Stress

Developed by Telma Sigrún Torfadóttir, February 2022

Abstract

Stress is a feeling of being overwhelmed by events that you cannot seem to control. Stressors are events that cause stress, which can be extreme, uncontrollable and can often produce opposing tendencies. There are four varieties of stress, acute stress, episodic acute stress, traumatic stress and chronic stress. A project manager must have knowledge about health and wellbeing at workplace such as stress in order to prevent it from becoming a major outbreak to the employees. It should not be assumed that stress is always a bad thing. It keeps people motivated and can provide a great sense of achievement once the stressful situation has passed. However, too much stress can have negative impacts. Some people appear to be better at overcoming stressful events, or to view such events as challenges rather than as sources of stress. Many techniques can help to manage stress. There is not just one technique for all and no technique will be able to eliminate stress totally. Each individual uses different coping mechanism to deal with stressful situation.

What is stress?

Stress is a subjective feeling caused by threatening or uncontrollable events. It is critical to recognize that stress does not exist in the situation, it rather exists in how people respond to a specific situation. Hence, when you are stressed, you perceive that the demands of the situation are greater than your ability to deal with them. Your subjective perception of your ability to deal with a given situation may be significantly different from your objective abilities. Stress can have both negative and positive aspects, although it is often seen as an unpleasant state. Negative stress is known as distress, and positive stress is known as eustress. (5)

People are likely familiar with both physiological and psycological reactions to stress. Signs of arousal, such as increased heart rates and respiratory rates, elevated blood pressure, and sweating, are all physiological responses to stress. Anxiety, fear, frustration, and despair are all psychological reactions to distress (negative stress), as are appraising or evaluating the stressful event and its impact, thinking about the stressful experience, and mentally preparing to take steps to try to deal with the stress.

Stressors

Stressors are events that cause stress. If an induvidual perceives an environmental event to be dangerous or threatening, it is called a stressor. Some attributes seem to be common with stressors. They are uncontrollable, beyond our ability to influence. Stressors are extreme, causing a state of feeling overloaded or owerwhelmed to the point where one simply cannot take it any longer. Finally, stressors can often produce opposing tendencies, such as wanting and not wanting an activity or object, for example wanting to do a task but also wanting to put it off as long as possible.

Varieties of Stress

Stress is classified into four types by psychologists.

• Acute stress: This type of stress is caused by the sudden onset of demands and is experienced as tension headaches, emotional upsets, gastrointestinal disturbances, feelings of agitation and pressure. Most people associate the term stress with acute stress.
• Episodic acute stress: This type of stress refers to repeated episodes of acute stress so it is more serious. Episodic acute stress can lead to migraines, hypertension, stroke, anxiety, depression or serious gastrointestinal distress.
• Traumatic stress: Refers to a particularly severe case of acute stress, the consequences of which might last for years or even a lifetime. The symptoms with the stress response of traumatic stress is called post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. These symptoms are mainly what makes traumatic stress different from acute stress.
• Chronic stress: Another serious form of stress and it refers to stress that does not end. Chronic stress wears us down day after day until our resistance is gone. Chronic stress can lead to serious systemic illness, such as diabetes, decreased immune system functioning or cardiovascular disease.

Coping with stress

People respond to stressors in different ways, some people seem better able to cope and to get over stressful events. The same event can happen to two people, but one is completely overwhelmed and devastated, whereas the other accepts it as a challenge and is motivated into positive action. Differences in how people respond to the same event are possible because stress is in the subjective reaction of the person to potential stressors (3) We all perceive demands and pressures differently, and we all have different resources or coping skills, which is also referred to as resilience. (1)

How is stress evoked?

In order for a person to experience stress, two cognitive events must occur. The first is the primary appraisal, which occurs when a person perceives an event to be a threat to his or her personal goals. The second cognitive event is called secondary appraisal and is when a person concludes that he or she lacks the resources to deal with the demands of the threatening event. Stress is not evoked if either of these appraisals is absent. (4)

Worker stress

The stress that occurs at work and affects work behaviour is called worker stress. Strategies used in dealing with stress in everyday life will not always work in dealing with worker stress. For example, some stressors can be eased through organizational changes and thus are under management's control, whereas others must be addressed by the individual worker. Furthermore, some of the techniques for dealing with stress in the workplace are simply good management and human resource practices, not special stress reduction techniques. A project manager must be knowledgeable about stress in order to prevent a problem from spreading to the subordinate workers. (6) Companies and managers are increasingly concerned about the effects of stress on employees and important "bottom-line" variables such as productivity, absenteeism, and turnover.

Why do project managers need to show interest in worker stress?

The most obvious reason is that excessive stress can cause illness. (7) Some of those stress-related illnesses are ulcers, hypertension, coronary heart disease, migraines, asthma attacks and colitis. Rates of absenteeism can increase if worker stress leads to stress-related illnesses. A workers productivity and quality of work can be affected when stress causes mental strain, feelings of fatigue, anxiety, and depression. Worker stress can influence turnover as well. That is, if a job becomes too stressful, an employee quits and finds a less stressful position.

Worker stress sources

Sources of worker stress that are common to all kinds of jobs, can be divided into two categories: organizational and individual.

Organizational sources

The organizational sources of stress originate in the work environment and can be split into two subcategories stress derived from work tasks and stress resulting from work roles.

Stress derived from work tasks

• Work overload
• Underutilization

Stress resulting from work roles

• Job Ambiguity
• Lack of Control
• Physical Work Conditions
• Interpersonal Stress
• Harassment
• Organizational Change
• Work–Family Conflict

Individual sources

• Type A Behaviour Pattern
• Susceptibility/Resistance to Stress
• Self-Efficiacy