Steve Haywood Health & Fitness

My work takes me in to lots of different working environments eg schools, call centres, police forces. Talking with hundreds of staff on a personal level it is very evident that the single hardest thing to cope with is stress. Someone at one of these sessions joked that if you could hook up stress to the National Grid you could do away with all other forms of energy. However, unchecked, stress can be very hard to cope with and as long ago as 1992 the Confederation of British Industry estimated that time lost to mental health and stress cost industry £5 billion a year. So what is stress?

From our earliest years we are faced with situations that result in physical and emotional stress. A certain amount of stress has been proved to be constructive, unfortunately, however, we are often placed or put ourselves under too much pressure. Put simply stress could be defined as a “perceived inability to cope with perceived demands” with the key word being perceived. As soon as we feel we cannot cope we are under too much stress.

The stress response is often referred to “fight or flight”. This response goes back thousands of years when our choices were either to fight or run away from a threat and we were and still are well adapted for both choices. Either way, once faced with these choices our body mobilises what is needed for immediate physical activity, the heart pumps faster to increase amounts of oxygen to the brain and glucose to the muscles and the digestive, urinary and reproductive systems are inhibited as they are not seen as useful at this time.

This reaction is controlled by the involuntary nervous system. When stress is detected it triggers our sympathetic stress response controlled by our hormonal system and when the threat passes our parasympathetic response is triggered in order to recover. Problems begin when our fight and flight system is triggered and stays there unchecked and we find it difficult to switch off to our calm response.

So what can cause stress? Examples are internal issues (pain, memories, thwarted ambition), external issues (politics, world problems), personal (partner, financial problems), occupational (boss, colleagues), personality type (TAKE THE TEST AT THE END OF THIS ARTICLE).

The effects of being too stressed are numerous and over time can lead to lots of health related problems. The idea of stress management is not new but increasingly people still turn to the wrong methods for coping such as smoking, alcohol, caffeine, under/over eating, aggression and misplaced anger, overwork, drugs of all kinds.

Stress

Better to begin to cope with and prevent stress with some of the following :-

talk to someone you can trust

exercise and learn breathing and relaxation techniques

put things in perspective

try to accept what you cannot change

start to think and talk positively

start to set goals, plan to meet them

time management, make the most of your day

think better of yourself, higher self esteem

It is all too easy to come up with these suggestions but in practice it can be hard to begin. Lots of forward thinking organisations have access to free counselling sessions, my suggestion is take it if it is there. Friends and family can be a great source of comfort and exercise can also help to let off steam. There is lots of advice elsewhere on this website about starting exercise. All the very best with your efforts to a better you.