Stress resistance is: definition, levels, increase

A person encounters many stress factors every day. Each of these meetings is fraught with the occurrence of stress, which in turn can turn into distress. Experts note that it is impossible to avoid all stressors; accordingly, you need to develop stress resistance and be able to cope with stress.

What is stress tolerance

Stress occurs due to the body's reactions in the cognitive and affective spheres. That is, if a person interprets a situation as dangerous, threatening or challenging, then stress occurs. However, it is noted that there are factors that cause stress at the biological level; here the individual’s attitude does not play a role. We are talking about substances such as coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, plenty of sugar, etc.

Stress resistance is a set of personal qualities that determine a person’s ability to control the impact of external stimuli and remain emotionally calm in a stressful situation.

Types of stress resistance tests

Assessment testing is used when hiring or when transferring to another position, for example, when promoting.

The ability to withstand stress is measured in two ways:

1. Assessment of personal inclinations and behavioral factors.
2. Projective psychological techniques.

When applying for a job, a person’s personal inclinations are most often assessed, that is, how he will behave in stressful situations and what actions to take.

Projective techniques - tests for professional burnout, latent and overt depression - are offered after a person has worked in a position for some time.

Personality and ability to cope with stress are assessed using:

• situational tests;
• psychological questionnaires.

Situational tests assess a person’s typical behavior in a stressful situation, while psychological tests assess his personality type and character tendencies.

1

Situational tests

Example of a situational stress test:

Go through Prepare

Situational testing

places a person in a fictitious work situation through brief scenarios describing workplace conflict.

The person is asked to identify the most and least suitable solution from the presented options. Or evaluate the effectiveness of each presented solution. Often the rating scale consists of five answer options.

Diagnostics and levels of stress resistance

When working with stress, it is useful to be able to diagnose the level of stress resistance and the specifics of the response to stress. To do this, I propose to get acquainted with two methods.

Diagnosis of stress (O. N. Istratova)

The questionnaire allows you to determine the characteristics of an individual’s response to stress, in particular the degree of self-control and the level of emotional lability. The technique is suitable for all people over 18 years of age.

So, answer “yes” or “no” to the following statements:

1. I always try to complete the work, but often I don’t have time and have to catch up.
2. Looking in the mirror, I see traces of fatigue and overwork on my face.
3. There is a lot of trouble at work and at home.
4. I work hard to break my bad habits, but I can't.
5. I'm worried about the future.
6. I often need alcohol, a cigarette or sleeping pills (sedatives) to relax after a hard day.
7. Everything around is changing very quickly. The changes make my head spin. It would be nice if changes didn't happen so quickly.
8. I love my family and friends, but often they feel bored and empty.
9. In my youth, I achieved nothing and often felt disappointed in myself.

Count the statements to which the answer is “yes” (“yes” – one point, “no” – zero points). Analyze the results:

• 0-4 points – high level of self-regulation in stressful situations. You know how to manage your emotions and are restrained in stressful situations. You are not prone to irritation and blaming others or yourself for what happened.
• 5-7 points – average level of self-regulation. You manage to maintain composure with varying degrees of success. Sometimes you are restrained even in the most difficult situations, and sometimes you lose your temper over some little thing.
• 8-9 points – low level of self-regulation. You are overworked and exhausted. The ability to self-control and self-control is poorly developed. You urgently need to learn self-regulation.

Do you have stress resistance (E. G. Kasimova)?

Answer “yes”, “not particularly” or “no” to the following questions:

