First of all let's examine exactly what stress is. Please use the Links on this page to help identify its existence in your life and lastly what you can do to reduce its impact.
Stress is a state of tension that is created when a person responds to the demands and
pressures that come from work, family and other external sources,as well as those that are internally generated from self imposed demands, obligations and self criticism.
Stress is both additive and cumulative. It adds up over time until a state of crisis is reached and symptoms appear. The emotional chaos it causes can make our daily lives miserable. It can also decrease our physical health, sometimes drastically. Strangely, we are not always aware that we are under stress. The habits, attitudes, and signs that can alert us to problems may be hard to recognise because they have become so familiar.

These symptoms may manifest themselves psychologically as irritability, anxiety, impaired concentration, mental confusion, poor judgement, frustration, anger, and poor self-esteem. They may also appear as physical symptoms, common symptoms include: muscle tension, headaches, low-back pain, insomnia, high blood pressure and skin disorders.

While a certain level of stress is necessary to avoid boredom, high levels of stress over a sustained period can damage your health.
The sections below show common symptoms of stress and the negative effects that excessive stress can cause. While the symptoms in isolation may or may not show stress, where several occur it is likely that stress is having an effect. Note that as the stress you are under increases, your ability to recognise it will often decrease. The symptoms are organised into the following sections:
Naturally if any of the symptoms feel serious, consult a doctor.

Short Term Physical Symptoms
These mainly occur as your body adapts to perceived physical threat, and are caused by release of adrenaline. Although you may perceive these as unpleasant and negative, they are signs that your body is ready for the explosive action that assists survival or high performance:

  • Faster heart beat
  • Increased sweating
  • Feelings of nausea, or 'Butterflies in stomach'
  • Rapid Breathing
  • Tense Muscles
  • Dry Mouth
  • Diarrhoea
    These are the symptoms of survival stress.

Short Term Performance Effects
While adrenaline helps you survive in a 'fight-or-flight' situation, it does have negative effects in situations where this is not the case:
  • It interferes with clear judgement and makes it difficult to take the time to make good decisions. ·
  • It can seriously reduce your enjoyment of your work ·
  • Where you need good physical skills it gets in the way of fine motor control.
  • It causes difficult situations to be seen as a threat, not a challenge.
  • It damages the positive frame of mind you need for high quality work by:
    • promoting negative thinking,
    • damaging self-confidence,
    • narrowing attention,
    • disrupting focus and concentration and
    • making it difficult to cope with distractions
  • It consumes mental energy in distraction, anxiety, frustration and temper. This is energy that should be devoted to the work in hand.

Long Term Physical Symptoms
These occur where your body has been exposed to adrenaline over a long period. One of the ways adrenaline prepares you for action is by diverting resources to the muscles from the areas of the body which carry out body maintenance. This means that if you are exposed to adrenaline for a sustained period, then your health may start to deteriorate. This may show up in the following ways:
  • change in appetite
  • frequent colds
  • illnesses such as:
    • asthma
    • back pain
    • digestive problems
    • headaches
    • skin eruptions
  • sexual disorders
  • aches and pains
  • feelings of intense and long-term tiredness

Internal Symptoms of Long Term Stress
When you are under stress or have been tired for a long period of time you may find that you are less able to think clearly and rationally about problems. This can lead to the following internal emotional 'upsets':
  • Worry or anxiety
  • Confusion, and an inability to concentrate or make decisions
  • Feeling ill
  • Feeling out of control or overwhelmed by events
  • Mood changes:
    • Depression
    • Frustration
    • Hostility
    • Helplessness
    • Impatience & irritability
    • Restlessness
  • Being more lethargic
  • Difficulty sleeping
  • Drinking more alcohol and smoking more
  • Changing eating habits
  • Reduced sex drive
  • Relying more on medication

Behavioural Symptoms of Long Term Stress
When you or other people are under pressure, this can show as:

