The classes of hassles

It is literally impossible to get through even a single day without encountering one or more of the endless varieties of hassles. As you read through the following list, think about an average day and how these hassles, commonly called stressors, may be reducing your enjoyment of life.

• Emotional hassles. This category includes the fears and anxieties we struggle with. For example: Can we prevent nuclear war? What if I run out of gas? How am I going to pay the light bill?
• Family hassles. Interactions with family members can be stressful: The striving of teenagers for independence, a spouse who drinks too much, in-laws visiting.
• Social hassles. Our interaction with other people: Asking a person for a date, expressing anger at another's behavior, giving or going to a party.
• Change hassles. There's a limit to the amount of change we can comfortably sustain before something becomes a hassle: Leaving a job, buying a house, moving to a new city. You may be able to handle one or even two changes at once, but the third could send you spinning.
• Work hassles. Whether you work in an office or from home, you'll experience work-related stresses like asking for a raise, rushing to meet deadlines, or cleaning tracked-in mud off the floor for the fourth time in one day.
• Commuting hassles. This is the category of unpleasant life events like the stress of discourteous or reckless drivers that occurs in rush hour traffic. It also includes the hassles of air, bus, or train travel.
• Decision hassles. Making decisions, especially regarding important issues or when there is no perfect solution to a problem, can drive you bananas: Should I have the surgical procedure now or wait? Should my aged parent be institutionalized? Should I get a divorce?
• Pain hassles. Pain stressors are the aches and pains of new and old injuries, or of ongoing medical conditions like a sore tooth, migraine headaches, and PMS. Chronic pain and discomfort can lead to social isolation and depression.
• Environmental hassles. This category of stressors includes aspects of our surroundings that are often unavoidable: Smoke-filled rooms, cramped offices, the glare of the sun, or the cold of winter.

The first step toward managing your stress is to identify the external events that set you off. And now that you can recognize the day-to-day categories of life's hassles and that you're not alone in combating them, let's peer into the inner part of the story of stress. This discussion will give you a better understanding of why stress affects you in the way it does.

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