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Fundamentals & terminologies explainedLike all clinical disciplines we’ve evolved some fundamentals and terminologies to help us teach and communicate to the outside world and between ourselves. However, we’re keen that these don’t become “jargon” – jargon excludes; the very opposite to our charitable aim which is to educate people about this debilitating illness. So, to clarify what we mean by some of the terminologies – and to explain some of the working assumptions that we make in our studies, we hope the list below is useful. Do contact us info@ergology.org if you would like any further information. Associated physiological symptoms (sometimes shortened to AΦS) Associated physiological symptoms are important. Firstly, to maximise the clinical care of excess stress, these have to be treated as part of the programme – because they become part of the excess stress stored memory. Secondly, because people are, for many reasons, reluctant to report that they feel damaged by stress to their employers, tribunals and courts expect recurring bouts of these problems to be identified by organisations as possibly being job-stress related. Causes of stress Job-stress isn’t caused by any of these factors – though they often play a part. Job-stress is caused by a failure in communication between people at work – often between those expecting the work and those expected to deliver it, but sometimes between co-workers. The failure often involves egos, status and misunderstood expectation, but at its heart it is always the failure of one party or another - or both – to clearly define what is possible and acceptable within the working environment. Clinical ergologist Differences between ergologists and other clinicians who help people with excess stress issues And to deal with the physiological symptoms associated with stress, do you contact your usual dentist, GP, osteopath – and will they understand how the treatment for the emotional side of stress you’re getting might effect how you feel when they see you? The problem, to some extent, is that most clinicians are defined not by what is wrong with the client, but by what training they had. And you’re expected to guess which might be best for you. Ergologists deal only with people presenting excess stress issues. So this Institute brings all these aspects into one initial triage situation. Then, after discussion, we refer you to the best help available. Ergology Ergo-RICE Excess stress Stress isn’t in itself a problem. You don’t need stress training – everyone can summon up stress. Stress evolved to be a solution – but unfortunately a very basic, primæval one. The real problem is excess stress. This is stress which hasn’t yet dissipated – either physically or emotionally. It’s stress you don’t need currently to solve a problem with sub-conscious action or conscious thought. We surmise the situation might have its roots in situations like this: Whilst hunter-gathering, you smell something new. You become alert. A second later a sabre-toothed tiger leaps at you, but because of your state of alertness, you run very fast and escape. Your mind will want – need - to learn from that incident. Your memory stores (without you consciously deciding to) not just the smell, or the memory of the tiger, but the sounds around you. Although you don’t consciously remember it, a crow cawed just before the tiger leaped. Your mind putting you on guard every time you hear a crow caw is a good survival mechanism – stress that works! Running back to your hut and hiding for two days every time you hear a crow - or biting your nails in case a crow caws – is a primæval form of excess stress. It all gets rather more complicated once humans learn to speak using a complex vocabulary. For one thing, we begin to trust the thoughts we have using language rather more than those we have which are driven simply by emotional messages. Think about when you feel someone is following you down a dark alley – you look around, see no-one, then reassure yourself by talking yourself “down”. From a primæval viewpoint this is a ridiculous strategy – it doesn’t matter a jot how many times no-one is actually behind you – what matters is that you feel stressed when someone really is there. Then you’ll be ready. For flight or fight. Modern work involves us becoming stressed, but rarely involves us properly dissipating that stress. Also, modern work tends to be quite complicated – but our primæval emotions are still rather, errr, primæval! Job-stress Practical ergologist Slow-stress Strategic ergologist Sudden trauma stress Working supposition The paradigm in which ergology sits is scientific, rather than esoteric, but the mind seems to use stories as a basic learning tool and will work quite happily with “unknowns” or even lies if the end result is perceived to be positive. An obvious example is you being happy to enjoy (and to have temporary emotional investment in) an episode of Torchwood, even though you’ve just watched John Bannerman judge a talent programme and know that Captain Jack doesn’t exist without writers. This seems to be because humans can use something they observe to problem-solve, even though they don’t have empirical evidence for what it is or why it happens. All they need is a good story that explains it. For example, relatively early in the adaptation of agriculture, which first happened about 13,000 years ago, humans saw that the state of the moon was useful in determining when they should sow and when they should harvest. The fact that they had no empirical evidence for either what the moon was, or why its appearance at certain times helped them, appears not to have been a problem to the adoption of this astronomical information. But it did need an explanation. This explanation was a working supposition. In some parts of the world, the need seemed to be for this supposition to be borne out by quite complicated calculations and a great deal of rational thought. More commonly though, legends about the moon – and why it changed appearance – seemed to suffice quite nicely. The seeds were sown, the crops were reaped. In ergology we use a number of suppositions which help us construct clinical methodologies. This is very common in science, for example in evolutionary theory connected to biology or psychology, such suppositions are called “reverse engineering”. The difference between using working suppositions, and going down the road of “pseudo-science” is that we don’t pretend that such suppositions are true – they just may be and definitely help us construct care programmes which work. The important thing is never to forget what is truth and what is supposition – and to never take anything not tested time-and-time again as being true scientific fact. |
What we're forWhy organisations use us as their employees' job-stress reporting station
Helping us help people affected by job-stress
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The Research Institute for Clinical Ergology. | |
Registered Charity Number SC038777