8 Keys to Stress Management

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.

—SWEDISH PROVERB

It’s never too late to be what you might have been.

—GEORGE ELIOT

Stress is a regular—even healthy—part of life. Although it can be beneficial in many situations, it is detrimental in others. Understanding the subtleties of stress, and having a clear understanding of its causes and effects, can greatly help you to use this book. This chapter will provide you with a quick overview of different types of stress and of the main effects of stress on your body, mind, and overall health. You will also learn the most effective ways to use the book and to put what you learn here into practice for maximum benefit in your life.

When we’re faced with a looming deadline, a difficult social situation, or an immediate challenge, the source of our stress is clear. But more often, we experience stress from multiple sources and experience it with such frequency that we are less aware of where the stress is coming from and of how we are being affected by it. This chapter will cover the signs and symptoms of stress in detail. It will examine common sources, such as jobs, relationships, and hectic schedules. The chapter will empower you to better recognize the sources of your stress and its impact and will list questions you can ask yourself to assess your stress levels, so you can gain a clearer idea of how to combat it.

Frustration Coming from All Sides

Madeline felt frustrated. Little things were upsetting her. Events that normally would barely even register as stressful or annoying—someone cutting in line at the grocery store, a series of phone calls interrupting her workflow—were enough to create strong frustration and anger. In response to these relatively minor triggers, she would snap at people around her and stay in a bad mood for quite some time. This would leave her feeling more frustrated and angry, because she had fewer positive experiences with friends and co-workers throughout the day during these times, and this would contribute to her general feelings of stress. For Madeline, life started to feel more and more difficult, as if everything she experienced was simply becoming more stressful. Frustration seemed to be coming from all sides.

Upon further exploration, the reasons behind this became more clear to Madeline. At first, she thought her agitation was merely a response to the stressors at hand—the difficult people who seemed to surround her. However, as we discussed her experience and explored what she was feeling, it became apparent that there was more going on under the surface. Madeline was reacting to a series of bigger challenges she had faced earlier in the month: She had learned that her son was struggling in school, and because of financial difficulties that had just gone from bad to worse she was dodging calls from bill collectors. She had not forgotten about these stressful events, but had not realized the toll that they were taking on her ability to cope with minor stressors. Once she realized that the challenges she faced were putting her into a more or less constant state of stress, Madeline was able to find more patience as she focused her energy on brainstorming solutions to her challenges and practicing coping techniques for the added stress they brought. While these issues did not have easy answers, once she understood the extent of the stress that they brought, she had a greater ability to manage it.

Why Awareness Is Necessary

As someone reading a book on stress management, you are likely aware that stress may be an issue in your life. So why have I included a whole chapter on becoming aware of stress? Because we have to understand where our stress comes from, as well as how it is affecting us, in order to know what to do to manage this stress. And understanding the source of our stress is sometimes less clear than it would seem. In fact, recognizing the extent of one’s stress can be surprisingly difficult.

When our lives are relatively stress free, a stressful event stands out. (Remember those acute stressors mentioned in the Introduction?) In a relatively low-stress lifestyle, a new stressor presents a contrast with what we are used to, so it becomes relatively easy to feel the stress that it presents and to know where this stress came from. However, as we face an increasing number of stressors (moving from acute to episodic stress), we tend to be triggered much more often.

It becomes more difficult to recognize where our stress comes from as stress becomes increasingly abundant in our lives, for a few reasons. First, with several sources of stress, we may just feel “triggered.” We may be able to name a few sources of our stress—perhaps the most pressing and obvious sources—but we may miss some of the other, more subtle areas of life that are stressing us.

In addition, once we are operating from a place of feeling stressed, we tend to react to things differently, in ways that exacerbate what we are already feeling, and create additional problems. (I cover this in more detail later in this book.) That means that stress that originated in one area of life can easily move to a different area. You may not notice the stress that you are feeling until it gains momentum in other areas of your life, so you may miss some of the initial stress triggers that created the cycle in the first place.

Finally, once we reach a state of chronic stress, we may actually become less aware of individual sources of stress. In what psychologists call learned helplessness, we may have learned that our attempts to escape the stressful situation we face are futile, may have accepted this state of constant stress as normal, and may not be attempting to change it anymore. We may be less aware of when we are stressed and when we aren’t, because we generally feel low-grade stress almost constantly. We may not be aware of specific sources because the stress seems to come from everyone, and it affects most of the main areas of our lives at this stage. (For example, stress from work affects our relationships if we are short-tempered from a difficult day, poor relationships can affect our health, and health concerns create more stress and can cause obstacles at work.) It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. In what follows, I discuss in more detail a few of the ways in which stress builds upon itself.

