Causes of Stress
What are some general areas that you can identify as major stressors in your life/career? Are these stressors based upon logistical (organizational) factors, student needs, or college requirements? Develop a list of your stressors within these general categories or create additional categories based upon your personal needs.
As a health care practitioner, I have the stress that my patients are looking to me to make them feel better. I feel a lot of stress when my patients do not feel better after a treatment.
I also work in four different places now, and my husband changes his work shift once every 4 weeks. Trying to balance my schedule is very stressful.
I also hate filling out insurance reimbursement forms, which is stressful for me, because I hate dealing with insurance paperwork and collections.
I am self - employed with 2 business I am trying to get off the ground. I also teach part time. Stress is something I deal with every day. My debt is high so I have to try not to let it bother me. I am up by 5:30 AM & I usually go to bed @ 11: oo PM. I do not have a staff. I have to do just about everything my self. It is hard. If I had it my way, If I could afford paid help I would. I wish that I could have a massage once a week. I wish I had time to work out at the gym every day. I wish I could spend 20 min a day in a steam room. All of those things contribute to stress reduction. Meditation, warm apsom salt baths. yoga. I just have to add these things to my "to-Do" list.
Jo,
I like the way that you effectively identified many different types of stressors in your life. Sometimes, just verbalizing and acknowledging the things that cause us stress can help us start to cope with these stressors.
AS A WAY OF VENTING STRESSORS ON A DAILY BASES I FEEL MORE SUCCESS AND CHALLANGE TO FURTHER MY GOALS .
Stress has it's positive outcome when in the company of others to vent out, and acknowledge the cause, and learning to cope with stress in all area's.
My Stressors:
1. Wondering if I am doing a good job teaching.
2. Wondering if I am teaching my students everything that they need to know about Medical Terminology and Medical Assisting and doing it effectively.
3. Trying to do all that I can to run the Medical Assistant Program for the school and make it be an excellent program.
4. Doing all that I can to help all of my students with problems that they may be having with school as well as other problems that they come to me with. I try to make everyone happy, even if it affects me.
5. Trying not to bend too many rules and regulations for students in my program (exceeding the number of absences allowed for example).
6. Taking care of my family and the house and bills, money, etc.
7. Taking care of my son, who has ADHD. The school is trying to cause problems as far as if we do not medicate him, then they want to put him in Special Ed and he is not the type of person who needs special education. So I am very stressed about that.
8. I would like to buy a new house and sell ours.
9. Disagreeing with my husband about parenting techniques. We do not agree on ways to discipline.
10. Husband drinking.
11. Not having time for "ME". Not having friends to do things with. Not being able to get away from husband and kids overnight. I have never been away over night and he has gone hunting every year for 2 weekends during deer hunting.
12. Working day and night. Not being with my family. (Sometimes, though, the break is nice)
13. Not doing more family activities.
14. I worry a lot about what people think about me as a person.
MOST OF MY STRESS DOES COME FROM STUDENTS THAT CONTINUALLY MISS TESTS AND THESE HAVE TO BE RE-SCHEDULED AT A LATER DATE, SO WHAT I HAVE DONE IS TO INTRODUCE A POLICY THAT THEY ARE ONLY ALLOWED TO MISS ONE TEST, UNLESS ITS AN EXCUSED ABSENSE, THIS WAY I FEEL AS THOUGH I HAVE MADE THE STUDENT A LOT MORE RESPONSIBLE FOR BEING HERE ON TIME AND DOING THEIR TESTS WHEN THEY SHOULD. THIS HAS RELIEVED THE STRESS LEVEL FOR ME.
I find that the majority of my stress comes from not making ends meet with the resources I receive from my work. When a person works really hard and really well and they still fight to pay bills or enjoy dinner and a movie or buy gifts for friends, the urge to continue the hard work decreases. The worst part of it is working so hard that it becomes impossible to take on outside jobs for extra funds.
