are generally more interested in flattering their manager than improving productivity and getting the job done.
Those two factors – mis-directed goals and unfair managers – explain the response that most people give when asked if they experience work-related stress and why: absence of control over their lives.
Many individuals have well-developed problem solving skills. Women in the workplace who are also mothers know very well how to manage time, multi-task multiple demands and innovate new solutions. They practice those skills every day at home. They also know a bit more than most about how to settle disputes among individuals, all of whom may be partly wrong and partly right.
Men, too, have ample experience in prioritizing resource expenditures, responding to complaints and deciding when to push and when to compromise. They practice that at home every day.
But the workplace often fails to mirror the freedom to use one’s thinking skills and the power to enact a workable solution. More often, goals come from above and little debate is allowed. Individuals employed in organizations of that kind experience obligations without authority – a guarantee of stress.
The single most-often cited reason for stress in the workplace boils down to that – demands, but without the resources to meet them. When an individual is placed in the unresolvable conflict between “I must” and “I can’t,” stress is the inevitable result. Fortunately, some organizations are beginning to recognize this and are taking steps to change. With luck, you may be employed by one.
Being placed in situations that demand the impossible almost inevitably lead to stress. Unrealistic deadlines to meet useless goals, enforced by unreasonable managers – are an all too common scenario. But individuals who find themselves in such circumstances still have options.
There are a dozen small, stress-relieving exercises that can help ease the symptoms while working toward the long-term cure. Stress produces a number of well-documented physiological effects like muscle tension, shallow breathing and compromised immune system. To combat these, you can take direct action.
Take a few deep breaths, slowly. No need to go into some kind of Zen state, just allow yourself to expand the chest and relieve tension around the center of the body. Stretch the arms and shoulders. Gently work the head from side to side. Flex the calves.
Take a few minutes to work on your mental processes as well. Stress often inhibits the ability to focus or concentrate effectively. It decreases memory retention on needed items because the irritation causes focus to shift to the fact of being angry.
While you’re breathing deeply, close your eyes and meditate for a couple of minutes. Again, that doesn’t require any form of deep relaxation, just a moment to let the external world go. At the same time, you don’t want to focus solely on the anger or stress you’re feeling. Focus on an internal image of something pleasant – a child’s face, the family dog, a great golf swing, anything that works for you.
Now that you’ve tackled the symptoms, go after the roots of the problem. Many choose to start their own businesses. That choice brings with it a whole new set of challenges, but the overarching benefit is the freedom to meet them. You’ll find yourself working long hours with little recognition. But, even in the absence of large external rewards, the internal rewards – the satisfaction, the feeling of being the ‘commander of your own ship’ – is frequently cited as a major incentive for those who keep trying.
Many others will try to work for positive change within their current organization. Even when those efforts are only partially successful, individuals report that they gain satisfaction from the knowledge that they are not simply accepting their unpleasant fate passively.
You can make efforts to transfer to another job within the organization, or look forward to the day when that unreasonable boss will have moved on. Remember, very few things in any company stay the same for more than six months to a year.
While you’re waiting for better circumstances, focus on the process less than the results. Keep a realistic attitude about what is and what is not within your control. Try not to let the latter matter very much. Seek out the cooperative individuals in the company and don’t burden yourself with trying to change the others. By all means, let off some steam to trusted friends and family members outside work. At work, stay focused on the task.
Stress in Today’s World
In the fast-paced world nearly everyone lives in today, stress is an ever-present possibility. Just-in-time manufacturing, instant news from around the world, computers and a host of other modern technologies are a great benefit. But along with them comes quicker deadlines, instant notification of bad news and more communication to deal with.
But no one is going to slow down the world, nor would many of us want to. At the same time, it’s helpful to realize that with more technology comes more options. Some of those options allow us to find new ways to deal with the internal and external factors that can form the basis of stress.
You may be unlucky enough to have a boss who imposes unreasonable deadlines to meet pointless work milestones. But many have the option now to telecommute, work flexible hours and take extended leave for pregnancy and other family situations. There may be myriad challenges in the modern world, but there are a variety of new tools to deal with them.
Computers can pile up work faster, but they also allow us to get more done with less labor. They also enable us to find those with similar interests who may live thousands of miles away. In decades past, that would have been nearly impossible, except for the occasional convention in a distant city.
Psychology, though still in its infancy as a science, is starting to compile a set of good data on neurobiology, nutrition and a host of other factors relevant to stress. Figuring out useful treatments from this bewildering array of studies will take time, but progress is being made.
Sports and diet have become much more scientific than they were a generation or two ago. As tools to fight stress, exercise and a proper diet are now recognized as twins in one of the most effective strategies for combating stress.
While millions still work hard, basics like housing and food, transportation and medical treatment constitute a smaller percentage of income for most than they did in generations past. It’s not uncommon for two-driver families to have more than two vehicles today.
Certainly there is no shortage of potential stressors. To listen to the nightly newscast is to see a picture of a world about to come apart at the seams. And, yet, we endure. It may be that there is more to the lives most people live than we see on the TV.
Dealing with difficult problems is, well, difficult. But that need not lead to stress. That results from a viewpoint that sees the dilemma between “I must” and “I can’t” as unsolvable. But there are many more methods available today to overcome “I can’t” and much more freedom to deny that “I must.” Toss the dilemma aside and declare your independence from stress.
How NOT to Deal With Stress
There are several techniques for dealing with the physical and emotional causes and consequences of stress. Short-term symptom relief and long-term cures for chronic stress are possible. But there are many common strategies employed that are counter-productive. There are a million ways to go wrong. Here are some of the more typical errors.
In an attempt to alleviate the tension and worry that accompany stress, some individuals will unwittingly engage in self-destructive behavior. The stress that can lead to being short-tempered can urge someone to lash out angrily at a trusted friend or loved one. It can incline some to excessive alcohol drinking or coffee drinking with the result of high caffeine intake, leading to more stress symptoms. It can lead to aggressive or violent behavior.
One of the most common results of stress is insomnia. When something is troubling you, and you are physically uncomfortable, it’s difficult to relax enough to sleep. When you do manage to fall asleep, it’s often interrupted during the night, or not the type of deep sleep that is genuinely restful.
Taking a sleeping medication may be helpful in some situations, but long term dependence on any kind of drug to deal with life’s problems is self-defeating. Instead, learn and use some simple meditation techniques to focus the mind and induce a relaxing state.
A heightened focus on problem solving is natural for some types of individuals. But obsessing, even in the face of serious issues, is counter-productive. Try to see the problem as you would if it were being experienced by a friend. You would be concerned, of course. We’re often much better at maintaining objectivity when the problem belongs to someone else.
Some people try to cope with stress by doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Throwing oneself into projects at work is one way of shifting focus away from problems at home. But avoidance can only be partially successful, and only temporarily at that. Some problems do go away on their own and ignoring them can be a viable strategy. But circumstances combined with evaluations that lead to chronic stress do not disappear simply because we’re not thinking about them.
A temporary break to gain perspective and get the emotions under control is healthy. Hiding one’s head in the sand is not. Fundamentally, all these incorrect and unhelpful methods have a common root. Reality doesn’t go away when some aspects of it are inconvenient or unpleasant. Life is filled with obstacles placed in the way of achieving values.
The existence of those hurdles and the need to overcome them – when combined with doubts about our ability to do so – leads to stress.