Stress! — The very word is stressful for some people. No one passes through this world without experiencing considerable stress in one form or another. And, from the dawn of humankind right up to the present, each generation and each person, including you, has encountered his or her own set of stressors and stress experiences. Undoubtedly, you’ve heard that there’s good stress and bad stress.

This article is about bad stress, the kind you don’t want, don’t need, and don’t have to have. The kind that limits your effectiveness, chews up your insides, and makes you feel like doggy pooh.The caveman lived on average to age 18 while experiencing a wide variety of stressors, some of which confront humankind today. You’re not being chased by saber-toothed tigers, but some of the stressors that you encounter can be just as foreboding.

In a way, stress is analogous to electricity. The right amount of electricity powers your radio, lights your light bulbs, and turns on your computer. Too much of the same type of electricity blasts out your radio speakers, burns out your light bulb, and causes a power surge that can knock out data on your hard drive.

When the caveman encountered a saber-toothed tiger, especially a surprise encounter, he exhibited stress much like you exhibit it today. The caveman’s body and mind was prepared for either fight or flight. Your ancestors stood their ground and knocked that big cat for a loop, or got themselves out of striking range altogether.

“Brain at Work”

When your brain recognizes or thinks it recognizes danger, it sets in motion a chain which releases chemicals in your body to put your nervous system into high gear. Your heart starts pumping faster and your breathing is accelerated to take in the extra oxygen you’ll need, whether you’re going to fight or flee. In either case, you’re wired. It’s either you and the saber-tooth duking it out, or you breaking the record for the hundred meter dash.

Either way, you have to draw on your physical resources. In fact, so many systems in your body capitulate to the need at hand, it would takes pages and pages to cover them all. Your reflexes get sharper so that you can respond more readily. Your blood clots faster so that if you get clawed, you won’t bleed to death …at least not on the first swipe!

It may well be adaptive, and even appropriate for you to exhibit fight or flight stress responses at the onset of a change in your environment. The problem for most people–need I say it–the problem for you is when you stay in this high gear, fight or flight mode long after the initial surprise/shock/bend in the road has been introduced.

Suppose new software was introduced in your department and you have to learn it in a matter of days. You’re comfortable with the old program and you don’t want to take on the new. Yet, the whole organization is changing over and you have no choice. So what do you do? You gear up. You put all your energy and intensity into this effort. The problem is, you’re “on” for the whole time. For the next three days, at work, at lunch, away from work, and at all points in between, many of your internal systems are revving at inappropriate levels for the task at hand.

You know how you feel, and you don’t like it, but you don’t know how to turn it off. You may start swigging cups of coffee, or aspirin, or Prozac, or whatever else is on hand. After work, maybe you belt down a couple of drinks or, more thoughtfully, do a couple laps around the park. Maybe you get enough sleep that night, maybe you don’t. Regardless, the next day, whatever gains you were able to achieve the day before are quickly lost as you plop down in front of the PC again, and begin Round Two of doing things in a completely different way. You don’t like it, but you’ve got to do it, and your body responds by operating in a gear too high for you to comfortably sustain for hours on end.

That’s Amazing

Amazingly, in nearly every situation that you face, nearly all of the time, at least half or more of the battle in alleviating your stress is simply to become more aware. This sounds too simple to be true, but it is true. Moreover, and we might as well get to the biggies right off the bat; for most people, most of the time, most of the stress they encounter is self-induced. This is the day-to-day, week-to-week stress that John Q. Citizen and Jane Doe experience simply as a result of having lots of responsibility, living in a frenetic society, and operating at too rapidly.

Name That Stressor!

What kind of stressors can the typical professional, i.e., somebody like you, experience? The number can be staggering. Actually, almost anything in your environment can serve as a stressor. For example:

• Your boss–a mean boss, an unfair boss, a disorganized boss, or someone with whom you simply can’t get along can be a great source of stress to you. Such a boss can make your daily work routine miserable. In extreme cases, such a boss can shorten your life, as can many other stressors.


• Co-workers–everything said about bosses above can apply to co-workers as well.


• Subordinates – the people who report to you can be an extreme cause of stress especially if they’re incompetent, late, tardy, unreliable, or untrustworthy.


• Relationships – whether it’s your wife, husband, mother, brother, father-in-law, mother-in- law, uncle, sister, second cousin twice removed, great-granduncle on your mother’s side, etc., anyone in your lineage can qualify. Relationship stress is something to which almost everyone can relate. Who hasn’t had stress as a result of a relationship in their life? Even Abraham Lincoln had troubles with his father. David Herbert Donald, in his book, Lincoln, writes that Lincoln had “not one favorable word to say about his father.” He did not even attend his father’s funeral.


• Work-related stress – independent of any particular people involved, the workplace itself can be stressful. Moreover, work-related stress seems to be on the rise. Whether it’s take-overs, down-sizing, mergers and acquisitions, new organizations, or meeting the challenge of hypercompetition, today’s career professional is likely to be reeking with stress.
  
