Stress is such a pervasive and threatening topic, that I am devoting the next 4 posts to a discussion of what it is and what we can do about it.
We all know that stress can affect us in different ways and in different situations. We often feel stress at times of bereavement, before an exam, during some heavy physical activity or in some sporting event. We also experience stress in work situations, although that kind of stress is not always so easy to identify, or perhaps more truthfully, is not always honestly recognised and accepted by the person feeling the stress. For some reason, which I will come to, people perceive stress and react to it differently in work situations compared with the other situations I mentioned.
Stress at work
Major causes of stress in organisations revolve around change and the resultant uncertainty that is caused. In some ways, this seems anomalous – that something which has not happened, and something which does not cause a physical arousal in you, can nevertheless cause the same kind of stress. This is because we are used to a particular way of functioning. We have certain rituals every day, we have a certain pattern to our lives every day, and we have certain work that we do every day. As soon as that pattern is interrupted, or we perceive that it will be interrupted, we react and this reaction is known as stress.
Not all stress is bad. We have a particular level of stress that is necessary for us to function and when we are working at the optimum level of stress, we work at what is known as the “comfort zone”, which is where we work the best. Once we move out of that comfort zone, we encounter negative stress. Negative stress means that we become aware, say, that our job is to finish at the end of the month, or it will change at the end of the month or within the foreseeable future, or may not exist at all. These points of uncertainty make it quite difficult for us to cope at times. Stress in the workplace can also arise if we are told that our role will change, or if we are not given any clarity as to what our role will be, or if our role is stated in some unclear or ambiguous way.
Recognising and dealing with stress
I am concerned in these posts with equipping you with the ability to recognise stress as it occurs in the organisational context and also to suggest some techniques which you will find helpful in dealing with it when it does happen to you or someone around you.
What is stress?
Stress is an individual response, ‘individual’ in the sense that it is different for everyone. For example, if we are driving through heavy peak hour traffic, some of us find it so stressful that we can become quite aggressive and abusive, hence terms such as “road rage”. However, other people can drive through the same traffic, in the same situation and feel absolutely no tension at all and feel absolutely relaxed behind the wheel. Why is this so? It is because, as I have said, stress is an individual thing.
Causes and manifestations of stress
How does stress manifest itself and what causes it? Stress is a physiological as well as a psychological process. It is how the mind and body connect, and usually the connection is through our endocrine system. The endocrine system is the system that controls all the hormones in our body. There is a major gland that actually controls our hormones, known as the pituitary gland. It is easy to find – right between your eyes, behind your nasal cavity. The pituitary gland is the gland everybody knows about that produces certain hormones for the secondary sexual characteristics which develop in both men and women as they go through puberty. However, this gland does not go to sleep, either before or after puberty, or during puberty for that matter. It controls various hormones known as Adreno Cortico Trophic Hormones, or ACTH for short. These hormones are released into the body when a person feels either under attack or challenged in any way and prepare the body and mind for active fight, sometimes called the “flight-fight response” in human beings faced with an aggressor. When this occurs, the whole body tenses up and it becomes physically much stronger (some experts suggest it is three times stronger than normal). The tensing up is caused by a release of adrenalin, as a result of the ACTH being released into the blood stream. The release of adrenalin affects the adrenal glands, which are located just on top of the kidneys. When adrenalin is released and the body tenses up, it becomes physically tauter, and harder and stronger, and therefore we are able to cope more effectively with the ‘foe’.
Of course, today in the office, the ‘foe’ is not something physical – the foe may be your boss, your staff, the trade union, the hierarchy, the volume of work, the complexity of the work, a deadline, the lack of work, the lack of complexity or the lack of challenge. Stress can result from such stimuli, but they have to be perceived as ‘threatening’ by the individual, because some people cope very well with a lack of work, for example, whereas other people do not cope so well. Conversely, some people cope very well with a lot of work, while others don’t.
Stress has been talked about for many years and became very “popular” as an ailment during the 1980’s. However, stress is still with us and seems as misunderstood as ever. We know that stress works in a number of stages as the body reacts, as we described earlier, and adjusts to a “threat” or “foe”. If we do adjust to the foe, the body goes into the next stage, which is sometimes called the “equilibrium” stage. When we get to that stage, we don’t feel as stressed any more, even though the body is. Once the foe goes or is relieved in some way, our actual stress levels go down, our adrenalin levels reduce and we feel relaxed again. The body goes back to normal, feeling very relaxed and elastic, and not as taut as it was.
More on stress in the next post…
