When I studied stress management way back in 2004 I was introduced to something called the Holmes-Rahe Scale.
If you are not familiar with it, the scale scores 43 potential life events that are most likely to lead to stress from 100 (death of a spouse) down to 11 ( a run in with the cops for a misdemeanor) with all stops in between.
Supposedly, if you add up your own score and it comes to more than 300 you probably need an ambulance and a bottle of Xanax, but if you score under 100 you’re more than likely good to go.
I’m not really keen on it as a tool because it presupposes every person handles similar situations in the same manner which is obviously not true.
It can also create stress when people look at it and think they should be more stressed about a situation they had been previously dealing adequately with
On top of that, it misses out hundreds of tiny stressors that whilst in and of themselves don’t pose a threat, can do in combination and over an extended period of time. Stress is cumulative, never forget that.
As an example of dealing with things differently, a change in living conditions is ranked at 25 points. I have just been through that, spending 3 weeks in temporary accommodation miles from anywhere with poor Internet and cell phone connectivity.
My wife was stressed senseless largely because she is working toward her masters and needed a reliable Internet. I on the other hand couldn’t have cared less (other than for Helen obviously).
I could give other examples where Helen dealt with things in her stride and I got all stressed and whiny. And that’s the whole point about stress, it’s highly contextual and individual.
Having said that, there are really only two things that stress you in your life. Every single time you have felt stressed you can trace the source back to one or the other or even both.
What Really Stresses You Out
When you look at the Holmes-Rahe Scale it’s not easy to spot the commonalities underpinning every single life event.
After all, what could the death of a spouse have to do with a change in social circumstances or the holidays or a dispute with your in-laws? Surely they’re all totally different?
Well of course they are, but underpinning all of them is either a lack of choice, a lack of autonomy or both.
Take the death of a spouse as an example. Unless you snapped after your husband hung yet another picture up crookedly in your new home and you stabbed him to death with his own screwdriver, you have no choice in when you lose your loved ones, it will happen when it happens.
Your Brain Loves Choice
When I talk to clients about the power of language I usually urge them to make some simple adjustments and wherever possible to change words and phrases like need, must, have to, got to and should into want to, love to, would like to etc
The reason I do this is because the former words remove choice and incrementally add to the stress they are feeling.
As a one-off they aren’t a problem, but as I said, stress is cumulative and they add up over time.
How Do You Use This Information To Lower Stress?
Well obviously the first stage is checking in with your language and shifting it where appropriate. It won’t make an overnight change, but in time it will help massively if you persist at it
Secondly, you can use reframing (if you’re not sure what that is, check out this post) which also explains about preframing and deframing.
The whole point of reframing is to change the way you look at things. In other words you’re choosing to decide how you view things and that is very empowering.
There is no cause and effect with stress, it’s cause – interpretation, – effect, so change the way you view or interpret things and the things you view will change and the stress can subside.
Note: Your brain loves choice, but not too much choice. At the opposite end of the spectrum it freaks out and gets overwhelmed trying to process too much choice, as anybody who has dined with me at The Cheesecake Factory will testify to as I spend hours mulling over the menu.
Your Brain Likes To Think It’s In Charge
A lack of choice is huge bummer as far as your brain is concerned, but not far behind is its closely related cousin, a lack of autonomy.
If you know anybody who is in a cubicle type job and they’re stressed by it, it will in all likelihood be because they have little or no autonomy.
They can’t pay themselves what they think they’re worth, they can’t decide to lie in till noon if they so wish, they can’t do the work they would like to do and so on and so forth.
A lack of autonomy can create a dopamine crash that is an evolutionary response to a perceived reduction in status.
Your brain likes status and removing autonomy makes it think you don’t have any and it gets all frustrated and fearful.
How Do You Use This Information To Lower Stress?
The simple fact of the matter is that you always have autonomy with the most important thing, and that is your thoughts.
Nobody can remove that option from you, but so many people either forget, or underestimate the phenomenal power of carefully and repeatedly choosing your own supportive thoughts.
External autonomy is nice, but it’s nothing compared to internal autonomy.