  • Talking too fast or too loud
  • Yawning
  • Fiddling and twitching, nail biting, grinding teeth, drumming fingers, pacing, etc.
  • Bad moods:
    • Being irritable
    • Defensiveness
    • Being critical
    • Aggression
    • Irrationality
    • Overreaction and reacting emotionally
  • Reduced personal effectiveness:
    • Being unreasonably negative
    • Making less realistic judgements
    • Being unable to concentrate and having difficulty making decisions
    • Being more forgetful
    • Making more mistakes
    • Being more accident prone
  • Changing work habits
  • Increased absenteeism
  • Neglect of personal appearance

These symptoms of stress should not be taken in isolation - other factors could cause them. However if you find yourself exhibiting or recognising a number of them, then it would be worth investigating stress management techniques.

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  • Set Impossibly high standards for your self
  • Compare yourself only with the great masters of the ages
  • Take all criticism as absolute truth and take it all personally
  • Worry obsessively about factors beyond your control
  • Identify the outcome of every project as an assessment of your value as a human being
  • View your work not as a commitment but as a burden to resent
  • Condemn your mistakes and imperfections without mercy
  • Don't exercise
  • Eat anything at all, anytime you want
  • Smoke, don't fasten your seatbelt
  • Avoid all meditation and relaxation
  • Drink alcohol, use stimulants, take drugs
  • Never listen to calming music
  • Stay disorganised
  • Take on too much
  • Rate everything as critically important
  • Ignore support networks
  • Don't ask for help
  • Eliminate your sense of humour
  • Stay in the victim position




MASTERING STRESS
FOR
OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE

WORKSHOP MODULES

"That which you are aware of - you can control.
That which you are not aware of - controls you."

The Purpose of the Workshop

  1. To Create an Awareness of the Problems Associated with Stress For Both Management and Staff.

  2. To Define Stress and Its Causes

  3. To Manage and Successfully Use Stress to Enhance Performance and Health.

MODULES·

  • What causes Stress - Stressors, environmental, chemical, your personal stressors.
  • Change - understanding and managing change
  • Cognitive Coping Strategies - with ref to anxiety management
  • Communication Skills - to include assertiveness and the use/misuse of agression
  • Control - its locus and its perception by the individual
  • Lifestyle and Health Promotion - to include nutrition, exercise and substance abuse
  • Models of Stress e.g. Human Performance Curve
  • Personality Type and Stress
  • Perceptions - how to alter your thinking about an issue
  • Meditation, Relaxation and Breathing - with reference to mind quietening techniques
  • Self Awareness
  • Social Support - to include emotional release and significance of enjoyment and laughter
  • Values and Beliefs - without critical scrutiny
  • Workplace Stress




STRESS MANAGEMENT COACHING (SMC)

ONE-TO-ONE TRAINING

Using the guidance of a qualified SMC or councillor on a one to one basis is the most effective way to understand, and to resolve your personal stress. Finding the right coping techniques both at the level of the mind and the body can be a daunting task without the help of a personal mentor. Using the best-suited therapy again can only be done under the guidance of a qualified therapist.

Therapies include the following:
Counselling
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)
Problem Focused Psychotherapy
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Rational Emotive Therapy
Hypnotherapy
Breathing Techniques
Relaxation Techniques
Visualisation
Alternative Therapies (see Alternative Therapies)

Make sure that your SMC has a valid certification, preferably by ISMA the International Stress Management Association.

Some Stress Areas to be included:

  1. Understanding Stress
  • Introduction to Stress Management
  • Understanding Stress
    • Survival Stress
    • Internally Generated Stress
    • Environmental Stress, Job Stress and Fatigue
  • How to recognise Stress
  • Optimising Your Levels of Stress
  • Managing Life Crises
  • How stress can get out of control
    • Exhaustion
    • Depression
    • Burn Out
    • Breakdown




Meditation
Meditation is by far the most effective means to both combat and reduce stress. It is probably the most holistic of all the disciplines because it involves the body, the mind and the spirit.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, stilling the mind and calming the body, has never been the western way. For centuries, meditation has been regarded by Europeans as an esoteric, oriental practice of little practical value.

