Those of us of a certain age may remember that \u201cback in the day\u201d an artist called Hadaway had a hit song (do people still use that phrase?) called \u201cWhat is love?\u201d It began with the lyrics \u201cWhat is love, baby don\u2019t hurt me\u2019 don\u2019t hurt me no more\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
It seems to me the word \u2018stress\u2019 could easily be substituted for \u2018love\u2019 in this context. Most people proclaim to experience both, yet might struggle to articulate what they mean by the respective words, and both experiences (love and stress) involve a strong degree of experiencing\u00a0hurt. An article I read this morning, based on some research carried out at Harvard University, suggests that our experience of stress at work can reduce our life span by as much as three years. Of course there are variables which feed into this such as gender and level of education. It appears that those with less than 12 years of formal education are more likely to be negatively impacted by their experience of workplace stress than those who have reached a higher level of educational attainment.<\/p>\n
So looking at what stress is, it seems there are three factors:
\n1. Perception – As with any emotion, we experience a level of psychological, and physiological, arousal and then we label the emotion based on a range of factors such as context and our own prior experience etc…
\n2. Control \u2013 Looking at the Harvard research it would appear that the more control we perceive we have in our work environment the less stress we are likely to perceive. Perhaps this is particularly relevant to the working world of a PhD where some perceive themselves as having very little control. Important to remember here that what matters is how we respond to what happens to us.
\n3. Definition of stress \u2013 ah yes, maybe this deserves a paragraph in itself.<\/p>\n
The Health and Safety Executive and similar organisations provide sophisticated and clear cut definitions of stress. However, these definitions tend to be wrapped up in socially acceptable language. Stress is primarily fear, and we have 5 basic fears:
\n\u2022 Humiliation \u2013 which is the fear of what other people think, the irony is that people are too busy thinking about themselves to worry about thinking about you.
\n\u2022 Separation \u2013 Being different, separated from those that are important to us, being disconnected.
\n\u2022 Poverty \u2013 The \u2018I haven\u2019t got enough\u2019 concept\u2026 yet money does not bring security.
\n\u2022 Unknown \u2013 The fear of new things \u2013 or lack of faith, hope and trust.
\n\u2022 Missing out \u2013 The fear of keeping up with the \u2018Joneses\u2019 \u2013 continually making comparisons (but even if you win the rat race you are still a rat).
\nWhilst we may not be keen to acknowledge it, most of the things which cause us stress in work, or our research, can be reframed into one or more of these 5 fears.\u00a0 Two universals wo<\/p>\n
If you want to explore this topic more please come along to one of our workshops on \u201cCoping with Stress in Research and the Workplace\u201d. The next one will be held on Monday 15th November at 10am, you can book via PROSE. Of course if you are ultra keen you will already have been on YouTube to find Hadaway\u2019s hit from the 1990s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Those of us of a certain age may remember that \u201cback in the day\u201d an artist called Hadaway had a hit song (do people still use that phrase?) called \u201cWhat is love?\u201d It began with the lyrics \u201cWhat is love, baby don\u2019t hurt me\u2019 don\u2019t hurt me no more\u2026\u201d It seems to me the word […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/pgrcareers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/pgrcareers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/pgrcareers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/pgrcareers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/pgrcareers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/pgrcareers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/pgrcareers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/pgrcareers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/pgrcareers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/pgrcareers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}