Gordon,
It can be very stressful to continuously accommodate students who miss tests and ask to reschedule. You are likely busy enough without these inconveniences. Setting student expectations by implementing class policies and procedures is a great way to elicit good student testing behaviors and therefore to reduce your stress as an instructor. As you have probably discovered, the key is to be consistent when applying your policies and procedures with students.
As an owner/instructor I find that life/career stressors are, synonymous. My stressors are logistical factors as well as student needs. I not only care for my students as an instructor, but also for the reputation of my school being the owner/administrator.
As the owner I probably need to make an administrative decision to concentrate on one area or the other; either to be an educator or to be an administrator.
To add to my own stress, I love being an educator, I love helping my students, but I also love the challenge of running my own business.
For the most part I do not feel stressed but I do know that I am and that it has affected my health. No vacations, no long weekends, heck no weekends.
Plans are already in the works to curtail my instructor hours with the knowledge that I can be the fill-in for the instructor who needs to take time off.
I feel better already.
As a physician and a medical director of a school for EMTs and Paramedics I confront stress in my professional life on a daily basis. The most common causes of stress are from what seems to be an overwhelming amount of tasks that need to be performed nearly instantaneously. Then there are the frustrations of dealing with the organizations inefficiencies. All this becomes especially difficult when there are family issues that can not be addressed because I can not take the time out while I am working.
The main source of stress in my life is juggling the roles of instructor, administrator, student, and mother. My oldest child is a senior in high school, so she has needs and expectations as well as needing a push to prepare for college. My youngest child is has a learning disability and her organizational skills cause me despair! I'm also the program director as well as main instructor in a sonography program. On top of all this, I'm pursuing my master's degree in adult education because it is an upcoming accreditation requirement for program directors. I need a clone! :)
Trying to balance my time accounts for stress in my day to day life. I am the school medical program director, a wife, mother, grandmother and caregiver for my elderly parent. However,I make sure I take consistent time for exercise, brief meditation and often step away from my desk for a short breaks. This brings focus, balance and calms me down.
I have stress from differnet areas in my life. For one, I try to be a great instructor. This takes time, energy, motivation, and practice.
second, I have my family. I try to be the best husband and father. It means a great deal to be the solid rock in our foundation. To do this, I need constant communication from my family so we can all be on the same page.
I am working at my church. I feel that I have opportuntiy to grow and work with others. This can be at times a stress because I don't have a lot of free time. I also have a private practice where I try to use the skills I have to help others.
If this is not enough to be stressed about, I have the daily dealings of paying bills, checking mail, and doing chores. I try to fiond a balance in try to get major chores done.
I am also trying to lose weight. So what I am trying to do is place in order what is most important. A lot of organizing and time put into praying and catching sleep when I can. I have Saturday to relax and spend my activities relaxing destressing and praying. I also take time with my pets as a way to enjoy life and take the time to enjoy the gifts that have been given to me.
Juggling family life and professional life has always been stressful. I found that if I allow myself some time to just be by myself for even 15 minutes I can make the switch more easily. Commute can be great alone time. Don't think as traffic as a burden but as a chance to be alone. You can listen to your favorite music or a book on tape.
I really like your point of view Anne-Patricia! Most people see events like commuting as a burden – something that can eat up your free time and take you away from accomplishing your goals. But these types of situations can be turned into opportunities with a little planning. Use them to get ahead in other areas of your life or to just have some time for you!
Being a director of education, it becomes very stressful when policies and procedures that have been established and taught are continually completed in a haphazard way with no attention to detail. The training and retraining for these procedures is time consuming, which leads to my stress.
Good points Ronald! It can be very stressful when policies and procedures are not followed – particularly when you are the one who established them! Training can be time consuming but important, particularly when your staff and administration churns regularly. One approach that has helped me is to develop self-study training materials that staff and administrators can learn from independently. In doing so, I only have to explain my policies and procedures once.
There are quite a few stressors in my life right now. I have family obligations, a business to tend to, lesson plans to create regarding topics I am not familiar with, etc. Sometimes, I just have to get away and relax. I think my stressors are based on a little of all the above factors.
