Stress is a state of mental stress that occurs in a person under difficult conditions or under certain circumstances. Any stress is associated with adaptation mechanisms. A person can learn to adapt successfully to a new situation (and then stress will have a positive effect), or adaptation will be difficult, can weaken a person, disorganize his life and, therefore, have a negative impact.
In principle, people need stresses. Without them, a person becomes non-initiative. Stress is a source of energy, a kind of creativity. But there is a rule - not to give a stressful condition to acquire a continuous form. Stress should be episodic. It is necessary to be able to switch in time, then the mechanisms of self-regulation will return all the stress-altered functions to the norm. The well-known Austrian psychoanalyst Hans Selye first formulated the notion of stress: "the nonspecific response of the organism to any demand presented to it."
Stress is an important part of our daily lives. Potentially as dangerous for the mental and physical health of a person is too long, chronic stress, which makes it difficult to adapt to the constantly changing conditions of the habitat. Selye identified three phases of the "general adaptation syndrome":
• an anxiety reaction when the body prepares to meet a new situation;
• the phase of resistance, when the body uses its resources to overcome the stressful situation;
• the phase of depletion, when the body's reserves are catastrophically decreasing. In the case of prolonged stress, exhaustion leads to a nervous breakdown, and sometimes to serious physiological disturbances.
There is the so-called professional stress. It turns out that people can be divided into three categories according to the ways of responding to stress: "rabbit stress", "lion stress" and "stress of ox". The first group includes those who react passively to stress. At the same time, a person is only able to activate his few forces for a short time. Another option, when a person vigorously and vigorously, like a lion, reacts to stress. Finally, the third type of people can work for a long time at the limit of their capabilities, like a wolf, able to work with a heavy load for a long time. In each specific case it is necessary to analyze the situation. Think, what depends on you, on what external circumstances you can influence, and on what - is not present. If necessary, adjust your goals. Depending on this, you should choose one of three roles - "rabbit", "lion" or "ox." From the point of view of psychophysiology, an active reaction to stress is more justified. However, with the intensive work of a person at the limit of his abilities for a long time, there is the danger of an unexpected breakdown. The stressful state of a person can be decomposed into the following time intervals: first, there is a "pre-start fever", during which we think about an upcoming event, for example, about an examination or an explanation with the boss. Then comes the stress itself. Next comes the state, which is called "post-stress".
Psychologists offer various methods of dealing with stress at each of the stages listed. First of all, it is necessary to imagine in the most detailed way the situation that awaits you: where the event that will move you will take place, what you will be wearing, what you will say, what the interlocutor will be wearing, what he will say. In reality, the details may not be the same, but it does not matter. As a result, your level of uncertainty will decrease and, as a consequence, the increased level of emotions that interfere with your work will decrease. Imagine various options for the outcome of the events, down to the most unfavorable. Think about what you will do if the worst scenario for you is realized. Similarly, plan your actions for other outcomes. As a result, you reduce the level of uncertainty, which usually provokes unnecessary emotions. Remember the situation in which you solved your problem and can be proud of yourself and your actions. Write down all the compliments you can make yourself. Now think, if you have already successfully solved a similar problem, then there is every reason to believe that you will be able to do just as well with a real task. Write down all your failures and analyze their causes: lack of resources (if yes, which ones), insufficient planning, etc. Try to take into account the identified mistakes in planning your actions in the future. It happens that we are inside a stressful situation, and the outcome of business negotiations depends on our ability to "keep ourselves in hand" and not succumb to provocations on the part of the interlocutor.
You can suggest the following methods of working on your condition, which you can do easily after some training ... Change the situation if possible; For example, if the previous stage of negotiations ended with a "heat of passion", then it is advisable to conduct the following negotiations in another room or to change the design of the existing "meeting room"; Watch your breathing; If you want to remain cool, then the duration of your exhalation should be longer than the duration of the inspiration; Pay attention to the objects surrounding you, call them mentally on exhalation, then it will be easier for you to convey to the visually the content of your thoughts in the most correct form; Some people with a "hot" temperament, psychologists recommend to count to one hundred, before starting to object to the opponent.
