All in the mind?

A personal approach to pressure proofing your thinking

Stress Management – Overview

The latest Health and Safety Executive (HSE) figures estimate that work-related stress, depression or anxiety affected 442 000 individuals who had worked in the last 12 months in 2007/08, with a corresponding estimated 13.5 million lost working days due to these work-related conditions. This represented an estimated average of 30.6 working days lost per affected case, making stress, depression or anxiety the largest contributor to the overall estimated annual days lost from work-related ill-health in 2007/08.

Apart from the actual days per year lost due to sickness absence related to stress; staff being away from their jobs can lead to more pressure on other staff members, who have to cover for them till they return.

There are many factors in stress management, the HSE typically covers six areas:

1. Demands

2. Control

3. Support

4. Relationships

5. Roles

6. Change

The areas are mostly directed to firms and businesses; however in this article I will address how you as a manager, executive, or individual can help “pressure proof” your thinking and help you manage stress and anxiety.

Stress Management – Ways to ‘pressure proof’ your thinking

1. Stroking your PETs (and avoiding the PITs you could fall into)

A PET is not your dog or cat! Rather PETs stand for:

Problem

Enhancing

Thoughts

Whereas PITs stand for:

Problem

Interfering

Thoughts

Let’s look at an example to show you what this means…suppose I had a big presentation or sales pitch coming up.

I may think to myself. “This is terrible, I’m going to mess it up and go frozen with nerves, best to avoid it (again)” This is an example of a PIT, not a very helpful thought to be dwelling on.

Or I could replace my PIT with a PET; i.e.

“It may be a challenge, but I’ll prepare, practice and think about where I can avoid any pitfalls –so it should go well”. An example of a PET, stroking or thinking on this is much more helpful.

2. Avoid unrealistic or twisted thinking and beliefs

My work with clients needing help managing stress includes identifying and overcoming these common errors in thoughts and thinking:-

Fortune-telling and predicting the future

“Emma did not reply to me when I came in this morning, she must be in a bad mood with me”. (but Emma may have been in deep in thought about something else and just didn’t notice me)

“I’ve made a complete mess of this report, I’ll never get it right!” (or you could try again and it would come out better?)

Awfulising/ Catastrophising

“I got up the car didn’t start, so I was late, then I had an urgent job to do”. (thinks: “It’s too awful, I can’t stand it!”)

Perfectionism

“I must never make mistakes, all my work must be 100% correct all the time”. (But if I make a few minor mistakes, what’s the worst that could happen?).

Another part of developing resilience to pressure and managing stress is that of “ABC awareness”. Where:-

A = Adversity triggering thoughts

B = Beliefs, which then largely determine our emotions and behaviour

C = Consequences related to the adversity.

This is why attitude(s) – arising from our beliefs following adversity – are so important. Why? We often cannot do anything much about A (adversities or problems we encounter) but B (our beliefs about what happens) has a big influence on C (the consequences or how we react).

Key to all the above is that we effectively stress ourselves by placing internal demands on ourselves in our way of thinking and expectations of the world (our internal set of “rules” on how the world should be and how it ought to treat us).

The above examples come from what stress counsellors – and also business coaches- call cognitive (thoughts/beliefs) work. While my examples given assume that someone may suffer from stress due to these thoughts or beliefs; in practice it is equally valuable to use cognitive techniques in coaching (where someone is not at the moment showing signs of stress) to increase work and business performance by:-

Helping Stress – Generating ideas

Identify your own thinking patterns to enhance performance.

Become generally more self-aware. (what are your “hot buttons” – behaviour and situations that upset your mind; and devise a strategy to handle).

Avoiding a M*A*S*H scenario where you get ill with stress and then have to be patched up; versus a more proactive approach involving coaching to build in advance better resources and capabilities to handle difficulties (like putting the body armour on beforehand, reduces the risk of you being harmed).

I hope this brief article has been interesting; If you would like more information on devising a personal coaching or stress management program please don’t hesitate to contact myself at Casson HR.

About The Author

John Casson BSc. MISMA. CIPD Associate. Founder of Casson HR; business services include Coaching, and Stress Management. John is a fully qualified Life Coach based in Northampton, Northamptonshire specialising in personal and learning development, life coaching & stress management.

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