  This manifests in dead-ended careers, emotional disorders, and families torn asunder. Business Week reports that more employees, at higher levels, are turning to drinking and drugs than any organization would like it to be known. Some are bursting into uncontrollable fits of rage, abusing their families, or turning to suicide. Even in a non-crisis setting there can be too much noise, not enough privacy, too many distractions, and unrealistic deadlines.


• Poor nutrition–you may not have considered this, but if you’ve been eating junk food all your life and are lacking vital nutrients you may not have the physiology to support you in times of need. Do you eat some square meals a day? Do you eat any vegetables and fruits? Do you take vitamins? A lot of people don’t, and then wonder why it’s so tough for them to get through the day.


• Sleep–study after study shows that Americans, as well as career professionals throughout the world, consistently do not get the amount of sleep they need on a daily basis. Lack of sleep can lower your immunity, increase your susceptibility to disease, and most definitely increase your susceptibility to stressors in the environment. Which leads us to…


• The environment–you don’t have to live near electrical power lines to experience stress as a result of your immediate environment. Poor water, poor air, traffic congestion, noise, fear for your safety, and a range of other environmental factors can contribute greatly to the stress you experience.


• Monetary pressures–meeting the monthly mortgage or rent when you’re short on funds, being laid off and not having a bank account, putting your kids through college, getting that operation for your mother, or simply making ends meet for the great masses of society has become a continual source of stress. Spending more than you take in, having what they call a champagne taste on a beer budget, will do you in time and time again.


• Being alone–has your partner in life gone on to meet his/her maker? Or are you looking for a mate, but it’s become a long-term struggle. Did someone who matters leave or is stationed far away? Being alone can be stressful for people and lead to all types of aberrant, if not unhealthy behavior.


• Not having time alone–the opposite of being alone, if you never get a spare moment, to think, to relax, to reflect, a mounting form of stress can ensue. The prototypical “Super Mom” of today that makes breakfast and gets the kids out the door in the morning, holds a full-time job, and barely gets home in time to begin the real work, can fall into this category. “Super Dads” can have equally taxing challenges, which result in the long-term mounting form of stress.


• Your physical self–do you perceive yourself as too fat, too thin, or too something else? Great masses of society do. One poll showed that more than two-thirds of all men and even higher numbers of women are fairly discontent with various aspects of their physical selves, and would like to make major changes. To compensate for perceived deficiencies in their physical self, some people will starve themselves to death. Others will eat themselves to death. Some will go on binges, some will go on feast and famine diets. Someone like that may be reading this article right now.


• Chemical substances–do you smoke, do you drink, do you take drugs? Enough said.


• Occupational stress–some people, simply by virtue of where they work, experience oodles of stress. And, it’s not always in industries, as you might guess. Airline pilots, for example, tend to live shorter lives than others. It is postulated that too much flying during the day leads to higher levels of radiation, which compounded over many hours and many years shortens one’s life.
  
  Sanitary engineers also experience occupational stress. Aha, you didn’t know that, did you? Do you know that such people have a high rate of accident and injury? Think about all the times they encounter sharp, dangerous, or otherwise harmful objects in garbage cans. And what about the slips and the falls? What about back strain? You don’t have to work in a mine to experience occupational type stress. People that are around loud noises for too long each day, or are routinely in high pressure situations such as airline traffic controllers have their work, and sometimes their livers, cut out for them.


• Getting sued–The U.S. is, by any measure, the world’s most litigious nation. And why not? We have 70% of the world’s lawyers and they need work! We sue each other at the drop of the hat. In New York City alone, more than a million lawsuits are filed annually over God knows what. Slip in the aisle of a supermarket? Drive over a pothole with your car? Get called a tomato-head by your boss?
  
  Any and all of the above have been grounds for lawsuits and pay-outs that even in 1790 dollars would jolt Jefferson or Washington. In the US, in particular, because of the contingency fee system whereby lawyers retain 33-40% of monetary awards, the rate of litigation is likely to subside soon.


• Other stressors–Add your own here, based on what you do, with whom you do it, when you do it, for how long you do it, and so forth. The point is there are many, many ways to experience major stress in this world.

Minor, Niggling Stressors

Beyond what’s listed above, there are an endless number of situational stressors, many of which are highly familiar:

• Time pressures–you’re late for an appointment. Or you’re late for a date. Different situations, different types of sensations, but either way, it’s hard to be at your best unless you’re armed with tools for keeping your stress to a minimum.


• Commuting–maybe you haven’t been lucky enough to be on the highway when the guy in the next car pulls out his ten-gauge shotgun, but being stuck in traffic even occasionally is upsetting, let alone having to crawl along in a “moving parking lot” every day to get to work. Which leads of course to…


• Being in lines–despite all the advances and technology, it seems that you end up in a long line, all too frequently. Whether it’s at the bank, the supermarket, the movie theaters, or God forbid, to get your license, a passport, or interact with any other local or federal government agency, it’s a reasonable bet that lines will continue to be with us for the foreseeable future.

Knowing where your stress comes from enables you to predict stressful situations and tackle them head-on.