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You’ve survived another stressful week at work. Once you’ve got everything sorted out and you’re about to relax, you get infected. This is because you used unnecessarily as much energy to solve your professional problems as it would be enough to hunt a buffalo or escape from a predator – explain psychologists.
– Occupational stress is not the sole cause of illness. However, it can accelerate or modify and intensify the occurrence of various health problems – primarily with the cardiovascular system, the locomotor system, and the digestive system (peptic ulcer disease). Stress sometimes also leads to increased tension in certain muscle groups (e.g. the muscles of the neck, neck or limbs) combined with involuntary movements. In extreme cases, depression appears – says Dr. Ewa Wągrowska-Koski, national consultant of occupational medicine.
Stimulus or reaction
– In modern psychology, the dispute over whether stress is a stimulus or a reaction has gone down in history. In general, however, researchers agree that stress is a specific type of relationship with the environment – says Dr. Dorota Merecz-Kot, head of the Department of Psychology at the Institute of Occupational Medicine. prof. J. Nofer in Łódź.
Stress accompanies us throughout our lives right from birth, and without its daily dose, we would not be able to function properly. As we grow up, we learn to deal with it. Sometimes, however, work becomes a cause of chronic stress. Our response to this stress depends on our individual character traits. For some, it will be a kind of downright pleasant emotions that will stimulate action. Television workers who show up on the vision often say they like the kind of stress that comes with every live visit. For others, it will be so unpleasant that it may be accompanied by fear of going to work.
A stressful profession
The American website CareerCast analyzed 200 different professions. 21 elements determining stress were assessed, such as time pressure, the necessary precision, life-threatening, the need to meet people and the number of hours worked. It turned out that firefighters had the most stressful profession. In further positions there were high-level managers, taxi drivers, surgeons, policemen, pilots of passenger planes, traffic officers, PR specialists and employees of an advertising agency. However, as Dr. Dorota Merecz-Kot emphasizes, there is no comprehensive research to determine which profession is the most stressful. – Certainly these will be professions that require continuous decision making, i.e. managers and doctors. The second group consists of employees who are forced to keep in touch with other people, such as teachers, psychologists or educators, for whom the awareness of the need to help others may be stressful. The third group includes uniformed services: the police, the army, the fire brigade, professions in which we expose ourselves to traumatic experiences in our daily work. The fourth group consists of miners and people associated with the construction sector, where the risk of an accident is very high, as well as people who depend on public safety (professional drivers, equipment operators).
The course of stress
Dr. Dorota Merecz-Kot explains that the activation of stress occurs through the so-called nervous axis. – It is a quick, but short-term stimulation manifested, among others, by dilated pupils, a feeling of dryness in the throat, increased heart rate, sweating, hair standing on end, ‘she explains. Then the neurohormonal axis comes into play. Its primary task is to maintain the stimulation produced by the nerve axis. The fight-or-flight response is an increase in muscle activity that allows you to fight or escape from the cause of stress. – Originally, the fight or flight response was triggered in response to specific physical threats. It is human misfortune that facing psychosocial and economic threats, he mobilizes enough energy to fight hand-to-hand combat, hunt a buffalo or escape where pepper grows, but to a small extent it is useful for intellectual processing of problems, what life brings – the psychologist explains.
In cases of very strong and long-term stress, another axis, the so-called endocrine, responsible for keeping the body on high alert for as long as possible. All the body’s defensive resources are activated. If this condition lasts too long, the energy mobilized in the immune phase is exhausted.
Aftermath of stress
Prolonged or high intensity stress depletes energy resources. There is a dramatic decrease in the efficiency and immunity of the body, manifested, among others, by particular susceptibility to many diseases, both physical and mental.
The list of diseases that can contribute to stress is frighteningly long. It includes heart disease, skin disease, weakened immune system, muscular and skeletal ailments, and cancer. – It depends on how the organism reacts. If we tighten the muscles of the back and limbs in a stressful situation, we risk degeneration of the musculoskeletal system. If we react with an accelerated heartbeat or an increase in blood pressure, we are exposed to cardiovascular diseases, a heart attack or a stroke. Stress can intensify many skin diseases, including psoriasis, hives and even acne, cause problems with sexual potency and contribute to depression. Concentration problems caused by stress make you more prone to accidents. Many people who try to deal with stress with alcohol can become addicted to alcoholism.
Do not give up
There are many ways to prevent the effects of stress. Learning to deal with stress over time is a natural method. Another public performance is no longer the cause of such emotions as the first one. The second method is called palliative strategies involving distracting oneself from stressful situations by indulging in some pleasure or relieving tension through social contacts. However, this method does not teach how to solve stressful situations. The third way to fight stress involves using the help of professionals, i.e. psychologists, who, thanks to special training, can help us learn to better manage our own time, be assertive, and deal with failure. And the last method is the so-called relaxation techniques to eliminate the negative effects of stress. These will be neuromuscular techniques consisting in tightening and relaxing certain muscle groups, visualizations and meditations taken from the Eastern culture.
Text: Maria Janiszewska