The experience of stress, according to Kyriacou (2000), varies a lot from person to person and affects people in a different way, there is, however a symptom of stress that almost everyone tends to report, which is the feeling of tension. One can distinguish between physical and psychological responses to stress where the latter can manifest themselves by, for example, losing one’s temper easily, whereas the former by getting mouth ulcers, etc. Kyriacou (2000) stresses that everyone usually develops their own unique profile of how they respond physically and psychologically to stress and only after recognizing those symptoms do they realize that they are under the influence of stress, or somebody else spots it. For that reason, it appears very important for everyone to recognize their own responses to stress in order to be able to react fast and deal with it hence the sustained experience of intense stress may result in stress-related illnesses, ranging from a reduced resistance to
common infections, such as a cold, to serious physical and mental illnesses such as peptic ulcers and depression. Sometimes it happens that a teacher faces pressure on a few different fronts, such as home, work, etc and there may happen that this teacher at some point feels they are unable to deal with all the pressures and they become overwhelmed by that situation. Guglielmi and Tatrow (1998) claim that a high level of stress can lead to various unhealthy behaviours like, for example, irregular meals, heavy drinking and smoking, and working until late at night without sufficient sleep; and that those unhealthy behaviours precipitate illnesses more likely than the direct effect on the body of the stress itself. Kyriacou (2000) makes a point that the experience of high level of work stress over a long period of time can result in teacher burnout which has three main elements to it: attitudinal exhaustion, physical exhaustion, and emotional exhaustion.
Attitudinal exhaustion manifests itself in teacher’s lack of enthusiasm for work and a lowering of a sense of job satisfaction. The teacher is usually unwilling to do anything in a different way if it involves spending more time and effort on teaching and they become uninterested in the achievements and work of their students. One may risk an assumption that teachers who are not interested in the achievements of their students may not want to enter into interactions with them, may not be creative in order to design interesting classes, and as a result, may be additionally stressed by low results which their learners are likely to achieve if their teacher is not enthusiastic about the subject they teach.
Physical tiredness of a teacher for much of the time at school is a manifestation of physical exhaustion, together with a complete lack of energy at the end of a working day. It may be caused by work overload which characterizes many teachers (Travers and Cooper, 1996), by discipline problems in case of which the teacher must devote much time to pacifying their students.
The difficulties in sustaining a positive feeling during the working day and the overwhelming feeling of heavy resignation towards getting through the tasks in hand, together with depression, stem from emotional exhaustion of a teacher. Such type of exhaustion may result from bad rapport with students, colleagues, or the school management, students who lack motivation, or work overload. In case of the last factor, the teacher may simply have a feeling, because of excessive work, that they are at work all the time – even if they are at home, they may think about their occupational tasks to do, tests to check and lessons to design. Even after their teaching day, academic teachers still mentally stay at work because of publications, contacts with
foreign colleagues and projects to make, so they may be more prone to emotional exhaustion than other teachers.
Kyriacou (2000) stresses that the sense of withdrawal from the situation and trying to survive as best as one can, may be associated with burnout.
It seems obvious that this is not a positive thing. First of all, it destroys the teacher themselves because of the negative feelings and tensions, secondly, it affects the process of teaching in a negative way for the reason that the teacher does not put any effort into it any longer and is not interested in the progress of their students, which, in turn may lead to their achieving low results, which, finally, can be a source of teacher stress and the beginning of a vicious cycle of stress and burnout.
Other common symptoms of stress at work, according to Kyriacou (2000:
5) are:
• irritability
• depression
• feeling unsettled
• short temper
• feeling off colour
• stomach complaints
• general aches and pains
• compulsive thoughts about work
• feeling tense
• eeling tearful
• sleeplessness
• loss of sex drive
• feeling tired
• nervous tics
• mouth ulcers
• indigestion
• panic attacks
As it can be seen, some of the symptoms enumerated above are physical ones, whereas the others are psychological in nature. Of course, as it was stressed earlier, the symptoms may vary from person to person, but one
thing is certain – they affect one’s life in a very negative way. Furthermore, a person may not be aware that they suffer from these symptoms because of the experience of stress, which can result in their worrying about their health additionally and triggering more stress. Some of the symptoms elaborated on above may even be dangerous for one’s health or life, such as, for instance, depression, which, if uncured, may lead to a suicide; panic attacks, or it can result in road accidents, health problems and withdrawal from social life.