I'm so stressed!!!! - Now what does that even mean?

Warning: This is a little dry, but I think it's important to understand in order to discuss the topic

In order to understand how we can moderate stress, the first task is to have a better understanding of what stress is. In conversation we use many abstract concepts and assume we all have a common understanding specific to the context. When your friend say they love pizza, you understand they are not romantically interested in the pizza. In a similar sense, we talk about someone being our friend, yet again, that is very abstract. Ignoring the Facebook definition of "friend", what does a friend mean? Try and think about how one might define it. One of the challenges is that a friend can take on many meanings depending on the context of the situation and there are many intensities of friendship. Yet, in conversation we often use such terms very loosely.

So when we want to study stress, we are confronted with a similar issue. We want to study a concept that one would think is well defined, but we encounter a number of questions: what is stress, is it something we always want to avoid, are there some benefits, how does it fit into our other psychological and physiological reactions, and so forth. After all, as famously stated, you can't study something until you can measure it.

Colloquially, we use stress in a number of ways. One could consider the word being used to described three distinct constructs the encompass stress (O'Sullivan, 2011). Stress can indicate the stressor, this is, the source of stress e.g. “This is a stressful job”. It can also be used to describe an individual’s response to an event e.g. “I get stressed by speaking in public”. Finally, stress can be the condition of an individual after having experienced an event e.g. “I am feeling stressed today”. In my work I am really thinking about the last type, that is, the final condition. 

I categorize stress into three types, of which the last is of specific interest to me: physical, mental, and psychological. The last two may sound similar  but I will explain the discrepancy  It's also worth noting that just because someone is experiencing psychological stress, it may have negative impacts on their physical and mental capabilities. Physical stress is what we do to our bodies when we exert ourselves, and this is the most objective form of stress. One can measure the tension put on muscles, and breaking point, the recovery rate, and so forth. Most of us know that the way we grow muscles is by straining our bodies, tearing fibers, and having them grow back bigger (I am far from an expert, so I apologize if I butchered that description). This is actually a very interesting dynamic, stress is damaging to our bodies, but can have some positive long-term outcomes. However, it's also true that one can over-exert physically and end up hurting oneself quite bad in the form of a torn muscle.

Mental stress is that pain you feel after you've just taken a tough math test. You think you did well, but just the activity of recalling information, processing and analyzing problems and so forth wears out your  brain. There is a reason after such a test you feel wiped out, often feeling it physically, as this is a very draining activity. I'm not sure there is a good parallel to pulling a muscle when it comes to mental stress, but it certain makes for a good cartoon.

Finally, there is psychological stress, and as I said, this is what I'm studying in my work. While mental stress comes from processing analytically activity, psychological stress comes from the impact of scenario testing and decision making. This is what I call uncertainty-based stress, the energy we are expending to handle the amount of scenarios and decisions we must consider. For those interested, I highly recommend Hirsh, Mar, and Peterson's (2012) paper on Psychological Entropy. In essence, we expend energy every time we have to calculate how to handle a situation. The more certain we are of various factors in a situation (how others are likely to act for instance) the fewer scenarios we must consider and therefore the less energy we need to expend. To make matters worse, due to our evolutionary design, when we lack information, we often fill in with danger and negative events. In essence, when we don't know what to expect, we prepare for fight or flight.

Despite discredited comments that we only use 10% of our brains, the truth is our brains run close to 100% at all times. Therefore, as we have to consider more and more scenarios, our minds fatigue in the same manner as when taking an exam. People often refer to this fatigue as anxiety or feeling anxious. They don't know what to expect, so their brains go into a very high gear preparing for the unknown and this makes us jumpy and tired.

So, to bring this all back to the original objective, stress, as I use the term, is that fatigue employees experience due to the uncertainty of change. As organizations go through change, big and small, there is a whole lot of uncertainty about the future. This is due to many factors including: unknown variables, information known by leadership but not shared with employees, poor communication, distrust in leadership, and what a generally unknown and uncertain future. In any situation this would be a challenge, but in the current environment, ripe with distrust it is much worse.

Next time I will touch on the heart of my research - TRUST!


Hirsh, J. B., Mar, R. A., & Peterson, J. B. (2012). Psychological entropy: A framework for understanding uncertainty-related anxiety. Psychological Review, 119(2), 304-320. doi:10.1037/a0026767

O'Sullivan, G. (2011). The relationship between hope, eustress, self-efficacy, and life satisfaction among undergraduates. Social Indicators Research, 101(1), 155-172. doi:10.1007/s11205-010-9662-z