Reminding yourself that you can choose your thoughts at any moment and thus change your attitude toward your circumstances is incredibly powerful and liberating.
Sure you may want to justify your negative feelings and believe thinking anything else is just being plain unrealistic. However, the only thing that approach will serve to achieve is you feeling crap and developing a victim mindset.
Do you really want to cultivate that?
I suppose in essence what we are doing here is reframing again because we’re looking to think differently about our circumstances which is effectively what a reframe is.
Stress Sucks
I went through enough years enduring chronic stress to know it sucks. It can sap your energy, lower your immune system, screw with your sleep patterns, make you irritable and damage your health.
But far too many people think high stress is an acceptable part of modern life, even though they often know the detrimental effects it can have.
If you’re suffering from chronic stress try the methods I explained above. See the difference you can make when you let go of the belief that you need to change your outside circumstances.
Oh, and you could of course take up meditation which is proven to lower stress levels, but we both know that’s a no-brainer, right?
I’m curious to know if you’re feeling stressed at the moment? If you are, please leave a comment telling me what about and I’ll do my best to reframe it.
I’m also keen to hear other peoples stress coping strategies, so share the wealth!
Excellent points.
I’m a big believer in reframing too, and have been working on talking myself into more positive interpretations of stressful events. And even when my reframes are totally illogical bullshit, it still helps defuse the stress!
And along those lines, there was just an interesting study out of Penn State showing that the way folks handle everyday stressors has huge health consequences down the line. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121102205143.htm
So not only can you make yourself miserable, you can set yourself up for chronic health problems if you don’t get a grip on this stuff. Not easy, but worth certainly worth it it try.
Thanks for the link Crabby, it’s a useful post and I encourage others to check it out.
I completely agree. It is very easy to become stressed about things you cant control. So instead of lingering on what you can’t control, focus on what you can do about the situation.
Thanks for your article
Agreed Karen and you’re very welcome!
I think the Holmes-Rahe Scale and most other psychological rating systems/tests are developed so psychologists can make their jobs seem objective and quantitative–so THEY have more control and choices.
You are absolutely right that stress is individual, cumulative and based on specific circumstances. i.e. I know one person who said the best day of her life was the day her spouse died…
Right now, I’m totally stressed over the fact that one of the staff for my son, stole his ice chest. A stupid ice chest, probably worth $20.00. I am thrilled they are gone. We fired the company for stealing many other things, and they took it as revenge.
But the ice chest was a gift from Aunt Janet… and it is just a concrete symbol of how we have so little control over the people who are hired to supposedly help him…and how very vulnerable he is. And I just can’t seem to let it go…even though I know it is stupid, stupid.
I know I shouldn’t have laughed at the example of your friend, but I did!
Do you mean you haven’t managed to let it go until now?
And I certainly don’t think it’s stupid. It may not be helping you, but that’s a different matter altogether.
For me, when I am feeling stressed I am believing something about myself that is not true. Furthermore, I have come to realize that stress is nothing more than a chemical addiction. In order for me to satisfy this addiction I need to create stressful situations in my life. So I will do just that automatically. When I understand that all situations are neutral and I only apply stressful thoughts to them I get to choose another way of looking at the situation. But that’s just me. :)
And that’s an empowering way of looking at things, whether it’s acceptable and believable to the majority of people is a different matter though.
Ever thought of becoming a coach? ;-)
Hi Tim!
Incidentally, I just wrote on my blog about using a calendar for timeboxing different tasks, similar to what Johnny B Truant did with writing Fat Vampire, and what I have noticed is that it is a spectacular way to gain control – or at least the illusion of control – over your time. This type of problem-based coping has been also found to be quite effective in managing stress. At least according to some of the scientific papers I have read on different coping mechanisms.
I don’t argue against the effectiveness of reframing, but I think with a visual system like this it is impossible to not see that you still can control at least some aspects of the way you spend your time. Granted, this approach might not be suited for everyone – I am a very self-regulatory and disciplined person – but all I can say is that it had a huge effect to both my productivity and ability to deal with stress.
Cheers,
Sami
I agree Sami that for some people that would be useful. Like most things with self development it’s all about finding out what works best for the individual and the more tools with have in out armory the better.
