When stress strikes, we respond with fight or flight mentalities.  We hence physically emit certain physical characteristics with the emotion associated with it.  If one can breathe properly, they can reduce stress.  They correlate the breathing patterns associated with less stressful emotions.  This in turn can fool the mind into a more relaxed state.

The article,  “Research: Why Breathing Is So Effective at Reducing Stress” by Emma Seppälä , Christina Bradley  and Michael R. Goldstein look at how studies show that better breathing can help reduce stress.  They state,

“Research shows that different emotions are associated with different forms of breathing, and so changing how we breathe can change how we feel. For example, when you feel joy, your breathing will be regular, deep and slow. If you feel anxious or angry, your breathing will be irregular, short, fast, and shallow. When you follow breathing patterns associated with different emotions, you’ll actually begin to feel those corresponding emotions.”

To read the entire article, please click here

Please also review AIHCP’s Stress Management Consulting Program to learn more about how one can reduce stress and utilize breathing as an effective strategy in reducing stress.

The workplace itself is a great source of stress.  The workplace has the ability to turn Type B personalities into Type A personalities.  Workplaces that are more competitive, stressful, intensely quota oriented, and with poor management, can lead to high level of stress and stress related deaths.

Some workplaces are far more peaceful but work itself must have some level of stress.  It is essential to have goals and meet certain standards, but without moderation, stress and anxiety can emerge.  It is important to be balanced but unfortunately, it is difficult to find the perfect career that is balanced.  In some cases, they can be found, but ultimately, many deal with some types of stress in the workplace.  Whether its the workload, dissatisfaction, management, or inter personal relations, stress can quickly overload into family and personal life.

Type A workplace environments are best listed with these qualities.  First, tasks are either extremely overloading or not enough.  Second, goals are unclear or even unrealistic to achieve.  Third, one’s career can be blocked towards future advancement or self fulfillment.  Finally, the hierarchy or management may seem unresponsive in meeting the needs of employees. (1)   A Type B workplace on other hand has clear priorities and no worker ambiguity.  Goals are clear and one’s career can develop and advance.  Finally, management is responsive to needs of employees.

Work overload is one of the biggest issues of stress.  It has the potential to kill yet individuals with this type of “battle fatigue” slug forward without noticing the mental and physical tear.  These individuals work longer than 40 hours a week, bring work home with them, and find little time for relaxation.

Goals are also a source of stress.  Sometimes in workplaces, goals are so far fetched or unclear that they are impossible to meet.  The goals may be unable to be met due to lack of proper training, or due to lack of time.  It is important to reduce stress that management defines objectives in a clear way and enables their team to meet those objectives with proper training or appropriate time.

Careers without meaning can also become a source of stress.  While everyone at some point has worked a meaningless job from time to time, no greater stress can be found when one works a meaningless job for a long period of time with no end in sight.    A person’s career or lack of career can become a huge source of anxiety and stress.  As one hits middle age, one looks to see where they are going and where they have been.  When one does not meet his or her expectations, then stress can set it.

One needs to identify dead end jobs or careers and see how change can be implemented.  Is the dead-end due to to the organization itself? Is it due to one’s lack of involvement within the organization?  Essentially, what is the source of one’s lack of advancement.  Is it the employee or the company?  Furthermore, one can look outside of the company to meet needs through hobbies, as well as volunteer programs or education.

How management responds to the needs of their employees is also key.  Some management teams and organizations are bureaucratic and apply rules and regulations over common sense and oral discussion.  These types of organizations become more impersonal. This creates a divide between the company and employee.

When employees cannot control part of their job or have a reasonable understanding of what to expect, it can negatively affect morale and work performances.  Unresponsive, impersonal and ambiguous management can cause unneeded stress on a workforce and affect output.

Stress Management Consultants are utilized to address these organizational issues for many firms and companies.  Companies in the 21st century are finally realizing that stress not only kills employees and costs them millions of dollars annually on disability, but that it also affects morale and output.  Output can be increased by creating a more Style B company plan. It is essential that employees are treated with dignity and respect.  Not all employees are good people but if companies reduce stress, the reward of output from most employees will outweigh any negatives.

Companies can work within their Human Resource Department and implement various stress management policies to help reduce discontent and increase mental well being.  This in turn can increase output and save cost.  Companies can hire experts in stress management or have their own HR department become certified in stress management techniques that can be utilized in the workplace and also applied to company goals and standards.

If you would like to learn more about stress management or would like to become certified through AIHCP in Stress Management Consulting, then please review the program and see if it matches your academic and professional goals.

1. The Stress Management Sourcebook by J Barton Cunningham (PhD)

Stress, as grief, is very subjective.  There are many universal elements to the science of stress but subjective personality traits react differently to stressors.  While certain things may be stressful in nature, they can affect the person differently with greater or lesser stress based on the person.

