Stress and The Hardy Personality

 

James has an important meeting with a work client but he is stuck in traffic and worries that he is going to be late. Of course he wants to make a favourable impression and being late is not ideal. On top of this he had a row with his partner about whose family you were going to spend Christmas with and he said some things he now wishes he hadn’t.

Also preying on his mind is the phone-call appointment he has booked with the doctor about some blood test results. This has been worrying him because the doctor asked to speak to him, and he can’t shake off the nagging thought that it could be bad news.

An interesting difference in how people respond to stressful events is the type of personality traits they exhibit. The personality traits will influence the typical way a person will react to events they face.

In general terms, Psychologists refer to personality as a set of characteristics, attitudes and temperament. The interesting thing about personality traits is that they tend to remain stable throughout a person’s life. The circumstances may change but the way we react to them remains consistent.

Researchers Kobasa and Maddi (1979) proposed a group of personality traits which had appeared to be resilient to stress-related illness even when they were faced with high levels of stress. They referred to it as Hardiness.

What do we mean by Hardy from a personality point of view?

We can think of them as the three C’s: Control, Commitment and Challenge.

Control: seeing yourself as in control of your life and what happens to you, rather than at the mercy of external influences.

Commitment: feeling that you are involved in what happens and have a strong sense of purpose. “I feel I know what I should do”

Challenge: Problems are things that they can and will overcome. They see change positively.

When we think about these more closely, it is not difficult to see how having a predominance of these traits is going to help a person cope with stressful situations. 

The Research…

Suzanne Kobasa (1979) wanted to study why some people who faced high levels of stress did not get ill when others facing the same stress did.

They began by assessing the life-events experienced by 800 executives over the previous three years and rated them for stressfulness ( The Social Readjustment Rating Scale). They also noted any episodes of illness they had experienced during the same time period.

From this they could identify those that had experienced high stress but low illness, or high stress and high illness.

Next… they asked them to complete an assessment task which tested the level of control, commitment and challenge in their personality.

From these two sets of data they could ask the question: Are the ones who had high stress but low illness also exhibiting signs of Hardiness (control, commitment and challenge)?

And that is exactly what they found… there was link between the Hardiness personality traits and those experiencing high stress but low illness.

Are We Describing Positivity and Being Proactive?

Perhaps we could argue that the key is having a positive AND proactive perspective for stressful events. Positivity is a good start, but to combine it with a sense of know what to do to mange the effects of the situation, makes the difference.

I used to make the joke with me psychology students that I could think as positively as a liked, but that is not going to help me run a marathon this afternoon. BUT, if I used positivity and proactively applied it to a training programme, it would be possible to run that marathon after a realistic time frame.

Can We Work On Having a More Hardy Personality?

One of the interesting applications of this research is that they helped to establish training programmes to help people ‘be more hardy’. The training focuses on being able to analyse how we have managed stressful situations previously and, with the illumination of hindsight, decide on more helpful ways of managing stress in the future.

Of course, this helps a person to gain a sense of control over their response to stress and recognise that they can overcome the effects of stress; it is within their power.

What Are The Lessons We Can Take Away?

When stressful events come our way…


1.    STOP! REASON AND CONTEXT: Put a positive obstacle between you and catastrophic thinking. Take a moment to think about the reality of the situation. Ask yourself: What do I need to do right now? Rather than thinking about the long-term effects of the events, focus on what would be most useful right now. That is your first step. 

For the smaller stressful events, often that is all you need to do. Preventing your mind go into ‘catastrophic mode’ can be enough to give you the time to see the situation for what it is. It will give you time to feel in control and recognise the stress as a challenge, all of which are characteristics of Hardiness.

Larger stressful events? Take another step…


2.     POSITIVE PROACTIVE PLANNING: What are the steps that I need to take to deal with this situation? Make a plan of what you CAN do. What do you have control over? What actions can you take? It is important to recognise the this plan is flexible. You should be able to adjust the plan as the situation changes. Life and events change and so should your response to it, the key is understanding that you are in control of the way you react to those changes. 

3.     PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE: Think about the successful ways you have dealt with stress in the past. What strategies have you used before? Remind yourself about the abilities you do have to cope, and the evidence you have that you coped in the past. 

Applying that in everyday life…

Take another look at the example of the stressed person at the beginning of this post. Applying a more Hardy Personality view, what would be a more helpful way to respond to the situation?

STOP! REASON AND CONTEXT

If there hadn’t been an important client meeting that day, on top of the underlying health worries which had led to the blood tests, it is quite likely that he wouldn’t have snapped about the Christmas arrangements; or at least not said some of the things he now regrets.

He might not want to spend Christmas with the relatives, or even think about it right now, so the added pressure of everything else going on, allowed the stress ‘get out’ in another way.


So… dealing with what is more important right now is probably best.


POSITIVE PROACTIVE PLANNING

He could call into the office and let them know about the traffic situation. Reason that if the traffic is so bad then it is most likely the client will be late too. Yes, it is important to be on time…. but in the end it is what he does that matters… the meeting itself.

He can make sure he has time set aside in his diary for the doctors call so that his is not trying to fit it in-between meetings.

Finally he can talk with his partner about Christmas another time, and acknowledge that the way he said what he did was because of everything else that is going on. It doesn’t have to be ALL done right now.


PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

At a later stage he could think about how he dealt with the stressful morning and what worked. How did he feel when he had proactively planned his response to the situation? Did he feel in more in control? Ask himself: how accurate was the catastrophic thinking he had in the first instance? Did the reality of the situation meet up to the negative expectation?

Remember you are in charge of how you react to stressful situations. Take control of how you are going to respond by consider those three steps above. 

When Stress Exacerbates Anxiety

Stress and anxiety are very similar, but the difference is where it comes from. Stress is often caused by external things for example a challenging workload or relationship problems. Because these things are external we can identify them and by doing so we can strive to make changes to them and the stress eases.

Anxiety, however, comes from inside the person’s mind. They feel the same pressures and have many of the same symptoms of stress but because it is coming from inside their mind they have no way of changing it. The person suffering with anxiety will say:

“But I don’t have any stresses, my life is fine, I don’t have any pressures” and yet they are still suffering with symptoms.

Anxiety can be explained as a build up of pressure inside the person, an accumulation, until the pressures becomes too much and begins to create symptoms. Anxiety needs to be released and our mind can do this by creating symptoms.

Common symptoms are prolonged sleep disturbance, phobias, low mood and depression and of course these are made more problematic by external stresses in our lives.

Hypnoanalysis is an analytical therapy which helps a person to relieve the accumulated stresses and the symptoms it has been creating.  Rather than using hypnotic suggestions to control symptoms, it aims to resolve the underlying causes of anxiety. By clearing away the internal stress a person is better equipped to deal with the external stresses of life.


Find out more about Hypnoanalysis at www.ketteringhypnotherapy.com where you can contact David to book a free initial consultation.


References:

Kobasa, S. C. (1979). Stressful life events, personality, and health: An inquiry into hardiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.1.1