This was an interesting topic to learn about, as most people who know me understand that (especially in the last two years) I have been under a lot of chronic stress due to school, family, work, and health concerns. I was hospitalized at the end of last year due to a traumatic brain injury, and have been struggling to get myself back to the type A person I was before. In the first test, the life-stress inventory, I tallied up a total of 285 points, which is on the higher end of the mid point of the scale (higher end starts at 300). This indicates a 50% chance of a major health breakdown due to stress in the next two years (though possibly higher since I am close to 300 points, unfortunately). I know that I am a very stressed person, so this did not teach me much of anything new about myself. One thing I did learn is that I need to find ways to alleviate some of this stress so that way I can try to avoid a health crisis, especially since I know that would cause even more stress in my life. Unfortunately, many of the stressors in my life are unavoidable, but I hope that after graduating, I can reduce the workload on myself and focus on getting my physical and mental health up to par.
The second test, regarding “Coping & Stress Management Skills”, was quite insightful, and my results revealed that I primarily use problem-focused coping when dealing with stress. What this means is that I focus on fixing the problems causing my stress when trying to handle it all. This can be beneficial when it comes to problems that are under my control, but with those out of my control, it is an ineffective stress management tool. Finally with the third test, I found that the “Type A Personality” results for me revealed that I can be impatient or irritable when confronted with stressful situations. This isn’t new information, but it is something I’ve been working to minimize in the past few years, as I know it isn’t productive or fair to others. What I was shocked to learn is that this actually may put me at risk for coronary heart disease, which prompted me to do some research into the topic. However, in a recent study published in the National Library of Medicine, they concluded that there was “no statistically significant relationship between hostility and anger with vasoconstriction” (Sadeghi et al, 2020). They did also state that there would need to be more research done into the topic, but my fears of this are slightly assuaged by the data provided. Nonetheless, I do strive to be a less impatient person and work on managing my stress internally before reacting to situations with irritability.
As for my research into how organizations are/should be helping their employees manage stress, I found that some helpful options are to be supportive of employees using their PTO, offer virtual/work from home situations for employees that it may benefit, providing mental wellness resources (like webinars, counseling, etc.), and offering more “flexible hours” (SHRM, 2022). I think that some of these suggestions are very useful, and can help HR professionals and those in management understand how they can offer a better support system to their employees. However, some of the suggestions such as encouraging employees to use their personal time off felt like empty gestures to me, if not the bare minimum of what an employer should be doing.
Citations:
Sadeghi B, Mashalchi H, Eghbali S, Jamshidi M, Golmohammadi M, Mahvar T. The relationship between hostility and anger with coronary heart disease in patients. J Educ Health Promot. 2020 Aug 31;9:223. doi: 10.4103/jehp.jehp_248_20. PMID: 33062756; PMCID: PMC7530407.
Society for Human Resource Management. (2022, December 13). How can employers help to reduce stress in the workplace?. SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/reducing-stress-in-the-workplace.aspx#:~:text=Provide%20resources%20and%20support.&text=Employers%20can%20promote%20wellness%20webinars,on%20maintaining%20mental%20well%2Dbeing.
