the g10fsp: stress profile assessment
TRANSCRIPT
ALL RIGHTS EXCLUSIVELY RESERVED. WE LOVE SHARING BUT KEEP IT ORIGINAL - GINO NORRIS AND THE STRESS DIARIES GANG. 2015 TO CURRENT.
The G10 Factor Stress Assessment is a wheel showing 10 areas or factors of your stress life where you could assess yourself and determine which of these areas you lack skills or coping. On the wheel the 10 areas are
marked to show your particular coping in that area. Select the areas in your life, by making an X in the appropriate space, to show if you have excellent coping skills in that area or a critical need to improve in it. A special key is set out for you to determine your level of currrent coping. Special questions are
The Colour coded-key ask you to rate your assessment as:
P - Shows No Problems and Positive Strengths in that AreaA - Adequate Coping Skills/ Or No issues identifiedG - General Issue of Coping that must be addressedN - Need Help Or Significant issues to be addressedC - Critical Issues Or Complex issues to be addressed
Your Stress Assessment
To determine which area in your life you would like to focus and increase your
stress management skills in, you would complete the G10
Factor Stress Assessment [10F].
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THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
WHAT ARE YOUR STRESSORS?The Health and Safety Executive, UK (www.hse.gov.uk) define stress as:
‘The adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demands placed on them.’
Although a certain level of pressure is required and healthy, when levels become too high and you cannot cope or you don’t have the resources to cope, then your health and efficiency are affected. Operating outside your comfort zone can cause stress because that’s when you’re likely to be beyond your known range of capabilities or experience.
How to recognise that you are under stress
While a certain level of stress is necessary to avoid boredom, high levels of stress over a sustained period can damage your health. While the symptoms in isolation may or may not show stress, where several occur it is likely that stress is having an effect. Note that as the stress you are under increases, your ability to recognise it will often decrease.
The symptoms of stress can be organised into the following sections: • Short Term Physical Symptoms • Long Term Physical Symptoms • Behavioural Symptoms • Emotional Symptoms• Psychological indicators
Another factor to consider is the effect of too little stress. We will be looking at the effect of this together with more detailed information on the symptoms, as indicated above.
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
Is stress an accepted part of the job?
Some stress at work is inevitable – it’s an inherent part of getting things done, of moving projects on, etc. And of course some jobs are much more stressful than others are, especially if you have to manage others. Getting a team of salespeople to meet targets, for example or dealing with life and death situations, such as the medical profession and the police force. However, this sort of stress is usually short-lived and well rewarded emotionally, if not financially – in most cases the more stressful the job the greater the pay. Most importantly it is stress that the person can anticipate and choose to take on when they accept that type of job, so they can be psychologically and (one hopes) physically prepared, in order to minimise the effects of stress.More damaging is the stress that relates to the way you are expected to do the job, or where the demands of work being made exceed your expectations. This sort of stress is most likely to lead to illness.
Stress Symptoms
When we experience stress we can develop a wide variety of physical, psychological and behavioural symptoms. These symptoms are not a sign of disease because stress is not a disease; they are brought about by the body’s Fight-Flight Response, which is designed to give us extra energy and speed to cope with the threat. When under stress we may experience a pounding, speeding heart. This is not a sign of heart disease, but is in fact, caused by stress hormones stimulating the heart to pump harder and beat faster to get extra oxygen to vital muscles and organs so we can fight or run away. Once the stressful event has passed, the levels of stress hormones in our blood stream will fall again and our heart will return to its normal rhythm. These symproms will indicate the severity of Stressors or Causes of stress in your life, and worth exploring...
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
ControlAs part of the appraisal process, the role of personal control is important in understanding stress and coping, particularly as it is described within Lazarus’
cognitively oriented theory of stress.
Beliefs about the extent to which individuals can control outcomes of importance (i.e., primary appraisals) and the appraisal of the possibilities for control in a specific stressful encounter (i.e., secondary appraisals) play a significant role in the relationship between stress and coping. Given this relationship, individuals’ perceptions of the control that they have over stressful situations may serve as an important predictor of their responses to stress.
