Research Paper on Refraining and Managing Stress in the 21st Century

Introduction

Every person develops or experiences stress in life which occurs due to the daily activities and life events. Powell and Enright (2015) assert that throughout human history, people experience stress as it is a part of human life as it is chronicled in history books, art, as well as literature. The existence of stress in one's life manifests itself in myriad ways. For instance, one may give a rude response or an angry reaction to an innocent question or even develop a headache after hard work.Once an individual identifies such symptoms, it is crucial to identify the means to handle the stress. As such, stress management is a crucial aspect in human life to ensure one refrain or manages stressful events. Failure to manage or refrain from stressful events could lead to chronic stress which has broad implications. This paper provides vignettes of stress management by discussing the contexts, stressors, and symptoms and the interventions that can be used for stress management.

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Various stress management interventions exist including meditation, counseling, and therapy. This paper aims at discussing meditation as a stress management technique. Meditation as a stress management intervention occurs in two ways; either at a personal level without a clinician or a psychologist or at the clinical level where a psychologist or a clinician is present to help a client go through the process (Goyal et al., 2014). To achieve results in meditation, it is crucial for an individual or a clinician to understand the source of stress. Meditation helps in dealing with various health-related problems such as depression, anxiety, and stress or distress among other health issues.

Vignettes of Stress Management

Having to work in9-5 employment seems to be an enjoyable task for many. However, in the hotel industry, many employees became fatigued and stressed through an encounter with customers. Sometimes the customers appear to be rude, rogue, and may even use abusive comments if they are not satisfied with the service. The rule that "the customer is always rights" sometimes prevents restaurant employees from communicating or airing their hardships. Whenever complaints reach the management, the employees may face punishment. Hence, working in the hotel industry may be stressful. Consequently, employees went home fatigued and stressed and ended up directing their stress to their spouses or families. In this case scenario, the stress suffices to emanate from hardships experienced at the workplace.

In another scenario, psychologists seem to assist people in the workplace to overcome various challenges of life. On average, a psychologist may have to deal with more than two up to ten clients within a single day. Sometimes it may become overwhelming for the particular psychologists who are required to facilitate assistance to their clients. Consequently, a psychologist may develop stress as a result of listening to various challenges that clients go through. Psychologists are needed to put themselves in the shoes or scenarios of their clients-psychologically processing stressful events in a bid to assess the most appropriate resolution that clients could use. This leads to work burnout which in other terms means stress. Therefore, it is essential for a psychologist to understand how to address the stressful events to ensure that they do not develop severe stress-related health problems such as depression or chronic stress.

Analysis

The analysis of the vignettes provides an understanding of the context within which stress occurs. As for both the hotel worker and the psychologist, stress develops or occurs due to the interaction with clients at the workplace (Marek, Schaufeli, & Maslach, 2017). Interacting with fellow human beings suffices to bea challenging situation can lead to stressful events. Stress emanates from various situations which include at the workplace, family relationships, or even from public events. For instance, people involved in a protest may encounter police and be arrested which increases tensions and stress. However, the two scenarios are in the context of the workplace. Importantly, any form of employment suffices to have its negative implications which may cause an employee to develop stress due to the issues or hardships that one has to go through since morning until the end of a shift.

The stressors in the vignettes suffice to be human beings. In the presented vignettes, people tend to, directly and indirectly, cause stress.As for the hotel employee, the stress is influenced by clients directly through complaints, quarrels with customers or mistreatment from the management due to the negative feedback from clients. On the other hand, although the psychologist may not become stressed due to quarrels with clients, stress may develop unconsciously due to listening to various problems that clients go through. As a psychologist one becomes the central part whereby clients come to relieve their stress (Marek, Schaufeli, & Maslach, 2017). Therefore, it can be concluded that stress in the context of the two vignettes emerges from burnout or hardships. Moreover, during stress management, it is crucial to understand the source and the context of the stressors to determine the best stress management approach to implement.

