recognizing the different levels of stress

8/11/2019 Recognizing the Different Levels of Stress

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RECOGNIZING THE DIFFERENT LEVELS OF STRESS

Stress is a natural response and can be a good thing. But with too much or the wrong kind, our bodies can go into a tailspin. Take better

care of yourself by understanding how stress works.

Stress is an automatic reaction that happens in your body when there is a perceived threat. The release of chemicals (such as the hormoadrenalin) sharpens your senses, focuses attention, quickens breathing, dilates blood vessels, increases heart rate and tenses yourmuscles. This is the fight or flight response that prepares us to act quickly to tackle or avoid danger. And thats a good thing.

On the flip side, it's not as helpful for most day-to-day stresses of modern life, such as never-ending deadlines, nagging traffic jams,financial worries or seemingly endless family responsibilities.

And while a certain amount of the right kind of stress can be a positive force that provides challenge, change and stimulation, excessive,negative or low-grade stress that extends over a long period of time can have a detrimental impact on your physical and mental health,relationships and general enjoyment of life.

Let your body be your guide

We all have our own ways of responding to stress: you may be prone to crying while your partner might become irritable or suffer insomn

Because stress is such an individual experience, it's important to let your body be your guide. Learn to recognize the ways that you tend react, and the events or situations that are likely to cause you to feel stress.

Also know that symptoms tend to escalate if the stress continues. Be aware of where you sit in the stress continuum:

Level 1 - Immediate stress

Increased heart rate and blood pressure

Rapid breathing

Perspiring and sweaty palms

Indigestion and nervous stomach

These symptoms occur in response to a stressor that causes fright or nervousness. Your body releases adrenalin to prepare you for actiExamples range from immediate, external danger such as a fire or a car speeding towards you to a self-imposed situation such as a jobinterview or first date.

Level 2 - Continued stress

Feelings of being pressured or driven

Exhaustion and fatigue

Anxiety

Memory loss

Colds and flu

Increase in smoking or alcohol and caffeine consumption

These symptoms can occur when there is no relief from a Level 1stress. Your body begins to release stored sugars and fats, using

up its resources. For example, a long-term deadline at work, odrawn-out divorce may lead to Level 2 stress.

Level 3 - Ongoing stress

Insomnia

Errors in judgment

Personality changes

Autoimmune disorders

Heart disease

Mental illness

When a stressful situation is not resolved and carries on for prolonged periods, Level 3 stress can result. Your body cannot produce theenergy resources it needs and the on-going strain can cause dysfunctions and breakdowns. An unsatisfying and highly demanding job orcaring for a disabled family member could potentially cause this kind of stress.

Relationship Between Stress and Job PerformanceStresscan be either helpful or harmful tojob performance, depending upon its level. When stress is absent, it limits job challenges andperformance becomes low. As stress increases gradually, job performance also tends to increase, because stress helps a person to gathand use resources to meet job requirements.

Constructive stress inculcates encouragement among employeesand helps them to tackle various job challenges. Eventually, a time

comes when stress reaches its maximum saturation point that corresponds approximately to the employee's day to day performancecapability. Beyond this point, stress shows no signs of improvement in job performance.

Finally, if stress is too high, it turns into a damaging force. Job performance begins to decline at the same point because excessive streinterferes with performance. An employee lose the ability to cope, fails to make a decision and displays inconsistent behaviour. If stresscontinues to increase even further it reaches a breaking point. At this breaking stage, an employee is very upset and mentally devastatedSoon he/she completely breaks down. Performance becomes zero, no longer feels like working for their employer, absenteeism increaseeventually resulting into quitting of a job or getting fired.
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Stress should not be very high nor too low. It must be within the range and limits of employee's capacity to tolerate and his performancelevel. A controlled stress which is within limits is always beneficial and productive than an uncontrolled one.

Management of every organisation must always consider their employees as assets of their firm and not work slaves. Efforts should bemade regularly to monitor and study stress levels in working environment. Necessary adjustments and arrangements should be made tocontrol stress and its causes. Co-operation, Kindness, Respect, Good Manners and Discipline among members of an organisation alwaycreate a stress free, healthy, friendly and productive environment in a workplace.

Understanding emotional aspectof a human factor also plays a key role in determining the success prospect of an organisation. No mahow intelligent a work force is, it is emotions and not logic that drives them to give their best.

Optimum Stress Levels

The level of stress under which you operate is important: if you are not under enough stress, then you may find that your performancesuffers because you are bored and unmotivated. If you are under too much stress, then you will find that your results suffer as you find itdifficult to focus on technique and fail to flow with the performance.

