Yet, Susan has always been a goal setter and an achiever. Her career taught her to look at things from all angles and to take risks. Recently, Susan made critical decisions with the help of a counselor at a community job search group [Hudson’s Mini-Transition; Kubler-Ross’s Acceptance stage]. Susan was able to see the connections between her daughter’s behavior and her own, and also to express her repressed feelings of resentment of having been the primary wage earner for so many years. After processing these emotions with her counselor and creating coping strategies for managing stress, Susan gained strength of mind, body and spirit. Recognizing and declaring that her family is the number one priority in her life, and her career is not, Susan was able to make choices [Hudson’s Getting Ready phase]. She decided to continue to market her advertising consultancy, because it would give her flexibility to be more present for her daughter’s final year in high school and to rebuild their relationship. Knowing that consulting work would be sporadic income, she added other career options into her strategy that were unrelated to advertising but played to her passions and strengths. Much like a patchwork quilt that has been tenderly pieced together, Susan would become a patchwork career woman [Bridges’ New Beginnings; Hudson’s Go For It].

Stress management

The word stress comes from the field of physics, where it refers to amount of force that is put on something. These forces are external and internal. But the real issue is the strain (another physics term) that occurs as a response to stress (Wheeler, 2007). For most researchers and clinicians, the working definition of stress is the situation that arises in you when life’s challenges and pressures exceed your perceived ability to cope (ibid.). Your whole self is affected by stress—mind, body, spirit—which by definition allows for compartmentalizing the affects and drawing on specific resources to cope. Managing stress during transitions is crucial to maintaining health, mental and physical. Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers (2004), is a leading expert on the physiology of stress. He and others have presented solid evidence that stress affects most of the basic functions of living, including sleep, memory, managing pain, sexual activity, and getting nourishment from food.

It is important for us to note here the difference between acute versus chronic stress. Acute stress is temporary stress and useful, whereas chronic stress is less useful and can be harmful (Wheeler, 2007). The acute stress response is triggered when you sense a threat. The response triggers all sorts of brain and hormone reactions in response to the threat. Once the perceived threat is gone, your body returns to its normal state. Recall when an animal darts in front of your car. Within seconds, your body responds to the threat. You put on the brakes or swerve, your stomach tenses and heart beats faster, you might sweat. It takes a few minutes to feel normal again, but normal returns. You have coped with that stressor quite automatically. It is not uncommon to experience several acute stress situations each day. When stress is chronic, it’s a much different story. When you cannot let go of the threat or continue to play out in your mind what might have happened – what your friends think about it, etc. – you keep that threat living in your system. Do you know someone who is still angry about something that happened over ten years ago? Someone who explodes in anger when something doesn’t go their way? Someone who is still grieving a significant loss from several years ago? These are signs of someone experiencing chronic stress.