For example, one of the most critical variables involved in individuals’ psychological health and well-being is control. Individuals’ feelings that they are in control of their own internal psychological environment (i.e., cognition, beliefs, emotions, and thoughts) and its outward behavioral expression are associated with feelings of psychological well-being. In addition, impairment of control has been implicated as one of the core features in several psychological disorders (e.g., Anxiety Disorders, Eating Disorders, Depression). Research has suggested that psychologically healthy individuals have a greater sense of control than do those suffering from psychological distress or impairment. Further, these healthy individuals have been found to overestimate the amount of control that they have in a situation, to be more optimistic about their ability to achieve control, to overestimate their invulnerability, and to underestimate risk in certain situations.
These healthy individuals also tend to make explanatory attributions [give reasons for their behavior] to protect their sense of control when behavioral control efforts are not successful. Thus, they tend to attribute unsuccessful outcomes to external rather than internal factors. Learn to manage the ocntrol you have in your life.
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
DEALING WITH CHANGEOur individual reactions to stress depend on such factors as our knowledge about the human stress response, our personalities, learned patterns of behavior, and our attitudes about the extent to which we believe our stress responses can be altered and controlled.
Occasionally, when we’re faced with the need to adapt to change, we become stuck - either unable to move forward with decision making, or sometimes unable to behave positively once we have made the decision. Though human beings are able to adapt to change, we don’t always like to do so. In other words, we can sometimes go through change, but not really accept it. Consequences of this inability to adapt may eventually include physical disease, emotional upset, addictive behavior or problems with relationships. More extreme responses to stress - depression, anxiety, substance abuse or thoughts of suicide - are signals that our usual defenses against stress are inadequate. When we begin to feel hopeless, helpless or unduly anxious about dealing with change, our wisest choice is to reach out for help in making tough decisions or charting new directions.
It has been said that change may be the most constant part of our environment today. Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock and the Third Wave, has noted that the need to “alter one’s way of life, to trade an old job for a new one, social pressures, status shifts, lifestyle modifications ... anything that forces us to confront the unknown ... all set off the chemical and physical changes that result when human beings feel they are under some sort of pressure. Even normal milestones, such as the birth of a baby, having a child go off to school, or retiring may produce feelings of distress.Because circumstances related to such changes vary considerably, the human distress that results may also vary greatly. The degree of loss felt in giving up the old - whatever it is - and the degree of threat, demand and uncertainty perceived in moving toward the new, combine to determine the level of stress felt.
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
Why You’re So Afraid of Change Because new information bothers our brains, we tend to find friends and form groups that reinforce our beliefs—whether they’re correct or not. Our reasoning could be, that when many people agree, it’s easy to discount the opinions of others in the face of undeniable logic. We also tend to believe the same thing about groups of which we are a member. There is safety in numbers or in familiarity.
We Hate to Feel Like We Wasted Our Time and EffortSometimes change involves a significant loss, and our brains hate loss. When we invest ourselves emotionally in anything, it becomes harder to change because we don’t want to lose all the time and effort we already exerted. As a result, we have a hard time letting go of a project we know deep down will fail. We also struggle to end doomed relationships because we’re terrible at accepting the whole thing was for naught. In reality, time isn’t wasted but our brains like to see the entire time as a loss rather than just a part of the inevitable conclusion.
So What makes us change?
• We may have come to ‘the end of our tether’ - reached ‘the final straw.’• We may be suffering so much that we don’t feel we have the option of not changing.• We may be simply bored with how things are.• The energy we put into change is determined by how desirable our goal is and by how likely we think we are to succeed. However, we’re less likely to change if we believe that doing so would cause us a great deal of upheaval. • Commitment = (desirability of goal X probability of success) - the upheaval of change
Remember...Change doesn’t always progress smoothly, one improvement following the one before it. More often we take two small steps forward and a step backwards. Don’t expect to make the same progress every day, we all have good and bad days. Change can be hard work - most of us underestimate the amount of time and effort we have to put into our recoveries!
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
Why is Health Important to Us?
There are several benefits of a healthy life. Your body becomes free from various forms of disorders and thus, you get a longer life. You can live a life without suffering from any aches, pain, or discomfort.
