5. Dealing with stress
This section includes:
- Explanatory text
- 1 activity on “Identifying stress levels and their impact
- 1 video.
You should allow yourself 30 minutes to complete this section.
"So that could be if I was subjecting myself to excessive levels of stress then in the long term there will be a physiological, psychological impact."
"…stress and tiredness…are the sort of almost preconditions for lots of people in their legal work."
Stress is a common part of all legal practice. In fact, that is not an intrinsically bad thing. There is evidence that a certain amount of stress has an important role in motivating individuals at work and assisting them in working more efficiently. This probably explains why many lawyers will state that they “work better under pressure”.
One way to visualise stress levels is to think of an inverted U shape. The top of the inverted U represents the optimum level of stress for performance and productivity. Once you begin to traverse down the side of the U, the danger is that your stress levels are becoming too high and may begin to have a negative effect in both your work and personal life. Research convincingly supports the inverted U-shaped curve hypothesis about stress and performance, with studies showing that, after a certain point, stress impairs cognitive performance (Lupien, Maheu, Fiocco & Schramek, 2007).
There are a number of tools you can use to identify your current stress levels, including this questionnaire [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]
Activity 3: Identifying stress levels and their impact
Part 1
The inverted U shape below has three text boxes – one indicating low stress, one indicating optimal stress, one indicating high stress. Spend a few minutes thinking about times you have experienced each of these conditions and make a note in the text boxes of:
- When you last experienced this level of stress
- What sort of thoughts, feelings and emotions you had at that time
- What impact (if any) you think experiencing this level of stress had on you (this could be physically, mentally or emotionally)
- What helped you deal with this stress?
- What got in your way?
Comment
By completing this exercise, you will have identified some stressors and their impact, but also will have considered what helped and hindered your response to this stress. This kind of self-reflection is useful in building up personal resilience and strategies for coping with stressors.
Here are some additional suggestions if you think you are experiencing high levels of stress:
- Think about whether you are attending to the basics of your wellbeing – sleep, healthy eating, exercise, hygiene.
- Are you communicating and establishing connections with supportive members of your family, friends and colleagues? Can you reach out and begin a conversation about the impact of work and strategies that are helpful with coping?
- Are you attuned to the possibility of withdrawal and isolation – if it has been a while since you engaged socially, it may be time to schedule a low-key meet-up with friends or family.
- Create time and space for reflection – meditation, mindfulness, prayer, reading, listening to music – schedule just 10 minutes in the first instance if you don’t have much time.
- Maintain the daily routines that you enjoy and allow for predictability – for example, the morning coffee at the bakery or reading the newspaper on the train.
- Look at whether your organisation offers confidential organisational support such as an employee assistance program. LawCare also offer a free, independent and confidential helpline on 0800 279 6888.
Knowing how and when you experience stress and being able to identify the impact it may have can help you to monitor you stress levels in the workplace and be more proactive in ensuring they stay within acceptable boundaries or within your zone of tolerance. If you find you are struggling to maintain this then it is important to seek help from your GP or another source (see “Additional resources” for further suggestions).
Part 2
Using the text boxes below, list your top three coping strategies. In other words, the three ways you usually try to deal with high levels of stress (don’t worry if you can only think of one or two). Then identify one advantage and one disadvantage of each strategy you identified.
| Coping strategy | Advantage | Disadvantage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | |||
| 2. | |||
| 3. |
Comment
You may have identified a range of coping strategies. In some recent research by the authors, two strategies that were referred to were compartmentalisation (separating out work and other parts of your life into separate “boxes”) and rationalisation (trying to rationalise your emotional response to a situation by labelling it as illogical or irrelevant). Although these can be useful strategies, they really represent ways to put things to the side and ignore them (compartmentalising) or explaining them away (rationalising). Therefore, it is also important to identify and implement other coping strategies which are focused on making changes and empowering yourself to deal with stress.
In the focus groups the authors ran with LawCare, other coping mechanisms included using alcohol to unwind and having a dark sense of humour about issues:
"And you go out for a drink with colleagues and everyone laughs about really horrible, stressful things that you’ve been through, and the coping mechanism is to laugh and have a glass of wine."
There were also indications of other (very unhealthy) coping mechanisms:
"Substance abuse, running themselves into financial difficulty, dysfunctional relationships."
Although socialising and unwinding with colleagues can have positive effects, there are dangers of becoming over reliant on alcohol to help cope. Using humour can also become another way to try and ignore the impact your experiences are having on you. However, humour can also be a major stress reliever and an acceptable way to deal with, or begin conversations about, topics that are otherwise hard to talk about.
One different strategy would be to identify one way to effect a change in your workplace and set a deadline to do it (don’t forget to put a reminder in your diary or phone). This could involve organising a social gathering at work or a coffee morning for a charity that is meaningful to you, pinning something uplifting to the noticeboard or fridge, doing something nice or unexpected for a colleague, bringing in a cake to share with colleagues, having a social chat with a colleague or complimenting someone on their skills. If you usually have lunch in front of your screen, maybe it is time to start going out with colleagues to eat occasionally as well.
This video gives some suggestions from legal professionals on handling stress.
Handling stress
Transcript
4. Handling responsibility