Grant Bickerton
18 May 2024
Christians face stress, and work stress, just as any other person. In this article for ISCAST (Christianity and Science in Conversation), experienced Christian psychologist Dr Grant Bickerton opens up our understanding of stress and how to deal with its potentially damaging effects.
What is stress? The good, the bad, and symptomologically ugly!
When you enter the word “stress” into a Google image search, predictable cartoons of frantic people clutching their frazzled hair, eyes bulging, and perspiration dripping from the brow emerge. However, stress is a normal part of life for all people – and that includes Christians!
Psychologically speaking, stress is a natural protective response of the body to a perceived threat, loss or challenge. Stress involves a set of biochemical and physiological changes that affect our perception, emotions, behaviour, and physical functioning, all directed towards preparing the body to meet the situation (the “stressor”) at hand. It is a normal response to keep things in balance by gearing us up for action to meet the challenge or threat, designed to be followed by a period of recovery where the energies expended are then replenished.
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Stress is not damaging to everyone at all times. Stress that comes from fresh challenges, change, and exciting opportunities helps us to marshal our energies and stimulate creativity, improve performance, and yield personal benefits such as satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. But stress is only “good” if it is short-lived, and working in harmony with phases of subsequent effective relaxation and rest. All stress takes a toll physically and emotionally, regardless of whether it has been precipitated by a positive challenge or a negative threat or loss. When one is deprived of, or neglects to create, an opportunity to recover and replenish personal resources spent, the outcome is stress overload. There are scriptural examples that describe this. Many of our esteemed biblical characters experienced symptoms of stress overload: Moses’ leading the Israelites, Job’s hardships, David’s psalms, Elijah’s despair, Jeremiah’s laments, Paul’s pressures of ministry, and of course, the Lord Jesus himself in Gethsemane and on the cross. Both Old and New Testaments illustrate that stress, and even encountering periods of being overloaded by it, does happen to people who are part of God’s story. However, to my knowledge, I cannot think of one example where these characters were rebuked by God for experiencing such distress. But neither is it a state in which God calls people to stay for long, and without any chance of recovery.
Where stress overload is a chronic state experienced within an occupational context, a health impairment process is initiated whose end product is known as “burnout”. Burnout is commonly defined as a constellation of three symptoms:
- Feeling emotionally exhausted— “All my energy has been spent and I just can’t give any more.”
- Increasing depersonalisation or cynicism about the work one is seeking to accomplish— “Ministry would be great if it wasn’t for the parishioners!”
- Low personal accomplishment— “I’m not having any real impact here anyway!”
Don’t ignore the petrol light!
The first step towards managing stress is to understand its warning function. Symptoms of stress act like the low petrol indicator in your car: a light will come on when you are running low to alert you that you need to alter your current course (at least temporarily) and refuel so that you can finish the larger journey. If you ignore the petrol light, you may be able to push on just that little bit further … but such a strategy may result in finding yourself stranded in a very inconvenient place, facing a long walk before being somewhere you can resume the journey – if at all.
Thus, stress and burnout symptoms are important warnings, signalling to us to recognise a problem and act sooner rather than later. The eventual consequences of burnout if we ignore the “petrol light” continuously are far reaching, and involve physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, and vocational aspects of life.
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Physical symptoms can include illnesses and fatigue of various sorts. A pattern of increasing absenteeism from work is a common consequence. For some of us, our body tells us we are impaired by occupational stress before we are fully conscious of it.
Emotional consequences can include a feeling that one cannot handle even the work activities that one would normally take in one’s stride. For people experiencing burnout, regular activities become major hurdles.
Relational consequences can extend beyond the workplace to touch family and friends. Lowered self-esteem and negative attitudes, coupled with cynicism and frustration rub off in angry and negative interactions with others. At the very time we need support and perspective, the burnout process will often alienate us from our significant others.
Spiritually, those with burnout tend to question their calling, the nature and sometimes even the existence of God. Stress can often precipitate spiritual struggles that threaten core aspects of a person’s personal identity, for instance, feeling that God has abandoned me, anger at God, religious doubts.
Vocational consequences of burnout include increased role turnover and premature leaving of the person’s profession.
Fortunately, there are clear practical and spiritual tools to help us through stress and continue our life journey.
Read more: Healthier clergy, families, churches because of five-day working week: Leaders
Tips for managing occupational stress
- Do something about it. Most causes of work-related burnout are situational stressors. There can be a tendency to feel “this problem is just too big, I’m helpless, there’s nothing I can do.” A key tip is to create a sense of personal urgency and do something. Talk to a supervisor, mentor or wise friend and seek their support so that together you can generate changes to alter the feeling of helplessness.
- Interdependence with God in coping with stress. It is important to target and act directly on the source of the stress in collaboration with God. Paul says, “to this end I labour, struggling with all His energy that so powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29). Those who collaborate with God in their struggles, rather than simply working at it ourselves or deferring all responsibility away, have much better health outcomes.
- Change expectations from abstract to concrete. Overly high ideals need to be replaced with more short-term goals. Developing a series of meaningful goals that move toward the cherished ideal creates clearer markers of accomplishment. It can be helpful to have a detailed and holistic job description and personal development plan with measurable goals that can be reviewed or adjusted annually.
- Take regular breaks. Learn to completely detach from work. Try to make sure this happens daily. Find places that can be genuine havens of rest that are positive and rewarding in themselves. For the Christian, this can include our quiet time with God.
- Exercise and Diet. Make sure you get eight hours of sleep a night. People who are physically fit manage stress better, and consequentially are in a healthier position to help others.
- Know yourself. Know your strengths, weaknesses, and what God has for you to do. This informs you of when to say “no,” when to act to develop skills and abilities, when to get help from others, and even when to change jobs.
Conclusion
In this brief article I have sought to give a simple overview of what is the stress response and how it has a normal and protective function for us all. However, when its warning signs are not heeded, it causes stress overload, which in the organisational context, is referred to as burnout. We can aid one another in recognising our low “petrol lights”, repent from denying the limitations of our God-given physical and psychological humanity, and take responsibility to find sustainable rhythms of work and life that allow for the natural stress and recovery process to function.
Dr Grant Bickerton is a registered psychologist, with more than 25 years’ experience working in full-time Christian ministry with Power to Change. Dr Bickerton’s academic research focus has been exploring the organisational, psychological, and spiritual factors that promote vitality and well-being in vocational Christian ministry.
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