Clarify Your Relationship With Stress and Its Causes
THERE ARE LIMITS to what a manager can do to help employees manage stress in the workplace. Ultimately, to perform under pressure, employees must develop stress management skills. And to develop these skills, employees must first assess their current relationship with stress.
As we have seen, stress is a complex response that involves thinking (cognition) and feeling (emotion) as well as physiology. Stress can be caused by many different factors, and can be expressed in many different ways or repressed to various degrees. Work in particular is full of the type of pressures that will physically and psychologically make you or break you. Studies have shown that the ability to handle stressors like those encountered at work is actually more important than the handling of major life crises when it comes to maintaining physical and psychological well-being. In addition, environmental and lifestyle factors may contribute to a person’s overall susceptibility to stress.
What is your own relationship with stress? Take a few minutes to become more aware of this relationship, and the factors that may contribute to it, by completing the following two self-assessments.
SELF-ASSESSMENT 1
Exploring Your Own Stress
Directions: Explore your relationship with stress by answering the questions below.
1. Do you think you are under a lot of stress? What makes you think so (either way)?
2. Has anyone ever told you that you’re stressed out? If so, who? Under what circumstances? How many times have you heard that?
3. How often would you say that you feel the effects of stress?
4. Do you lose your temper often? If so, under what circumstances? How often?
5. Do you feel out of control? If so, under what circumstances? How often?
6. Do you feel overburdened? Or overwhelmed? If so, under what circumstances? How often?
7. Do you sometimes become highly irritated over small inconveniences? If so, how often does this sort of thing happen? Why do you think it happens?
8. How do you behave when you feel stress?
9. Do you have trouble sleeping? If so, under what circumstances? How often?
10. Are you feeling troubling physical symptoms? If so, what are they? How often do you experience them?
11. Have you been having trouble in relationships at work or at home? If so, under what circumstances? How often?
• Assessment Concluded
SELF-ASSESSMENT 2
Exploring Your Own Stressors
Directions: How much stress are you under at work, in your environment, and in your lifestyle? By completing all three parts of this assessment, you will be one small step closer to the answer.
1. Check off any event that has occurred in the last year. The more checkmarks you make, the more likely it is that you feel pressure at work on a daily basis.
Too much work
Too little work
A change in job responsibilities
An outstanding performance achievement
Trouble with the boss
A change in working hours
A change in working conditions
Working with new people
Pressure to meet deadlines
Requirement to perform beyond your ability
Keeping up with new technology
Constant change of policies or procedures
Lack of clear job objectives
No social support
Given responsibility but not control
Feelings of pressure from your boss
Telephone interruptions
Lack of promotion
Boredom
Work demands on private life
2. Now consider your environment and lifestyle. In the inventory below, list the events and things that make you feel stressed; then consider whether any of them can be avoided or if you can make helpful adjustments.
3. For another approach, look at your typical daily schedule and then fill in the details on the following Inventory chart. Be as thorough as you can about what you usually do during each time period: Where are you, with whom, doing what, and how? Then think about which aspects of your environment and lifestyle are most likely to cause stress. Can you think of any adjustments that might reduce stress?
Perhaps you are now one step closer to understanding your own stress. If you think that you are experiencing problems with chronic stress, you should consider the help of a psychotherapist. However, even with the assistance of a professional (or someone who knows you well and whom you deeply trust), ultimately it is you who must evaluate and address your stress. Many people never examine their lives in this way, but all of us need to do it.