1. Are you afraid of competition at work, sports or gambling?
2. Does this result in aggression?
3. Do you easily move from one activity to another?
4. Are you resilient at work?
5. If you see that your efforts are not being properly recognized, do you quit the game?
6. Do you avoid confrontation?
7. Do you like doing nothing?
8. Do you take minor failures and disappointments personally?
9. Do you enjoy the small pleasures in life?
10. Do you often act according to other people's wishes rather than your own?
11. Do you give yourself at least half an hour during the day?
12. Do you have good relationships with your colleagues?
13. Would you say that your work environment is conflictual?
14. Do you agree that many people behave uncompromisingly?
15. Life is not fair?
16. Do you often laugh at your failures?
17. Do you have someone to share your experiences with?
18. Do you get nervous if your plans change due to someone else's negligence?
19. Do you consider yourself a physically healthy person?
20. Do you know how to maintain composure in difficult situations?
21. Have you ever repented of an action committed in a moment of irritation (another feeling)?
22. Are you annoyed by crumpled pages of a book or someone's moral teachings?
23. Do you have communication difficulties?
24. Do you feel distrustful of your colleagues?
25. Are you tormented by the thought of your own insignificance?
26. Do you want to achieve a lot?
27. Do you often get irritated and withdrawn into yourself?
28. Do you often get bored?
29. Does it ever happen that you don’t want to return home?
30. Are your colleagues happy with you?
31. Do you always manage to maintain your composure?
32. Do you maintain relationships with people with whom you have little connection?
33. Do you have a regular circle of friends with specific interests?
34. Do you feel unreasonable hostility towards certain people or situations that you have never experienced before?
35. Are you confident in your responsibilities?
36. Do you often find yourself unable to tune out dark thoughts?
37. Are you sometimes unpunctual?
38. Do you have a good attitude towards people who change their point of view often?
39. When you are sick, are you patient?
40. Do you often interrupt your interlocutor?
41. Are you performing your duties well?
42. Would you like to know what other people think about you?
43. Do your desires and responsibilities coincide?
44. Do you get nervous when you're waiting for something?
45. Do you easily combine family and professional responsibilities?
46. Is it typical for you to “wait by the sea for weather”?
47. After you come home, do you think about what happened at work?
48. Are you sometimes too categorical, including in your statements?
49. Do you find it difficult to talk to loved ones about your problems?
50. Do you ever feel like you can't handle something?
51. Are you hoping for the best?
52. Does it ever happen that you conflict and then regret it?
53. Do you find it easy to control your anger?
54. Is your work affected by noise and other irritants?
55. Do you pick up habits easily and break them just as easily?
56. Are you working at a steady pace?
57. Do you get nervous while waiting?
58. Are you constantly in a bad mood and suspicious of others?
59. Do you often “explode”?
60. Do you worry if you forget to do something?
61. Do you know how to control your feelings?
62. Do you influence decisions made at work?
63. Is your work often accompanied by struggle and contradiction?
64. Are you overloaded with work?
65. Do you often lose your temper?
66. Do you react to criticism from others?
67. Can you work for a long time without loss of efficiency and results?
68. Do you often experience mood swings?
69. Do you make decisions quickly?
70. Does fatigue cause you insomnia?
71. Do you react calmly to refusals?
72. Do you often look for an excuse not to do work?
73. Are your experiences accompanied by nonverbal signs (pronounced gestures, changes in facial expressions and voice)?

Sum up: “yes” – 3 points, “not particularly” – 2 points, “no” – 0 points. Check out the results:

• More than 180 points. You are very susceptible to stress, unrestrained and impatient, quick-tempered, and lose your temper easily. Your nervous system is clearly shaken, which makes both you and your loved ones suffer.
• 100-180 points. The largest group, which includes people with average stress resistance. Only a very unpleasant event can make you angry. You don't pay attention to minor troubles. You are immune to them.
• Less than 100 points. You are abnormally calm, one might say, callous and indifferent to everything that happens. Probably, your loved ones often consider you “thick-skinned.” Complete indifference is not the best sign.

Holmes and Rahe's method for determining stress resistance and social adaptation

Doctors Holmes and Rage (USA) studied the dependence of diseases (including infectious diseases and injuries) on various stressful life events in more than five thousand patients.
They concluded that mental and physical illnesses are usually preceded by certain major changes in a person's life. Based on their research, they compiled a scale in which each important life event corresponds to a certain number of points depending on the degree of its stressogenicity. Test instructions

Try to remember all the events that happened to you during
the last year and calculate the total number of points you scored.
In detail: Read the entire list carefully to have a general understanding of the situations, events, and life circumstances that cause stress. Then read each item again, paying attention to the number of points assigned to each situation. Next, try to deduce the arithmetic average from the events and situations that have occurred in your life over the past two years (calculate the average number of points in 1 year).

If any situation occurred to you more than once, then the result should be multiplied by a given number of times.

Test material

Development of stress resistance

Training in managing and overcoming stress is provided in two alternative areas:

• changes in environmental conditions, demands placed on individuals, habits;
• changing thinking and behavior, working with the sphere of cognitive and social response.

Both of these methods allow you to achieve the main goal of the work - to destroy the chain of reactions that cause distress and its negative manifestations, to stop the stress mechanism.

First of all, a person must understand his problem, determine the characteristics and nature of stress factors. After this, find ways to change environmental conditions (for example, eliminating noise, lowering the temperature) or psychosocial environment (conflict people at work, mismatch of temperaments with a partner). Or a person realizes that in order to meet the requirements of the environment he must change his capabilities, and begins to work on himself, for example, learning to resolve conflicts.

If you cannot change the situation, then you need to change your attitude towards it, that is, change your perception of the requirements, their importance or your capabilities. In order to determine the significance of the situation (and is it necessary to pay attention to it at all, worry about failure and difficulties), you need to imagine the worst outcome of events, then evaluate it in the perspective of your whole life (what impact this unfavorable outcome will have on life in a broad sense ).

