Dealing with stress - how to balance work and life
RACING heart, trembling limbs, colliding thoughts — the stress response is hardwired into us and though we don’t have to battle the elements or confront wild animals for food, there are plenty of other dangers today.
So says positive psychology trainer Brenda Roche, who runs stress management programmes in workplaces. Roche believes stress is prevalent today because of psychosocial issues — deadlines, relationship problems, traffic, money, long hours and multi-tasking.
“There’s lots of pressure to be perfect. Many people are asked to do more with less. Women, especially, take on a lot of competing demands.”
David Hegarty, psychologist and health coach, finds stress “enormously” prevalent. “There’s no hiding place,” he says, citing technology and social media as making people “available for activities they may not want to be available for”. It’s vital to manage our stress levels, he warns.
“When stressed, we get physically tense. Our body’s posture is thrown out of alignment, putting enormous strain on the skeletal muscles and the organs feeding them. Circulation slows and breathing becomes shallow. The first cells affected by the lack of oxygen are brain cells, so we get fatigued.”
Roche points to research by Nobel prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn, who found stress can accelerate ageing. Her study looked at telomeres — protective caps at end of chromosomes – which shorten as we age. “People with high levels of stress tend to have shorter telomeres,” says Roche.
Meanwhile, American professor of Medicine Dr Dean Ornish found lifestyle changes, including stress reduction techniques and social supports, increase telomere length by an average of 10%.
Stress is remediable, says Hegarty. “It can be dealt with. This may not solve the problems we’re facing but it can change our perspective on the problem.”
Here, five people in highly-pressured jobs and lifestyles share how they manage their stress levels.
“A big stress is the number of admitted patients in A&E – patients seen by a consultant who decides they need hospital admission, but there’s no bed for them. There were 25 in the department this morning in addition to A&E patients.
“I regularly look after patients who are nursed on chairs. They have no dignity, no privacy. I do 13-hour shifts three or four times a week. Every day I go into work, there aren’t enough staff, so you’re cross-covering. You’re stretching yourself to do more and trying to ensure you don’t miss anything.
“It’s stressful going home, knowing I haven’t looked after the patient in the way I’d like. Sometimes my husband wants to chat, but I don’t because I need to debrief – at work you don’t get a moment to stop and think about anything that happened or about the care you’re providing. I come home and wonder if I’ve left something undone – I regularly ring back to check.
“I find baking relieves stress. I bake a lot for my colleagues. I do ginger bread, banana bread, I get requests — I do a nice baked cheesecake. Everyone at work is so under pressure – when you open a tin of something nice, it takes away some of the stress.
“Baking’s so precise. I like it because I have control. Nothing’s controlled in the emergency department – you never know what the day will bring.&!”
“The premier stress is, once you get a call, time is so critical. Getting the right information so you can get there as quickly as possible is the biggest stress. The time between someone dialling and the fire service getting accurate information could be three minutes. The unknowns are stressful – someone says there are one or more people unaccounted for. Then you have the stress of an emergency rescue.
“I deal with stress very well. I run a checklist in my head: How is the incident going? Is there anything else we could be doing?
“We have safe operations guidelines — if we follow these, things generally go ok. We also do ‘critical incident stress management’ after any traumatic call.
“I run three or four miles every day, sometimes six or seven. I run in and out of work and around where I live in Kilcully. I’ve been training all my life. I train in the work gym at night – half an hour to 45 minutes. It clears my head. You go over what you did, what should have been done, were people better off because you were there, was there anything we could have done better, any piece of equipment that would have helped?
“After a run, you come back relaxed, feeling better in yourself. But I run to keep fit, too, not just for stress management.”
“It’s busy. We have four in nappies. There’s the physical side of having to feed, change and dress four children, three of them babies. They’re good babies but there are three of them. The older two want time with you and the babies are now starting to look for attention. Most nights, we’d be up with one or more of them.
“A midwife’s job is stressful, too. I’m based in the Cork maternity services and it’s busy. I work set days so I don’t have the stress of shift work. If I’m too stressed, I get a pain in my jaw or down the back of my neck. I clench my teeth. I have to make a physical effort to relax my face.
“Being organised is one of the main ways I counter stress. I bring all five children out with me when I’m dropping Fearghal Óg at playschool — I get the babies up, feed them and put them in their car seat. !
