Tips to Understand Your Stress Triggers
If I asked you to list and rank order the 5 events that cause you the most stress and then to tell me how you relieve stress what would you say? I know what I would say. My wife and friends and I have just returned from a holiday in south-east Alaska. In Juneau, Alaska’s tiny capital, there is a cable car that goes from the center of the town up to the top of Mt Roberts. My wife loves these experiences - I detest them. I didn’t realize I had acrophobia - extreme fear of heights - until I was driving up to a small village in India called Nainital. This pretty little British hill station lies at 6000 feet in the Himalayas. The trip nearly paralysed me. The experience also humbled me as I learned what it is like to have screamingly high levels of stress, anxiety and fear.
Different experiences trigger different levels of stress for people. Some people get a rush out of extreme sports while others are terrified at the thought of doing such dangerous things. For me, it is heights like to think of a way of reducing the stress. My best stress relief strategy is to make sure that I don’t engage in these experiences.
What makes you stressed and worried? Spiders, snakes, people, tests, and public speaking are very common stressors. Look at what I’m going to say and work out which ones are problems for you. What is it that makes you feel terrified and stressed? Sometimes it’s people, sometimes it’s places sometimes it’s insects or spiders. Examine the list below to see which ones cause you great distress.
In the workplace we have these triggers: organizational changes, unfair or excessive workloads, too much unpaid overtime, stressful demands and expectations, duties that do not match individual’s job specification, work that is boring and is not motivating, no (or limited) autonomy over the work situation, job insecurity and threatened redundancy, inadequate training for the demands of the position, inadequate, inappropriate or excessive supervision, a work environment that does not meet occupational health and safety standards, inadequate resources to do the job. Others include inappropriate social culture in the workplace, for example, racist, harassing, discriminatory, poor relationships with colleagues or bosses, and dramatic events in the workplace, for example, death, severe injury, hold-ups. What a list. It is a wonder that so many of us enjoy our workplaces a well as we do.
I grew up on a farm so I am not particularly concerned about snakes but many people have deep fears about these creatures. Consider your own list of personal fears. Sometimes they are social fears like attending a party when you don’t feel confident or appearing dumb or uninformed. Body shape and being overweight can destroy people’s self-esteem and cause social stress.
Being a family can be a stressful event. If you are a parent, saving up to college, paying your kids dental bills, determining when they should be able to date, unwanted pregnancies - the list goes on. You might be worried about your own relationships and this causes you constant stress. Families do create stress but they also provide stress relief.
What we have to do is to work out how to deal with these stressors in order to reduce or relive the stress and tension. I propose a model I call BE CALM. The acronym has two purposes: to remind you to be calm in the face of a stressful event or a difficult and person; and the six letters represent logical strategies for dealing with complex situations. The model is B for Build, E for Examine, C for confront, A for Accept, L for Let go (forgive, forget) and M for Move on with your life. I don’t have space to explain this model but when one works through this carefully over any stressful event, a plan of action can be mapped out that will mean that we can manage and relieve stress effectively.
Tags: anxiety, dr jeff, how to reduce stress, how to relieve stress, manage stress, managing stress, Mental Health, PTSD and stress, social support, Stress, stress levels, Stress Management, stress relief, stress symptoms, stress test, stressed out, stressors
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