In every sphere of your life, you will be able to perform to the best of your ability. Doing excellent work helps you to be a valuable member of a healthy society. Besides, when you are physically fit, it gets reflected on your face. So, you look attractive and start feeling good about yourself! If you have a fit body, then you can lead a physically active life even after growing old. This is because, the body can heal the regular wear and tear associated with aging faster. In short, health and wellness brings about a drastic improvement in the overall quality of your life.
YOUR STRESS AND HEALTH
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
Physical Health: Taking Care of Your Body
Your physical health is important
Physical health is defined by the condition of your body. Good physical health is when your body is functioning as it was designed to function.
What affects my physical health?
There are four categories of things that affect physical health. You cannot always control the things that affect your physical body, but you can do your best to prevent injury and help your body to function at well. These are the categories.
• Lifestyle• Human Biology• Environment• Healthcare Services
What can I do?
We need to take care of every aspect of our being in order to achieve good physical health. Positive emotions are linked to better physical health. We must try to keep a balance in our lives and live optimally.
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
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PRACTICE AND LIFE?
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How People CopeCoping occurs in response to psychological stress—usually triggered by changes—in an effort to maintain mental health and emotional well-being. Life stressors are often described as negative events (the death of a loved one, loss of a job, divorce, etc.); however, positive changes in life (marriage, birth, moving, a new job, etc.) can also constitute life stressors, thus requiring the use of coping skills to adapt. Coping strategies are the behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that you use to adjust to the changes that occur in your life.
Coping StylesThere are many coping styles that people use, and some may prove more effective than others, depending on the nature of the stressful situation and the person who is employing them. Ineffective coping mechanisms, also referred to as maladaptive coping, may also be applied to stressful events or internal conflict, often unconsciously. Maladaptive coping mechanisms are counterproductive.
Coping styles are commonly assigned broad categories that draw distinctions between methods.
For example, 1. instrumental coping (referred to as problem-solving) focuses on ways to tackle the issue in order to reduce stress around a given situation, 2. while emotion-focused coping gathers tools to nurture one’s emotional health during the stressful period.
Additionally, coping is identified as being either active or avoidant. 1. Active coping strategies involve an awareness of the stressor, followed by attempts to reduce the negative outcome. 2. By contrast, avoidant coping is characterized by ignoring the issue, often resulting in activities that aid in the denial of the problem (e.g., drinking, sleeping, isolating).
Become aware of how you cope.
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
Your Personal Well-being
Personal wellbeing is not the absence
of emotions, but it is your ability to understand the value of your emotions and use them to move your life forward in positive directions.business.
YOUR PERSONAL WELLBEING
‘A positive sense of wellbeing which enables an individual to be able to function in society and meet the demands of
everyday life; people in good mental health have the ability to recover effectively from illness, change or misfortune.’
You may experience many risk factors which may have a negative impact on your personal or emotional wellbeing, and can have a profound impact on your self-esteem and your ability to function.
Everyday emotional well-being also involves identifying, building upon, and operating from your strengths rather than focusing on fixing problems or weaknesses. The better you are able to master your emotions, the greater your capacity to enjoy life, cope with stress, and focus on important personal priorities.
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
What kind of benefits can you expect?
Some benefits of gaining greater emotional well-being include knowing that your needs are important and that you deserve to have a life where you feel happy and secure. As you achieve emotional balance,
you are able to identify your heart’s desires, take positive action, and make changes in your life.
With personal and emotional well-being, you can experience: • Healing – from stress, anxiety, depression, grief, and other issues • Change – to transform unhelpful patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving • Self-confidence – as you gain trust and belief in yourself • Growth – to live more authentically You can leave worry, stress, and despair behind as you learn to lead your life with vision, inspired action, and an inner state of creativity. Having Emotional freedom is your ability to connect with your body and utilize emotions, feelings, senses, and intuition to guide you into an empowered alignment with purpose. How do we improve our wellbeing?
How do we make ourselves emotionally strong? Preventative approaches are much better than intervention after a problem has emerged. Learning the skills needed to handle emotional problems will
give you a foundation of mental and emotional health. Emotional health has many aspects. Put simply, it is based on self-esteem-how you feel about yourself-and behavior that is appropriate and healthy.
Assess yours here.
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
Stress outletsWhy a Stress outlet?
