Stress - Q & A

This fact sheet lists a range of questions on stress which were posted by visitors to the
Better Health Channel. Our experts provide the answers.

Q. What are the common signs of stress? How can you tell when you are burnt out
at work?
The most common early signs of stress include:

• Disruption to sleep, such as taking longer to get to sleep or waking up more often
during the night
• Feeling tense
• Increased irritability
• Increased worry
• Difficulties concentrating.

In relation to burnout, there are some specific signs, including:

• Persistent feelings of emotional exhaustion

• Depersonalisation – feeling as though things around you are not real or
withdrawing from other people
• Ineffectiveness – not being able to function well at work or home.

Sometimes, stress symptoms can be temporary and resolve over a few days; sometimes,
they can persist or progress into more serious, stress-related health problems. In general,
if you notice any particular changes in your sleeping pattern, eating or drinking
(especially alcohol) patterns, day-to-day moods, concentration and physical functioning
(at work, at home and socially), you should do something about it.

If you are concerned about measuring your level of stress, you could consult a
psychologist who works in the stress area. They will ask you to complete one of the
standard stress assessment questionnaires and provide feedback and suggestions for
appropriate strategies and techniques to reduce your stress.

Q. I stress myself out all the time. I’m always changing my life around and stressing
everybody else around me. Am I selfish?
When people feel stressed, they tend to become more self-focused and preoccupied. This
is because they feel personally threatened and they are trying to cope with the stress in
order to feel safer. In evolutionary terms, threat was often a physical reality; now the
threat is often more psychological. Either way, self-preservation becomes our top priority.
This usually changes when the stress is addressed and the person becomes more able to
refocus and take part in what is going on around them.
If you experience a frequent need to ‘change your life around’, it’s likely that something
is out of balance and having an emotional impact. If you are disruptive to people around
you, this is also an indication that something is unsettling you. Both problems indicate
there is an issue in your life that could be addressed more directly.

It could be an issue of clarifying your direction and priorities in personal life or your
career. It could be a stress-related issue or an underlying unresolved emotional difficulty.
Seeking advice (from a psychologist, for example) to address whatever it is that prompts
your frequent changes could be very helpful to reduce the disruptions in your life.

Q. I know some people who stress out if they can’t cope with a situation. Wouldn’t it
be better if people learnt how to deal with stress, so they can then deal with its
cause? And how do you get people to understand this?
I agree it’s best if people do not get inappropriately stressed; for people to change their
lifestyle, they first need to want to change. Wanting to change is often related to
understanding the real causes of their distress or to appreciating the positive benefits of
change. Learning to deal with stress more effectively is the next step.

If this is an organisational situation, it is possible for management to introduce stress

reduction programs and encourage staff to attend. If it’s a partner or friend who is
stressed out, some possible steps you could take would include:

• Share your own experience of the gains of stress management

• Invite the stressed person to a public lecture on stress management
• Leave stress management material in a place where it might catch their attention
and spark an interest
• Share some of your brief observations about their stressed condition, but care
needs to be taken here – your comments may be seen as intrusive and stressful.
Understanding how to communicate effectively will help you do this.

Q. How can I help someone who is feeling stressed without taking on their stress?
It sounds like you may have some boundary difficulties with people, taking onboard their
problems too much rather than recognising they need to solve them personally. This
means you have problems maintaining your own energy and tend to get overly involved
in other people’s stress. There is a useful book Beyond co-dependency by Melody Beattie
that may help in this regard.

Q. I find myself becoming angry quickly without good reason. I also swear when I’m
angry. I’m unhappy with both as they are detrimental to my family life.
It’s not clear whether this is a long-standing ‘bad habit’, developed as a means of getting
your own way, or if it occurs more when you are under pressure, feeling tense and
irritable. Either way, there are a number of effective psychological approaches you can
take to help manage and reduce anger.

Most recommended approaches are based on the early work of psychologist Raymond
Novaco who suggested that, in practical terms, you treat anger as a habit problem made
up of a number of different stages. These include pre-provocation, provocation,
frustration build-up and then the expression of anger.

Look at what is making you angry

In our everyday experience, these stages are hard to identify and often seem fused
together – this is because the anger seems to just erupt and it’s hard to identify specific
triggers. So the first steps involve increasing awareness of the process by regularly
reviewing and analysing situations in which you have expressed anger. This review
process also starts to condition you to become more aware of and alert to the stages that
come before your angry outbursts.

At each stage, there are techniques that may be used to help reduce the tendency of the
anger to continue building to the point where it bursts out. It is a question of where you
can achieve the most benefit and this may be different for each person. This means that a
different combination of techniques will suit different people.

Sometimes the initial triggers are in the situation, such as feeling that something is not
fair. Or you might be reminded – subconsciously (without you realising it) – of some
feeling or reaction from earlier in your life, like being bullied at school. Sometimes the
triggers are internal, such as strong expectations about the way things should be done or
how people should act in certain situations. There can also be a contribution from stress
and tiredness – we all become less tolerant when we are under pressure or feeling low in
energy.

Anger self-management
There are a number of good anger management self-help books available but I would
recommend that you ‘kick-start’ your anger management program by consulting a mental
health professional who works in the field. You would only need a few sessions to
develop your program and then you could self-manage it from there and begin to reduce
the fallout on your family life.

Where to get help

• Your doctor
• Psychologist
• Psychiatrist
• National Psychologist Referral Service Tel. 1800 333 497