Approaches to Manage Stress Action oriented, Emotion oriented, Acceptance oriented

A widely accepted definition of stress, attributed to psychologist and professor Richard Lazarus, is, “a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.”

This means that we experience stress if we believe that we don’t have the time, resources, or knowledge to handle a situation. In short, we experience stress when we feel “out of control.”

This also means that different people handle stress differently, in different situations: you’ll handle stress better if you’re confident in your abilities, if you can change the situation to take control, and if you feel that you have the help and support needed to do a good job.

Signs of Stress

Everyone reacts to stress differently. However, some common signs and symptoms of the fight or flight response include:

  • Frequent headaches.
  • Cold or sweaty hands and feet.
  • Frequent heartburn, stomach pain, or nausea.
  • Panic attacks.
  • Excessive sleeping, or insomnia.
  • Persistent difficulty concentrating.
  • Obsessive or compulsive behaviors.
  • Social withdrawal or isolation.
  • Constant fatigue.
  • Irritability and angry episodes.
  • Significant weight gain or loss.
  • Consistent feelings of being overwhelmed or overloaded.
  1. Action-Oriented Approaches

With action-oriented approaches, you take action to change the stressful situations.

Managing Your Time

Your workload can cause stress, if you don’t manage your time well. This can be a key source of stress for very many people.

Take our time management quiz to identify where you can improve, and make sure that you use time management tools such as To-Do Lists, Action Programs, and Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle to manage your priorities.

Then use Job Analysis to think about what’s most important in your role, so that you can prioritize your work more effectively. This helps you reduce stress, because you get the greatest return from your efforts, and you minimize the time you spend on low-value activities.

Also, avoid multitasking, only check email at certain times, and don’t use electronic devices for a while before going to bed, so that you use this time to “switch off” fully.

  1. Emotion-Oriented Approaches

Emotion-oriented approaches are useful when the stress you’re experiencing comes from the way that you perceive a situation. (It can be annoying for people to say this, but a lot of stress comes from overly-negative thinking.)

To change how you think about stressful situations:

  • Use Cognitive Restructuring, the ABC Technique, and Thought Awareness, Rational Thinking, and Positive Thinking
  • to change the way that you perceive stressful events.
  • Take our positive thinking quiz
  • To learn how to think more positively.
  • Use Affirmations and Imagery to overcome short-term negative thinking, so that you feel more positive about stressful situations.
  1. Acceptance-Oriented Approaches

Acceptance-oriented approaches apply to situations where you have no power to change what happens, and where situations are genuinely bad.

To build your defenses against stress:

  • Use techniques like meditation and physical relaxation to calm yourself when you feel stressed.
  • Take advantage of your support network, this could include your friends and family, as well as people at work and professional providers, such as counselors or family doctors.
  • Get enough exercise and sleep, and learn how to make the most of your down time, so that you can recover from stressful events.
  • Learn how to cope with change and build resilience, so that you can overcome setbacks.

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