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According to Army Lt. Col. Angela Yarnell, assistant professor and research psychologist with the Department of Military and Emergency Medicine at the Uniformed Services University’s (USU) F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine, the process of being stressed is similar to making deposits and withdrawals to a bank account. Every time you experience stress or respond to stressors in your life, you’re making withdrawals from what Yarnell calls your “wellness account.”
“If there’s nothing in your wellness account to withdraw,” she explains, “then your response to stress won’t be very good. Thus, when managing stress, we ultimately want to make deposits (e.g., good sleep, nutrition, exercise, spirituality, meditation, social support, etc.) that fill up our wellness bank so there’s something there for us to make withdrawals on when needed.”
Yarnell shares her tips on how to better take care of your wellness account.
Stress, Stress Management, and Self-care
The stress response is the body’s physical, mental, and emotional reaction to a demand (or stressor). We become stressed when the demands placed on us exceed our ability to cope. It's a normal part of life. It’s said that once you recognize the signs of stress, you’re well on your way to managing it.
Stress management is a type of self-care, but it is not one-size-fits-all. It’s important to figure out what works best for you, whether that’s relying on family support or talking with a friend or meditating.
Self-care means taking steps to ensure that you remain healthy and able to effectively perform your duties as a leader. By engaging in self-care, Yarnell says you’re taking care of yourself and taking care of others, as well as ensuring that the mission can be completed.
“From a leadership perspective, we encourage USU students to make a plan,” says Yarnell, “so they can incorporate wellness-promoting behaviors when they’re not stressed in order to be able to call on them during times of stress.” For example, every year, students from USU’s School of Medicine and Graduate School of Nursing participate in Operation Bushmaster, a five-day medical field practicum designed to develop leadership skills.
Operation Bushmaster allows students to practice tactical combat casualty care under realistic conditions in an austere environment. This field exercise simulates a deployment in medical platoons where students plan and carry out support for combat operations.
The environment is ripe with stressful situations. At the end of the practicum, students reflect on their experience.
“Some students worried that they wouldn’t be able to manage the prolonged stress,” says Yarnell. “They were really overloaded throughout the simulation. They knew that an actual deployment would be longer and eventually more stressful. But, still they wondered how they were going to handle it all.”
In this case, Yarnell encouraged and counseled the students.
“I told them that they had to practice being successful now. I emphasized that they shouldn’t think about how they couldn’t handle stress at the moment, but instead start practicing different stress management techniques and figure out what would work for them.”
Whether students need to go for a run or learn how to meditate or rely on faith, these things need to be already in place so that when stress actually rears its head, the student has a practiced response to it.
“You have to practice when you’re not stressed,” emphasizes Yarnell. “You have to build up that ability to be stressed and grant yourself grace while learning how to do it.”
Furthermore, Yarnell offers, “When we’re in stressful situations, we more than likely lean on negative behaviors (e.g., smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, binge eating, etc.) that exacerbate stress instead of taking it away.”
Learning wellness-promoting self-care behaviors will also ensure that our health and well-being aren’t impacted by the stress we’re experiencing.
Why don’t we take stress seriously?
People often recognize that stress affects their lives, but they don't take appropriate steps to manage that stress in a timely fashion. In that way, stress becomes the boss of them. Stress can have a powerful impact on various aspects of your life, often altering mood, energy level, relationships, and work performance. Stress can also cause and/or exacerbate a wide variety of health conditions.
For example, let’s say that a student has an upcoming exam or is really stressed out over school. Perhaps to address that stress, the student could exercise, take a nap, or go for a run. Or, the student might choose to do something positive to energize him/herself, and then study for the test. However, what often happens is that the student will play video games or binge on Netflix. Those actions feel better right then, but they will increase the student’s stress because the student didn’t work on the task of actually studying for the exam.
“Humans often trick themselves into accepting immediate gratification from stress versus thinking through the long term of what would be better for us,” notes Yarnell. “The long run isn’t necessarily years down the road. It could be that you now have less time to do the things you need to do and thus become even more stressed out.”
What drives leadership stress?
As leaders, it’s vital to have the self-awareness to realize when you’re exhibiting signs of stress and take the necessary steps to manage them appropriately.
“In our leader development program, we talk about the leader and then leadership, which is the activity of influencing others,” remarks Yarnell. “When we think about stress, we see that there are things that apply to both. Everything we’ve talked about in terms of managing our own stress is essential to our performance as a leader.”
Yarnell emphasizes that what we’re normally used to will be fine under stress.
“It’s going to come out. If someone is really quick to anger when he/she is stressed, it may manifest by that person yelling at others or becoming overwhelmed. Thus, this behavior will not make the person an effective leader. This happens often with students during the Operation Bushmaster experience.”
Continuing, Yarnell explains that, usually, students are fine with their peers, however, “when students get overwhelmed and their tendency is to shout, then you’re going to see that happen more under stressful conditions. On the other hand, some students understand this trait about themselves and work hard to reduce that response. Thus, when stress arises, they will not react by shouting. That’s the leader part of it.”
As for the leadership part, Yarnell says we have to ask, “Who else is stressed in that scenario?” and acknowledge that those who are following orders from the leader are likely under stress, too, and are responding to it in their own ways. “So, you have to question,” Yarnell adds, “how does a leader take into account his/her stress, yet still be effective and contribute to mission success?”
Being a leader can be a tough job. But good leaders take the time to sort out what does and doesn’t work. Leaders can take the following actions to counter the harmful effects of stress: recognize stress signals, prioritize self-care, maintain healthy boundaries, ask for help if needed, and practice the art of recovery.
Knowing yourself and your tendencies is the first step to appropriately respond to stress. A calm, cool, and collected leader generates an environment where the team can handle obstacles and challenges with confidence.
What can students do to manage stress?
“In our leader development program,” Yarnell says, “we figure out where the students are and start from there. We focus on what works for them, but first try out different things when they’re not under stress.”
This past year, our students were taught meditation techniques before they engaged in Operation Bushmaster and were encouraged to try them during the field practicum. She suggests, however, that students don’t have to engage in one particular version of meditation. They can use whatever works for them, be it yoga, focused breathing, mindfulness meditation, body tightening and releasing exercises, walking meditation, etc. These quick interventions have been shown to have results for some people. The interventions can change the students’ ability to deal with stress and can change their ability to manage their emotions.
“It’s all connected,” Yarnell says.
Some other stress management techniques that may help minimize the effects of stress include the following: focus on what you can control, tell yourself that it’s okay to be temporarily upset, breathe deeply, exercise, do something proactive to manage stress, practice setting limits, evaluate your priorities, get support, and seek out counseling.
“Self-care is personal,” Yarnell concludes. “Remember to focus on doing things that make you feel satisfied. Self-care involves anything that brings peace and understanding to your life. Consider keeping self-care in your daily life because you’ll be less likely to feel overwhelmed by stress when it occurs in the future.”
| Date Taken: | 06.08.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 06.08.2023 10:30 |
| Story ID: | 446491 |
| Location: | BETHESDA, MD, US |
| Web Views: | 47 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Taking Care of Your Wellness Bank Account: Self-Care Under Stress, by Vivian Mason, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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