The graph below shows the relationship between stress and quality of performance:

Where stress is low, you may find that your performance is low because you become bored, lack concentration and lack motivation. If thistate persists for a long time, then you may find the sport tedious, and give it up.

Where stress is too high, your performance can suffer from all the symptoms of stress. Your flow can be disrupted, you can be distractedand competition can become threatening and unpleasant.

In the middle, at a moderate level of stress, there is a zone of best performance. If you can keep yourself within this zone, then you will bsufficiently aroused to give a high quality performance, while not being over-stressed and unhappy.

This zone of optimum performance is in a different place and is a different shape for different people. Some people may operate mosteffectively at a level of stress that would leave other people either bored or in pieces. It is possible that someone who functions superbly low level competition might experience difficulties in high level competition. Alternatively someone who performs only moderately at lowlevel of competition might give exceptional performances under extreme pressure.

Not only will the zones of optimum performance be in different places for different athletes, they will also be different heights and differenwidths. This is why you must take responsibility for controlling your own levels of stress, particularly in a team situation: if the team generneeds motivation, but you are in an optimum zone, then paying attention to a motivating team talk may move you to a state of being overstressed. Similarly if some team members need to be relaxed, then relaxation techniques applied to an entire team may move you to a stof bored demotivation.
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You may also find that fine and complex skills are less tolerant to stress than simple skills - your zone of optimum performance may benarrower for very difficult skills than for the basic skills of the sport.

Finding Your Opt imum Stress Level

An effective way of finding the stress level at which you operate best is to keep a training and performance log. In this record the quality oevery training session or performance, along with the level of stress that you felt during that performance.

If you have stress monitoring equipment, and can score your performance, then this gives you hard, objective figures to use in your trainilog. If you do not have the ability to do this, then record your subjective views of the stress levels you felt and the quality of the session.

After a time review the training log - this should give you some good information on the way that you respond to stress. This information whelp you to decide and implement a stress management program that is appropriate to the different sporting situations you find yourself i

the Inverted-U Model

Balancing Pressure and Performance

Have you ever worked on a project that had a tight-but-achievable deadline, and that needed your unique, expert knowledge for it to becompleted successfully?

Even though you found it challenging, you may have delivered some of your best work.

Or, think back to a project you worked on where there was little pressure to deliver.

The deadline was flexible and the work wasn't challenging. You may have done an average job, at best.

There's a subtle relationship between pressure and performance. When your people experience the right amount of pressure, they do thebest work. However, if there's too much or too little pressure, then performance can suffer.

This relationship is explained by the Inverted-U Model, which we'll look at in this article. This helps you get the best from your people, at tsame time that you keep them happy and engaged.

About the Model

The Inverted-U model (also known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law), was created by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson as long aas 1908. Despite its age, it's a model that has stood the test of time.

It shows the relationship between pressure (or arousal) and performance.

According to the model, peak performance is achieved when people experience a moderate level of pressure. Where they experience tomuch or too little pressure, their performance declines, sometimes severely.

The left hand side of the graph shows the situation where people are under-challenged. Here, they see no reason to work hard at a task,they're in danger of approaching their work in a "sloppy," unmotivated way.

The middle of the graph shows where they're working at peak effectiveness. They're sufficiently motivated to work hard, but they're not soverloaded that they're starting to struggle. This is where people can enter a state of "Flow," the enjoyable and highly productive state inwhich they can do their best work. (See our article on theFlow Model for more on this.)The right hand side of the graph shows where they're starting to "fall apart under pressure." They're overwhelmed by the volume and scaof competing demands on their attention, and they may be starting to panic.

JOB STRESS AND PERFORMANCE

Job stress is a common problem across occupations and it impacts job performance. Although most contemporary studies highlight

negative effect of stress on job performance (distress), mild stress is known to enhance an employee's performance (eustress).

necessary to take a holistic picture of antecedents to job stress by including the effects of personality, organisational factors and the w

family interaction in the perception of job stress. This article defines stress, examines whether it has a positive or a debilitating effect
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performance before providing managers with techniques to manage their occupational stress as well as to deal with the stress levels of t

subordinates

Occupational stress has become a common problem throughout the industrial world. Over the years its prevalence has increased, taffecting the individual's mental health and well being. In order to understand its effect on health, it becomes important to define 'heaitself. The World Health Organisation (WHO) terms health

1as a 'state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not me

the absence of disease or infirmity'. In more recent years, this statement has been modified to include the ability to lead a 'socially economically productive life'.

