Stress: How to De-Stress without Doing Less Read Online Free PDF Page A

isn’t that life is full of stress spikes, just that the general pace of life is so frantic that it becomes constant and consistently stressful, leaving little or no time for the vital relaxation which would restore the system back to baseline.
    A woman I worked with explained to me the things that she felt were behind her own problems with stress. ‘I know I am stressed-out a lot of the time,’ she said, ‘but I don’t see what I can do about it. People always say I should do less or relax more – but when? If it’s not getting the kids to school on time (which is always a nightmare), I am frantically cleaning, or cooking, or making costumes, or whatever the latest thing is they need. I’ve had to take on a part-time job to try to help bring some extra money in and that’s really stressful because I’m constantly trying to work out how I can fit in the things I need to do for work around the edgesof the things my kids need. I seem to spend most of my time feeling guilty. If I am working, I feel guilty and worry that my children need me, but if I am at home, I often am so aware of work that needs doing and I feel guilty for not doing that. I feel as if I am literally being pulled in several different directions and I am just not able to keep up with all the things I am supposed to be doing.’
    Stressful events in life
    For some of us, of course, the kind of stresses we are facing are not down to choices we have made. Life can throw things at us, and very often it seems to be totally unfair as lots of things all happen at once. Life events such as the death of someone close to us, moving house or even happy things that involve major changes to our life, such as getting married or leaving home, all trigger stress. In the late 1960s, a couple of psychiatrists worked through their notes on thousands of their patients and put together a list of stressful events that seemed to be linked to the chances of stress triggering illness in the people they were working with. The scale, which they then went on to test, gave each event a score. The idea was that you added up the total from each event you had experienced in the last year and this could give you an idea of the levels of stress you were under. Scores over about 150 seemed to indicate that you might be at risk of your stress causing you problems; at scores over 300 this was even more marked. You can see a list of some of the events and their scores in figure 6, overleaf.
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    Figure 6: Just some of the ratings given on the Holme and Rahe stress scale 1 (figures given are for adults)
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Event
 
Score
Death of spouse
 
100
Divorce
 
73
Death of close member of the family
 
63
Personal injury/illness
 
53
Marriage
 
50
Loss of job
 
47
Retirement
 
45
Pregnancy
 
40
Major change in financial state
 
38
Death of a close friend
 
37
Change of job
 
37
Major change in responsibilities at work
 
29
Children leaving home
 
29
Starting or finishing school
 
26
Change in living conditions
 
25
Moving house
 
20
Change of school
 
20
Holiday
 
13
Christmas
 
12
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    Holme and Rahe’s scale is interesting and it can give us an idea of roughly where we might expect our stress levels to be. But the truth is that different people experience stress very differently. The same event might be not much of a big deal to one person but an intolerable stress to someone else. The way we experience stress can be influenced by our personality, our aims and goals and the way we think. We also all notice stress at different levels. One person may feel dreadfully fraught and pressured, and another just think this is normal life, but both are at the same kind of stress level. Some people seem to thrive on stress and always like to be working towards something. The important thing to realize is that those people are just as likely to succumb to stress as anyone else.
    How do you recognize when your