Stress: The Impact of Life Changes and Daily Hassles

It’s unsurprising that negative life changes cause stress, however research has acknowledged that even positive life changes produce stress. Why? Any life change requires extra mental effort. A life change needs extra processing of emotions (positive or negative) as well as adjusting to new beginnings.

It is the change that is most important. The change requires extra mental effort as we adjust, and that’s what causes the stress.

It is largely agreed that any event that was unexpected, unpredictable and uncontrollable has the potential to be stressful in an unhelpful way. The impact of COVID19 lockdown applies here easily. The lockdown was largely unexpected and unpredictable added to the fact that, in our lifetime, we have not experienced anything like this pandemic. 

It feels uncontrollable and so we manage the stress by gaining control through seeking out information and following guidance. We take part in charity events online or help our friends and relatives with shopping and social support. This has a positive impact on society and has the added benefit of helping us feel in control: we are doing something.

Some Research…

Life changes are not confined to global events, and researchers (Holmes and Rahe, 1967) wanted to find a way to measure and quantify the potential impact of life changes on a person’s health. 

The researchers had recognised that patients who developed health problems also had a tendency to have experienced significant life changes in the past 12 months. They developed the hypothesis that significant life changes was associated with physical illness.

What did they do?

From looking at 5,000 patient records they came up with a list of the most commonly reported events that had preceded illness. They enlisted the help of 400 participants to rate each of the events on the list for how long they felt it would take someone to readjust to the life change. They used ‘getting married’ as a base rate of 50. If they thought the event would take longer to adjust to compared to getting married, they would give it a higher score. The scores were averaged and the result was the Life Change Unit (LCU).

The list of events could then be used to qualify those an individual had experienced over a particular time to assess the potential difficulty they might have readjusting as well as the potential for illness. It was called the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SSRS).

Take a look…

The researchers tested the proposed association between life changes and illness, by using over two and half thousand navel and marine personnel. They were asked to identify the events from the SSRS (using events that were relevant to them, for example, promotion) that they had experienced over the last two years, so the researchers could calculate their life change units.

This was compared to the number of times they needed medical help (and the severity of the illness) while they were at sea for the next 8 months. The results showed there was a positive correlation between the life change unit score and their illness scores, in other words those with high life changing units scores were more likely to have high rates of illness too.

But we are all different…aren’t we?

Critical life events, like the death of a loved-one or children leaving home, may be an important source of stress because they represent a need to readjust our lives, however, what might be particularly stressful to one person might be less problematic to another.

Perhaps the critical events make us more vulnerable

 to the potential of suffering from stress?

The Diathesis Stress Model explains behaviour in relation to an interaction between influences that lead to a behaviour. It could be that someone has a biological vulnerability (genetic, bio-chemical) to certain illnesses, which is triggered by the stress of the life changes. Without the underlying potential for a particular illness, they might not have been affected by the life changes as someone else.

What about other Stresses?

A client once bustled into my consulting room at the end of the day, slumped in the chair and said: “Everything has been on a red light today!” 

Imagine, you slept through the alarm this morning and in a rush to get out the house you left that important paperwork you needed on the kitchen table. You got stuck in a traffic jam and just to add to your frustration you spilt coffee down your shirt.

Ordinary daily hassles, right? 

Surely they don’t cause significant illness like life changes?

No… but perhaps we should be looking at those more closely, after all daily hassles happen more frequently than life changes and we cannot deny how stressful they are.

One researcher (Lazarus, 1999) explains them in relation to an accumulation effect. Just sleeping through the alarm is not too stressful, but add forgetting the document, the traffic jam and spilled coffee and we feel the impact. Each daily hassle accumulates to produce a stronger negative impact. Let’s not forget about those life changes too, they may well amplify the negative impact of those daily hassles. If someone is currently grieving for the death of a loved-one, for example, their stress levels are already high and the daily hassles tip the balance.

The life change may reduce a person’s resilience to deal with daily hassles and where once they may have coped, now the reaction is one of intense stress.

There is some good news though…

We can mediate the negative effects of stress with Daily Uplifts. Other research has recognised the effect of minor positive experiences in our day-to day lives has in reducing the stress of hassles. The uplifts do not need to be extravagant things, compliments, expression of thanks or simply feeling good about how you look, all help to reduce the negative impact of hassles.

Where do we go from here?

The evidence of an association between stress and illness would suggest that any way we can reduce our stress, the better. This is clearly no a self-indulgence, in fact is one of the most important personal and professional activities we need help us to lead happier and healthier lives.

KickStart Coaching…

The focus is to assess and work on immediate issues - for example: changes at work or home which are proving to be problematic, up-coming promotion and crisis of confidence, communication skills for interviews, or needing a ‘sounding board’ for personal issues.

The programme is designed to KickStart the process of coaching when circumstances require action now. This can be current stresses which have been accumulating or perhaps you are dealing with the stressful impact of a life change.

It is also the perfect start to on-going coaching where the principals of psychology and positive behavioural change can be applied with greater depth.

KickStart lays the ground work for further success and it is quite likely an on-going coaching programme would be enhanced by the KickStart.

Find out more and book a consultation at www.ketteringhypnotherapy.com

References:

Holmes, T.H., & Rahe, R.H. (1967) The Social Readjustment Rating Scale. The Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 11, 213-218

Lazarus, R.S. (1999). Stress and Emotion: A New Synthesis. London: Free Association Books.