It’s not just those who have lost their jobs who are suffering from stress, in any organisation at the moment there is the consistent threat that people may lose their job.
For anyone who has seen Maslow’s hierarchy of needs this violates one of the most basic, our need as humans for security. What about those who, through redundancies, have inherited jobs they do not want, do not feel they are good at or are unable to move beyond? This violates the top of Maslow’s hierarchy, the need for esteem (internal and external) and the need for self-actualisation. This lack of fulfilment, fear or unhappiness is hard to express in an environment where people are told they should be happy just to have a job at all, so they keep this negative energy inside.
The research of Nitin Nohria and Paul Lawrence, authors of Driven, has taken Maslow’s theory one step further showing that all human needs have to be satisfied in tandem. So, even if you had job security, if you knew that you could never progress in the way you would like to, you could become de-motivated and stressed – you would need a certain degree of security AND a feeling that you could progress if you wanted to.
The word ‘stress’ is derived from the word ‘stringere’ which is Latin for ‘draw tight’ and it doesn’t take a psychologist to work out that if you’re ‘drawn tight’ at work then you are probably taking this home with you. Without doubt everyone has experienced stress at some point in their lives and observed it in those around them but the question is how to deal with it when it becomes a daily companion. Stress can manifest itself physiologically (migraines, headaches, stomach cramps), affectively (anxiety, depression, apathy), behaviourally (hyperactivity, aggression, moody) or cognitively (inability to focus, negative perception of reality, absent-mindedness).
Within our brains is something called the amygdala which is like an emotional memory stick in our subconscious, storing and matching emotional data. It seeks out memories to match situations that we are living in the here and now i.e. if you fell out with a colleague or a friend and they sent you an email some days later, you would be more likely to read it in a negative tone and become stressed as your memory relives that past negativity. When stressed the body releases cortisol into the nervous system which is the main cause of diabetes and heart disease. The more negative you feel, the more your amygdala will seek to link the current negative situation to a similar one in the past, and the more your body will maintain a consistently high level of cortisol excretion. This would suggest that should we seek out the positive / opportunities in our stressful situations our amygdala may seek out similar positive situations in our subconscious and remind us how we can overcome our current situation.
They say a healthy mind can be found in a healthy body, but an unhealthy mind is going to struggle in finding the motivation to run down to the gym or to the nearest Yoga class, so it can easily become a vicious circle. The reason we get stronger by exercising is that we damage the muscles in our body which then repair and become stronger. Like the body the mind becomes stronger by exercising beyond its current capabilities. But like the body, if the strain is more than our mind has learnt to deal with or the strain is so constant that we do not find time to repair, it can result in injury.
Stress is subjective in many ways. The personality of the individual is a big part, some people are more resistant to stress than others. They see stress as another form of challenge or opportunity; they have a strong level of self-esteem; and believe that although they cannot control events, they can control the outcome of the event – think of Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, in the depths of despair he seeks out the positive. Others feel that they have no control of the world around or within them and when confronted by stressful situations can become paralysed with fear, negativity and unhappiness – compare Frodo with Gollum who has become the product of his despair.
Many companies offer wellness programmes (Yoga, talks, intranet literature etc) but the majority of those who utilise these services are already willing to deal with stress head-on and those who struggle or do not understand the need to combat stress do not value them. We are not always in control of dealing with the timing of stress or the level it comes in at. You can go on holiday or lock yourself in a health spa for a month but the effects will wear off at some point, a little like fad dieting. Many of us have adopted our jobs as our purpose in life, and this means working long hours or constantly thinking of work matters on personal time – how many of us cannot be parted from our BlackBerry? Which means we never truly leave the office.
Having to put up with this stress (event) may not be something we have a choice in i.e. it is a necessity of our job or we are having to seek a new job. It is easy to think that those who deal with stress well have some magic formula or are better than us. But one of the big differences between those who handle stress well and those who handle it badly is how they choose to react (outcome) to a given situation. When they talk about the stressful situation do they summarise the positives or do they only focus on the negativity or who is to blame? For the latter, it may be more constructive to put time and energy into learning how to think positively about stressful situations and control the outcome, rather than attempting to eliminate the event. For example, if made redundant your time would be better spent exploring all of your options i.e. things you could not do when you worked, what job you would like to do, using unemployment services etc, as opposed to fixating on the fact that you no longer have a job, may not be able to pay the mortgage, might not be able to get the job you would like etc. As John Milton wrote: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven”
Like our careers and relationships with family and friends, we need to consistently work on and invest in learning to relax, process information positively, take control of as much of our environment as is within our personal ability. I am not saying this is as simple as waking up one morning and deciding you need to think differently – though that would be a good start. It’s about proactive choices to seek out the help you need to learn these skills, and that is half the battle. As Dan Gilbert expresses so elegantly, it’s easy to be happy when we are getting exactly what we want, it’s learning how to be happy when we don’t get what we want that is the true skill.
(please note we are referring here to general life-related stress and not to any clinical depressions or disorders)
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