All of us have days that are more stressful than others. Sometimes it could be work‐related or maybe you are writing a final exam or even have some family issues. Occasionally a little bit of stress is inevitable, and it could enhance a healthy life. Stress could help you to find solutions to challenges and motivates you to reach your goals, making you a smarter, happier, and healthier person. However, all stress is not created equally. If you are working in a stressful environment or are worrying constantly about something it could create a major risk factor for mental and physical problems.
What is stress?
Stress can be defined as a feeling of being overwhelmed or unable to cope with mental or emotional pressure (Walinga, 2014). Stress can manifest in heart palpitations, sweating, dry mouth, shortness of breath, fidgeting, accelerated speech and augmentation of negative emotions (American Psychological Association, 2022). Stress comes in many forms, and it can affect people in different ways. According to Albrecht (2022), there are four types of common stress types that most people experience in their lifetime:
- Time Stress: you experience time stress when you are running out of time to complete your tasks, not meeting deadlines, or are running late for an important meeting.
- Anticipatory Stress: are you worried about your future? Anticipatory stress is ‘stress that you experience concerning the future’. It could be focusing on a specific event, such as an upcoming exam or a new job or even worrying about your future life in general.
- Situational Stress: sometimes we lose control over our lives, and we end up in tricky situations for example an emergency, a conflict between family members, getting laid off, or making a mistake in front of our team.
- Encounter Stress: we could feel drained and overwhelmed when we interact with too many people (contact overload). You could also experience encounter stress when you find it difficult to communicate with a group of people that you perceive as difficult, or deal with a lot of demanding customers.
Why should we pay attention to stress?
When stress becomes a part of your daily life it could be harmful to both physical and emotional health. Although stress cannot be classified as a disease, persistent stress could lead to ill‐health which could deprive you of enjoying your life to the fullest. According to research studies, stress is a major risk factor for mental and physical health problems for example depression, anxiety, and burnout. It might also increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, obesity, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, Type II diabetes, and arthritis. Although anxiety and depression are not the same mental illness, often they coexist. Other symptoms could include cognitive symptoms (inability to focus and poor judgment) behavioural symptoms (changes in appetite, and an increase in nervous behaviours for example nail biting) and emotional symptoms (feeling bad about yourself, always in a bad mood and avoiding others).
DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY
What is depression?
Depression is often seen as a disease of the 21st century. According to DSM‐5, (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 2015) depression is also known as a major depressive disorder or clinical depression mood disorder. Those who suffer from depression experience persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness and lose interest in activities they once enjoyed. Aside from the emotional problems caused by depression, individuals can also present with physical symptoms such as chronic pain or digestive issues. To be diagnosed with depression, symptoms must be present for at least two weeks.
HISTORY OF DEPRESSION
When looking at history, depression was seen as a spiritual rather than a physical condition. The belief was that it was caused by demonic possession, which was dealt with by priests rather than physicians. During the Ancient Greek and Roman era, depression was called “melancholia” and the belief was that the condition was caused by four imbalanced body fluids called humours: yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood. During the 5th century Hippocrates wrote in his book “Aphorisms” that if fear and sadness last a long time, such a state can be called melancholy (Bourin, 2020). He was the first physicist that described depression clinically (Bourin, 2020).
During the 1600s, Robert Burton published “Anatomy of Melancholy”, in which he outlined the social and psychological causes of depression such as poverty, fear, and loneliness (Bourin, 2020). In the late 1900’s beginning 20th century Emile Kraepelin noticed that “the syndrome of melancholy was characterized by the insensitive development of anxious depression, to which delirious conceptions are joined in very variable proportions” (Bourin, 2020).
What is anxiety?
One of the main reasons for developing anxiety is persistent stress. Anxiety could be defined as the presence of excessive anxiety and worry about different events, or activities. Worry could occur for at least six months and is challenging to control (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 2015). It could be divided into several types of anxiety disorders for example separation anxiety disorder, specific phobia (intense fear of something that poses little or no actual danger but causes a lot of anxiety), social anxiety disorder (social phobia), panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). GAD is a long‐term condition that causes you to feel anxious about almost anything. Normally the person often struggles to remember the last time they felt relaxed.
What can you do about it?
- Learn how to manage your stress. Figure out the stressors in your life. Find ways to reduce stress.
- Planning is key, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
- Learn how to create more time in your day. Learn good time‐management skills.
- Prioritise your most important tasks.
- Make sure that you are assertive by saying no if you do not have the time to complete a task.
- Use positive visualization techniques.
- The cognitive theorist Aaron Beck discovered in the 1960s and 1970s that depressed patients often experienced spontaneous negative thoughts about themselves, the world around them, and others. Patients who constantly contemplated deeply on these negative thoughts began to treat them as valid and accurate (Beck & Alford, 2009).
- Learn how to overcome the fear of failure.
- Learn how to manage conflict in all areas of your life (Work and personal life). Learn to practice Emotional Intelligence and have Empathy with people.
Dear Stress,
Let’s break up, I don’t love you anymore.
Yours faithfully
Me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ms. Wonda Grobbelaar Lecturer, Business & Management - UWL UK