“I make Fearghal Óg’s lunch the night before. I’d have something organised ahead for breakfast, lunch and dinner — something either taken out of the freezer or halfway prepared.
“I go to Rebel Bootcamp in Ballincollig twice a week for an hour. I do cardiac work and lots of resistance and circuit training. I’m not worried about the baby weight — I do it for exercise and to get out of the house. I love my children but, when you’re in with them all day, it’s a relief to run out the door. Even if I’m tired, I go. It burns off stress and I sleep better.
“When the kids go to bed, there’s a bit of organising to do, but I love to read a chapter of a book. I have a very good husband, Micheál, we have a great relationship. We’re glass half-full people. We don’t sweat the small stuff.”
“Living in an increasingly litigious society places demands on school principals to ensure all policies are in line with the raft of legislation that continues to come on stream. A school could have up to 100 policies and procedural documents to deal with. A big stress is dealing with child protection issues.
“Cutbacks in education create major stress – these cutbacks affect the most basic running of the school. Ours is a DEIS school, so we don’t have the economic capacity within the community to do large fundraisers to offset costs.
“Also very stressful is the human side of managing and leading a staff of 45. These are all unique individuals doing a stressful job and experiencing the usual life events and challenges in their personal lives, too. My role is to support them as they twin-track their work and personal lives.
“For me, stress manifests in headache, trouble concentrating, not being able to switch off. I play the clarinet. I’m a member of a band. I find music stimulating, comforting and uplifting. Playing the clarinet is one of the few times I literally don’t think of anything else.
“I also need to do something on a daily basis to manage stress. I enrolled on a mindfulness stress-reduction course. I also did an online course with Mindfulness Matters on mindfulness for the teacher in order to pass it on to children in the classroom. I practice mindfulness every morning. Four or five times throughout the day, I do three-minute meditations, just focusing my attention and grounding myself. It helps my mind reconnect with my body. I do it prior to a big meeting or stressful encounter. It’s a lifeline.
“I’m on the go from 7.30am to 5.30pm. It’s difficult to find 30 minutes for lunch. Three-minute meditation offers me respite from the daily busyness and unpredictability. It’s regular recharging of the battery to get me ready for the next challenging meeting. Since finishing the course, I don’t run in the corridor anymore – I walk!”
“My job has a lot of stresses, from traffic congestion — you’re delayed trying to get to what’s possibly a serious call — to witnessing loss of life. If I’m treating a young boy, who has been knocked down, it might remind me of my own son. I’ve dealt with incidents where five kids have been injured. The experience sits and simmers with you and the court case is the trigger that brings it all back again. And then there’s the occasion when a patient is violent or physically threatens you — that’s a stress.
“Within the job, there are various pathways for dealing with stress. I also like to hill-walk. I get out for a walk three times a week. A walk can put everything in perspective – you can work things out as you move. I like to listen to music and I enjoy going to a concert in the National Concert Hall. I also find listening to water relaxing, whether it’s a waterfall or waves breaking on the shore. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve cried over different stressful things – that’s a release too.”
* A three-year study conducted with 2,700 people after the September 11 attacks found those with high stress levels were three times more likely to develop high blood pressure and heart disease than those with low stress levels.
* Stress increases susceptibility to illnesses like a cold. Psychological Stress and the Human Immune System: A Meta-Analytic Study of 30 Years of Inquiry, found the more a stressor became chronic, the more components of the immune system were affected in a potentially detrimental way.
* Gastrointestinal disorders may be worsened by stress. “Gastric acid increases, which may lead to heartburn and inflammation of the oesophagus,” says Brenda Roche. A 2010 article, published in The Journal of Mental and Nervous Disease, said, “Stress can trigger and worsen gastrointestinal pain and other symptoms. This is why psychological therapies are often used in combination with other treatments — or even on their own — to treat functional gastrointestinal disorders”.
* Stress doesn’t have to be harmful. Roche points to a US study of 30,000 adults over eight years, which found those who believed stress is harmful to their health had an increased risk of dying within that period. But if you view your stress response as helpful — a tool to maximise performance — this reduces negative effects. “People’s heart rate is still raised but their blood vessels stay relaxed, rather than constricted,” says Roche.
* Two Harvard researchers found a jolt of stress isn’t necessarily bad. Up to a point, it can lead to increased performance and efficiency.
“Once this optimal point is reached, however, further stress and anxiety leads to a decline in performance and ability,” says Roche. “It’s important for people to know their limits.”
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