Stress has now become a regular part of life. It can be of varying intensity, can be caused by innumerable factors and at any age. To get relief from such stress, we try to find other outlets. That is the reason why we yearn for holidays, recreation and entertainment so that we can relax and enjoy life forgetting the day to day chaotic troubles.
The ideal to reduce stress would be to create a healthy Work-Life Balance
Striking a healthy work-life balance is a difficult challenge even in the best of times, but it is all the more daunting and necessary during times of economic stagnation and uncertainty. Adding to the pressure, today’s portable electronic devices have obliterated the line between work and home. Gone are the days when leaving the office or shop meant leaving our work behind. Today employees are available to their supervisors, co-workers, and customers around the clock.
The coupling of increased workloads with technology that keeps us constantly connected to our jobs finds an increasing number of workers feeling overwhelmed, discouraged and depleted. Today work-life balance ranks as one of the most important workplace attributes - second only to compensation, and workers who feel they have a better work-life balance tend to work 21% harder than employees who feel overworked.
How do you let your stress out?
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
DEVELOPING STRESS HARDINESS
“You can’t always influence what others may say or do to you but you can influence how you react and respond to it.”
(Unknown)
Research has shown that some people are more resistant to stress and better able to cope with it than others. This is partly due to the fact that some people have a number of personality traits that protect them from the effects of stress; psychologists call this the stress-hardy personality.
One researcher in the stress hardiness field is clinical psychologist at the City University, New York, Doctor Susan Kobasa PhD. In the late 1970s she carried out a study on a group of executives who were under a lot of stress whilst their company, the Bell Telephone Company in the USA, was undergoing radical restructuring. On completion of the study, when the data was analysed, she found that certain personality traits protected some of the executives and managers from the health ravages of stress.
These stress hardy personality traits included: 1. Commitment2. Control3. Challenge
The executives who had these stress hardy personality traits decreased their risk of developing a stress related health problem by a massive 50%.
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITYis the ability to restructure knowledge in multiple ways depending on the changing situational demands (i.e. difficulty
or complexity of the situation) (Spiro, 1995).
Cognitive Flexibility and Control is the ability to change what you are thinking about, how you are thinking about it and even what you think about it – in other words, the ability to change your mind. Cognitive flexibility is required in multiple ways throughout life.
To function you have to switch mental gears when moving from one activity to another, abandon one way of thinking about a problem when it does not lead to a solution and adopt another way of thinking, and even give up erroneous information to accept new and correct information. Cognitive control is the ability to switch ways of thinking, either automatically or deliberately, in situations requiring flexibility. Cognitive control requires the ability to resist the impulse to perseverate and keep thinking in a previously active but no longer appropriate manner.Cognitive flexibility helps you Interpret information in multiple ways, Change approaches, Select a new strategy if the first one is not working. This develops an ability and a willingness to look at things in a new light, to hold more than one conceptual framework in mind.
Cognitive flexibility is a critical skill for us to embrace new ways of thinking. To embrace new ideas most fully requires an ability to “see” that there may be more than one explanation or process operating simultaneously. To hold one idea in one’s mind while at the same time seeing another. Cognitively flexible individuals shows greater speed and accuracy in cognitive flexibility tasks - which were meant to assess the ability of a person to “switch” from one task to another, and is a strength in high creative or successful people.
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
Having Cognitive Flexibility in a stressful situation means having the ability to assess through cognitive appraisal, cognitive alternative thought patterns and have a high efficacy ability to adapt to the new requirement or environment.
How well you respond depends on
1. Your level of accepting change2. Your Hardiness3. Your Self-awareness and Confidence levels4. Your thought management5. Your emotion management skills
Factors influencing your Cognitively Flexible
• I have many things that bother me and causing worry and fears• I have doubt in my own ability• I am struggling with making decisions• I have poor self-esteem• I am not flexible in my thinking• I am not good with managing change• I am poor at problem solving• I am no good at having an alternative perspective• I cannot stand losing face and have to win at disagreements• I am not good at completing or following through on my targets or goals• I am not at all motivated to face new challenges
Assess how cognitively flexible you are...
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
With respect to just exactly what social support means, perhaps one of the best definitions was given by the psychiatrist Sidney Cobb. He proposed that social support was a subjective sensation in which the individual feels, “That he is cared for and loved. That he is esteemed and valued; That he
belongs to a network of communication and mutual obligation.”