The Effects of Stress in a Job

Research2in organizational behavior has shown that an individual could suffer from significant health complications - backac

headaches, gastrointestinal disturbances, anxiety and depression amongst others - if subjected to stress over a long time. Behaviochanges in the form of excessive tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption, nervous disorders, heart diseases, diabetes, obesity etcalso related to stress. Job dissatisfaction is known to lead to job stress, which in turn reduces the productivity (Madeline, 1983).

Over the years, a lot of research has been carried out in the realm of work place stress and it has been emphatically proven that inteor prolonged stress leads to a negative impact on one's mental and physical well being. (Health & Safety Executive, 2001; Cooper e2001). Even though a fair degree of stress may be felt in all occupations, some work places have been known to experience more stcompared to others.

Varying Degrees of Stress

People in some work places experience more stress vis-a-vis others, particularly those in occupations where workers are requireddisplay emotions like nursing, social work and teaching (Travers and Cooper, 1993, Cooper et al., 1999, Kahn, 1993, Young and Coo1999). An extreme form of this stress has been categorized as 'burnout', a stage when a person starts treating his clients as obje(depersonalization), evaluates himself negatively and feels emotionally exhausted (Sheena et al, 2005). In such extreme casperformance has been known to dip considerably and this drop in productivity can be attributed to the stress. Hence, its imperativ

define stress, understand its implications and counter the risk of productivity loss by effectively managing stress in oneself and in othe

Biologically, stress is the reaction of the body to environmental changes. It can cause the body to produce 'fight or flight' reactions wequip a person to deal with the stressful situation. Various studies have defined stress as that state of health resulting from 'any condthat causes an individual to have a generalized psycho-physiological response which deviates from a state of equilibrium' (Madel1983). Strain is described in her study as a 'psycho-physiological response to stress, a response that deviates from a person's norm may lead to illness'.

Eustress is a positive psychological response to a stressor resulting in the presence of positive psychological states. Neustress refera neutral reaction and the individual is said to be in homeostasis. Distress is the negative counterpart of eustress (Pestonjee DPareeek U., Agrawal R., Tripti Desai, 1999).

Differences Between Distress and Eustress

Most of the studies pay a lot of importance to the negative side of stress, i.e. distress which is just one aspect of stress. However, sostudies have shown that if one can manage stress effectively, it can lead to a positive outcome and response. Jennifer (1996) and S(1976) proposed the positive affective response to the stress process and coined the term 'eustress'. Other influential writers have asuggested that stress is not inherently maladaptive (Hart, 2003; Hart & Cotton, 2002; Karasek, 1979; Lazarus, 1999; Lazarus & Folkm1984; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). In the context of the work place, stressful events can lead to perceptions of positive benefit (CampbQuick, Cooper, Nelson, Quick, & Gavin, 2003; Nelson & Simmons, 2003). Although many researchers have investigated distreustress had been neglected until recently.

Stress is a part and parcel of life and cannot be avoided. However, if used in a gainful way, stress can lead to beneficial outcomes (Selve, 1973). Research and studies should be directed towards understanding the impact of stress on positive health, growth and wbeing as proposed by the positive psychology movement (Seligman & Csikszentmihaiyi, 2000). If aptly managed, stress can energstimulate and induce growth and productivity in one's pro fession. One can accomplish new objectives and there can be positive perschanges (Quick, Nelson, & Quick, 1990; Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004; Somerfield & McCrae, 2000). Further studies and research required to identify the processes involved in the development of positive and negative emotions (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004).

The Impact of Stress on Performance

Various studies have been conducted to examine the relationship between job stress and job performance. Job performance canviewed as an activity in which an individual is able to accomplish the task assigned to him/her successfully, subject to the norconstraints of reasonable utilization of the available resources. At a conceptual level, four types of relationships were proposed to ebetween the measures of job stress and job performance (Jamal M, 2007). One is a negative linear relationship, when productdecreases with stress (distress). Productivity can also increase as a consequence of stress, thereby implying a positive linrelationship between the two. Thirdly, there could be a U-shaped or a curvilinear relationship wherein, mild stress could increaseproductivity initially up to a peak and then it declines as the person descends into a state of distress. Alternately, there need not be quantifiable relationship between the two.

Factors that Result in Job Stress

Job stress could be as a result of a number of factors, which can be broadly classified into (1) external factors relating to organisaand work-family conflicts, and (2) internal factors. External factors are well described by Cooper and Marshall's five sources of stress.


