This week’s focus is on stress, and specifically the ways that I deal with stress now, and how I can work to mitigate the harmful effects of stress in the future. I took several tests to get my current benchmark level of stress. From the Holmes-Rahe “Life Stress Inventory” Rating system, I scored a 235. According to this test, that puts me at a 50% chance of having a major health breakdown in the next 2 years. This was very unsettling to discover. Additionally, I took the “Coping and Stress Management Skills Test”, and scored a 75, and was told that I do “problem-focused coping”. This made sense, and is generally helpful, as long as the problem that I am focusing on is something that I have the agency to change myself. I also took the “Type A Personality Test”, and scored a 41, characterized with “impatience and irritability”. This tracked for me as well, as I generally try to be as patient, tolerant, and warm, but when stressed I definitely can lash out. These results were somewhat troubling as well, as I was unaware of the connection between these traits and the increased risk of heart disease.
While these results are somewhat troubling, I would be foolish to say that they are surprising. Over the last term, I have slowly been taking inventory of my major habits that I need to change in order to have the best chance of success once I am “on my own” truly and working full-time. I am going to be starting work in the Construction industry soon, which is a notoriously stressful work environment, so it is paramount that I work hard how to start developing my habits so that once I start work I will already have a system in place that can help to mitigate the chronic stress of that environment.
As I understand it, the Latent, or Chronic Stress is the real killer, that leads to all of the long term health problems, whereas acute stress (fight or flight response) is actually somewhat beneficial as long as it doesn’t happen too often. I definitely have some chronic stress, and need to start developing my routine to mitigate the impact that it has on me. During my last summer working, I would bike for at least an hour every day after work, and that had a very positive impact on my stress levels during the day (especially when compared to the previous summer where I didn’t put effort into maintaining routine physical activity).
Currently I am reading the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, which is helping me come up with actionable steps that I can take to change my nonproductive habits, and develop positive new ones to create a system for myself which will allow me conquer my stress and get better everyday.
Sources:
https://www.apa.org/topics/healthy-workplaces/work-stress
