STRESS

MANAGEMENT

Digital
Assignment -3

Submitted By
 KANTHAN

17MBA0081

Stress management techniques:Aim of stress management.coping strategies

Stress management
Stress management is a wide spectrum of techniques and psychotherapies aimed at
controlling a person's level of stress, especially chronic stress, usually for the purpose of
improving everyday functioning. In this context, the term 'stress' refers only to a stress with
significant negative consequences, or distress in the terminology advocated by Hans Selye,
rather than what he calls eustress, a stress whose consequences are helpful or otherwise.

Stress produces numerous physical and mental symptoms which vary according to each
individual's situational factors. These can include physical health decline as well as
depression. The process of stress management is named as one of the keys to a happy and
successful life in modern society.[1] Although life provides numerous demands that can
prove difficult to handle, stress management provides a number of ways to manage anxiety
and maintain overall well-being.

Despite stress often being thought of as a subjective experience, levels of stress are readily
measurable, using various physiological tests, similar to those used in polygraphs.

Many practical stress management techniques are available, some for use by health
professionals and others, for self-help, which may help an individual reduce their levels of
stress, provide positive feelings of control over one's life and promote general well-being.
Other stress reducing techniques involve adding a daily exercise routine, finding a hobby,
writing your thoughts, feelings, and moods down and also speaking with a trusted one about
what is bothering you. It is very important to keep in mind that not all techniques are going to
work the same for everyone, that is why trying different stress managing techniques is crucial
in order to find what techniques work best for you. An example of this would be, two people
on a roller coaster one can be screaming grabbing on to the bar while the other could be
laughing while their hands are up in the air (Nisson). This is a perfect example of how stress
effects everyone differently that is why they might need a different treatment. These
techniques do not require doctors approval but seeing if a doctors technique works better for
you is also very important.

Evaluating the effectiveness of various stress management techniques can be difficult, as

Coping strategies for stress in the organization

When we look at stress from organizational point of view, management may not be
concerned about the low to moderate levels of stress experienced by the employees. The
reason is, that some functional level of stress is necessary to improve employee performance.
But high levels of stress and sustained low levels of stress are a cause of action by the
management. But when we look at stress from individual's point of view even the low levels
of stress are perceived to be undesirable. Keeping this in mind we can discuss the individual
and organizational approaches towards managing stress. Before discussing these approaches,
we must keep in mind two points :

(i) Firstly, we must not make any generalization. Each of us have different limits, different

optimum stress levels and will perceive the sources of stress differently. One person's
overstress may be another person's challenge and optimum stress.

(ii) Secondly, we need to differentiate between what we can do to equip ourselves and to
organise our environment to prevent us from becoming over or under stressed. We label this
as Prevention. Yet, however, well, we prepare ourselves and try to control our environment
from time to time, we will still experience undesirable stress. It is then that we need to have
developed Management Skills.

Now we discuss the individual's and organizational approaches to managing stress.

Individual approaches

As we know that stress has got a number of negative consequences for the individuals, that
is why every individual should take personal responsibility for reducing his or her stress
level. There are a number of ways by which a person can either avoid stressful conditions,
change them or learn to cope with them. Stress can be managed by an individual, which will
enable him to regain control over his life. Some of the stress reducing strategies from
individual's point of new are :
 1. Knowledge About Stress : in the first stage, an individual should become
knowledgeable about stress. He should know about the process and effects of stress. He must
find out the major sources of his stress. He must anticipate stressful periods and plan

accordingly in advance. He must be honest with himself and decide what he can cope with
what he cannot.

2. Physiological Fitness : Exercise in any form can help people in coping with the stress.
Non competitive physical exercise such as aerobics, walking, jogging, swimming, riding a
bicycle, playing softball or tennis have been recommended by physicans as a way to deal

with excessive stress levels. There is evidence to suggest that individuals who exercise are
much less likely to suffer from certain types of stress related exercises. With proper exercise,
diet control and nonsmoking habits, blood pressure and cholesterol become controlled and

the body becomes more resistant to pressures. People are more likely to get physically sick or
emotionally depressed if they are over weight or poorly nourished.

3. Time Management : Most of the people are very poor in managing the time. They do
not know that what must be done and when it would be desirable to do so. The result of poor
time management is feeling of work overload, skipped schedules and tension. A well
organized person can often accomplish twice as much as the person who is poorly organized.
Therefore, an individual must understand how to manage his time so that he can cope with
tensions created by job demands. A few of the well known time management principles are :
 (i) Preparing a daily list of activities to be attended to.

(ii) Prioritizing activities by importance and urgency.

(iii) Scheduling activities according to the priorities set.

(iv) Knowing your daily schedule and handling the most demanding parts of a job when
you are most alert and productive.

4. Assertiveness : An individual should become assertive. He should not say 'Yes' when
he wants to say 'No'. He should start saying No to people or managers who demand too much
of his time. Being assertive is an important factor in reducing stress.

5. Social Support Network : Every person should have people to turn to, talk to and rely
upon. Good friends become highly supportive during times of stress and crisis. Social
network includes friends, family or work colleagues. Expanding your social support system
can be a means for tension reduction because friends are there when needed and provide
support to get the person through stressful situation.

6. Readjust life Goals : Every individual must know what he really wants to do. This
should relate to not only the major decision of the life but to all activities in our life. He must
know what is important for his. Because of the severe competition in life to go ahead, most
individuals set very high standards and goals for themselves. These high expectations and
limited resources to reach such expectations result in stress. Accordingly, every person must
readjust his goals and make sure he has ability and resources to reach such goals. Perhaps the
goals should be established after the resources have been analysed.

7. Relaxation Techniques : Every individual must teach himself to reduce tension through
relaxation techniques such as Yoga, mediation, hypnosis and biofeedback. 15-20 minutes a
day of deep relaxation releases tension and provides a person with pronounced sense of
peacefulness. Deep relaxation condition will bring significant changes in heart rate, blood
pressure and other physiological factors. Yoga is probably the most effective remedy for
stress. Studies have revealed that Yoga has cured several stress related diseases.

8. Plan Your Life in Advance : So many times, people create situations which induce
stress because they either did not plan or did a bad job of planning. The traditional Indian
attitude of "Whatever will be, will be" a way of accepting the unexpected difficulties in life.
This attitude may be relevant in those situations over which we do not have any control like

death in the family, but for other events in life, it is better to plan in advance, so that we can
confront them with confidence when they occur.