Elements of stress

This a story about stress. I’ve always liked to say that good coffee makes morning good. I’m, however, having discuss the fact again. Despite having Guatemalan dark roasted coffee in my cup, the mornings haven’t been exactly good lately. There has been and still is a load factors causing stress and maybe even bit of anxiety, which have had a significant influence on me. So now that I have lead the storyline from fresh coffee to something totally different, I can perhaps elaborate a bit.

During past few days there has been a load of stressing factors placed upon me, and it eventually turned me to a grumpy bastard. And if can say that honestly of myself, I believe people around me will have an even harsh description of my state of being. Not a sunshine by any means. Admittedly, I’m a person who becomes influenced by such factors. I’m highly aspiring at what I do, and simultaneously get upset and frustrated, if things just keep going wrong. This is to say, that it will touch every person differently.

I’m trying to balance and achieve on multiple fronts at the same time, so there is a multiplier to the stress factor. What often happens is that when struggling on one front, one tries to find success on other fronts. However, under enough stress load all fronts become affected and vicious cycle is complete – things just get worse. And worse. Then that adds to the overall stress. I got into state where I just couldn’t stand my training and it became shitty, because I felt bad and that I should be doing work instead. Whilst working, I started to feel that I should be training. And it snowballed from there on.

There are several coping strategies with stress, some of them working better than others depending on the personality. First is a problem-focused approach, when you pro-actively try to find solutions to improve the situational stressors. It is a rational process where you actively seek ways to deal with the stressors to get rid of it, which in working environment often works. Secondly comes the emotion focused where the emotions triggered by the stressors are emphasized. That is done by using social support or any other means to meet the emotional state. Thirdly, an effective way to deal with stress is sheer avoidance, which by no means is recommendable. That is when you choose consciously to ignore the task and thus, things usually can only get worse.

This time I have applied the first two. It has not been working too well until this morning. I was miserable and trying to train on my turbo at 7am, when I started to realize that there is only so much I can do about it. I’ve found possible solutions, I’m pursuing them and I’ve had emotional discussions within and been supported with the situation. Whilst doing my cool down, I reached my conclusion that I can choose to be continuously stressed or I can pursue to problem focused solutions, and work my ass off in training (which by the way is one of the solutions). The came to mind a certain Control theory, which is one of my favourites in the anxiety front.

According to the control theory, there are things that can be controlled and the feel and perception of control determines how much stress is actually triggered. If one feels they’re up to the demands, the stress becomes easier to deal with. And I am now, I can pursue the leads and do my training. Another thing in regards to control is something I learned from Dr. Wayne Halliwell last autumn: “Control the controllables. There are things you can’t control, let them go since you can’t do anything about them.”

How do you cope with your stress?

Have a good day.

Anton

Moral disengagement in sport

Before going back to (or out of) the comfort zone, I thought to have bit of review of my work in sport psychology and anti-doping. I am research associate for Dr. Ian Boardley in a WADA funded research project, and my own PhD will build on that investigating a related specific hypothesis. This summarizing bit of text is about moral disengagement in sport and doping.

The doping phenomenon is increasingly causing problems to the sporting world. The World Anti-doping Agency (WADA, 2016) issues the problems in three categories: (a) provides an unfair advantage over competitors, (b) potentially results in negative health consequences and (c) contravenes the spirit of sport. However, doping is not only existent in competitive sport despite the recent events. In today’s society also ordinary exercisers have been reported to adopt performance enhancing drugs to their exercise routine in an increasing manner, which causes problems in the future. Therefore, investigating the psychological factors facilitating doping behavior has become increasingly important.

Moral disengagement refers to a series of psychological factors that potentially contribute and influence the use of doping substances. The construct has its fundamental bases on the Social Cognitive theory of moral thought and action (Bandura, 1991). In principle, Bandura (1991) suggests that people are able violate their personal moral standards without any self-consequences by using the components of moral disengagement. There are eight factors in total that are: moral justification, euphemistic labelling, advantageous comparisons, displacement and diffusion of responsibility, distortion of consequences, dehumanization and attribute of blame. Each one affects athletes and exercisers in unique manner.

