Introduction
What is stress? In engineering stress refers to a force acting on a body - often in the context of reaching breaking point. For most people stress has come to mean any 'excessive' demand or the body's reaction to such demands.
Stress is becoming the single biggest cause of health problems and days lost to sickness. In addition to the incalculable cost in human terms, certain high profile court cases have led to significant payouts to stress 'victims'.
Stress Counselling and Stress Management programmes have tended to date to help people deal with stress when they are already suffering from it. This programme is based on the concept of prevention - with some useful things you can do to relieve stress if it occasionally sneaks under the guard of your immunisation.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this programme, participants will be able to:
Identify potential and actual causes of stress for themselves and colleagues
Identify how stress from family and social life can have an effect in the workplace
Differentiate between performance raising pressure and stress
Notice the symptoms of stress in themselves and others
Identify the effect stress can have on themselves and others
Recognise how stress varies between individuals
Make changes to prevent stress
Use exercises and various techniques to defuse personal stress
Support colleagues who may be (perhaps temporarily) vulnerable to stress
Programme Content
The programme enables participants to identify stress as a normal part of life, in the same way that we all live with common viruses. It is only when conditions change that, in the case of viruses, we are 'run down and catch a cold' and in the case of stress, we lose our coping ability and start to display unwanted symptoms.
The importance of balance in life, the ability to say 'no', to manage our emotions and to use a range of coping techniques are all covered.