I would actually love to do a bit of research at some point to see if e.g. people’s character strengths could act as an indicator to what kind of strategies would work best for them. That could actually have a pretty decent impact on coaching and therapy as well, if there is a connection.
For example, one hypothesis could be that these kinds of problem-based coping mechanisms work better for those who score high in e.g. self-regulation, but those high in e.g. love, kindness, hope etc. might benefit more from learning and using emotion-based coping.
So far from what I know these have been studied in groups such as entrepreneurs, but the link to character strengths or even personality types is missing. Hmm… :)
//sami
I think that’s an awesome idea mate, wish I’d thought of it!
You are completely right, when you can’t change the circumstances, the wiser and only good thing to do is to change the way you think about it and react to it!
Yep, a tad more difficult doing it than writing it down though ;-)
Great post and completely true. There is no use in just banging you head against the wall. Nothing says you have to take it the way it is. I have reacently been reading A Rebel Chick Mytic’s Guide by Lisa Selow, and she talks about living life by your rules and no one elses. It’s not an wasy thing to try as we have been so used to doing things the way we are told! This post is a great reminder. I am glad I read this today, a great companion to this book for me! If anyone wants to check out this book, it’s on her website at lisaselow.com. Thanks again!
Lisa’s sounds like a sensible approach. Too many people think they have to conform, yet when you look at the really successful (and happy) people they are often complete non-conformists.
There’s 7 billion different realities and we just have to manage our own and not worry about all the others.
Hey Tim! Twitter Amy here, haha- Great post yet again lol :)
Oh just wanted to say y’know regarding the scale thing, when I studied Stress in psycho we learnt about The Daily Hassles scale which provides a more cumulative calculation to stress…it looks at daily uplifts too, lol.
and to answer your question…yes, I feel stressed at the moment lol.
:) X
That sounds a lot more sensible and I have to confess that I’ve never heard of that, rather embarrassingly!
lol! well here’s a random link I found- if you wanna read more about it http://www.mindgarden.com/products/hsups.htm :)
Oh and for coping with stress, what I usually do (pretty simple actually) I just stop doing everything for a while, haha.
So if like college work is getting to me…I’ll quite literally not do anything for a day and just chill…relax…and bake cakes ;)
Then, I feel all refreshed for- another bout of stress! ha.
Though I like this strategy, it’s kinda screwed me over lately ’cause…well…I hate to admit it but I’ve became lazy. In my defence I’ve quite literally burnt myself out over the past 2 years.
Oh and as for what’s stressing me out recently…it’s…well…I guess the term everyone uses is- domestic abuse.
Amyyyy :) X
Shit, I hated to read that last part, it sickens me to the stomach.
I don’t know what to say Amy other than I hope you get it sorted out.
Yeah…trying to get it sorted.
Just…have no idea what to do.
If you’d ever like a chat for half an hour on me, let me know.
Hi Tim :).
Stress is a fascinating thing to me – It’s amazing to me (as you put) because it is so relative depending on each person and their own situation.
For me, I have noticed that often when I feel stressed out about certain challenges I face the easiest solution is to start focusing on attaining the necessary knowledge to solve this stress. Essentially, all this does it prove to myself that I am in fact capable of solving the problem (I just need to learn how).
I also love to use the phrase “I am responsible.” It often makes me laugh because I feel like a character in a skit that makes fun of self-help but it also works.
Excellent post.
Great way of dealing with it Izzy, thanks for sharing mate!
Reading this article was great timing for me as I’m going through some major stress right now. I like the points about choice and the fact that people respond to stress in vastly different ways. I doubt there’s no real way to codify how specific circumstances impact an individual and then produce a statistic around it.
I would add to the list a stress coping strategy that takes some practice, much like meditation. It’s simply dropping your “story.” I have to remind myself that I am bigger than what happens to me and more than my experience. I have a choice about what I tell myself and others about who I am. That’s a freeing thought and I hope it helps others as well.
Glad to have found your blog Tim!
Yes, I very much like the ‘dropping your story’ approach, it can be incredibly powerful.
Glad to have you here Jeisyn!