Stress and Well-Being 2.0

Stress and Well-Being 2.0

Francesco Attanasio and Ferdinando Pellegrino

Copyright © 2019 Ferdinando Pellegrino and Francesco Attanasio

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-244-82637-6

Index

Preface

What is stress?

Stressful Events

Eu/Di-Stress

The somatization

Behavior

Work-related stress, daily stress

Clinical approach to dysfunctional lifestyle

The psychosocial risks and the diseases from work-related stress

The syndrome of burn-out

Stress and well-being. Recognize and manage your resources

Stress & Fitness: The fitness cognitive-emotional

When Stress is good

Friendly Stress

Well-being in companies

4D of Time Management

Multitasking and stress

The management of complexity

Beneficial Effects of Running

Frequently Asked Questions

Bibliography

The Authors

Preface

The introduction in each working sector of new business management methodologies involves the assumption of an innovative attitude towards own work. Today, flexibility, competence and greater professionalism are required, as results of training for the global profession which includes technical, psychological and managerial aspects.

These problems affect the today professional both personally and professionally.

The stressed worker makes more mistakes, performs worse, is more vulnerable to the development of somatic pathologies - traditionally related to stress, such as cardiovascular diseases - and psychiatric illnesses such as anxiety and depression, he is more exposed to the risk of work injury and can assume dysfunctional lifestyles (cigarette smoking, gambling, alcohol abuse ...). For these reasons, the need to take care of the individual well-being in the workplace has become increasingly pressing in recent years. With the entry into force of the new laws, concerning the protection of health and safety in the workplace, the object of protection is the health interpreted as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not consisting only of an absence of illness or infirmity ; in this sense, the obligation to assess work-related stress is sanctioned for all Companies, but also to promote an organizational climate suitable to prevent discomfort from professional strain and encourage conditions of well-being. Therefore, the planning within companies of innovative pathways for the assessment and management of psychosocial risk becomes strategic to have a significant impact on the organizational climate and improve the effectiveness of human resource management. In this sense it was considered appropriate to focus attention on resilience. Although there has been an interest on this concept starting from some studies carried out after World War II, the systematic study of resilience dates to the early 1980s and to the research of Emmy Werner at the University of Davis (California). In literature, resilience is defined as the ability of a dynamic system to resist or recover, following significant challenges that threaten stability, vitality and development. It represents the possibility of standing despite the difficulties. When a critical event breaks into a life context, the system of routines and habits cracks; for which it is necessary to develop emotional, cognitive and relational strategies that allow to re-establish the threads between past, present and future, according to the perspective of resilience, strengthening the resources still available and favoring the development of the latent ones.

Resilience is a dynamic process that varies over time in relation to life events and the individual ability to modulate specific adaptive responses. In work contexts resilience has the function of allowing the person to protect his integrity and to explore different alternatives when he is under pressure or he is in difficult circumstances. The concepts of resilience and vulnerability are the extremes of two psychological dynamics that are opposed and acquire greater utility when we speak of transitions and turning points (i.e. alterations or significant changes in a trajectory that can alternate in an individual’s life cycle or in a context). Many turning points occur in the workplace and therefore it can be useful to promote the resilience process. You can act on three fundamental points:

What is stress?

Life is very simple, but we insist on making it complicated. - Confucius

Stress indicates a state of tension in which the body finds itself in response to solicitations from event-stimuli perceived as stressors. A stimulus is not a source of stress but depends on how it is perceived and interpreted by a single subject, as well as by its physical and psychological characteristics: what can be stressful for one of us is not for another person. When the organism perceives certain stimuli as stressors, it implements a coping process, a series of responses, some immediate and unconscious, others filtered by cognitive considerations (such as social opportunity, shame, etc.).

In 1936, the Austrian doctor Hans Selye defined stress as a General Adaptation Syndrome that develops itself in three phases:

alarm -> resistance -> exhaustion.

Body reacts to a stressful stimulus by entering in alarm, then tries to oppose a resistance to its modified state of equilibrium from the event-stimulus and then try to adapt itself and thus find a new balance.      

The attempt to adapt to the external environment is essential for survival, it always has been and still it is: despite the environmental diversity in which we live, it remains the biological mechanism that ensures the survival of the species. If the body fails to deal with the event and regain balance, the transient stressful situation persists over time as if it were the last state, thus becoming chronic distress, which is a risk factor for physical and mental health, that can be a catalyst for other conditions. It is as if we lived constantly in alarm and stressed, even in the absence of specific stressful stimuli.

In this situation, in which most of us has to live, especially those with tight pace of work (professionals, entrepreneurs, managers,