Triton 2025 - Magazine - Page 8
SEAFARER WELLBEING
are allowed to drive over the bridge at one time. The other
meaning of stress can be traced back to the 16th century
and it’s about having severe dif昀椀culties, a really hard time,
being seriously troubled.”
Selye later came to regret the choice of words and
started a campaign to skip the word ‘stress’, insisting that
the regulatory system all mammals have built in should
be called the ‘resources mobilisation system’.
According to studies, 9,999 out of 10,000 of our
stress reactions are positive in helping us to handle a
challenging situation. However, once in a while the stress
reaction is negative, most often because we misinterpret
the situation. When the cognitive system reads into
it too much risk or danger, the stress reaction will be
overexaggerated – for example, feeling nervous, pulse
too high, blood pressure too high, the voice doesn’t work,
or you can’t remember what you were going to say.
The most common form of negative stress reaction
causing sick leave is psychological exhaustion, or
burnout. However, to say this is caused by overwork is
not the whole truth – it’s rather that it is caused by underrecovery,” Malmström says.
“The major reason behind psychological exhaustion is
that the person has not developed a good enough mental
self-regulating capacity – not being able to relax and
put himself into a peaceful state of mind. The important
factor is to analyse what has hindered your recovery to
take you back out, prepared, ready for the next effort.”
To develop the recovery process to a higher level and
build resilience, an individual needs to heighten their own
tolerance and capacity to deal with stressful situations.
Many people want to avoid being stressed, thinking
that the discomfort of taking on a stressful challenge
should be avoided. That kind of ‘destructive approach’ is
becoming increasingly common, especially among young
people and especially boys, who actively avoid taking on
challenges.
“But that is what you have to do to build
your tolerance to a higher level – you have
to expose yourself to such challenges.”
8 / Triton 2025