Becoming more aware of where the stress is coming from can help us to better manage it, particularly when we experience higher and more constant levels of stress. Examining the most common sources of stress can help—when you read about the types of stressors that many people face, your biggest stressors will likely become evident as what you read resonates with your experience. You may wish to take notes as you read about these stressors and realize which ones are affecting your life, or you may decide to read first and examine your stressors all together afterward. Either strategy works, so try what works for you.

Common Sources of Stress in Our Lives

Stress can come from many sources and affect people in different ways. The end of a relationship can be a freeing experience for one person and a crushing one for another. Even the experience of sitting at a desk and working while the sounds of birds and lawnmowers come in through an open window can feel soothing to one person and frustrating to another. Because of this variation, we cannot say for certain which experiences are inherently stressful to everyone, and to what degree.

That said, surveys have shown that certain experiences tend to feel particularly stressful for many people and that certain situations are more commonly experienced as stressful. The following are some of the top sources of stress that people commonly experience. This is not an exhaustive list, but when you are looking at where the stress may be coming from in your life, here are some popular culprits.

Work

Many people cite work as one of their biggest stressors, and there are many reasons for this. Given that most of us spend a large proportion of our time at work, jobs are often closely tied to our personal identities, our finances, and our lifestyles as a whole. This makes our work lives quite influential on our overall well-being. People with jobs that have certain characteristics are at risk for higher levels of stress, as well as an increased risk of burnout, anxiety, and depression. Here are some of the most serious on-the-job stressors.

Unclear Requirements

When workers aren’t clear on the extent of their responsibilities, it becomes difficult for them to fulfill these obligations. This is obvious, but there are many work situations with unclear requirements, where workers know that they have missed something only when it becomes a problem. When people are not clear on what their jobs entail, they can be asked to do things that are not their responsibility, and they may be unsure if they can refuse. They can work hard all day and never know if they have done enough. They can find themselves feeling insecure or resentful and not know what to do about it. Particularly when those in charge are not clear communicators, this can present a stressful dynamic.

During difficult economic times, when companies are downsizing and workers who remain are given job responsibilities that were formerly handled by others, this can become even more of an issue. People may find themselves expected to do more than they were originally hired to do, or they may feel that their jobs will be in jeopardy if they do not offer to take on extra tasks. This can inject additional pressure into an already stressful work situation.

How to Manage

If you find yourself in a job where requirements are unclear, you may not even realize that this is a significant source of stress—you may simply be aware that you feel stressed at work, and aren’t sure how to meet all the demands. If an unclear job description is part of the problem, be sure to talk to whoever is in charge and see if you can get (in writing) clarification on these issues. If you are self-employed, be sure to take the reins in communication and clarify with your clients what their expectations are, letting them know what they can expect from you. (Read more about communication and boundary setting in Key 6.)

Unattainable Demands

In other job situations, the demands are clear but impossible to meet. Workers may be expected to get more work done than time permits or to do work that requires resources they do not have. This type of situation becomes disheartening, because workers feel overwhelmed and eventually consider giving up. Situations like these can pose a threat to self-esteem, to feelings of job security, and to hope for any sense of accomplishment.

Again, this is a situation where self-awareness becomes very important. People in jobs in which there are unrealistic demands can feel very stressed if they do not realize that the demands are unattainable, and do something about it. They may feel that the work is draining and difficult, but realizing that it is unrealistic to be able to complete it can actually be a relief.

How to Manage

It is helpful if you can look at your situation objectively and see that the expectations placed on you are unrealistic. Perhaps the worst thing we can do is to hold ourselves to unrealistic demands and judge ourselves for not measuring up, rather than recognizing when something is simply not possible. If you find yourself in a job situation where you believe that the demands are unrealistic, it is important to talk to your boss about this and see if you can objectively show what it is about the job that might be unreasonable. If you are a freelance worker, you may have to have a talk with yourself and adjust your own expectations. Communication with clients and boundary setting are also crucial. (Again, see Key 6.) Because attempting to meet impossible demands can be so disheartening and can induce burnout and depression, this is a situation that should be addressed in whatever way is feasible.

