The missing link is that we cognitively appraise the situation

The missing link is that we cognitively appraise the situation. Many people might think that this cognitive approach to stress is a very modern concept, but let’s consider the ancient philosophers. Two millennia ago, Epictetus observed: “People are disturbed not by things but by the views which they take of them.” Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations that “Everything is what your opinion makes it, and that opinion lies with yourself.” In more recent times Shakespeare noted in Hamlet, “Why, then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” In fact the more modern cognitive view of stress is quite old, and predates some of the theories from the last century.I wish to challenge statements such as, “My boss makes me angry” or “My children make me feel guilty.” If we take a cognitively mediated model of stress, it means that it’s not so much “out there” that causes stress, but our appraisal or perceptions of an event.The clients I see who are suffering from stress have a number of beliefs such as, “My partner makes me feel depressed,” “Connex South-east makes me furious,” “Deadlines make me very anxious,” “The tube gives me panic attacks.”As a psychologist, I help clients to consider situations from a different perspective. Let’s look at the last one: “The tube gives me panic attacks.” Now, technically speaking, if travelling on the tube causes panic attacks, then everybody travelling on the tube would have panic attacks, but this is patently not true.

You may be crammed in like sardines, but very few people will actually be experiencing panic attacks. To be accurate, people may get panicky about travelling on the tube, but the tube train does not in itself induce panic attacks. This is a very important aspect of both the more modern and also the old cognitive philosophy.However, let’s get real! There is plenty of research that shows that traumatic events such as assault, near-death incidents or earthquakes will be stressful for the majority of people. Yet most stress scenarios in the average workplace are not life-threatening, although many of us appraise a problem, such as not reaching a deadline, as stressful, thereby triggering the old fight-or-flight stress response.

The mental attitude we take into the workplace is often as important as the problems that arise Both issues need addressing A challenge for the 21st century!. Here’s how I feel emotionally, when confronted with the threats and whining bluster of the Stroke My Volvo lobby, and its soi-disant (I throw that effete French word in his face with defiance – huh!) leader, Mr David Handley. I want to look him in the eye, and growl: “Come on then, Handley, if you think you’re hard enough. Let’s see how big you are when you’re not tailgating a Nissan Micra full of small children in your 20-ton articulated lorry, eh? Go ahead and organise another of your fuel protests and let Uncle Jack Straw make my day.”

Here’s how I feel emotionally, when confronted with the threats and whining bluster of the Stroke My Volvo lobby, and its soi-disant (I throw that effete French word in his face with defiance – huh!) leader, Mr David Handley. I want to look him in the eye, and growl: “Come on then, Handley, if you think you’re hard enough. Let’s see how big you are when you’re not tailgating a Nissan Micra full of small children in your 20-ton articulated lorry, eh? Go ahead and organise another of your fuel protests and let Uncle Jack Straw make my day.”
The very sound of Handley’s voice (he is described in Lawrentian terms in this week’s Spectator by one of their resident Connie Chatterleys as “possessing a steely edge to his soft burr”) is becoming enough to shake my equilibrium. “I’m from the country,” he told the radio this week, “and when a rat is cornered by a cat there’s only one thing he can do – fight back.”I hate to tell him this, but we effeminate, poofy, denatured, over-bathed townies do know about rats and cats.

We may never have castrated a ram with our bare teeth, but we aren’t completely stupid. For Mr Handley’s information, we’re also the ones paying his subsidies.Now the man wants to hijack the name of Jarrow and send a convoy of juggernauts grinding at 4 mph down to the smoke via the M1, holding up every midwife, homeward-bound dad and tired teacher for hour after hour As if the weather and Railtrack weren’t enough. And then, in London, he expects to be met by half a million (the number has gone down by 50 per cent in a fortnight) cheap-petroleers wearing “I Love Global Warming” T-shirts and Jeremy Clarkson trousers.This will all happen unless, by the end of the Chancellor’s autumn statement next week, he has reduced diesel duty by 26.6p, or all petrol duty by 15p or whatever figure is plucked out of the air by a spokesman for Stroke My Volvo in the meantime.We’ll come back to Mr Brown in a moment, when I’ve finished having fun with Mr Handley Or rather, some of his allies. Because what I want to know is, if the haulage industry is in such dead lumber, how on earth can hauliers afford the Jarrow-to-London jaunt? How many of the convoy vehicles, for instance, will belong to fuel lobby leader Nigel Kime, who owns over 30 of them? He has told journalists that his business is running at a slight loss this year, and presumably that loss would be made far worse by participating in a long, revenue-losing go-slow.Just after the last fuel crisis, a correspondent with experience of the haulage industry wrote to me. He estimated that a lorry run from London to Birmingham would cost £175 in fuel alone.

“Then,” he continued, “add on the cost of the truck being off work. They lost,” he estimated, “something like £2500 of gross income for the week.” Hauliers are well known for allowing the minimum possible amount of down-time for machines and their over-worked drivers, yet here they are taking losses that even large fuel-tax cuts would take an age to cover. Why?Anybody involved in strikes and protests knows how much they can cost those involved. During the miners’ strike there was a massive voluntary effort made to try and alleviate the consequences for miners’ families. Holidays were organised for kids, food parcels were distributed.By contrast, on picket lines outside refineries in September, some hauliers, well-known local millionaires, would turn up in Range Rovers and Porsches and rail against the unfairness of it all. It must be the politics.As if this wasn’t sufficient reason to raise my tribal hackles, it then filtered out that the far-right were giving their unsolicited support to the pickets.