Our Stress Tolerance Point

To read the first post in this Stress Series click here!

Just as the way we perceive stress is highly individualized, so is our Stress Tolerance Point. Our Stress Tolerance Point is that specific point at which stress begins to have a negative impact on us, it’s the point at which our performance declines, when we begin to lose focus on the task, and when we recognize the symptoms of being stressed. It’s the point at which we go from what we can handle, the level of demand still being manageable to one step further where the demands exceed our capacity and we tip over the edge. Remember that even though not all change is bad, all change still creates stress on our bodies (stress simply equals a change). We all experience a number of positive and negative events that create stress. Whether we perceive an event as positive or negative we must cope with it all the same. Often times we use the same maladaptive coping skills to manage positive stress/change as we do with negative stress/change, unfortunately what we don’t realize is that negative coping skills only exacerbate the negative impact of stress; doing more harm than good.

Before we get further into active coping strategies, let’s first look at identifying our Stress Profile by accurately identifying the stress we’ve been under. By analyzing our needs and current abilities, we can take a look at the things that trigger us to feel stress. Triggers are all those things that cause us “to stress”, it’s based on our perceptions and on our individual tolerance point. Triggers can fall into 4 distinct categories: environmental, personal, physiological, and social; each impacting us slightly differently. Journaling is a powerful tool to understand what our triggers are and how each trigger impacts us differently. If you’re not a journal-er, no problem, just spend some time thinking about your own stressors. It shouldn’t be too difficult to identify when demands go from manageable to you feeling overloaded and unproductive. We usually know what we can handle but lets not forget about “the when”.  Timing is everything. Its no surprise that holidays are a stressful time. Regardless of demands, they are stressful! The” what” is only half the equation, the “when” being the other half.

As we begin to get a deeper understanding of our stress triggers (the what when, and how much), we begin to see that stressors don’t occur in a vacuum and we need to be careful of not creating a simple ranking system. Change needs to be understood in context to what else we are facing at any given time. It’s important we understand the impact of compound stress; one event may not usually lead to unmanageable stress however adding it on top of other “small” events and we are now experiencing compound stress. Nothing puts us over our threshold quicker than compound stress. One stressor (even a seemingly big one) seems more manageable because we’re better equipped at handling 1 thing, we get frazzled when things begin piling on top of each other. We lose focus simply because there are too many things that need attending to, too many things demand our time. Contrary to popular opinion, we are not very good at multitasking; we are far more successful at managing 1 demand, one change, at a time. 

A common example of this is moving away from loved ones to begin a new job. Maybe you’re very accustomed to beginning new jobs, typically feel very comfortable as the new employee or jumping right into an unknown task, maybe you usually find this type of change exciting, however add the changes that come with settling into a new place 500 miles from your stable support system, and your quickly burdened with compound stress. All the positive change may leave you feeling overwhelmed and anxious. On the surface, these may all appear to be positive steps, you may have even voluntarily moved and sought out a new job, however change = stress regardless if the change is positive or negative. You may notice changes in your mood, sleep habits, appetite and energy level all as a result of experiencing so many significant changes at one time.  

If you’re still having a hard time identifying triggers there are a number of stress rating scales available, one of my favorites is the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (also known as the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory); developed by psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe in 1967. After noticing a link between stressful life events and illness, Holmes and Rahe created a 43-item checklist of various life events to help make a connection between experienced stress and risk of future illness.  The Homes-Rahe Stress Inventory captured a way to assess a person’s life within the past year and apply a weighted amount to each event – creating an overall stress score categorizing our overall stress level.

Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory

Now that we’ve identified our stress tolerance point, the next step is to begin understanding how we respond to stress; what are the healthy and maladaptive strategies we rely on? Where can we make changes and develop a better action plan? While my follow up post will focus on coping skills, it’s essential to differentiate between what we can control and what we can’t. In order to successfully manage our environment we need to pick an element that is controllable and work on that one thing. It’s important to identify those things we can and cannot change. It’s a waste of our time trying to change what we have no control over, we need to instead spend our energy developing positive coping strategies and change those things that are within our control. For everything else, we need to practice acceptance as a coping skill.

Until Next Time ~ Be Well