preview

Coping with Stress Essay

Decent Essays

Stress is part of our lives. We live with it, deal with it, and above all worry about it. Our way of life, the area in which we live, the economy, and our jobs can cause a great deal of stress. Not everyone deals with the same level of stress and there are several factors that can impact our lives and cause us to have higher or lower stress levels. We can have stress caused by Cataclysmic events which according to Feldman (2009) are events that can affect many people at the same time and are “disasters such as tornado and plane crashes, as well as terrorist attacks”. (p418). Other factors are personal stressors and can be caused by events such as a divorce, death or a loved one or the loss of a job. (Feldman, 2009). The …show more content…

These are stressors we live with and deal with on a daily basis.
Work Stress and Mental Health Some people have higher levels of stress because they might have a very stressful job. Police officers, fire fighters, soldiers in a war zone, health care providers, long distance truck drivers, and yes, even educators (think of a classroom full of students where you are responsible for making sure that they are learning the skills they need to succeed) have very stressful jobs. According to Elkin and Rosch (1990) workplace related stress in a major problem in the U.S. and it creates a major expense for corporations. Koeske, Kirk, and Koeske (1993) indicate that all jobs have some level of stress but jobs that are in the human services have additional stressors because they “derive from intense involvement in the lives of others”. (p.319). They also refer to the type of stress experienced by individuals working in human services as “burnout” (Koeske, Kirk, and Koeske, 1993, p.319). Another factor that can influence our stress level is how we handle life’s demands. There are different ways of reacting to the situations we face every day of our lives. We have all heard of expressions such as ‘road rage’ and ‘going postal’. These are terms that we have come to identified with violent reactions to stressors caused by situations all of us face every day. How many of us have experiences in the road that

Get Access