Here the stress has already come. Now we need to do everything possible to reduce its negative consequences. The proposed methods can be divided into two groups. Work with the emotional component of stress: relaxation, movement, walking, delicious food, a bath with soothing herbs and oils, music, auto-training, massage; Another way to relax - the activation of both hemispheres of the brain, this goal can be achieved by performing any movement simultaneously with hands and feet; Switching attention to another activity - a humorous movie, a book or a play, a hobby. Working with the cognitive cognitive component of stress: understanding the main goals in life, comparing them and traumatic events to the scale of world problems; "Pronouncing" the problem: stress is an image for which the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible, and when we talk about what we care about, we load the left hemisphere responsible for speech, while the right hemisphere rests, so psychologists recommend telling in detail About their feelings to a good conversationalist; Visualization of the problem in different frames: mentally place the problem, disturbing you, in a dark picture, under the lantern. And now imagine how the snow falls and falls asleep with flakes.
Adaptive Syndrome
Adaptation syndrome is a set of adaptive reactions of humans and animals, arising from significant in strength and duration of adverse effects - stressors.
In the development of the adaptation syndrome, three stages are distinguished:
Stage of anxiety: lasts from several hours to two days. It includes two phases - shock and protivoshok (the latter is mobilization of protective reactions of the body).
At the stage of resistance the resistance of the organism to various influences is increased. The second stage leads either to stabilization, or is replaced by the last stage - exhaustion.
Stage of exhaustion: protective reactions are weakened, the body itself and the psyche are tired.
Adaptation syndrome also has physiological signs: an increase in the adrenal cortex, a decrease in the thymus gland, spleen and lymph nodes, a metabolic disorder with a predominance of decay processes.
How to measure your stress
One way to interpret stress is to present it as any emotion in an extreme form of expression. That is, fear, anger, sadness and even joy can produce stress.
Scientists T. Holmes and R. Reich thought about whether there is a connection between the power of stress and the susceptibility to disease. For ethical reasons, they could not invite subjects and subject them to stressful influences - besides, it is unlikely that this would provide an adequate picture of how stress works in real life.
Therefore, Holmes and the Reich developed a special scale for measuring life stresses. Scientists compiled a list of 43 life events that usually cause stress in people and require adaptation to the situation. This list was presented to 394 subjects with a request to assess for each item the degree of stress caused by the event.
Since it is easier for some people to adapt than to others, the "marriage" event was taken as the starting point-an arbitrary index of 50 was assigned to it. Assessing all other events, it was necessary to compare how much easier or more difficult to adapt than getting married? Does it need more or less time?
The emphasis in this study was precisely on the adaptation to the event, and not on the emotional reaction or psychological significance of the event. And here is the list of the subjects:
How to calculate your stress level
To calculate the level of your stress, select from the list of events that happened to you in the last 12 months and add up the points you received.
To test the stability or inconsistency of estimates, the researchers divided the subjects into several subgroups and determined the correlation of the scores obtained for each item. The results obtained in the male and female subgroups, among the young and the elderly, among the subjects with high socioeconomic status and low were compared. Correlations were high - and it indicates that this scale can be used for all people with an approximately equal degree of accuracy. Stress and susceptibility to disease.
But Holmes and Reich began their research with the goal of understanding whether a strong level of stress is associated with susceptibility to disease. To this end, they conducted another experiment, in which 2500 crew members of sea-going vessels took part. It was found out that during the six-month voyage in subjects with indicators of the level of life stress less than 100, the average number of diseases was 1.4. Those whose level of life stress was in the range from 300 to 400, the average number of diseases was 1.9. And subjects with stress indicators from 500 to 600 - suffered an average of 2.1 diseases.
However, this method subsequently had its own critics. As a shortcoming of the stress measurement scale, the absence of an interpretation of the event by the subjects was called. For example, retirement for one person may mean the end of a career and social life, and for another, a pension can be a way out of disgusted work.
