If You Know What Causes Stress, Don’t You Think Half The Battle Is Won?
Recognising what causes stress is in my opinion the first step towards the solution. Stress as you may already know is becoming a major cause of ill-health and it represents a major cost to the economy.
Stress by its very nature is not necessarily a bad thing. It only becomes an impediment when stress levels are sustainably high and suffered for prolonged periods as well. We all have a natural instinct to respond to stressful situations.
n fact we all have an innate ability to produce stress hormones that facilitate either a fight or flight response once we are exposed to a potentially stressful situation.
The stress hormones turbo-charge our body with extra strength and endurance to enable us either fight or run away from that perceived danger.
It is not always possible to walk away from a stressful situation for a variety of reasons. Scenarios like that mean we have to learn to cope with the stress and adapt our body to reduce the effect of the stressful situation on our physical and mental health.
So what causes stress in our lives?
The causes of stress could be domestic, workplace related and environmental and social.
We should also not forget the fact sometimes positive changes in our lives can unavoidably lead to stress, for instance, pregnancy, wedding and indeed buying and moving into a new property.
Research has shown using the Holmes-Raye scale some of the severe causes of stress in our lives include death of a partner, divorce and positive life events as mentioned previously like marriage, purchase of a new property, public speaking, Christmas and starting a new job.
Who would have thought Christmas would rank up there as a very stressful event?
Causes of stress at the work place can be traced to factors such as:
- Unrealistic deadlines to complete tasks to either your personal or establishment standards.
- Working unusually long hours
- Management that fails to understand their staff and their specific needs
- Poor or lack of staff complaints channels
- Job descriptions that lack specificity or just poorly written
- Temporary work
- Fixed term contracts
- Jobs where margin for error is very narrow
- Unfair weight of responsibilities on staff
- Conflicting demands placed on staff
- Bullying at the work place
If you experience any of these or a combination of them, then it is very likely stress will gradually creep into your life which may affect your relationship with your colleagues, friends and family.
Ultimately prolonged stress will ruin your physical and mental health unless you have tools to cope with the stress.
Check out our how to cope with stress web page.
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