Low Recognition

Job situations that offer low compensation, that are considered menial, or that in other ways fail to provide a payoff for the required efforts can be disheartening and stress inducing. When things happen at work that cause people to feel that they are not respected for the work they do, this can damage self-esteem, motivation, and drive, making a job feel more challenging and draining. It is not necessarily about ego gratification as much as it is about feelings of being valued. Feeling a sense of unfairness about being passed over for promotions; feeling belittled by a manager, co-worker, or clients; and feeling taken advantage of are all stressful feelings that can contribute to feelings of chronic stress and a lack of satisfaction with a job.

How to Manage

If you feel a lack of recognition in your job, there may be ways to create recognition in your life without having to change jobs in order to get it. If talking to your manager, boss, or company’s human resources department doesn’t work, you can create a supportive network of friends and co-workers, and you can congratulate one another on your accomplishments. Consider having a regular lunch meeting where you all share what you are most proud of (and take turns figuratively patting each other on the back) or get other support with your challenges—it may sound unnecessary, but therapists and coaches commonly have supportive groups like this, because they can be very beneficial. You may also simply have a supportive friend or two with whom you can exchange celebratory phone calls. Another option would be to have a hobby outside of work that provides this positive feedback that we all need, even if it is not directed toward your accomplishments at your job. The point to remember is that lack of appreciation can be a stressor in any job, and steps can be taken to manage that stress.

Another option that can be quite effective for alleviating stress in a situation like this is to find deeper meaning in your job. If you can recognize ways in which your job benefits others, for example, the job becomes more important than just the tasks involved, and doing the work takes on greater significance, even if the tasks themselves are not intrinsically enjoyable.

High Penalties for Mistakes

In fields like medicine or transportation, there is necessarily a narrow margin for error—if mistakes are made, people can die. These are not the only fields in which there are highly negative consequences that accompany mistakes; some companies will fire people for small errors, certain managers will berate employees when mistakes are made, and in other situations, the consequences are simply part of the job that cannot be changed. Freelancers and business owners may lose customers when small errors are made, and those unhappy customers may be vocal in their dissatisfaction.

Whether the penalties are the decision of the company or simply part of the job, work situations that allow for few mistakes can be unnerving. They can keep us in a constant state of vigilance and bring feelings of self-doubt and insecurity. After a while, the pressure can take a toll.

How to Manage

There is not a lot that can be done to manage situations like those described above, other than to take care of ourselves so that we are functioning at our best (see Key 5 for more on this) and manage our stress as effectively as possible so we can handle a little extra stress from such jobs.

Lack of Challenge

It would seem that an unchallenging job would bring relief from stress, but certain types of jobs that lack challenge can actually be more stressful than jobs that present a greater level of challenge. This is because we naturally crave growth, and it can feel good to do work that uses our unique strengths. (See more about this in Key 7 in the section on gratifications.) People actually tend to feel less stress when performing tasks that present just the right level of challenge—not so much that the work is stressful, but not so little that it becomes painfully boring and meaningless. Those who work at jobs that are repetitive and unchallenging may find themselves dreading going to work. This is not as heavy a stressor as some of the others discussed here, but it can certainly take a toll.

How to Manage

If you find yourself at a job that does not use your strengths or challenge you, there may be a simple fix. Putting time into hobbies that do challenge you when you are not working may provide you with the stimulation you need to feel more balanced in your life as a whole. In this case, more of a challenge means less of a feeling of stress.

Relationships

Relationships can bring us the best of times and the worst of times. While often beneficial to our health and happiness, our relationships can also present obstacles that are frequently cited as main stressors in people’s lives. While we discuss the interplay between our relationships and stress in further detail in Key 6, there are a few relevant points to remember here when it comes to relationships as a stressor. The following are types of relationships that can be stressful.

Toxic Relationships

It can be highly stressful to be in relationships in which we are not respected. When we are subject to frequent criticism, gossip, unrealistic demands, contempt, mocking, and other negative experiences—when we do not feel safe being ourselves—we may not realize the toll it takes on us. Likewise, in relationships in which we find ourselves not being our best, it can be bad not only for us but also for other people in our lives. We may become used to the situation, may fail to recognize the damage that is done, and may neglect to do anything to change the circumstances we are in. Relationships that habitually make us feel bad about ourselves can be constant sources of stress, because they can lead to negative rumination, feelings of low self-esteem, conflicts to constantly resolve, and other threats to our happiness and self-worth.

