Levels of Stress and Stressors

Stress is not a single thing. Different kinds of stress affect people differently. Different sources produce different stresses. Four levels of stress and a set of specific stressors describe what school staff actually deal with.

Stress can be positive

Stress can be both positive and negative. The response to stress, and how it is managed, shapes how it affects the person.

Not all stress is bad. Some stress is energising and productive. The same biological response that produces destructive chronic stress also produces the focused energy that gets work done.

The four levels distinguish positive from negative stress.

Eustress

Eustress is good stress that comes from pleasant events or conditions. It is curative in nature: a positive cognitive response to stress that is healthy. It gives a positive feeling of fulfilment and shows a positive correlation with life satisfaction and hope.

Eustress is the stress of good challenges. The first day of school for a new teacher. The annual school day approaching. A new programme being launched. A child finally making a breakthrough.

These produce stress in the technical sense: heart rate up, focus sharp, energy mobilised. But the emotional valence is positive. The person feels alive, engaged, growing.

A school that has eustress in its work is a school where staff feel energised. The challenges are real but they feel like opportunities, not threats.

Distress

Distress is stress that results from unpleasant events or conditions. If the stimulus is negative, the experience is really distress, even though people often label it simply as stress. The death of a close friend is a typical example.

Distress is the stress of bad situations. Loss of a loved one. A difficult parent complaint. A bad performance review. Financial trouble.

This is what most people mean when they say “stress”. The negative kind that wears down the body and mind.

A school’s job is to minimise unnecessary distress while accepting that some is unavoidable. Death, illness, loss happen. The school can support staff through these without being able to prevent them.

Acute stress

Acute stress comes from specific events or situations that involve novelty, a threat to the ego, unpredictability, and a poor sense of control.

Acute stress is sharp and short. A specific event. A surprise. A loss of control.

In a school: an angry parent confronting a teacher in the corridor. An unexpected inspection. A sudden medical emergency. A child’s serious behaviour incident.

Acute stress can be intense but is usually time-limited. The body responds, deals with it (or fails to), and the event passes.

Chronic stress

Chronic stress is prolonged stress that exists for weeks, months, or even years. Its sources include poverty and broken family situations.

Chronic stress is the dangerous kind. It does not pass. It accumulates.

In a school: a teacher in a chronically difficult section. A staff member with persistent family stress. A school in financial crisis. A teacher in an unhappy marriage. A community in extended turbulence.

Chronic stress is what produces exhaustion in Selye’s model. The body and mind cannot sustain the response indefinitely.

A school head should watch especially for chronic stress in staff. The signs are subtle but real: persistent fatigue, gradually declining performance, increased absences, withdrawal from collegial life.

Organisational stressors

Factors that cause stress are called “stressors”. Several categories come from the organisation itself.

Organisational climate

A high-pressure environment that places chronic work demands on employees fuels the stress response. A school with consistently high pressure (always behind, always urgent, always more to do) produces chronic stress in staff. The pressure may be necessary in some moments; sustained at high levels, it damages.

Organisational structure

Structure defines the levels of hierarchy, the degree of rules and regulations, and where decisions are made. Excessive rules and a lack of participation in decisions are structural variables that often become potential stressors.

A school where staff have no voice in decisions tends to feel controlled rather than professional. The lack of agency itself is a stressor.

Organisational leadership

Leadership represents the managerial style of the organisation’s senior executives. Some chief executives create a culture characterised by tension, fear, and anxiety.

A principal who manages by fear produces a stressful workplace. The same school under a different principal is often less stressful.

Organisational changes

When changes occur, people have to adapt, and adapting may cause stress. Change itself is a stressor. A school in constant change keeps its staff in constant adaptation, with no settled period to recover.

Occupational demands

Some jobs are more stressful than others. Jobs that involve risk and danger produce more stress. Teaching is moderately stressful as a profession. Some roles in a school (deputy head, principal) are particularly so.

Work-related stressors

Several specific work-related stressors are worth naming.

Work overload

Excessive workload puts a person under great pressure and leads to stress. Two forms:

• Qualitative: a job that is complicated or beyond the employee’s capacity.
• Quantitative: too many activities to be performed in the prescribed time.

A teacher given a class she is not qualified for has qualitative overload. A teacher with too many sections has quantitative overload. Both are stressors.

Work under-load

When very little work, or too simple or repetitive work, is done by an employee, the routine and simple nature of the job can lead to monotony and boredom, and to stress.

Counter-intuitive but real. Under-loaded workers also experience stress. Boredom is a stressor. A teacher used to challenging work who is given only routine tasks may experience stress despite the low workload.

Working conditions

Employees may be subject to poor working conditions: poor lighting and ventilation, excessive noise, dust, and so on. Unpleasant conditions create physiological and psychological imbalance and cause stress.

Bad physical conditions produce stress. A staffroom that is hot, crowded, and noisy is a stressor. A classroom with inadequate ventilation drains the teacher’s energy.

Second-hand stress

Workers who appear rushed and busy tend to raise the stress levels of almost everyone they come into contact with throughout the day. Overall team productivity often decreases as collective stress levels rise.

A school head who is always rushed and stressed transmits the state to her staff. The school’s collective stress level rises. Productivity drops.

This is a useful warning for principals. Your own visible stress is contagious. Managing your visible state is part of managing the school’s stress level.

A school’s stress map

A school head can map her school’s stressors using these categories.

1. What is our organisational climate? Tense or sustainable?
2. What is our structure producing? Voice or voicelessness?
3. What is my leadership style producing? Calm or anxiety?
4. How much change are we asking of staff? Sustainable or overwhelming?
5. Who is overloaded? Who is under-loaded?
6. What working conditions are we providing?
7. What is the second-hand stress level? How much is each person’s stress affecting others?

The honest map points to where the school’s stress level can be reduced. Some sources are easier to address (working conditions) than others (organisational climate). All can be improved over time.

Flashcard

What are the four levels of stress, and what is the distinction between eustress and distress?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Eustress, Distress, Acute, Chronic.

1. Eustress. Good stress from pleasant events; energising; healthy.

2. Distress. Bad stress from unpleasant events; what people usually mean by “stress”.

3. Acute stress. Sharp, time-limited; specific events with novelty or threat.

4. Chronic stress. Prolonged over weeks to years; dangerous; accumulates without recovery; produces exhaustion.

Eustress and distress are the technical distinction; the same biological response can have positive or negative emotional valence. A new initiative can produce eustress if framed as opportunity, distress if framed as threat. A school head can shape framing, which shifts how staff experience the same situation.

Chronic stress is the most dangerous because it accumulates. A school head should watch for it specifically: persistent fatigue, gradual decline, withdrawal.