The Stress Test

Below is a list of stressful events in one's life. Find the ones that fit for you, add them up and then become even more stressed out or depressed. Follow me as I count up my stress factors and see what my score is:

The Impact of Life Crises, and How to Minimise Them
Life crises such as death of a spouse, divorce or bankruptcy can disrupt even the best stress management regime.
Different life crises have different impacts. In many cases, however, it may be possible to anticipate crises and prepare for them. It may also be useful to recognise the impact of crises that have occurred so that you can take account of them appropriately.

Some very interesting work in this area has been done by Drs T H Holmes and R H Rahe, with the Social Readjustment Scale. This allocates a number of 'Life Crisis Units' (LCUs) to different events, so that you can evaluate them and take action accordingly. While this approach is obviously a simplification of complex situations, using LCUs can give you a useful start in adjusting to life crises.

The idea behind this approach is to run down the LCU table, totalling the LCUs for life crises that have occurred in the previous 2 years. As a rule of thumb, you may anticipate some form of serious mental or physical effects of the crises according to the following table:


Life Crisis Units and the Probability of Illness

LCUs Probability of illness

300 80%+
200-299 50%
150-199 33%

The LCU table is shown below:


Life Crisis Scoring Table

Event LCUs
Death of spouse 100 Nope
Divorce 73 Nope
Separation 65 Nope
Jail term 63 Running from the law
Death of close family member 63 Yes
Personal illness or injury 53 Nope
Marriage 50 Yes
Fired at work 47 Nope
Marital reconciliation 45 Nope
Retirement 45 Nope
Change in health of family member 44 Yes
Pregnancy 40 Hell no
Sex difficulties 39 Nope
Gain of new family member 39 Nope
Business readjustment 38 Nope
Change in financial state 38 Yes, yep and uh huh
Death of close friend 37 Nope
Change to a different line of work 36 Yes
Change in number of arguments with spouse 35 Nope
A large mortgage or loan 30 Kinda
Foreclosure of mortgage or loan 30 Nope
Change in responsibilities at work 29 No job
Son or daughter leaving home 29 Nope
Trouble with in-laws 29 They love me
Outstanding personal achievement 28 Hardly
Spouse begins or stops work 26 Yes
Begin or end of school or college 26 I wish
Change in living conditions 25 Yes
Change in personal habits 24 Yes
Trouble with boss 23 I wish
Change in work hours or conditions 20 Once again no job
Change in residence 20 Yes
Change in school or college 20 Nope
Change in recreation 19 Learning to freeze
Change in church activities 19 Going to burn in hell
Change in social activities 18 Yes
A moderate loan or mortgage 17 Yes
Change in sleeping habits 16 No
Change in number of family get-togethers 15 Yes
Change in eating habits 15 I wish
Holiday 13 Fucking yes
Christmas 12 Fuck yes
Minor violations of law 11 Shhhh

Where you are in danger of suffering the ill effects of life crises, try to minimise the disturbance to your life. If, for example, you have lost someone close to you, try to avoid changing your job.

If you have a high score, or know that you will have a high score in the future, it may be worth pre-empting any problems by adopting stress management strategies now. Look after yourself.


Ok let's add them up together shall we?
We have:
63+50+44+38+30+26+25+24+20+19+18+15+13+12
Ok for you math wizards you probably can count this in your head. Obviously since I am so stressed out I can't so I shall use the calculator to find out how near death I am:

adding.......

Other things that can add stress is using a calculator that is used by engineers. Any calculator that has stuff for calculus is evil.

And the grand total is:

397
Impressive huh? Of course I am disappointed which makes me stressed out that I couldn't even hit 400, but let see what does it mean that I am at 397?

So it says here over 300 and I have a probability of an illness befalling me. But they do all this studying and then don't even give us a head up on what kind of illness might land on our doorstep.

Will it be?
Leporsy
a bad hair day, week or month

I can't even imagine. But tis important to remember that I have control over how I react to people, places and things and just because I am at the top of my class when it comes to stress.

At least I'm not part of the Conservative Party.