So what exactly is stress and stress management?
Author: Michael O'Sullivan

From a practical point of view, stress can be considered to be any physical, chemical, or emotional development causing strains which can lead to physical illness. An authority on stress, the Canadian physician Hans Selye, identified three defining stages of the human stress response:

1. Alarm: During this stage, the body recognises the stress and prepares for action, either to fight or escape. Endocrine glands release hormones which increase heartbeat and respiration, elevate blood sugar levels, increase perspiration, dilate the pupils, and slow the digestion.
2. Resistance: During this stage, the body repairs any damage caused by the alarm reaction. If the stress continues, however, the body remains alert and cannot repair the damage.
3. Exhaustion: This third stage is the stage that clients arriving at the end of their tether will be experiencing. Physical and mental exhaustion sets in, and a stress-related disorder might well be the result. Prolonged exposure to stress depletes the body's energy supplies and can even lead to death.

Stress management is, in its simplest terms, a twin process of prevention and intervention. The first stage consists mainly of preventative measures. This is where there are few, if any, existing problems, the aim of the consultation being to prevent them from happening. The second stage is the intervention stage where stress is, in fact, present. They are known as Stage 1 and Stage 2 respectively. In practice, these stages are not always clear cut, as in real life the two stages can and do overlap.

First of all, let’s look at stress and two different categories of stress.

Stress is an individual reaction. Of several people dealing with the same set of circumstances, one might succumb to stress and the others remain unaffected. Stress is misunderstood. It can be beneficial or it can ruin a life. Outstanding athletic achievements are not made during training but when the stress of competition provides the added stress, the edge that makes an athlete give just that little bit more.
Harmful stress is also called ‘negative stress’. This is for the very practical reason that stress can be positive, and indeed is very necessary in our lives. Harmful (negative) stress definitely is not useful, and must be reduced and controlled. To avoid confusion, the term stress means "negative stress" wherever it is used throughout this newsletter, unless otherwise stated.

Because stress is very much an individual response, you might be wondering at this point how anyone is expected to arrive at an understanding of the subject. Although we are all unique individuals, we are also all human being and as a result also have a lot in common, which is why we can refer with a great deal of confidence to common stress responses.

When evaluating a stress problem you must always ascertain whether it is a long term or short-term issue.

Short-term stress can be triggered by, for example, loss of a job. It remains short term if another job is found quickly, at which point the stress usually subsides. It can become long term stress if another job is not forthcoming fairly quickly. The defining factor is that the client did not report having any kind of stress problem until fairly recently and can link its onset to losing their job, relocating, a forthcoming marriage or divorce and so forth.

It surprises many people to discover that a marriage, by any criteria a happy occasion, is considered to be a high stress factor. Equally, and this will come as no surprise to those of you who have had to move house, whether into purchased or rented accommodation, such a move often causes a very high level of stress indeed. Yet often the move has been eagerly anticipated and initiated by the person himself. Both marriages and moving house can give rise to short-term stress. One factor is common to both these events, and that is that the person often experiences strong emotional feelings leading up to and during the event.

Any similar occasion where there is a strong emotional response can indeed be very stressful. The human body/mind system was not designed for exposure to stress over extended periods. Stress reactions evolved for one reason and one reason only, to ensure that when we were in immediate danger that we would be able to react by either fighting our way out of trouble or running away from it! This reaction is known as "fight or flight". Modern man lives in today’s 20th century environment with a body/mind system designed for the Stone Age, and modern stress problems are largely due to this fact.

Quite often, the stress inherent in a situation arises from having to deal with the change, or the aftermath of the situation or incident, and not necessarily from the event itself. Clearly, the stress is far greater if the event has had a negative impact, but even changes triggered by positive events can cause negative stress.

Long term stress

This is self-explanatory. This occurs when people are exposed to stress on a long-term basis. You may be surprised to discover that these people are not necessarily captains of industry and other individuals with heavy responsibilities. You will find that the people who suffer most from stress are those who feel or who actually have the least control over their lives. You will not find these people in the world's boardroom. You will find them, however, living on your local housing estate or sitting despondently in your local GP's surgery.






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Michael is a former Special Forces Soldier with personal experience of exposure to serious long term stress and trauma. He is an experienced therapist and runs a private practice specialising in stress and trauma management. His e-mail address is leapint@dircon.co.uk - To receive a free subscription to his on-line newsletter The Stress Monitor please visit: http://www.leapint.dircon.co.uk

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