The particular vignettes contain different symptoms that portray that the hotel worker or the psychologist has stress. In the first scenario, the hotel employee contains symptoms in that they may show anger and irritation while communicating with their spouses and family members. Subsequently, they may develop headaches after work. Moreover, a hotel employee may show the unwillingness to communicate or interact with anyone and always desire to sleep after work (Marek, Schaufeli, & Maslach, 2017). On the other hand, the signs of stress in the psychologist are portrayed by the instances of restlessness after work. Similarly, after dealing with many clients, the psychologist develops acute headaches. Hence, stress management interventions are crucial to ensure one understands the appropriate approaches to refrain or manage stress. Practicing meditation suffices to be a basic practice that facilitates stress relief.

Stress Management Intervention

Meditation suffices to accrue benefits in the management of stressful situations. According to Sharma and Rush (2014), the incorporation of yoga and meditation in a mindfulness-based stress intervention suffices to be an essential approach for tackling depression, anxiety, and stress. The study involved the assessment of various studies involving mindfulness-based stress reduction conducted between 2009 and 2014. Although the studies did not involve meditation alone; combining it with yoga or practice was effective in facilitating stress management. The findings of the meta-analysis study prove that stress management through meditation or mindfulness-based stress intervention is an effective modality for stress management. Henceforth, the hotel worker and the psychologist can consider the intervention after work to help relieve stress. The intervention may even involve combining yoga with meditation to accrue improvements in stress management.

de Vibe et al. (2013) carried out a study of 288 medical and psychology students to investigate the intervention useful for reducing burnout and distress. de Vibe et al. (2013) assert that failure to manage stress can lead to an inability to function well at the workplace as well as interacting with family members. The study focused on studying the intervention effective to help university students develop coping skills to prevent distress and future burnout. The study involves a seven-week mindfulness-based approach to stress management. The results of the study assert that the students or participants involved in the study achieved a significant improvement in psychological distress and mental well-being after the meditation programs. This proves the significance of meditation in combating stress, anxiety and work burnout. Similarly, psychologists and hotel employees can utilize meditation to assist in relieving stress and anxiety that one develops while dealing with clients.

In another study carried out by Ratanasiripong, Park, Ratanasiripong, and Kathalae (2015), the researchers focused on investigating the efficacy of biofeedback and mindfulness or mediation. The study incorporated 89 participants from a nursing college. The findings prove that both biofeedback and meditation help reduce anxiety levels, but meditation was effective in ensuring the reduction of stress to significant levels. As such, meditation was more useful in assisting the students to cope with the stress and work burnout. Similarly, the hotel worker and psychologist can utilize meditation to combat stress and work burnout.

Conclusion

To conclude, meditation suffices to be an essential intervention that helps reduce stress and anxiety that may have developed at the workplace. The intervention suffices to inexpensive as compared to seeking therapy session. Furthermore, meditation can be carried out even after work which makes it effective as one does not have to spend time visiting or booking for appointments with therapists. Hence, it is advisable to use stress management intervention to refrain or manage stress.

References

de Vibe, M., Solhaug, I., Tyssen, R., Friborg, O., Rosenvinge, J. H., Sorlie, T., & Bjorndal, A. (2013). Mindfulness training for stress management: a randomised controlled study of medical and psychology students. BMC medical education, 13(1), 107.

Goyal, M., Singh, S., Sibinga, E. M., Gould, N. F., Rowland-Seymour, A., Sharma, R., ... & Ranasinghe, P. D. (2014). Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA internal medicine, 174(3), 357-368.

Marek, T., Schaufeli, W. B., & Maslach, C. (2017). Professional burnout: Recent developments in theory and research. Routledge.

Powell, T. J., & Enright, S. J. (2015). Anxiety and stress management. Routledge.

Ratanasiripong, P., Park, J. F., Ratanasiripong, N., & Kathalae, D. (2015). Stress and anxiety management in nursing students: biofeedback and mindfulness meditation. Journal of Nursing Education, 54(9), 520-524.

Sharma, M., & Rush, S. E. (2014). Mindfulness-based stress reduction as a stress management intervention for healthy individuals: a systematic review. Journal of evidence-based complementary & alternative medicine, 19(4), 271-286.