Specialist help

A change in the perception of the situation and the individual’s capabilities occurs in the context of individual consultations or psychotherapy, where discussions and conversations take place between the client and the specialist. Sometimes medication is indicated.

Socio-psychological group trainings have proven positive in the development of stress resistance, in which:

• discussions are held on problematic topics, for example, participants are asked to recall current difficult life situations that have arisen over the past six months (month);
• difficult situations are played out through role-playing games, strategies of coping behavior are tested;
• popular coping strategies for stress (seeking support, analyzing the situation, avoiding) are analyzed and discussed;
• Using brainstorming, other possible effective behaviors are written down;
• Participants use self-analysis to record existing and desired skills.

Independent work

It is not necessary to attend trainings; you can try to figure out the situation yourself according to the following plan:

1. Problem orientation. It involves determining the fact, the presence of a problem, accepting the inevitability and normality of life’s difficulties, convincing oneself that the problem is solvable, and perceiving the situation as an opportunity for positive change and personal development. The most effective method at this stage is auto-training.
2. Definition and formulation of the problem. It involves collecting information on the problem (the more a person knows, the lower the anxiety), dividing information into objective facts and subjective experiences (assumptions, assessments), identifying the main problematic elements from the entire situation (supporting stumbling blocks), drawing up a written plan to achieve a real goal and the desired outcome of the situation.
3. Identification of alternative solutions. Write down as many possible solutions to the situation as possible. Capture even the most fantastic ideas. Later, from all the options, you can choose the optimal one or combine several alternatives into one solution.
4. Decision-making. Choose the option that will completely solve the problem with a favorable outcome, will not delay the solution or mask the problem, but will solve it. To make it easier, write down the possible consequences for each option (they can be short-term and long-term, aimed at yourself or at others). Every decision has its consequences, often both positive and negative. Your task is to evaluate the consequences and the ability to cope with them from the point of view of your own values, priorities and capabilities.
5. Implementation of the solution and evaluation of its effectiveness. In fact, analysis of consequences is the final stage - verification of the solution.

By the way, analyzing fictitious problem situations is an excellent exercise for increasing stress resistance. Regularly replenish your theoretical basis for overcoming stress by analyzing problematic situations encountered in life according to the presented plan. Examples of such situations can be taken from books, films, the lives of friends and acquaintances, and your own experience.

In addition, to independently overcome and prevent stress, people use:

• relaxation;
• meditation;
• physical exercise;
• prayers (self-hypnosis effect);
• breathing techniques;
• massage;
• other methods of self-regulation.

Both independently and accompanied by a specialist, the method of hypnosis and auto-training is used. Autotraining increases performance, trains will, attention and memory, and develops self-control and self-observation skills. A person’s consciousness changes, as a result of which he controls his mood, is calm, cheerful and balanced. Hypnosis is used to relax and increase self-confidence.

Tips for coping with stress

Often, overcoming stress is hampered by an inadequate perception of this phenomenon. Here are a few points on the issue that are worth knowing:

• Stress provokes the development of real diseases. It is a mistake to assume that all symptoms are in the imagination of the individual.
• It is not weak people who are more susceptible to stress, but those who are extremely busy at work and have a high level of aspirations in life.
• We are not always responsible for the events that happen in life, but we choose for ourselves how to react to them. We ourselves are responsible for stress.
• It is not always possible to feel the real strength of the stress experienced. Usually on the contrary, the more stress, the less symptoms we feel. It is only when stress turns into distress that they become apparent.
• The reaction to a stimulus is not always immediate. Sometimes stress develops after the irritant has passed away, which makes it difficult to accurately determine the causes of the condition.
• Stress, its prevention and overcoming are individual. Sources of stress, symptoms, effects and treatment differ from person to person. Moreover, methods of coping with stress differ not only from person to person, but also from case to case.
• Not all relaxation methods people use are actually relaxation methods. For example, yoga is much healthier than watching TV. However, we must not forget about the previous point.

Increasing stress resistance involves extensive work on oneself and personal development. In this case, the problem is not solved locally. Stress resistance largely depends on the following personal characteristics:

• Locus of control. It can be external (attributing responsibility for the events of one’s life to external conditions, other people and higher powers) and internal (understanding one’s own responsibility for all events occurring in life). People with an internal locus of control are self-confident, persistent, consistent, balanced, sociable, friendly, and prone to introspection. An external locus of control is accompanied by lack of confidence in one’s strengths and abilities, imbalance, anxiety, suspicion, postponing goals, aggressiveness, and conformity. People with an internal locus of control are more resistant to stress, neuroses, illnesses, and psychological problems such as loss of self-esteem.
• Self-esteem. Closely related to the need for personal self-affirmation, self-perception and, accordingly, behavior style. Inadequate self-esteem is always a negative factor that creates a predisposition to stress. With low self-esteem, a person takes on too much responsibility and blames himself; when overestimating, he shifts responsibility to other people.

