KARACHI, Jan 9: The stress disorder which is perceived as an individual’s adaptive response to excessive psychological or physical demand, caused by some stimulus, may be termed as a pattern of disruptive physiological and psychological reactions to events that threaten one’s ability to cope with changing environment, vital for survival.
This was stated by the organizational psychologist and consultant, Ms Tanveer Ishrat, while dilating in detail over the issue.
The event was organized by the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) at its Vicky Zeitllin Library, on Thursday.
Explaining her point of view about stress management she said that management of stress was a concern both for the individual and for the employing organization. For individual it was important inview of the fact that it can affect his life, health, productivity and income.
“From Organizational point of view it is vital not only for humanitarian reasons but also for its performance in all its facets and thus organizational effectiveness can be affected”.
Suggesting measures to counter the situation from individual perspective, she said that he or she should be engaged in regular non- competitive physical activity, such as walking, jogging, swimming, riding a bike and playing tennis, however he should not hesitate in seeking advice from a health specialist, when he felt so.
“Besides meditation, offering prayers may also help alleviate the stress problem of an individual”.
“We should freely discuss our problems, fears, frustrations and sources of stress with those who care about us and should build bridges of goodwill with others”.
According to her, the sources of stress can be positive or negative as a certain amount of stress is inevitable part of our lives, however actual stress can interfere with functioning in every area of our lives and chronic stress has been linked to the degeneration of health, colds and flue, allergies, high blood pressure, increased risk of heart diseases and fatal heart attacks.
Referring to the organizational factors she said that some of the stress factors were also associated with the organization itself despite the fact that organization was made up of groups and individuals, but ironically there are also more macro-level dimensions, unique to the organization which contained potential ‘stressors’.
“These factors include bureaucratic rules, downsizing, unfair benefits, administration, sick leaves and vacation plans, while the formal centralized and vertical organizational structure result in stress besides restrictive and untrusting culture is also stressful”.
Ms Tanveer pointed out that rate of social and technical change has had a great effect on people’s life-styles which was carried over to their jobs.
“Although medical sciences has increased life span of people and has eradicated or reduced the threat of many diseases, the pace of modern living has contributed significantly to enhancing the level of stress in the society and decreasing personal wellbeing”.
“Since the people tend to get caught up in the mobile, urbanized and crowded life-style of today, their wellness, in general, has deteriorated and the potential for stress on the job has increased considerably” she added.
Citing political instability as one of the major reasons of stress, she opined that it caused disruption in economical, educational, social, cultural, aspects of life and employment condition in a country directly or indirectly affected people’s level of stress and their well being.
Segregating stress into A and B type personalities, she said there are individual differences in personality and traits as reactions to stressful situation are often related to type A and B.
“The first category people are aggressive and competitive, set high standards and put themselves under constant time pressures and they even make excessive demands on themselves under constant time pressure and owing to constant stress they feel, some type A’s are more prone to physical ailments related to stress.
“Type B personalities are more relaxed and they tend to accept the situation and work within them rather than fighting them competitively. Such people are specially relaxed regarding time pressures and for the same reason they are less prone to face problems associated to stress”.—PPI
