Taming the red-eyed monster.

• Author: Williams, Roger T.
• Position: Management & Careers

Stress! Almost everyone is concerned about it. And there are good reasons for being concerned. Researchers have found that 75 to 90 percent of the illnesses we experience are stress-related. That means that stress is at least partially responsible for most of the illnesses we know.

GOOD STRESS AND BAD STRESS

Of course, stress is not all bad. Nor is it something to be avoided. Stress is a normal part of life and there's even such a thing as good stress! When we are living life on purpose--following our hopes 2and dreams and accepting the challenges life sends our way--we are experiencing "eustress" or good stress. When this happens, we are likely to feel energized and highly satisfied with life.

The enemy is "distress," or stress that drains us physically, emotionally, and socially. Some of the signs and symptoms of distress include headaches, backaches, ulcers, diarrhea, constipation (stress hits people in different ways!), fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, irritability, cynicism, depression, withdrawing from others, and lashing out at others. Chronic stress can result in frequent bouts with minor illness or more debilitating illnesses like colitis, cardiac problems, stroke, and cancer.

LEARNING TO COPE WITH STRESS

It's important to learn how to deal with distress. One of the keys is recognizing that much of the stress we experience is self-induced. One of my favorite cartoons shows a man talking with a stress management counselor. The man says, "I don't plan to stop burning the candle at both ends--I'm here so you can tell me where to get more wax." Clearly our inability to say "no" and our tendency to get involved in too many things are ways we create stress for ourselves.

But there are other ways as well. Here are some of the more common ones: being overly rigid, being highly competitive, having perfectionist tendencies, being impatient, setting unrealistic expectations, using negative self-talk, and allowing interpersonal conflicts to go unresolved. Since much stress is self-induced, we can reduce our stress level by reversing these behavioral characteristics. If we could just learn to be less rigid, less competitive, less perfectionistic, and so forth, we would be well on our way to dealing with stress.

Now, there are several specific strategies for coping more effectively with stress. These can be divided into four broad categories: physical, mental, social, and holistic approaches. I'll touch on each of these briefly.

PHYSICAL APPROACHES

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