Energy drain: How to manage stress before it becomes contagious

(MCT)

FORT WORTH, Tex. — "Stress is higher than it's ever been before," says Cynthia Ackrill. "We have people who don't have a strategy for dealing with what life throws at them."

Ackrill would know: She's a stress expert and board member of the American Institute of Stress in Fort Worth, which conducts research on stress management and provides information to help prevent human illness related to stress.

She cites a 2012 study by the employee assistance provider ComPsych Corp., in which more than half of the employees surveyed reported high levels of stress resulting in extreme fatigue and the feeling of being out of control.

"My belief is that we've overloaded the human coping mechanism," she says.

That's why it's important to have a strategy to manage stress in place before it happens. In fact, Ackrill says people who feel like they have the resources, skills and power to meet the day's challenges actually thrive under stress.

Those who don't will end up expending energy they would otherwise use for creative work on worrying. And that stress is contagious: The neurons in one person's brain will pick up on the state of the neurons in another person's brain, she says. So if the guy in the cubicle next to you is stressed out, you're likely to catch what he's got.

"Are you going to find the perfect job?" Ackrill asks. "No. Does it exist? No. Every job comes with a challenge. If it didn't, you'd be bored."

So how do people with high-stress jobs handle the inevitable stress? We went to three experts — people with some of the highest-stress jobs around — to find out how they cope.

Patrick Byerly, president of the Dallas Marathon

On Thursday night before the weekend of the Dallas Marathon, Patrick Byerly will sleep long and hard. Come the weekend, he'll be lucky to catch a few hours of discontinuous rest.

"That's your go-time," says Byerly, who prepares all year for those three days in December when thousands of runners descend on Dallas.

Their fun is serious work to Byerly. And stressful: The job search portal CareerCast ranks event planning as one of the top 10 most stressful jobs because of the demands and potential for crisis.

Byerly knows. The responsibility for the success or failure of the event rests on his shoulders. But like arduous training is to runners, preparation for the marathon is worth it when Byerly watches those athletes, sweaty and spent, cross the finish line.

"You live for those types of moments," he says.

"Those three days, that's the excitement of what we do. That's what gets us through the year."

That's what energizes him the months approaching the marathon, when he doesn't leave work until 10 p.m. That's why he sleeps only six hours a night. That's why his wife and 2-year-old daughter come to the office to eat dinner with him.

To prevent the responsibility from overwhelming him, Byerly does two things.

"I try to get up every morning around five to go out for, like, an hour run, so that gives me time to get my body moving, get me alert, get me fresh and ready to attack the day."

As the marathon approaches, Byerly turns his morning run into a training session for his own race.

"It helps me make sure I get out of bed," Byerly says.

While he's juggling a million responsibilities, waking up every morning to run is consistent and controllable.

During the workday, he always takes a break to either walk or drive around the block.

"That five minutes for me is an escape where I can just ... take a breath and then go back at it."

Of course, Byerly admits he thrives under pressure.

"I personally feel like I perform better the faster it goes," he says.

But come Sunday evening after the race, when he finally gets to relax, "It's like, aaah."

Tom Hoban, pilot

Tom Hoban loves flying jets.

Hoban, a retired Marine and 22-year pilot for American Airlines, is perceptive, and he immediately distinguishes one of the greatest sources of stress in his job: the safe operation of the aircraft.

For each flight, a pilot must decide the best route to navigate the weather, how to allocate his fuel, whether to steer visually or with instruments, where to land should a mechanism unexpectedly fail.

Getting adequate sleep is the single most important aspect of this operation, Hoban says.

He tries to get eight hours of sleep a night, but admits that's hard, especially when sleeping in unfamiliar hotel rooms.

The other source of stress for Hoban is universal: job security.

"That's a different kind of stress," he says. "But it's pretty significant if you've been put out on the street and out of the job."

Hoban says it's important to leave those worries outside the cockpit.

Like any job, "you're going to have stress no matter what," says Hoban, but unlike most jobs, if Hoban brings his anxiety into the airplane, the consequences could be detrimental.

"Pilots aren't supermen," he says. "We're human beings like everyone else."

Hoban also tries to protect his personal life from workplace stress. After a six-day trip, Hoban will have a few days home with his family, and he makes the most of it.

When he sets the parking brake and shuts down the engine, "I'm done."

Unlike other jobs, there's no additional paperwork. Hoban can go home to his family and relax.

Melanie McMahon, burn nurse at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas

Melanie McMahon meets her burn patients in the tank room deep in the recesses of Parkland Memorial Hospital, where she bathes them, scraping away charred tissue and debriding swollen blisters.

She medicates the wounds, administers pain medication and wraps thick white bandages around the bloody flesh. Then she moves them into the intensive care unit, where she'll regulate their temperature and replenish their fluids.

"Not many people want to do this," McMahon acknowledges quietly.

People ask her, "Oh, you're a nurse? Where do you work? Oh, Parkland? That must be really exciting! What do you do?"

And when she says, "I'm a burn nurse," even the other nurses respond, "Eww. Why do you do that?"

Many of her patients have burns covering their entire bodies. Some are children.

"I think the youngest I've seen is two months," she says.

Though it's grisly, McMahon loves her job.

"If you don't ... even a little bit of stress is going to make you leave it or just continue to just grow animosity for your position," she says.

"Enjoying your job keeps your stress level at a certain dull roar."

Sometimes the stress ruptures McMahon's quiet strength.

Usually, that's if a child appears in the tank room or a patient dies. She'll wonder whom they left behind, and if she helped them die with peace and dignity. If it's too overwhelming, McMahon steps out of the room to catch her breath.

"I generally try not to let anybody see it on the floor, because if the patient or the family sees that type of reaction, then it makes it harder on them."

McMahon unwinds on her drive home, and if it's been a particularly exhausting day, she retreats into her home office, where several clocks hang on the walls.

"I just sit there and listen to them," she says. The monotonous ticking in the silent room helps empty her head of the graphic images.

Then McMahon can stoically return to the tank room.

"I just treat them," she says. "Just kind of put it out of my head as to why they're there or how they got there."

Understanding stress

What exactly is stress, and what's causing it?

Stress is a reaction to whatever is perceived as a threat, says Cynthia Ackrill of the American Institute of Stress in Fort Worth.

Stress is a primitive response that works well in the short run, say if someone's being chased by a tiger, but doesn't work so well in the long run, when lingering problems continuously plague the mind without relief.

Stress can manifest itself physically, in the form of a headache, or emotionally, as debilitating fear or loneliness. Ackrill says it's triggered most often when something happens that doesn't match one's expectations.

"We walk around with an unrealistic expectation that bad things shouldn't happen," she says, and when they do, people feel victimized, which only makes it worse.

Ackrill suggests having short- and long-term practices to cope with stress. She recommends checking in with yourself several times during the day to see how you feel physically, mentally and emotionally. Maybe your blood sugar is low and you need a snack. Maybe you're feeling angry about something and need to cool down.

For a cool-down technique, Ackrill suggests taking a deep breath for five seconds, holding your breath for another five seconds and then releasing your breath for a final five seconds. This helps bring your emotions back to a neutral state.

In the long run, Ackrill says to look at the big picture. Is this just a bad week, or is there a systemic cause of stress that should come off your plate?

Maybe it's just: "This week was horrible, but in the big scheme of things, I got through it. It's all good."

Or maybe the job isn't the right fit.

Inner strength is being able to hold that bigger perspective.

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