The Buffer Zone Approach to Good Stress Management
By
Douglas Lisle, Ph.D.
Stroll
through any modern bookstore’s psychology/self-help section, and you will see
numerous books addressing concerns about stress management. People in today’s
society are often stressed out, and the authors of these books offer their
thoughts about how to correct the situation.
Some of these books make many fine
suggestions, such as encouraging people to learn relaxation techniques,
and to look at life’s stressors more critically to determine if a particular
stress response is truly indicated. This latter technique can be most useful,
since people are able to make mountains out of molehills quite easily in our
modern environment. By contrast, in my grandmother’s day, she and her family
really did have to worry about having enough to eat, and enough wood for the
Buffer zone approach
Although
techniques such as relaxation training and perspective-taking can be useful,
there is an entirely different approach to stress management that is rarely
discussed. The techniques of this approach involve making life choices in a
manner that leads to reducing the probabilities that stress responses will
occur in the first place. I call this the buffer zone approach.
Three key life values
Threats
to three particular areas of life consistently cause stress. These key areas
are health, wealth, and reputation. When any of these areas is threatened,
stress responses naturally result—as they should. Stress responses are built
into our natural psychology in order to help us deal more effectively with
threats to important values! Stress responses such as increased vigilance,
worry, rumination, and heightened arousal are potentially useful. Our ancestors
were people who worried and got very focused when important values were
threatened. Stress responses helped to increase their survival prospects. Less
concerned people were less successful biologically.
Stress
responses are an important component of our biological heritage, and can serve
us well. If a person quits his job because he doesn’t like the boss, but has no
way to pay his rent or feed himself in the interim, he doesn’t have an
effective stress-response system. If a person takes a short-cut down a dark
alley in a big city late at night in order to save a few steps, she may pay
severe consequences for her lack of a sufficiently pessimistic imagination—a
useful component of the stress response.
Health protection
In
nationwide surveys aimed at determining the most important factors influencing
human life satisfaction, health consistently comes out on top. It is the number
one factor associated with psychological well-being. This is probably not due
to the fact that everyone thinks about his or her health very much. Rather, it
is probably because when health is seriously threatened, the stress response is
so great that it tends to dominate the person’s overall quality of life
experience—as it should! Therefore, the number one key to stress management is
to make healthful living a top priority.
No
one needs the stress of discovering a growth or a tumor, and then hoping it is
benign; or discovering that one’s shortness of breath is the result of one’s
arteries being almost completely clogged. In my view, the best
stress-management technique is to avoid health-related stress altogether, if
possible! You can do this by making daily choices to maintain, or even improve,
your health.
Don’t
be content just because you are not obviously ill. What you want to do,
ideally, is to build a buffer zone around your health—your
most precious asset. You want to make it as unlikely as possible for any
accident or short-term illness to end in disaster. If you don’t take care of
yourself, at some point, even a subtle stressor may result in serious,
permanent problems.
Many people are
walking time bombs, so vulnerable that even a short-term stressful event can
result in a heart attack or a stroke. One woman of my acquaintance was so
unhealthy that one fateful day, when she sneezed, she experienced a paralyzing
stroke. Now, she and her family must live—every single day—with the
consequences of her previous lifestyle habits, which caused her health buffer
zone to become paper-thin. A key stress management strategy is to consistently
invest in your health, so that you have some leeway in your health buffer zone
when life sends you trouble.
Wealth protection
Today,
people spend a good deal of time and energy worrying about money. This isn’t
surprising, because so many people have a paper-thin financial buffer zone! If
you don’t have a few months’ savings in reserve, each time the boss looks a bit
displeased, stress responses—such as anxiety and tension—can result. If you
need a reliable vehicle to get to work, but cannot afford potentially expensive
repair and maintenance bills, every strange noise your car makes can initiate a
stress response.
Building
a sufficient financial buffer zone is one of the most effective things a person
can do to reduce his or her life stress. You can do this with a very simple
philosophy. Make a habit to consistently produce more than you consume!
Regardless
of how much or little you can afford, start saving this month. If you can save
$300 per month, in a year you will have saved $3,600. With interest earned, at
that rate you will have saved over $20,000 in less than five years. Through the
consistent practice of a prudent philosophy, you will have succeeded in
building a very substantial buffer zone into your financial life. This will
reduce your stress in many ways.
Reputation protection
Your reputation—what those who know of you think about you—can be either a tremendous asset, a serious liability, or anything in between. What others think of you is beyond your direct control. You can influence what they think, however, in reasonably predictable ways.
For
example, by making a habit of regularly doing a bit more than is expected, and
by always striving to be honest and fair, one can build an excellent reputation
over time. This can act as a stress-reduction strategy, since a fine reputation
can act as a buffer zone should your judgment, or motives, ever be called into
question.
A
man of my acquaintance once told me that he had made a regular habit of showing
up for work early, for seventeen years. I asked him what others seemed to feel
about this. Curiously, he said that he was both admired and envied.
Co-workers
observed his unusual habit of doing a bit more than was expected, and this
simple strategy had contributed to the development of his remarkable
reputation. I asked what he thought would happen if his judgment were ever
called into question, or if he needed time off because of a family emergency.
He laughed, and said that he was certain his employer would be there for him.
It is an insurance policy that he hopes he never needs to use. But should he
ever need it, he expects that it is there. That knowledge provides him with a reputational buffer zone each and every day of his life.
Perfection not necessary
The
buffer zone approach to stress management does not demand that we seek
perfection in our lives. We cannot always make the most healthful choices. We
cannot always save more than we spend. We cannot always do more than is
expected. Perfection is not the point. The buffer zone approach is part of a
philosophy that encourages us to consistently seek to invest in our health,
wealth, and reputations, so that should life send misfortune or difficulty in
our direction, we are better prepared, and have a greater margin of protection.
Some may call this approach old-fashioned, but in my practice as a
psychologist, I continue to relearn timeless and valuable ideas. Sometimes
simple ideas are the most profound—and an ounce of stress prevention is often
worth many pounds of cure.
Douglas Lisle,
Ph.D., is director of clinical research for the