Stress And Lifestyle |
|
|
|
|
||
|
To many people the most obviously stressful style of life is probably that led by a top businessman, living in the fast lane as he jets around the world dealing with a wide range of overtly pressured situations, involving crucial decisions and important responsibilities. But this stress-stereotype can be misleading. In fact stress affects individuals as various as a young mother bringing up small children; a factory worker on the production line; a teacher; a middle-aged housewife; someone who has lost his job. All these individuals find themselves in very different situations, but all of them can, and usually do, suffer from some degree of stress, possibly of a more damaging kind than that which affects the high-flying executive.
For example, the young mother may suffer from feelings of inadequacy in meeting the variety of demands made on her by her children, which may be intensified by a sense of isolation if she lives in an environment such as a high-rise block of flats with no facilities or easy access for children.
The factory worker, although he may have no major decisions to make or difficult challenges to meet, may suffer acutely from stress derived from the sheer repetitive monotony of the production line. He may find himself playing a purely automatic part in this unstimulating process, requiring little or no initiative, and feeling no sense of involvement or achievement in having contributed to the finished product.
The teacher will have to cope with day-to-day stress in the classroom, intensified by discipline problems and inadequate resources. Overall stress will be generated by falling staffing levels, resulting in overwork, and major curriculum changes requiring a high degree of adjustment. Both may combine to create stressful feelings of lowered esteem and vocational uncertainty.
After devoting many years of her life to children who have now left home, the housewife may find herself alone in middle age with a round of unfulfilling household tasks and a husband whose own interests and job take up all his attention, with little left for her. Unless she is capable of taking a long hard look at her situation, and of developing genuinely absorbing interests of her own, neither of which she may be necessarily equipped to do, she may find herself incapable of adapting to these changes in her life, which may well be compounded at this particular time by the changes of the menopause; the cumulative frustration of her situation may cause her a very considerable degree of stress.
Finally, the man who has lost his job, possibly with little immediate prospect of finding another, will very likely be suffering from the kind of stress associated with empty days, loss of sense of direction and purpose, lowered self-esteem and a general feeling of being in a dead-end situation.
|
||