Understanding the sources and levels of stress that
affect you is an important step towards managing that stress. Learn to
identify the potential causes of long- and short-term stress, and
analyze your reactions to it.
Be Aware of Long-Term Stress
The first step in
managing stress is understanding the stresses you experience so that you
can anticipate, and prepare for, stressful situations and learn to use
the stress management techniques that are most appropriate to each
situation. You are probably aware of some of the immediate points of
stress in your life, but you may not be as aware of the deeper,
longer-term stresses.
Respond to Change
It is important to
recognize that all kinds of change in your life raise your stress levels
as you try to adapt. The transition from college to a new job, for
example, involves radical changes in lifestyle, location, and personal
status that can be deeply stressful. Anyone changing jobs, or even his
or her role within the workplace, will experience a wide range of new
challenges and difficulties. The joys and upsets of relationships and
families also have their stresses, and all of these will have an impact
on your ability to cope.
Think Smart
It may be possible to manage a serious stressor by
taking control of more easily manageable stressors that may be tipping
the balance.
If there is a
serious stressor you can’t avoid, look for any additional sources of
stress. If you can take steps to control these additional stressors it
will help you to bring the overall stress in your life within more
manageable bounds.
Learn from Experience
Read through the three groups of life events in the Schedule of Recent Experience and make a note of how many of them apply to you.
If a large number of
these life events are relevant to you, especially those in Group 3,
which are the most stressful events, then you should take great care to
keep your life as stable and as stress-free as you possibly can.
Schedule of Recent Experience
Group 1
A minor violation of the law (e.g. a parking ticket or speeding fine)
A major change in your eating or sleeping habits, in your social
activities, in your usual type or amount of recreation, in the amount of
participation in church activities
Taking out a loan for a purchase such as a car, television, or freezer
Moving house or changing to a new school
A major change in working hours or conditions
A revision of personal habits
Group 2
A major change in living conditions.
An outstanding achievement
A son or daughter leaving home
A major change in duties and responsibilities at work
Foreclosure on a mortgage or loan
Taking out a mortgage or loan for a major purchase
A major change in the number of arguments with your partner
Changing to a completely different line of work
The death of a close friend
A major change in the state of your finances
Sexual difficulties
Group 3
Pregnancy or gaining a new family member through adoption
Major business re-adjustment (merger, bankruptcy), retirement from work, redundancy
Major personal injury or illness, or health problem of a family member
Marriage, marital reconciliation, separation, or divorce
The death of a close family member, especially a partner or a child
Detention in a prison or other institution
Consider Short-Term Stress
Against the background
of your long-term stress level, sources of short-term stress occur on a
routine and daily basis. These can include over-demanding deadlines,
problems with your co-workers, worries and anxieties, or any of a host
of other possibilities. Because stress is partly a matter of perception,
and because people respond to situations in different ways, it is
important to understand and analyze your own particular sources of
stress. Keeping a stress diary is a good way of doing this.
Use a Stress Diary
You can use a
“stress diary” to record information about the stresses you are
experiencing, so that you can analyze these stresses – which rarely
receive the attention they deserve – and determine how best to prevent
them or deal with them effectively and efficiently.
If you learn to identify recurring stresses you will be able to do something about controlling your reaction to them.
Techniques to Practise
Record stressful events on a daily basis, detailing
the nature of each event, and why it caused stress. Also record, on a
scale of 1–10, the level of stress you experienced and how it made you
feel. You can also record how you dealt with the stressful situation.
Gathering information
regularly and routinely over a period of time about the stress you are
experiencing will help you to separate the more common, routine stresses
from those that occur only occasionally. It will also give you an
important insight into how you react to stress, help you to identify the
level of stress at which you prefer to operate, and show whether your
reactions are appropriate and useful.
Make entries in your stress diary at fixed points during the day, for example every hour, or every three hours.
If you tend to forget to do this set an alarm to remind you when you should be making your next diary entry.
Make a diary entry only if an incident is stressful enough for you to feel that it is significant.
Analyze the Information
By keeping a stress diary
you can uncover patterns of stress and extract the information you need
about the stressful events and situations in your life. When you have
been keeping your stress diary for a month, list the different stresses
you experienced during this time by frequency, with the most frequent
kind of stress at the top of the list. Then prepare a second list that
ranks all the stressful experiences by how bad they made you feel, with
the most unpleasant stresses at the top of the list. The stresses at the
top of each list are the most important for you to learn to control.
Your assessments of the underlying causes, and your appraisal of how
well (or otherwise) you handled particular stressful events may reveal
that you could benefit from improving your stress management skills.
