meri75 is offline meri75 Post #1  May 28,2010, 9:14pm
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Stress is a word I now hear bandied about all the time. I typically hear it my workplace with regard to people feeling stressed or becoming ill due to stress.

Do you believe in stress?
 
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meri75 is offline meri75 Post #2  May 28,2010, 9:14pm
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I do not believe in stress.

Whenever my staff/peers use this term with me in coaching sessions and I dig for more information, there is actually something else going on. The person is overwhelmed by a sudden and severe increase in workload - what I find is that he/she says 'I'm stressed Meri! when he/she means 'I'm overworked Meri!'.

I see stress pop up a lot also when a person is angry, fearful or sad.

I don't know. Stress seems to me to be this fluid word used to describe a problem without defining the problem. I think of it as knowing there is dirt on the floor and sweeping it under the rug, instead of clearing it away properly.
Last edited by meri75; May 28,2010 at 10:37pm. Reason: Typo
 
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AndieIsMe is online now AndieIsMe — Advice Member-Moderator Post #3  May 28,2010, 10:06pm
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To me, stress is real. It causes many things and is caused by many things. Your example of someone being overworked, that is the cause of their stress. It is identifiable. There are other causes which aren't as easily identified.

Stress does cause sickness, depression, body aches, headaches, etc.

It sounds like you like to identify and possibly correct the causes. Which is a great ability to have.
 
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Avalon1k is offline Avalon1k Post #4  May 28,2010, 10:32pm
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You're stressing me out Meri...


Actually I think we live in really stressful times now. And that probably has something to do with the increase in cancer and other illnesses. Stress lowers the immune system and a healthy immune system can deal with cancer cells. So yeah stress is a big issue.

Also stress can be good or bad. I mean good things can stress you out as well. Some people deal better with stress than others.
 
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MicMan is offline MicMan Post #5  May 29,2010, 9:47am
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meri75 wrote :
Do you believe in stress?
You better believe it.

I've been under a tremendous amount of stress in the last month. I usually do well under pressure. With long hours and demanding deadlines, I have to. In the last month, I've seen my workload increase, my time demanded more, and the climate of my workplace change. We're all stressed out and we're all handling it in different ways.

Right now, I feel like I'm being pulled in a lot of different directions. When I have downtime, I honestly don't feel like doing much of anything.
 
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tweet37 is offline tweet37 Post #6  May 29,2010, 9:56am
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Meri, you don't know stress because you haven't experienced it yet.

How about caring for a spouse who's dying of cancer for almost a year. And you've got your daughter's wedding to plan before your spouse dies. And now you have a small business to run as well as your day job. While one of your kids is a drug addict. While your son-in-law gets mortared in Iraq.

Call it what you will. I call it stress.

But it's all how you deal with it.
 
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Lilycat is offline Lilycat Post #7  May 29,2010, 10:15am
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IMO stress is real, and there are a multitude of causes.......

It is a lot easier to tell someone that "I am stressed out here" as that appears to be generally understood to be a negative thing.... gives you a bit of clarity as to the situation the person is in emotionally without having to go through the gory details.......

Stress is real - there are a multitude of causes, but it's a real feeling/situation to be in.......

JMHO

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cal_dude is offline cal_dude Post #8  May 29,2010, 11:04am
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I think that in bad economic times people stress more. Even those who have their jobs stress because they have more work to do, and there are less opportunities to move to another job. So some are stuck, some are overworked, and some are looking for anything... and stress is contagious
 
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chemgal is offline chemgal Post #9  May 29,2010, 11:16am
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Stress is very real. It's the body's response to, well, stressful situations.

Meri, I think your point is that it makes more sense to treat the cause of the stress than the stress itself - and I'll agree whenever that's possible. If a person is stressed due to overwork, reduce their workload to a more appropriate level and the stress dissipates. If a person is stressed due to a move or a death or a divorce, though, you have to address the stress directly since you can't un-move, un-die or un-divorce. (Well, okay, you could un-divorce but I bet it wouldn't fix the stress.)
 
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meri75 is offline meri75 Post #10  May 29,2010, 8:14pm
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chemgal wrote :
Stress is very real. It's the body's response to, well, stressful situations.

Meri, I think your point is that it makes more sense to treat the cause of the stress than the stress itself - and I'll agree whenever that's possible. If a person is stressed due to overwork, reduce their workload to a more appropriate level and the stress dissipates. If a person is stressed due to a move or a death or a divorce, though, you have to address the stress directly since you can't un-move, un-die or un-divorce. (Well, okay, you could un-divorce but I bet it wouldn't fix the stress.)
Hmmm ... I'm probably looking to go slightly deeper than this and recognise that it is not stress, but XYZ (whatever the situation may be). I know my GP doesn't believe in 'stress' as a medical cause, which is what first made me stop and think about every single time I've felt what others tell me is 'stress'. I can only describe it as feeling like I was suffocating slowly and horribly aware of responsibilities which were mine to honour.

******************************************

I'm not at all looking to make light or a mockery of the very real and enduring pain and hardship that people have experienced. Rather, I'm interested in looking further - past what I describe as the 'suffocating feeling' to see what is happening to the person.

I also wonder: how much stress (seeing as everyone so far except me believes in it ) do we accept or bring upon ourselves? Is that even possible? Or is everything causing this 100% outside of our control? Could you tell the boss to back off with your workload? Or how about financial concerns? Family concerns? Stuff happens to all of us and yep, there's been stuff happen to me too which I would rather have not experienced.

But a big mistake I know I've made - and incredibly, I repeated it - was to not ask for help when I was out of my depth.
 
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