The Positive effects of strong Social Support
Social support buffers the adverse effects of stress on cardiovascular and immune responses, which can provide numerous health benefits. Laboratory studies show that when subjects are subjected to stress, emotional support reduces the usual sharp rise in blood pressure and increased secretion of damaging stress related hormones. One report demonstrated that middle aged men who had recently endured high levels of emotional stress but had little social support were three times more likely to die over the next seven years. Lack of social support has been found to increase death rates following a heart attack and to delay recovery following cardiac surgery. Conversely, a happy marriage or good long term relationship at age 50 was a leading indicator of being healthy at age 80, whereas having a low cholesterol level had very little significance. Emotional support also reduces the risk of coronary events in individuals with Type A behavior.
Strong emotional support reduces the immune system abnormalities that contribute to numerous disorders due to the stress of caregivers for spouses with Alzheimer’s disease. It also boosts immune system function in AIDS and HIV-positive patients. Breast cancer and malignant melanoma patients who receive group emotional support from strangers also live longer and have a better quality of life. Similar emotional support is responsible for the success of Alcoholics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Shoppers Anonymous and other groups that deal with addictions to drugs, smoking or reducing compulsive behaviors. This comes from sharing things with strangers, getting things of your chest, and learning how others have been able to deal with or conquer the same problem you have. Such groups often provide addition emotional support by utilizing a “buddy system” – someone you can call at any time if you feel you are slipping into your old habits and who can provide support when you need it the most.http://www.stress.org/emotional-and-social-support/
SOCIAL SUPPORT
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
Social support means the people and other sources of physical and emotional comfort in our lives. Benefits of social support include:• warmth, • intimacy, • sharing accomplishments, • self-esteem, • self-identity, • solace, • comfort, • and the easing of loneliness.
You may find that each person - or even a pet — provides you with a different type of social support. However, the quality of your social support is more important than the quantity. A single individual can serve as the source for all your social support needs.
Three Major Types of Social Support
1. Psychological/Emotional: Offers encouragement, comfort, someone to share your burdens with 2. Informational: Offers assistance with making decisions3. Practical: Offers help with chores, financial assistance, work schedule adjustment, child care, etc.
Typical sources of support
• Family (spouse/partner, children, parents, grandparents, siblings)• Close friends• Coworkers• Acquaintances (casual friends or contacts from church, school, neighbors, etc.)• Pets
How are you being supported?
THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
CONGRATS ON KNOWING WHERE TO START NOW!
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THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
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THE G10 FACTOR STRESS PROFILE
A complete stress solution in 28 days with the Stress Diaries
www.stressdiaries.com
It helps to identify the Causes of Short-Term Stress:
Stress Diaries are important for understanding the causes of short-term stress in your life. They also give you an important insight into how you react to stress, and help you to identify the level of stress at which you prefer to operate. The idea behind Stress Diaries is that, on a regular basis, you record information about the stresses you are experiencing, so that you can analyse these stresses and then manage them. This is important because often these stresses flit in and out of our minds without getting the attention and focus that they deserve. As well as helping you capture and analyse the most common sources of stress in your life, Stress Diaries help you to understand:
* The causes of stress in more detail;* The levels of stress at which you operate most effectively; and* How you react to stress, and whether your reactions are appropriate and useful.
Stress Diaries, therefore, give you the important information that you need to manage stress. It also allow you to see perspective to see the bigger picture and more intense details. Find out more about it here.
What are the Stress Diaries?
The Diary/Journal is an effective stress management tool. It will tell you exactly: Where you stress, When you stress, Who you stress with, What you are stressing about, For how long, and how intensely you stress, and Why you stress. It will identify the patterns of your stress, it’s causes, places, incidents and reasons for why stress occurs. It will offer you options to adjust or rectify your behaviour, thoughts, and attitude and it does it effectively, as it allows you to write your entries, in your own time, and even if you do not feel comfortable talking to someone about your difficulties – you are free to do so in your Stress Diary/Journal. Your Diary/Journal is proof of your progress and growth…
Download the FREE stress diaries
How to Guide here