One of the biggest contributing factors to grief is one’s personality traits in how they react to stress and life itself.  Some individuals by their very nature are more compulsive or anxious or even quick to anger.  Some may be more controlling and combative.   Others may be low energy and very passive and meek.  They may even possess a level of apathy to situations.  They may not care what occurs.

These attributes and qualities of individual personalities are a very important ingredient in understanding stress and one’s ability to cope with stress but also one’s overall health and life span.   Personality A is the more active personality towards stress.  It responds to stress but it can be so in an excessive or moderate ways.  Studies show moderate but active responses to stress are good for health and life.  Individuals who react to stress but in a moderate fashion, respond to stress in an appropriate way.  Stress and issues arise and one needs to react but if one reacts in a measured but productive way, one can handle situations, resolve conflicts and minimize stress damage via controlled emotional response.   The same is true of any moderate responses.  Personality B is a more passive response to stress but again, if moderate it can be a beneficial response system.  It passively resolves the stressful situation again with the appropriate energy and understanding of the situation.

It when personality A or B enters extremes that one sees negative health and higher mortality rates in people.  Individuals who do not respond to stress at all and exist in apathy have poorer health and shorter lives, while individuals who over react to stress also face negative health risks.  Like everything in life, moderation is key to any response.  Balance in life is critical.  Stress and its many stressors are not necessarily negative things in the temporal world.  Things happen that require change but when one fails to respond to stressors or over react to stressors, then acute and long term chronic poor health can result.

If we are more aggressive or more passive, we need to develop moderation in our personalities to face and deal with stress.  Moderate reactions acknowledge stress and form solutions prevent immediate negative health symptoms to our heart or blood pressure or cardio vascular and digestive systems as well as long term and chronic damage.

Obviously, our personality and how we react is only one of the many elements in stress management.  Exercise, diet, relaxation and interpersonal relations at home and work all play key subjective roles in how one responds to stress, but our personality and how we choose to deal with stress is definitely one of the front line determining factors in how one will live his or her life.

If you would like to learn more about Stress Management or would like to become a certified Stress Management Consultant, then please review AIHCP’s Stress Management Consultant Certification and see if it meets your academic and professional goals.

Stress is usually the unseen enemy.  It be gradual or sudden but overtime, stress can kill.  It can cause problems with the mind, body and soul.  It is important to understand the dangers of stress and how to properly cope.

While stress is very subjective it also has some universal aspects.  A generally accepted definition refers to stress as “universal human (and animal) response resulting from the perception of an intense or distressing experience” (1)  Stress can influence our behavior and responses and our ability to cope and react.  Stress can gain a foothold in one’s life through an event but the event itself is not always universally stressful.  Beyond the stressor itself, one must look at the person’s coping strategies, diet,  exercise, genetic dispositions and daily schedules.  Regardless, if stress is not properly coped with, it can cause a variety of diseases in the body, most notably heart disease.

With this danger of stress so apparent and modern humanity facing more stress than ever before, it is important to understand where stress originates in our lives.  Ancient man dealt with stress at a basic level.  Hunting, eating, gathering, and flight or fight responses.  These needs were very much connected to the nature of man.  However, humanity in the modern era faces many different types of challenges beyond the basic needs and these needs are rarely faced externally but allowed to internalize due to social norms and work.

Work is one of the biggest sources of stress but having a job is not necessarily the source of negative stress.   One of the biggest issues at the job site is interpersonal relationships.  The inability to deal with these issues leads to multiple problems.  Work place violence is becoming a bigger issue in this nation as stress at work between employees continues to rise.  The inability to properly work with others and deal with issues is a huge source of workplace stress.

In addition, on the job site stress can be related also to the work load.  Work load is not always directly correlated to stress due to subjective reactions, but usually, overwork load can play a role in stress.  Workload can be an issue due to quantity or quality of the work.  Individuals with too much to do in a little time will experience work load stress, while others under trained to perform a task, may feel helplessly lost in fulfilling it.

Other issues can include, micromanagement.  Individuals with less control and freedom to complete a task will experience higher levels of work stress.  This dismisses the myth that higher level positions are more stressful.  The fact is, lower level and moderate level positions have more stress due to a lack of freedom to complete tasks.  Middle managers experience the most stress in being given tasks from higher management and then translating it to the floor workers.

Ultimately, most stress does come from work but it does not have to.  Stress from work will exist at a healthy level but excessive stress is not usually due to the job itself, but more so the inability to work with relative freedom and in a non hostile environment with tasks conducive to skill set and time frame.

Without stress at work, ambition, motivation and completion of tasks would be impossible.  With no stress at all, the mind would fall into disconnect and lack of interest, but it is important to avoid the other extreme where certain issues can lead to panic, anxiety and resentment.  Unfortunately, for most, the natural level of needed stress in one’s life is not present.  In work, it is either a lack of motivation or too much pressure.

In essence, it is not necessarily the job or the career, but the unneeded stresses that come with human interaction with job related tasks.  Work is necessary and work is good but unfortunately it is also a leading cause of many people’s stress due to improper stress management and stress reducing policies in organizations.

