Imperatives for workplace stress management
By Dele Fanimo and Roseline Okere
STRESS is a universal phenomenon that essentially manifests itself in humans as a result of pressures emanating from several experiences or challenging situations.
It is a part of everyday life and behoves on everyone to cope with it as best as he can. Stress at work is an ever-increasing problem in contemporary societies resulting in enormous costs both for the corporate organisation involved and for the individual employees.
To create awareness on stress management, Professional Practice Group of the Lagos Chambers of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), organised a seminar titled "Stress Management" as part of their monthly breakfast meetings for the year.
Speaking at the seminar, Chairman of the group, Mrs Adenike Shobajo urged employers not to forget the wellbeing of their staff and amid concerns over economic gloom.
She stated: "As the recession starts to bite, stress is likely to increase even more. Employers that tackle stress at work can improve their staff's health and wellbeing, and boost productivity. In these trying economic times, it's vital that employers and unions work together to reduce stress at work".
Shobajo said that stress intervention was a necessity for professionals. "Stress is a human condition to which one is not immune. With so much work related competition, people have become immune to stress related problems, which at times can also become fata. Thus, people are turning to various de-stressing programmes and stress management consultations to cope with stress."
She urged the chief executive officers to provide a stress free working condition for staff to enhance productivity in work place.
Speaking at the programme, the Chief Executive Officer of Healthy Insights, Dr. Danjuma Yunusa said that stress was responsible for poor performance at work as at least 60 per cent to 90 per cent of all new incidences of illness in the work place was stress oriented.
According to him, a stress free person will be healthy, which in turn improve staff recruitment and retention and improve customers satisfaction.
He explained: "Anyone who has ever worked knows that stress is part of the workplace. Applying the correct amount of stress hardens the muscles, sharpens the mind, and strengthens the spirit. It is when a person moves from this "Good" type of stress into distress that things begin to go wrong. The fact is, most people who work are feeling pressure from things going on both inside the workplace and outside the workplace.
"Most business owners face the common and cost problem of worker stress whether they are aware of it or not. Job stress can lead to several problems, including illness and injury for employees, as well as higher health insurance costs and lost productivity for employers."
He therefore, called for good prevention strategies, which is focused on identifying potential causes of employee stress in the workplace.
However, according to a health journal online, everyone experiences stress from time to time, so it is perfectly normal. However, normal doesn't necessarily mean healthy. Nor is it inevitable! Believe it or not, you can learn how to largely eliminate stress. I don't mean eliminate the pressures in your life - those will probably persist. The way I think of it, pressure is what is happening to you, but stress is how you react to those pressures. So, you can keep the pressure and get rid of the stress.
A good example of this comes from the study of stress in executives. Several studies have shown that low and middle level executives show many stress symptoms, like ulcers, high blood pressure, tension, burnout and so on. Top executives, however, as a group show much fewer stress signs. There are exceptions in both directions, of course. Why do big wigs show fewer signs of stress? There may be many reasons, like more control over their lives, but it is hard to believe they don't have pressures. So why don't they get as stressed out? Probably the main reason is that they are either naturally stress resistant or have learned how to handle the pressure without letting it eat them up. It's like the old saying, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen".
Fortunately, stress management is largely a learnable skill. Most people can learn how to take the heat in their lives. Before we talk about how, let's consider what stress is in more detail. The way I think of it, stress is a "false alarm". What I mean is that it is the erroneous activation of the "danger alarm" system of the brain. I visualize it as a big red fire alarm inside the head. This is a system we are all born with and it is a good thing to have. However, the biological purpose of this system is to help prepare us for dealing with real, physical danger. When the danger alarm is turned on, it produces a physiological response called the "fight or flight" reaction, which helps us to fight the danger or flee it.
When you are in real, immediate physical danger, it is appropriate to feel afraid. Getting your body charged up with adrenaline may well help to keep you alive. However, most of the time when we feel stressed, there is no immediate danger, so it is a false alarm. The fire alarm is sounding, but there is no fire!
So how do you learn how to manage stress? There are basically two main ways:
Learn how to turn off the alarm system through various relaxation methods.
Learn how to not turn it on inadvertently in the first place.
Relaxation methods work on the idea that you can't be relaxed and uptight at the same time. Basically, anything you do that is the opposite of what the danger alarm system does will tend to shut it off. Some examples include:
Deep breathing - taking deep, slow breaths rather than the shallow, fast breathing we feel when we are stressed. This really works physiologically to help shut off the danger alarm.
Muscular relaxation - tensing and relaxing various muscle groups can work wonders. Try your neck and shoulders, your shoulder blades, your forehead and eyes, tensing these groups for a few seconds, then relaxing them. You can also combine this with deep breathing by inhaling while you tense, then exhaling when you relax the muscles. There are more sophisticated versions of these muscular methods, like the shower of relaxation and progressive relaxation.
Visualization - imagine a very peaceful scene, like laying on the beach, out in a fishing boat on a lake, in a mountain cabin or whatever. It can be a real place or you can make it up. Try to invoke all your senses as you imagine being in this very peaceful, relaxing place. What do you see? What sounds are there? What sensations of touch, temperature or smell? For example, you might imagine the sun on your skin, the cool breeze on your forehead, the salt tang of the ocean, the grit of the sand.
Try all these methods and see which works better for you. Some people do better with muscular methods, others with visualization. All these can be learned quite readily and often work very well.
In the long run, however, it is better to learn how to avoid getting stressed out in the first place. So how do you do that? Well, the clue is in the visualization method. Thinking peaceful thoughts makes you feel relaxed. In imagining a peaceful place, you have also distracted yourself from whatever thoughts you were having before. This points out the basic premise of cognitive/behavioral psychology, that our feelings and behaviors are largely caused by our own thoughts. This is oversimplified, because there are many feedback loops that make the connection between thoughts, feelings and behaviors sort of like a chicken and egg problem. But the simple version of the cognitive theory is that peaceful thoughts cause relaxation and stressful thoughts cause stress.
In other words, the reason we get stressed out is not what is happening to us and not what happened in the past (at least not directly), but rather, how we are thinking about what is happening. Past experience does influence us strongly, but the medium of that influence is beliefs or thoughts. For example, if you were abused as a child, you might have developed the belief that you are worthless. It is this belief today that is making you feel depressed, not the fact of the abuse itself. This is a really neat, powerful idea because it means we can overcome the bad experiences of the past. It means we have power over ourselves, so we don't have to be victims of the past or of present circumstances!
The best way to manage stress is to learn to change anxiety to concern. Concern means you are motivated to take care of real problems in your life, but your danger alarm system is not erroneously activated. Changing your feelings is largely a matter of learning to identify and change the upsetting thoughts that are the immediate and proximate cause of upset emotions.