Caregiver Situations

People who are in constant charge of the welfare of loved ones are exposed to a particularly intense level of stress, the severity of which varies according to the level of needs that the caregivers must meet. Regardless of how much caretakers may love their relatives, the responsibilities can be draining, and the feelings associated with them can exacerbate the stress experienced from the workload.

When children are small, they require a nearly constant level of care and involvement. Studies show that marital satisfaction declines in those early years of parenthood as parents work to meet these demands. While young children ideally share a close bond with their parents or caretakers, the feeding, changing, chasing, tantrums, and other demands that are part and parcel of caring for small children can take a toll and create stress.

Those who are caring for sick, disabled, or elderly relatives often experience similarly high levels of stress. In fact, this type of stress can be much more taxing. First, it can be emotionally difficult to contend with the reality that a loved one is in need of constant support; caregivers feel for their loved ones and would prefer to see them healthy and able-bodied for their own sake. Needing care can be difficult on these loved ones as well, and caregivers often feel this, perhaps feeling guilt over their own feelings of stress in the situation. The workload can be even more difficult than that of caring for small children, because it can be unexpected, emotionally draining, and more physically demanding to deal with an adult who needs help with basic self-care, medical procedures, and other challenges.

Caregivers may feel even more stress if they experience guilt for their feelings of exhaustion and being overwhelmed. However, even the most loving caregivers are human, and sometimes the demands of meeting another person’s needs can take a toll on our ability to meet our own.

How to Manage

Getting support—both emotional and practical—and carving out time for self-care are vital for stress management at this stage. Ideally, the responsibility of caregiving should be shared among several people so that no one person becomes burned out. Involving siblings in the care of an elderly parent or dividing responsibility among spouses and perhaps using outside resources in caring for a child with special needs can ensure that each caregiver has the opportunity to adequately care for his or her own needs. However, there are not always others who are willing or able to help. Fortunately, there are support groups for parents and caregivers in the community, and getting acquainted with these resources can make quite a difference. If you are feeling overwhelmed as a caregiver, I encourage you to take action now by researching resources (others you can trust and support groups in your community) that can help.

Hectic Schedules

Overwhelmed seems to be the new normal for many people. We, as a society, have begun to expect much more from ourselves in recent years than was the case for previous generations. Many people find themselves working longer hours than ever before, and often working more than one job. We fail to take vacations when they are offered. One recent survey found that only 45% of respondents planned to take a vacation over the summer—the lowest percentage in the survey’s 11-year history—and of those, only 35% planned to take longer trips; most were expecting to take only the weekend for their vacation.

We fill our spare time with more responsibilities, and then we wonder why we are exhausted (or perhaps we have stopped wondering or even recognizing it).

How to Manage

Becoming aware of the hectic pace of our lives can be a first step toward carving out a more reasonable lifestyle, but sometimes it takes looking seriously at our schedules to realize that we have had too much, and to know which activities to cut out. One way to take an honest look and begin the process of optimizing your schedule is to create a thorough schedule for yourself, if you haven’t already. Rather than merely listing your major commitments, find a calendar application that you can use on your computer (I like iCal and Google Calendar), and list all the things that make up your schedule. Block out and label how much time it takes you to get ready in the morning, how much time you spend driving, and even your relaxation time, and see where your time is committed. For an even more accurate picture of where your time currently goes, you can check in with the calendar throughout the day and see if you are actually doing what you are projecting you do each day. Plotting out a detailed schedule like this can allow you to really see where your time goes and to more clearly see where time may be wasted or discern which activities are not really serving your goals and life satisfaction. (We cover time management more thoroughly in Key 5, but becoming aware of when we are overcommitted is a first step.)

Health

Stress and health are closely linked. Stress can affect our health, as I mentioned earlier in this chapter, and health issues can bring considerable stress. In fact, dealing with health issues represents one of the bigger stressors that people face. With longer life expectancies and greater medical advances, we tend to experience more chronic illnesses (such as heart disease and cancer) than infections and viral diseases, which claimed more lives a century ago (and, interestingly, virtually all these chronic illnesses have direct or indirect links to stress, among other risk factors). The stress of living with chronic conditions and serious health threats can touch not only those who experience the stress but also their friends and family. And conditions that are less serious can take a toll as well.

