Stress

Over breakfast I have been skimming a book called "Stress" by Tom Cox (1978, London, the MacMillan Press Ltd). This was quite enlightening - it's drawing on research from 30 years ago, mostly from the time of the early 70s recession. There was a bunch of stuff about how do you define stress and the conclusion was
"Stress, it is argued, can only be sensibly defined as a perceptual phenomenon arising from a comparison between the demand on the person and his ability to cope. An imbalance in this mechanism, when coping is important, gives rise to the experience of stress, and to stress response. The latter represent attempts at coping with the source of stress. Coping is both psychological (involving cognitive and behavioural strategies) and physiological. If normal coping is ineffective, stress is prolonged and abnormal responses may occur. The occurrence of these, and prolonged exposure to stress per se, may give rise to functional and structural damage. The progress of these events is subject to great individual variation."

I have to say that I couldn't agree more this was most definitely my experience of negative stress. Further on it compares the human experience of stress where a little bit enhances performance, then you get wobbly then you crash with the stress curve of metals. Interesting, and of course looking back at my materials science days how very true - it is indeed exactly the same, and of course there are treatments you give to different metals that can improve their stress resistance. I like cool analogies.

The chapter on work place stress was interesting because it focused on the stress of unskilled production line jobs. I remember in my shredding books days thinking about how some of my colleagues coped (I did because I knew I was off back to college in 9 months to do a PGCE in Primary Ed so it was only temporary) and realising that the only way was by switching off their brains and becoming thick - and I thought there but for the grace go I... Exactly what this book reported, how the end result of this switch off was lots of physiological responses to stress as the brain shut down the body became ill.

Then I thought about some of my other colleagues - it was 1991 and ectasy was just taking off - and wondered why they did the drugs they did at weekends thinking - why wipe yourself out for a week for 1 night of fun? - and I realised again it was their way of coping with the tedium of life, having a mind numbing job all week isn't so bad if you have already numbed your mind till Wednesday on a Friday/Saturday night. That was also the time of Trainspotting and the recognition that Heroin/crack use is frequently tied to low hope of improvement in life quality. For years this has left me wondering why do people with higher powered jobs - ones giving more challenges etc - still do the recreational drugs at the weekend, but of course if the boredom I saw is stress and the need for release of people with a "stressy" job is a release the same coping mechanism is being applied. I know the rationale for illegal drug use won't be the same for everyone but it is something to have in the back of ones mind if you ever are in a situation when it becomes apparent a member of your team is doing these things.

Another area of discussion was the Man-job fit model for overcoming work place stress. This was very interesting because it is a person centred approach to jobs rather than an organisation centred approach - the costs are higher (so either you make less profit or charge more for your goods) but the people are happier - what price on your staff wellbeing. As society changes will individuals come to terms with the concept "my DVD player should cost more so the workforce are healthier?"