The waves of stress seem to keep washing up over me before rolling away. They aren’t as predictable as the waves of the ocean, there’s no set schedule for when they will reach their lowest or highest point; and they aren’t as steady either, they can jump from lowest to highest in a matter of minutes (less so in the other direction…).
It’s hard to know whether or not this time of great uncertainty has worsened my stress or not. Sometimes it feels as though it set me free from the weight of unemployment. I mean, what pressure do I have to look for and find a job when the whole world seems to be standing still? Luckily, we (me and Assaf, my partner) are able to live with his family for the next few months which reduced our financial burdens tremendously – further lessening the pressure I feel to find work.
But even living in such a privileged situation – a beautiful apartment with a view, no bills to pay for, no reason to go outside (often a source of stress for me), free to do what I want at any moment – my stress hasn’t left me entirely.
Understanding Stress and What Causes It
A Facebook friend of mine posted something the other day about the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale which I subsequently looked up. It’s essentially a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questionnaire made up of 43 weighted events that you answer whether or not you experienced in the previous year. Based on your score, you can see how likely you are to suffer from stress. This friend noted that due to the current health crisis, most people are likely experiencing at least moderate stress levels according to this scale. For anyone interested, here’s an online version of the survey.
It was in the link that he posted that I saw a definition of stress coined by renowned psychologist Richard S. Lazarus. We suffer from stress when we perceive that we don’t have the necessary individual or social resources to handle a difficult event or situation. He and his student put forth that there are two viable coping methods. Either, attempt to address the situation head-on, or try to adjust your thinking to lessen the emotional impact of the state (note the importance of the word ‘perceive’ in the definition).
Learning to Cope with Stress
Reading this, I thought about what I feel is demanded of me, and how much of it I demand from myself. On the one hand, it’s good to set goals and strive to achieve them; to be hard on yourself sometimes, to push through hard times and overcome. But so much of what we may be demanding of ourselves is just not worth it. One way we help cope with stress is to let go of whatever we’re demanding of ourselves that doesn’t benefit us. During this time especially, demanding yourself to be productive or creative or [fill in the blank] all day, every day is probably unrealistic. You can let go of that one, I know I’m trying to.
The other way we can cope with stress is to find ways to increase the resources available to us. I thought of 3 ways to break this down: increasing or improving our personal abilities, increasing our social network and improving our connection to our social network.
In terms of personal abilities, I thought of things like preparing ahead of time or practicing a new skill; anything that increases your ability to handle a given difficult situation that you anticipate facing. If you’re moving in 2 weeks, you might start packing a bit every day so that on the day of the move there’s less to worry about.
There isn’t always something for us to do personally to make a difficult situation easier. We can’t always anticipate stressful situations. Sometimes you need to rely on your social resources, either by forging new connections or by utilizing your existing network. In some situations, you may seek outside council or expert advice, and in others you may be able to reach out to your existing network, just ask for help.
That point hit hard for me, that you can cope with stressful situations by simply asking for help. It’s so obvious now that I write it down, but it just doesn’t come naturally to me. Thinking back to what I demand from myself, I know that my expectations of myself to not only be successful but to appear successful is definitely connected to my inferior ability to ask for help. As you know but perhaps haven’t considered until now, asking for help means admitting that you need help. Again obvious, but at the same time… nuanced.
Before You Go…
My takeaway from this, then, is that I can reduce my stress levels and learn to better cope with my stress if I can just learn to ask for help when I need it. In a practical sense, I’ll work on this by trying to verbalize the questions that frequently come up in my mind only to bounce around a few times before being set aside. “How does this work? What does that mean? It’s ok to ask!!!”
What about you? With this framework in mind, do you have any new ideas about how you can cope with stress?