| Personal Demands and Pressures |
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Personal stress can come from success and achievement as well as personal setbacks and failures. Trauma such as an injury or illness, being assaulted or robbed, or minor violations of the law, such as a speeding ticket, test your endurance and well-being, creating personal doubts, self-examination, anxiety, depression, and illness. Worries about attractiveness, weight, aging, or physical changes as a result of personal injury, illness, or time destroy peace of mind and affect your relationships with yourself and other people. Personal stress is difficult to address with self-help measures. You're so close to the concerns causing your stress, they're hard to see. Often, you're unaware that stress influences how you see yourself and how you feel about what you see. And even when you become aware of personal stress, you're often so enmeshed in its causes, you feel powerless to do anything. The most pervasive aspect of personal stress is trying to meet obligations to yourself. Some people feel guilty about being "selfish" while simultaneously feeling resentful about getting "shortchanged" by life. This conflict is created by being over-involved with career, family, fame, fortune, the needs of others, or maintaining your lifestyle. You are never alone with yourself, or get personal things done, or pursue your personal goals and aspirations. It comes from feelings of failing to live up to what you really are, giving up on your dreams, "selling out," or "settling." Shakespeare expresses this universal truth in Hamlet, "To thy own self be true." Loss of self-esteem and self-respect or regaining it is a persistent theme in art. Edward Hopper's Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Willie Loman and his eldest son, Biff, in Death of a Salesman are examples of how loss of self-esteem and self-respect makes life empty and meaningless. The movie Rocky, on the other hand, portrays the joy and deep satisfaction that comes from following your dreams and living up to your potential. Limitations on personal freedom - going where we want, when we want, and how we want - and autonomy are the second most common type of personal stress affecting our clients. Personal freedom is central to most of us. Biological limits on personal autonomy are particularly troublesome for women. An unwanted pregnancy, for some women, is like nine months in jail. Sexual difficulties or starting menopause can be equally stressful. Jail or prison terms, by definition, limit our personal autonomy and freedom. Changes in recreation or religious activities often reflect a loss of freedom of choice. Limitations on our personal autonomy are so stressful for of us that we will fight to the death rather than tolerate them. The New Hampshire state motto, for instance, is "Live Free or Die." Change always creates stress and life always involves change. Change is an inevitable part of normal development and growth. As we grow and mature from childhood to adolescence to adulthood to maturity and senescence, we go through changes in residence, in our living conditions, personal habits, interpersonal relationships, and recreational activities. Each change involves leaving something familiar behind and moving on to something new and unsettling in its uncertainty. Often, the demands and pressures of life changes create further personal stress by diverting our energies and resources. Sometimes we have difficulty meeting our obligations to ourselves. Drug and alcohol problems develop as we seek relief from the stress. In our culture, we over-emphasize appearances. If you compare yourself to the airbrushed, slick magazine versions of masculine or feminine "perfection," you're bound to be disappointed. Nobody looks like that. Many people try and end up feeling miserable when they fail. The narcissism of failed perfectionism is a particularly difficult area of personal stress, because it leads us to feel ugly, undesirable, fat, or old and worn out. Almost everyone has their own ideas and convictions about how the world works and their place in the universe. There may be an explicit set of rules or a code of conduct, or the rules may be vague and unspecified. Some of us are rigid and unyielding about our particular views and myth systems, others are flexible and frequently change views. Philosophical or religious preoccupations, questions about our basic beliefs and conceptions, concerns about right and wrong, and personal morality, make up an element of personal stress. Our views relating to these basic issues are part and parcel of who and what we are. When they are challenged by circumstances, ourselves, or others, the threat is to something basic and vital about ourselves. The key to handling personal stress is to build your self-esteem. Write a list of ten things you like about yourself. Pay yourself compliments: "I really did a good job on that," "I may not be the best, but I'm awfully close." If you have difficulty accepting compliments, keep practicing until you can. Look at yourself in the mirror and say the things to yourself that would make you feel good if someone else said them to you. Another way of altering your personal stress is to try looking at your situation from a less immediate perspective. Take a long-term view of life, particularly your own. Nothing in your life is wasted, every experience prepares you to cope with situations later on. Look at your parents' lives or their friends' lives. Draw on older people's experiences for examples of how changing your perspective can reduce the stress of your current situation. Be assertive about your personal privacy, freedom, and autonomy. Examine your goals and directions, make sure you're doing what you want to do, going where you want to go. Are your goals your own or someone else's? Decide what you want to be doing and where you want to be in five years, then figure out what will get you there. This can be tough on personal relationships and you may have to decide which is more important, your relationship or your freedom. If you're feeling bad about not meeting obligations to yourself or berating yourself for being a failure and not having lived up to your potential, take time out for a reality check. Who are you competing with? Who are you comparing yourself to? Young people often compare themselves to people ten or twenty years older than they. Whose aspirations are you reaching for, yours or someone else's? Your parents'? Your spouse's? Your teachers'? How much of your feelings of failure have to do with disappointing others? Quit competing, quit comparing, and follow your own dreams. Make a list of your achievements, successes, and accomplishments. Chances are you'll be pleasantly surprised at how much you've done. How much of your personal stress has to do with impossibly high standards others have set for you or you've set for yourself? How much comes from overestimating your own talents, abilities, and capacities? Do you tend to overestimate, underestimate, or accurately estimate what you can and cannot do? Get in touch with reality. Ask someone you trust and respect for an honest appraisal of your abilities. Get checked out by a career counselor or headhunter. If you've got it, go for it. If you don't, back off on your standards and give yourself a break. If too much success is the problem, just slow down. You don't have to live up to an image of success. You don't have to exhaust yourself to live up to your past success. Take it easy and don't assume more success than you can handle. You don't have to live up to someone else's ideas of how much is enough or what you should do with success when you get it. You might want to take a look at whether your success is worth the hassles it brings. Develop a multi-faceted personal identity. Learn to look at yourself in many different ways. Don't limit yourself to being just one thing. Search for balance among work, family, friends, recreation, and hobbies. Altering personal stress can be a daunting task and everyone needs a little help with it from time to time. Tap your friends or family. If you need more support, get in touch with a good counselor or therapist. Click on other areas of demand and pressure that are problematic for you to learn more about what you can do to get them under control as well. |
Personal stress develops from situations that affect your relationship with yourself. A strong and positive sense of self is a powerful asset in coping with life stress. Events or experiences that shake your self-image impact how well you overcome external challenges in your life. Discomfort with how you see yourself is also a major source of stress point in and of itself.