How to Manage

The knowledge that we need to take care of our health can weigh heavily on our minds when we are stressed and too overwhelmed to make the best choices. The reality of dealing with a serious health condition brings much more stress. The best thing we can do is to carve out time to be proactive about remaining healthy, find support where possible, and practice stress management techniques to support our overall health and wellness. Picking up this book (and reading it) is a very important first step that you have already taken. Following the advice in Key 3 on taking care of your body, and the tips in Key 8 for maintaining resilience-promoting habits can be your best bet for enhancing overall health and wellness.

Life Adjustments

As I discussed in the Introduction, one of the most often cited characterizations of stress is that it results from any situation that requires a response from us. This means that events in our lives that are both positive and negative can bring stress—it simply comes from having to formulate a response. Different life events take a heavier or lighter toll, but each event can cause stress. One of the more popular ways to measure stress in a person’s life is by using the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale (named after the psychologists who created it), which names 43 stressful life events and weighs each according to the amount of stress that it creates and its likelihood of leading to associated illness. The scale is scored by tallying the “value” of each of the events that have occurred in the past year. While this scale may not present a perfect measure of stress experienced (for example, a divorce or a death in the family may have a heavier impact on one person than on another, depending on the relationships involved), it does provide a reliable general measure and a clear basic picture. It also demonstrates the point that each event in our lives can take a toll on our overall stress levels. The list includes events as obviously stressful as “death of a spouse,” “divorce,” and “incarceration”; midlevel stressors like “change in frequency of arguments” and “change to a different line of work” and relatively benign events like “change in eating habits” and “vacation.” While the scale helps to provide a clearer picture of how much stress has been encountered in the past year, simply looking at your life and assessing the events that have brought the most stress can help you to get more in touch with where your stress is coming from. This can be effective because you may have a clear understanding of exactly what impact each event has had on you, based on personal factors and other issues that are going on in your life. Looking at the stressful events in the past year or so also helps you to get into the frame of mind that can allow you to become more aware of your stressors and become more proactive in handling them. Which types of stressful events have you faced in the past year, and what toll do you think they have had?

Attitudes and Perspectives

We don’t always realize it, but the way in which we perceive and process our lives can actually be a source of stress in itself. When we look more closely at the negatives than at the positives of a situation, we can experience it as more threatening and, therefore, more stressful. When we dwell on negative events in our lives, we exacerbate the stress we are feeling. When we approach various situations in our lives as competitions for perfection, feeling a need to best those around us and beating ourselves up for anything short of an impossible ideal, we can cause unnecessary stress in ourselves and in those around us. I explore this in greater detail in Key 4; the important thing to note here is that becoming aware of these thought patterns is vital. If we don’t realize that our patterns of thinking can have an effect on our stress levels, we are trapped in a dynamic that follows us wherever we go and magnifies the stress that we experience in our lives. Here are three main thinking patterns to be aware of:

• Rumination. This involves dwelling on the negative, particularly when there is nothing you can do about it. It is natural to want to fix problems as they arise, but rumination is a negative and unproductive form of dwelling on things in our lives that are already causing us stress. Rumination can eat up hours of what could have been a more pleasant day.

• Negative thinking. Focusing on the negative in a situation, expecting things to go wrong, explaining away the positive things that happen in life—these are all patterns of negative thinking. If you find yourself zeroing in on the pessimistic side of things, you can save yourself a lot of stress if you stop. Noticing this pattern is the first step.

• Cognitive distortions. There are several types of cognitive distortions (again, discussed in detail in Key 4). The link between them is that they ignore a vital piece of reality, and they cause stress. These patterns of distorted thinking are automatic and designed by the psyche to protect people from stressful realities; unfortunately, they tend to cause more stress in the long run than they eliminate in the present. Notice if you begin to discount certain realities, convince yourself that you are “right” in situations without objective proof, or otherwise distort in your mind what is objectively happening around you. Facing things the way they actually are is ultimately less stressful.

Activity to Try: Become More Aware of Your Sources of Stress

After reading about the main sources of stress that people experience, and what about them makes them most stressful, you may already have a clearer picture of where the stress in your life is coming from, and you may have some ideas about where to start in managing your stress. The following exercises can help you move further along in the process of unearthing the origins of your stress and of creating a list of which major areas to address when answering the question, Where do I begin?

