Nurse's Path to Stress Prevention: Straight Talk, Simple Tips from Nurse Together

Deadlines. The daily commute. Work is stressful as it is. But for healthcare professionals, the word 'stress' takes on a whole new meaning. On top of the everyday demands of your job, the profound responsibility of caring for your patients coupled with managing the needs of their loved ones, can take its toll on your mental and physical well-being. Over time, day-to-day stress factors can add up, leaving you feeling anxious, fatigued and overwhelmed. Understanding how stress works is the first step toward regaining control and ensuring a positive work environment.

Stress: What Causes It?

Stress is a normal biological reaction to events or situations that happen every day. Linked to the natural “fight or flight” response that occurs when your body perceives danger, stressful situations trigger the release of certain hormones that increase your heart rate, heighten awareness and cause a temporary surge of energy.

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Holiday Stress: 6 Ways To Deal With Difficult Family Members During The Holidays from Huffington Post

George Burns once said: "Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city." So that would explain why the holidays are so stressful. Those dear relatives who live in San Francisco suddenly are lingering in front of your refrigerator in Cincinnati, Ohio and you have to figure out a socially acceptable way of setting the table together, resisting the urge to re-expose the childhood wounds that you've learned to protect.

Here are a few tips I use in interacting with those family members who tend to wake my grumpy inner child, triggering an ugly tantrum right about the time Santa shows up with his loot.

1. Repeat: It's Not About Me

You think it's about you when your brother calls you a "selfish, lazy, son of a something," but actually it's not. He may point his finger at you and say, "You. I'm talking about you." But he's really not. He is seeing something that has nothing to do with who you are.

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The vicious physiology of stress from CNN

One of my favorite parts of this job is stalking busy scientists researching different aspects of stress.

I recently tracked down the brilliant Dr. Rajita Sinha, director of the Yale Stress Center, and spoke to her about what she’s working on. In this first part of our conversation, we discussed the physiology of stress and its connection to maladies, ranging from addiction to chronic disease, diabetes and obesity.

How did you come to study stress?

Early on I was working with different types of emotions - anger and sadness - and how they affect the body and change our responses to different stimuli in the environment. One of the things I observed was that generally people don’t have pure emotions, like anger or fear.

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