Moral justification can be attributed to team, camaraderie and honor. For example, earlier research by Boardley & Kavussanu (2007) summarized that foul play and cheating can be justified by the above mentioned means. Euphemistic labelling is about selecting the words and language used and it means to turn harmful sounding stuff to have more positive tone: anabolic androgenic steroids is negative sounding term, whereas ‘gear’ or ‘roid’ is often interpreted less negatively. In the context of foul play, aggressive behavior is often neglected by saying ‘letting some steam off’. Advantageous comparison is, in short, about making actions more trivial by comparing them to more serious examples. For example, comparing verbal abuse to physical violence is something that people have come across quite often.

Displacement of responsibility happens when athletes and exercisers view their actions as results from social pressures and not as a personal choice, which is a common way to neglect negative emotions. Where displacement happens on personal level, the diffusion of responsibility is a group action where a group together makes a decision to take steroids, and thereby the liability for the action and personal agreement with the decision becomes shared. Avoiding and minimizing harm of taken action is the essence of distortion of consequences. A practical example in sporting context is a case of injury after physical conduct in the field. A person distorting the consequences is likely to avoid finding out the status of the injured opponent.

Dehumanization refers to a process where humanity is stripped off the occasion and the opponent becomes an animalistic creature in a sense. Thus, the opponent can be treated differently without negative emotions. Finally, attribution of blame aims to victimize the one who took the action: a player treats their opponent violently or takes a drug and as a consequence attributes the decision to provocation or persuasion by the counterpart. That allows a person to become a victim of their own foolish action and thus, not (so) feel bad about it.

Overall, moral disengagement is a useful tool to understand antisocial and unacceptable behavior on and off the field. It is a widely known concept various social contexts. It provides valuable information of how people rationalize and justify their decisions. A sport specific measure has been developed (Boardley & Kavussanu, 2007) and a doping specific is under development at the moment.

References:

Bandura, A. (1991). Social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. Handbook of moral behavior and development, 1, 45-103.

Boardley, I. D., & Kavussanu, M. (2007). Development and validation of the moral disengagement in sport scale. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 29(5), 608-628.

The Comfort Zone

First, there may be a part two to this. It came me yesterday as a personal reflection, whilst I was trying to do a brisk test of my ability. In essence, I think people agree that when you test yourself, you should give your all and sometimes bit more. However, I couldn't do it, which was apparent from the numbers and my action right after the effort. If you've given it all, you just don't carry on with the cool down.

I got back to my flat and had a coffee, which, in other words, means that I had a moment of reflection. The reasons behind my lack of ability in the art of suffering are apparent: no intense session due to various reasons and my aims of developing the ultimate endurance. The former reason is consequence of stuff that I've had no real control of, so I'm just having to deal with them. Yet, the latter one is increasingly interesting to me.

You build your base endurance and pile in good mileage, that is all good to a point. In my case, I mainly target races over set distance at maximal sustainable speed as in time trials. The word sustainable carries a lot of weight – as in many card games, early winnings become serious losses at the end. That means to say that overkilling a performance from the start is not optimal strategy and hence people talk about pacing strategies, negative splits, strong finished and so on.

It leaves us with a educated estimate of our pace, power or any other measure of our sustainable performance over the distance. What does one then do? Answer is monitor. Monitoring is psychological process where you interpret the existing data, feelings and markers. By monitoring you keep the performance together. It isn't bad thing by any means. Although, it can lead to situations, where one doesn't know actually the absolute limits and can practically never empty the tanks. Emptying the tanks, on the other hand, are decisive in racing. Continuous monitoring also creates a honed alarm system within the athlete. The athlete may become too aware of what is going on and thus, keeps receiving signals, interpreting them and stays on the comfort zone. Notably, comfort zone here means the maximal sustainable effort, not as in riding or running in comforting pace.

So, the alarms start to become more and more honed and accurate. They start ringing and raising questions even if there is no real need to. Athlete keeps making adjustments to keep in the desired zone. And ultimately finishes the races thinking: ”Actually, I had plenty left – maybe I should have given it more and next time surely I will.” Then comes the next time and the very same happens. To me, at least.

The monitoring develops very easily when you train alone a lot. Then you have time to interpret everything. It also develops when you get caught on numbers too much. It happens naturally, if you are that kind of person. It happens after some destructive experiences that you haven't analyzed well enough. This all applies to me. Now, I'm in the process of verifying my thoughts by reading. And yes, there will decisively be part two on how I'm to overcome my issue of monitoring overkills.

Train hard and trust your instincts.

Anton