8. Stress
Even knowing where to start talking about stress is stressful! It’s probably one of the most common words used in recent times and it affects us personally from both a psychological and physical perspective. Before we get to those, let’s talk about resilience…surely that’s the way out of stress, right?
Resilience
Resilience appears to be rising in fashion as a popular word that I feel is being misused. I speak with friends, I see patients and I also see employees in my medical role. I hear the phrase, “You have to build resilience” more and more as if that’s the answer to stress. I am literally beginning to hate the word as I become more convinced that many think that resilience is the antidote to stress. I’m concerned that it’s being used as a reason to just say, “man up”, and in my experience resilience is becoming more of an excuse for others to just deflect from their responsibility to look at the potential causative triggers. That statement isn’t just aimed some employers, I’m talking to myself!
Life is what you make of it
I’m sure many of us are interested in the big house, smart car, and nice holidays. Yes, they all cost money! So we enter the treadmill of a working life and join the rat race. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for all of those but it comes at a cost. Working hard whilst in education, climbing the corporate ladder, gaining promotions and earning more all sounds good but what about the stress it creates? As I’ve grown older (and hopefully wiser), I’ve learnt that the rat race isn’t much fun and has potential consequences on our lifestyle choices and health outcomes.
Physical effects
We have a stress hormone produced by the body called cortisol. We also have two main automatic systems in the body call the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). They oppose each other. The SNS is responsible for our fight or fight response. I think it was originally intended for us to get out of tricky situations. However, for some of us, the SNS is on overdrive leading to a raised heart rate, raised BP and altered lipids (cholesterol etc). Stress increases our risk of heart disease (link) and developing type 2 diabetes (link). The PNS is the rest and digest response causing a lower heart rate, breathing rate and BP. We can activate this in many ways (we may come back to this in another blog) with the aim of reducing our stress response. As examples we have mindfulness, meditation, positive psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy to name but a few.
Psychological effects
Some events that happen to us throughout life are beyond our control. Some are unfortunately inevitable…illness, old age, bereavement and death. These are all going to create an element of stress and sometimes even a mood disorder, like depression. I am sure we have all had some element of stress in our lives. It makes us irritable, sleep less and with poor sleep quality. It can make us low in mood and anxious and none of these are good for our overall well being.
How we respond to stress is important
The main issue here is our response to stress. When we feel stressed, it’s a bit like being at a fork in the road. We can choose to take one route or the other but it often means making a choice. The fork usually has a signpost on it and we can make choices to react to it differently and take an alternative route (changing job, reducing hours, giving up some things we’re involved with). It’s recognising what is on the signpost and what’s important that’s the hard part.
What I am doing:
Several years ago I changed the way I work to gain flexibility. In itself, that can cause stress but it worked for me
Nearly two years ago I took on board a wonderful administrator to take much of the administrative burden away from me.
Most recently, I have altered my working day to accommodate an early morning walk and make sure I have lunch! I’ve adapted and changed my timetable.
I’ve started to read more and focus on recognising stress triggers and reduce them where I can.
As for me, reducing stress has often meant making a compromise. What am I willing to give up or change to reduce my stress levels? It’s a question to ponder for yourself and one I ask myself regularly!