STRESS
Is your OOHC job, or life, stressful? If so, do you have strategies to successfully manage stress? Being able to talk things over with someone, rest and relaxation, exercise, or maybe good sleeping habits? Or does stress sometimes affect your professional and personal relationships and ability to focus, plan, strategise, problem-solve and learn? As we all know, stress is the body’s physical response to a real or perceived threat, demand, or danger. When we feel threatened, the body releases stress hormones which prepare the body to fight or flight - or in some instances freeze.
Stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline, make our:
heart beat faster
muscles tighter
breathing faster
blood pressure higher
senses sharper
There are three main types of stress.
(1) The most common type, acute stress, can in some situations be helpful. But in others it can be detrimental to your mental wellbeing. Common symptoms of acute stress include:
emotional distress
muscle tension
headache, back pain, or jaw ache
stomach upset
rapid heartbeat
raised blood pressure
Sometimes acute stress is more severe. Severe acute stress can lead to acute stress disorder or PTSD. Occasional, moderate acute stress tends not to cause mental health problems. But if it starts to happen more often it may cause issues.
(2) Episodic acute stress is when a person experiences acute stress frequently. If you have episodic acute stress, you may feel like you are always under pressure or that things are always going wrong. This can be exhausting, both physically and mentally.
Experiencing episodic acute stress symptoms may affect the way you behave towards others. Left untreated, episodic acute stress can lead to:
irritability
unintended hostility
relationship problems
Experiencing episodic acute stress may indicate the need to make some changes. You may need to reduce the demands you make of yourself, or that others make of you.
(3) Chronic stress is ongoing stress resulting from long-term emotional pressure. If you have chronic stress, your body experiences the fight or flight response too frequently to recover between episodes. This means your nervous system is constantly aroused, which is not good for your health.
Left untreated, chronic stress can cause physical health problems. Research links chronic stress to heart disease and problems with the immune system.
If you think you may be experiencing episodic acute or chronic stress, you should talk to someone you trust. And/or what about the children, young people and families who you work with? Many of them will be experiencing acute or chronic stress, as may some foster carers and colleagues. Indeed I’d suggest some whole teams and organisations can also manifest the characteristics of acute or chronic stress.
Left unchecked, acute or chronic stress will compromise individual wellbeing and both the effectiveness of work with children and young people and their outcomes. Do you need to do something about stress – whether your own or that of someone else?