Self-esteem essentially determines a person’s confidence in his ability to cope with life’s difficulties. Restructuring thinking and perceiving problems requires mandatory work to increase self-confidence and correct self-esteem.

In addition, when restructuring thinking, it is important to assess the correctness of the individual’s demands on himself. Separate work is carried out with beliefs and stereotypes, the individual’s desire to meet someone’s expectations. Following stereotypes or someone else's beliefs is a popular cause of stress. As soon as the narrow framework of stereotypical thinking does not coincide with reality (and this often happens), the person will find himself in a very unpleasant state. Chronic stress is most often based precisely on this reason.

Rules for anti-stress life

1. Don't be afraid to talk about your problems, find someone you can talk to. Also support him.
2. Know how to take breaks. Force yourself to relieve stress with your favorite activity, take your mind off your problems.
3. Calm aggression and anger. Don't make decisions in this state.
4. Know how to give in and agree, even if you are right. Of course, if your life does not depend on it.
5. Break each task, each problem into many feasible stages and tasks. Build a hierarchy among your tasks, starting with the most important tasks.
6. Don't try to be perfect and the best at everything. Each person is individual and wonderful in their own field. Mind your own business.
7. Allow others to be themselves. Don’t try to change people, make them comfortable for you, don’t make excessive demands, let them be themselves. Try to criticize less. Look not for shortcomings, but for advantages. Focus on them.
8. Treat competition appropriately. There is no need to try to overtake all people in the race of life; this is again a matter of individuality.
9. Don't withdraw into yourself. Self-pity and withdrawal from society will not make the situation better. Only your activity will provide solutions to problems. Try to find other ways to interact with society and approaches to people if things don’t work out.

Exercise to develop stress resistance

Focus on negative emotions is another problem that requires separate consideration. The technique of concentration (switching) will help in the fight against negative emotions and thoughts: at a moment of tension and an abundance of thoughts and emotions, find an object in the room, for example, a clock hand. Follow the arrow and don't think about anything.

It's not as simple as it seems. Thoughts will come periodically - again concentrate your attention on the arrow. Do this exercise every day, even when you are in a calm state. The goal of the lesson is to gain control over your thoughts. Start with 3-5 minutes. Repeat the exercise 2 times a day, preferably after waking up and before going to bed.

Combine this technique with relaxation:

• Before the exercise, take a comfortable position (lying or sitting);
• close your eyes, breathe calmly and deeply;
• After the exercise, lie down (sit) for a while with your eyes closed;
• repeat the breathing exercise.

There is a common belief that after relaxation, drowsiness occurs. In fact, good deep relaxation, on the contrary, improves performance and memory, gives vigor, and clears consciousness.

What does this give?

An employee is tested in practice - in a resume and at an interview, almost anyone is able to show their best side, carefully answering the HR employee’s questions and saying what is required. In a stressful interview situation, you won’t be able to prepare – character is visible here.

One person will shut down when asked harsh questions, another will begin to react aggressively, a third will burst into tears, a fourth will slam the door. And only a few will “go into a rage” and deftly parry or remain perfectly calm and reasonable.

It is precisely such people, capable of improvisation and maintaining a cool head, that are needed in companies that organize such competitions. After spending up to half an hour with a person, the personnel officer will know as much about him as he would have learned in weeks or months of work.

That is, a stress interview is a quick way to assess the qualities of an applicant, his psychotype and character, as well as his compliance with the company’s philosophy of thinking.

Afterword

You can overcome stress only through activity (search activity), but not in the form of meaningless and dangerous fuss, but with a well-thought-out plan of action. You can't just wait, you need to help yourself. Increasing stress resistance is facilitated by such qualities as emotional stability, endurance, perseverance, openness, goodwill, determination, and low levels of anxiety.

Sometimes people intuitively and subconsciously look for ways to relax, rest, and relaxation. Thus, laziness is sometimes a sign of overwork and the body’s attempts to change activities and rest. It is important to be able to relax and calm down in order to restore resources and set yourself up for productive work.

Increasing stress resistance means regularly working on yourself and developing your personality. A person who knows who he is and where he is going is difficult to lead astray. Thus, in order to increase stress resistance and prevent stress, you need to work on your body (nutrition, sports, care), emotions (release of emotions, everyday joys, hobbies as an outlet and a favorite activity in which you will definitely succeed), mind (self-acceptance and love to yourself, regular development).