The Complex Experience of Suffering from Stress - An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Stilling, Michael Teis ; Barrett, Nathali Bülow

4. term

Psychology, Master

2023

2023-10-16

63 pages

Reasons for writing: Stress is an illness that is on the rise worldwide, having huge financial, social, and personal impacts on societies. Researching and finding new ways to stump the stress rise and treat people currently suffering from stress is important for health professionals all across the world. Problem; Stress research has largely ignored looking into the experience of people suffering from stress, while mainly focusing on symptoms, specific work areas, and work stressors and how to minimize these on a company structural level. We find this to be an oversight, and believe that there is knowledge to be found within the stories of the people who have suffered from stress, and what they experienced that can be used to explain stress on a larger scale and help halt the rise of stress in society. Methodology; This paper followed the IPA semi-structured one-to-one interview format. Following the interview transcriptions, the data from each interview were divided into a PET, showcasing each participant's main themes through the interview; these PETs were merged together into several five GETs were created for our three participants, The Inadequacy of the System, Experiencing a Mix of Positive and Negative Factors Influencing Rehabilitation, The Need for Various and Continuous Coping, Negative Influence of Social and Societal Miscomprehension of Stress, The Complex Nature of Stress and Both Positive and Negative Consequences of Stress, where in the data from our Interviews are condensed. Finally, the GET that was found best able to represent the data by being a large theme across the PETs while having the best distribution of each participant’s contribution to the GET was chosen for analysis. Analysis; The analysis highlighted the need for various and continuous coping from our participants. The coping varied among our participants, using nature, body, and the mind in ways of coping with their particular challenges, but there were similarities. All of our participants have experienced being forced to adapt their lives during and after stress. Self-agency in multiple aspects of their experience was highlighted both in regard to the right treatment and in finding the best ways of coping both with stress and a pressuring system. Conclusion; We found a high level of need for self-agency in treatment for our participants. This need could possibly be tied to the harmful experience two of our participants have been put through, having an experience of the system being directly harmful to their healing process. We furthermore concluded that our participants have been forced to find ways of coping and adapting to the after-effects they are having from being sick with stress, these effects persist even after returning to work. Their lived experience of stress in a social setting and their extensive need for coping indicate stress as being a complicated, varied and characteristic phenomenon. Keywords; Stress, IPA, Experience of stress, Burn out, Udmattelsessyndrom, Qualitative, Work Stress, Stressors. semi-structured one-to-one interview, Coping, Long-term stress, Adaptation Disorder.

Stress ; IPA ; Coping ; Semi structered interview ; Stressor ; Long-term stress

Download
View record in AAU Student Projects