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Exhibit 1 The factors inducing job stressOrganisat ional factors: According to Cooper & Marshall, stress could be due to factors intrinsic to the job, such as poor physworking conditions, work overload or time pressures. Often, one's role in the organization and the ambiguity associated with theresulting from inadequate information concerning expectations, authority and responsibilities to perform one's role as well as the conthat arises from the demands placed on the individual by superiors, peers and subordinates could also result in stress. A third factothe impact of status incongruence, lack of job security and thwarted ambition on one's career progression. Rayner and Hoel (19theorized that relationships at work with bosses and colleagues, including bullying in the workplace could result in a lot of stress. Aorganizational level, the structure and climate, including the degree of involvement in decision making and participation in office polcould result in a stressful climate.

Stress could be due to factors intrinsic to the job, such as poor physical working conditions, work overload or time pressures.

Cary Cooper and Judi Mars

Additional sources of stress documented in the ASSET model include the impact a person's working life has on their life outside of w(work-life balance), the amount of satisfaction people derive from their work, the degree of control and autonomy people have in the wplace, and the levels of commitment in the work place both from the employee to the organisation and from the organisation to employee (Sheena 2005).

Work family interact ion: The rise of families in which both partners are earning and increasing female participation in the sphereemployment has transformed the ways in which couples manage work and family responsibilities. Work and family integration can rein both negative (i.e., work-family conflict) and positive interactions (i.e., work-family enrichment). Work-family conflict and work-faenrichment can occur in either direction - "work-to-family or family-to-work". Work demands, family demands and work flexibility recognized to be important determinants of the work- family interaction (Luo Lu et al, 2008).

Personal i ty :Besides external factors, there are internal factors too that can cause stress, like the age of the individual, sex, educa

and a personality that is deemed Type A or inherently stressful.

Stress Management in the Work Place

Stress resulting from work is a major problem and it takes a toll on one's physical and mental well being. Moreover, the managemenstress is not easy, as can be ascertained by the documented ineffectiveness of stress management interventions (Beehr & O'Drisc2002; Sulsky & Smith, 2005). However, a few pointers could be had for managers to counter and mitigate stress effectively.

First and foremost, one should be able to identify the stressors at work, assess them and manage them too. One should be careful noremove the rewarding aspects of the job. Occupational stress does not always lead to distress and if challenges are dealt with effectivthen growth and positive changes can result in an individual. The challenge lies in providing the tools required to handle the effecmanagement of workplace demands. The implications of cognitive appraisal models which suggest that stress is an 'individual problbest addressed by positive appraisal techniques, are flawed.

...one should be able to identify the stressors at work, assess them and manage them too. One should be careful not to remove the

rewarding aspects of the job.

Primary assessment includes a subjective assessment of the balance between demands and resources. Rather than increasresources or reducing demands straightaway, one must train the individual to assess these demands positively. Training in 'copstrategies' has had limited impact so far (Folkman & Lazaraus, 1988). Since a combination of strategies is almost always more effecthan a single strategy, these techniques should be used flexibly and individuals must be encouraged to use coping strategies in nsituations.

Stress management includes taking care of organisational issues like leadership, peer support, organisational culture and policies, wdesign and reporting arrangements as well as job analysis, staff selection and training to enhance role clarity such that there is a balabetween the individual and his work environment. Effective systems for motivation and performance management are essential (Jennet al, 2006).

While meditation, yoga, pranayam, self hypnosis, biofeedback etc are techniques which can be practiced at an individual level to dwith stress, Pestonjee (1987) had proposed proactive intervention at an organizational level to manage employee stress. Some of th


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techniques have been listed in Exhibit 2. An organisation relies on its employees for success and thereby, it must spare no effortimproving employee welfare.

Stress management

techniquesDescr ipt ion

Undertake a stress

audit

Organisation decides to take a peep into mental cum physical health status of its employees.

Questionnaires and interviews are used to collect data on various stressors, coping

techniques and outcomes.

Use scientific inputsSpread awareness and information about effective dealing with stress, both inside and outside

the organisation.

Check with the

company doctorThe medical officer can conduct stress management programmes.

Spread the messageThe importance of regular work habits, leisure, diet, exercise and practicing personal

relaxation should be emphasized.

Exhibit 2: Organisational stress management programs

ConclusionTo summarize, the various factors responsible for job stress can be broadly classified into external factors relating to organisation work-family conflicts, and internal factors. Certain occupations are more stressful, especially those in which there is high emotioinvolvement. The holistic view of antecedents to job stress should take into account the interaction between the three categoriefactors and the impact of socialization which has proved to be a significant moderator in stress perception and in coping with it. Furthqualitative and empirical studies are required to prove the importance of the factors in an Indian context to study the culture spedimensions of the "person-stress" interaction.

recognizing the different levels of stress

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