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Stress
Stress is something that most of us have experienced and can relate to. Stress (the physical and psychological experience of and response to strain) can be brought on by a wide range of events or life changes, and can look and feel very different from person to person. For example, someone who is feeling stressed might begin to feel shaky and jumpy, experience muscle tension and neck pain, lose sleep, become more prone to catching colds, seem more disorganised and inefficient than usual, lose track of time, or become upset more easily. These symptoms might be brought on by a relationship break-up, accommodation changes, a promotion at work, unemployment or change in employment, the arrival of a new baby, health concerns, or any number of other events or changes. Someone experiencing stress might attempt to cope with such changes by shutting friends out, drinking or smoking more, working longer hours, avoiding particular scenarios or people, sleeping for longer, ‘stress eating’, staying up later watching TV or playing computer games, or planning major holidays or workplace changes.
Life stress is normal and unavoidable; everyone feels some stress some of the time. We run into trouble when the stress we experience is ongoing and significant, when we feel too fragile to manage small and expected amounts of strain, or when the ways we choose to cope with our stress cause major problems for us or others. If your stress is unsustainable, or your way of coping with it is doing harm or impacting your life negatively, then working with a psychologist might be part of the solution.
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One person's experience
Lisa is in her 30’s and has been working for the same workplace for over four years. Although many would consider her job rather stressful, Lisa has usually kept healthy and relatively balanced by regularly exercising, socialising with close friends and family, and ensuring a good night’s sleep most nights of the week.
Lisa told her therapist that things hadn’t been the same since the private company she works for expanded significantly nearly three months ago. With the recent expansion and restructuring of her organisation had come changes that effectively decreased the autonomy and flexibility she had enjoyed so much about her role. Not only was she now answerable to a line manager with little understanding of the organisation’s history or her former role, but she was expected to meet new key performance indicators and benchmarks, her job description had been amended to include additional and unfamiliar tasks, and she now had to negotiate with newly-formed H.R department whenever she wished to attend medical appointments or take small amounts of leave.
Lisa explained, “These days, I get home from work and just crash – the last thing I feel up to is ringing a friend, or going to the gym. I just don’t have the energy. I spend my weekends hibernating and wondering how long I can keep this up for, my friends are starting to wonder about me, every other day I get headaches which the doctor tells me are from stress, and every Sunday night like clockwork, my stomach starts to churn in preparation for the start of the next working week. Some nights, the only way I seem to get to sleep is if I have one or two drinks – just enough to send me off. I wish it was as simple as leaving – but the sort of work I do is hard to come by, I committed to a large loan not four months ago, and besides, I’m close with a few there in the same boat as me and I couldn’t move on right now without them.”
Over a number of sessions with her therapist, Lisa came to understand the particular factors that compounded her workplace stress. Through a process of sifting through what was within her control to change, Lisa was able to put in place a handful of newly-learned strategies that worked particularly well in decreasing her stress levels. She also found ways to resurrect some of the natural ways she used to balance, which had fallen by the wayside as her stress had increased. These new job stressors may have been here to stay, at least in the immediate future, but with the help of a therapist, Lisa had risen to the challenge of coping effectively in the face of these uncontrollable changes.
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