How work and career is handled will greatly affect one’s health.  Overworking, like anything in excess, can eventually cause health issues and death.  In addition to over working, how one handles interpersonal drama as well as handling tasks is important to long term health.  If interpersonal drama is minimal, and tasks are correlated with proper alignment of time and professional training, granting some autonomy to the employee, then less stress can be found at one of the leading places of stress.

Yet, stress is not only found in the work place.  Stress is a very personal thing and can affect well beyond the work place but follow one with finances, health, family and loss of loved ones.  These issues can accumulate and over time cause serious health issues.

Stress kills but it kills over time.  It sends messages to the body to exert certain amounts of energy and hormones to face certain problems.  While this is natural and important to achieve goals, chronic stress and intense situations can in fact hurt the body.  Excessive tear on the body, internally and externally can create issues for the function of the body.  Stress hence internally can affect heart health, cholesterol levels, stroke, as well as affect the body’s immune system through fatigue or tiredness.  It can affect the digestive track, causing intestinal issues, as well as ulcers.  Stress can also cause muscle aches, migraines  and tightness in the muscles.  Stress can also cause an array of emotional responses that can lead to anger, depression or anxiety.  These in turn can lead to bad coping strategies through smoking or drinking and other drug abuse.

It is no wonder then that stress can kill.

In protecting oneself, no one answer suffices.  One needs to have an overall holistic approach of body, mind and spirit when dealing with stress.  And even then, genetic dispositions of bad health, or places in society or finances can still make it subjectively difficult for one to deal with stress better than the other.  Regardless though, one needs to reduce the level of stress one faces in order to have a longer more healthy life.

If you would like to learn more about Stress Management techniques or would like to become Certified Stress Management Consultant, then please review AIHCP’s Stress Management Program and see if it meets your academic and professional goals.

1. The Stress Management Source Book: Everything You Needt o Know” by J. Barton Cunningham, PH.D

Reducing and managing stress is a key way to better health and more productivity.  Stress Management Consultants can help individuals face stress and deal with in better ways.  Fortunately there are numerous stress management technique and strategies available for individuals to utilize.

The article, “16 Stress Management Activities and Worksheets to Help Clients Beat Stress” by Jeremy Sutton from the PositivePsychology.com looks at 16 different stress management activities available to individuals to cope with stress.  He states,

“There should be no excuse to hide from stress or become overwhelmed by it.  By using tools for coping and taking control, we can see stress as something natural that can invigorate and motivate us to overcome both the planned and the unexpected. These activities we shared will definitely help you manage stress. ”

Please review the article to learn more about these activities by clicking here

Please also review AIHCP’s Stress Management Consulting Program and see how it matches with your academic and professional goals in becoming a Stress Management Consultant

Stress can be caused by multiple issues in the office.   Management needs to curtail these issues to create a productive work environment.   Office politics plays one of the biggest roles of stress in the office.   It can cause divisions, resentment and gossip.   It can also prevent management from rewarding based on merit instead of status.

The article “Office politics major source of work related stress”  by Jayne Smith looks at some of the issues caused by office politics.  She states,

“In contrast, the number 1 cause of work-related stress is now ‘work-related office politics’ – with 37 percent commonly experiencing this issue. Following recent scrutiny and growing awareness of toxic work environments, ‘office politics’ clearly presents itself as a pressing issue for HR strategies in the upcoming year. ”

To read the entire article, please click here

Learning to overcome stress in the office is key to a healthy work environment and high productivity.  Please also review our Stress Management Consulting Program

One of the most stressful jobs is ER nursing.  Lives hang in the balance and quick decisions need to be made.  The pressure of an ER nurse cannot be denied.  The stress that results from this type of high pressure nursing can be over bearing at times.  Sometimes a patient dies, or a nurse is stretched from one patient to another.  This type of environment is not for the weak of heart.  The ER nurse needs to be able to control emotion and stress.

The article, “Stress Management For The Emergency Room Nurse” by Rosa Elizabeth Vargas looks closer at how ER nurses can better cope with stress.  She states,

“As an ER nurse, you know how taxing emergency nursing can be. If you don’t know, allow me to share that many of my ER nursing clients say it is complete turmoil—but they love what they do. You can ask a new ER nurse or a veteran ER nurse, and they will tell you that the Emergency Department (ED) is one of the most challenging patient care units…”

To read the entire article, please click here

ER nurses love their job and they love saving lives but being able to stay calm and cool at work and at home can be a challenge.  Stress Management is a key ingredient for nurses.  Please also review our Stress Management Consulting Program and see if it meets your professional goals.

Stress in the corporate world can cause hypertension and possible heart attack.  It is important to monitor stress and keep it down while working and managing a company.  Stress Management helps keep the anxiety and stress down.

The article, “Stress and hypertension in corporate world” by the Elets News Network states,