But over the last two decades, the increasing speed and pressures of modern living have been matched by increasing need for ways to cope with them. Medical science is now proving what a growing number of people in the West have discovered for themselves: that the relaxation of true meditation has immense measurable beneficial effects on all levels of our being, with no damaging side effects.

Some of those benefits which have been measured in research:

  • Reduces Stress
  • Lowers High Blood Pressure
  • Improves Quality of Sleep
  • Increases Creativity
  • Rejuvenates the Body
  • Improves Clarity of Thinking

Meditation does not make use of the thought processes in any way. No effort is required, indeed effort of any kind would simply halt the process. It is simply a process of letting go.

A Simple technique:

Counting of Breaths
Breathing then is probably the most powerful technique to enter meditation, based on focusing the attention on the breathing itself to the exclusion of all else. Counting of the breath in groups of four is very effective. Each inhalation is accompanied with the silent word "and " and then each exhalation is counted up to four. If a thought enters the mind at any time before you reach four, you simply return to the start again. For a person to reach the number four without a thought entering the mind is itself considered an advanced state.

  • Inhale and silently say the word "and" as you do so.
  • Exhale and silently say the number "one." as you do so.
  • Inhale and silently say the word "and" as you do so.
  • Exhale and silently say the number "two" as you do so.

Continue in this way until you reach the number "four," then return again to repeat the process, starting with the count of "one."

If a thought enters your mind at any time during the counting process, and it will, simply return to the start again with the count of "one" and continue up to four.

Repeat this pattern until you feel that you can then enter the "nothingness" that is when you can stop counting and stop thinking. Simply be aware. If a thought pattern begins to start again, simply start the counting of breaths for one more sequence and return again to the "nothingness." Throughout your meditation session, strive to stay in the nothingness, use the counting of breaths, as you need to, to dispel any thoughts. It does not matter if you have to do this frequently, with practice you will find that you can go longer and longer with the silent periods.

As all thoughts are pure energy and creative, there is no better way to control one's thoughts than through the practice of meditation. Meditation also impacts on the endocrine glands - the chemical messengers of the body -, which are responsible for our rejuvenation and well being.

Brain wave activity will go from the Beta state at the start, into Alpha and then into the deep relaxation state of Theta.

One ten-to- twenty minute session per day can have profound effects on one's life and well-being.

Self Hypnosis
The subconscious mind is the silent controller of all our actions, it holds our perceptions of reality and determines how we feel about people, events and life. Gaining access to it is not only possible but also very desirable. Through the use of positive suggestions, made in an altered state of consciousness (hypnosis) to the subconscious mind, one can alter or remove certain behaviours, as is deemed to be beneficial. It is especially helpful to trigger relaxation in certain situations, which were once considered stressful.

We are all subject to suggestion - the advertising companies spending billions of dollars annually are well aware - bur suggestion made in this special state of hypnosis, is immensely more powerful.

Massage
Massage is an ancient art dating back to Roman and Greek times. Using various oils, the therapist massages the soft tissue of the body, the skin and muscles, helping to relax, stimulate and rejuvenate the circulatory, muscular and nervous system.

It is also effective at removing toxins from the system and at creating a deep level of relaxation. It is said that an hour's massage is worth several hours' sleep. It is extremely useful in releasing stress at a cellular level, especially when combined with other therapies.

Reflexology
Reflexology, is an ancient foot massage system of healing which works on the principle that there are reflexes and energy channels in the feet and hands which correspond to each organ and gland structure in the body.

Gentle finger pressure on these reflex points help to locate and to resolve any blockage in the respective energy channels ensuring a healthier and more energetic body. Again, very useful in dealing with stress at the cellular level.

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