Activity to Try: Maintain a Stress Journal

It can be quite helpful to maintain a running list of the stressors in your life, as a way to track where your main stressors and energy drains lie and to enable you to create a plan for managing them. When maintaining a stress journal, you may simply reflect on your day each evening and record what seemed to be the biggest stressors you encountered. Over the course of a few days, you will notice patterns that point to the chronic stressors in your life, as well as the most taxing situations you face. As you record what you face with regularity, you will likely notice more of what is taking a toll and can be motivated to make changes that can stop the stress.

Schedule Periodic Check-Ins

Maintaining a stress journal can be a very useful tool for identifying sources of stress. However, we sometimes tend to put more emphasis on some types of events when we look back over the day, and we fail to remember other stressors that played a role. For example, if you have a stressful commute to work because you are engaging in rumination about the day before, you may set yourself up for a more stressful day at the office, perhaps even making mistakes that you wouldn’t have made if you were in a more relaxed state. Looking back over your day, you may not remember that the ride in was stressful because of what you were thinking about, or may not even remember the ride as being stressful at all. However, the effects are there, and this is a situation that should be addressed.

In cases like this, it can be helpful to periodically check in with yourself throughout the day and notice what is causing you stress from hour to hour. This is a practice sometimes used in studies on stress, and it can be effective for short-term use as you examine the areas of your life that are bringing the greatest levels of stress. Simple, periodic check-ins can take a few minutes here and there, and this system can accomplish two goals: It can help you to become more aware of what is stressing you, so that you can begin to make changes that will help the most, and it can help you to immediately change what you are doing in cases where that is possible. (For example, in the scenario we just discussed, you may have been immediately less likely to continue in rumination if you were reminded that you were doing so.)

Check-ins can be simple. You can set an alarm to go off every hour or half hour or at whatever interval you choose, and simply gauge how you are feeling and why as the alarm goes off. Recording what you are experiencing in your stress journal can work well here, although you can still gain some insight by simply stopping and assessing.

A typical stress check-in log might look like this:

9:00 A.M. Drove to work, and found myself ruminating about what Angelina said yesterday.

10:00 A.M. Found myself cleaning up a mess that Jenkins made with a client last week.

11:00 A.M. Just caught myself daydreaming instead of working. I’m more exhausted than I realized.

Another way to do this is to notice how you feel and why at various natural stopping points throughout your day: when you arrive at work (or school, or back home from driving your kids), when you take a midmorning break, when you have lunch, and so on. By becoming more aware of how you feel and when, you can spot stressors that you may have simply accepted, and you can see if you are able to eliminate them from your life.

Try Lifestyle Scan Meditation

Helpful in providing more immediate answers on what is stressing you, this exercise takes about 5 minutes. While journaling about stress in real time or over the course of a few weeks may yield a more accurate picture of your situation, this can work more quickly and supply you with some answers as well.

1. Take a minute to relax. Find a quiet room, get comfortable, and close your eyes.

2. Vividly imagine going through your day. In your mind’s eye, see yourself getting up in the morning and getting ready, then going through the activities you would normally perform in the course of a day. Imagine getting dressed, driving to work or school, or whatever you do in your day.

3. With each imagined activity, note how you feel about what you are thinking about. Do you feel a touch of anxiety when thinking about the drive to work? Do you find yourself tempted to ruminate about the difficult co-worker at the office? Do you feel a touch of anxiety when you think about helping your child with homework or meeting up with your significant other? The feelings you have during this visualization exercise will not be as intense as they would be in real life, so you need to be sensitive to what comes up for you—notice which areas of life feel stressful when you think about them.

4. Write this down. You may want to explore your feelings on paper after the visualization portion of this exercise, or you may simply want to make a note of the areas of your life that feel stressful and move on from there. This list will come in handy as you go through the next keys and start formulating a plan to manage the stress.

Ask a Friend

Even if you are not sure what is causing you the greatest amounts of stress in your life, there are people who can likely tell you: your friends and family. Think of the people you talk to the most, and the most candidly. What would they say brings you the most stress? Bluntly put, what do they hear you complain about the most? Think about what they might say—and if you’re not sure, you may want to ask them!

Rate the Main Areas of Your Life for Stress

Imagine each of the following areas of your life and rate the stress that they cause on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning that they bring no stress, and 10 meaning that they bring unbearable stress. On the lines below each main topic or on a separate sheet of paper, add what parts of this aspect of your life may bring the most stress. (For example, under “job stress” you may list “lack of recognition,” or “impossible workload”; under “relationship stress,” you may list the name of the person who seems to cause the greatest level of stress.)

1. Job stress ___

a. _________________________________________________