Women in the work place are experiencing high levels of stress, according to Bermuda Employers? Council seminar leader Stuart Doyle.

?There is a lot of stress in the work place and it is something that we don?t understand. We use the term stress but we don?t understand its various manifestations,? Mr. Doyle said.

For 23 years Mr. Doyle has been a human capital developer and his learning model is designed to make people aware of the nature of stress and to find ways to cope with stress.

Today Mr. Doyle will be presenting an all day stress mastery seminar at the Bermuda Employers? Council.

?Stress comes to us in a number of different ways. The impact of an event depends on whether you view it as either positive, negative or neutral.?

?What may be a negative cause of stress for one person may be a positive cause of stress for another but it strikes everyone in the community in some degree or another. It is a physical, psychological and an emotional reaction.?

He said women in the workplace are particularly subject to stress and 90 percent of the participants of his stress seminars are women.

Mr. Doyle said many women are juggling professional and domestic commitments as they continue to perform the nurturing role in taking care of children. ?Stress is difficult to define because we tend to carry our dirty laundry in different ways. If we have stress on the job we take it home and sometimes take it out on our family members and vice versa.

?It almost seems as if men don?t want to admit they have stress. Women, both non-Bermudian and Bermudian, are out to get ahead and they are dealing with some big obstacles.?

He said the American Medical Association (AMA) estimate that $10-20 billion per year is spent on absence, hospitalisation and early death among executives and alcoholism costs industry over $16 billion annually.

Mr. Doyle said the stress employees experience is usually attributed to the behaviour of upper level management.

?There are some companies that create an atmosphere where people can?t wait to get to work in the morning because they feel a sense of purpose.?

He said negative companies create a situation where people are constantly having to deal with unpleasant situations.

?There may be an edict that comes down from above where an employee has to do something they don?t feel is appropriate or deal with people who bad mouth people in the presence of their peers because they don?t have the self esteem to do so in private.?

Mr. Doyle said it is very rare for anyone from top management or middle management to attend a seminar for stress because they may not want admit it. ?A lot of these women are smart enough to take care themselves by going to the gym but unfortunately some head to the bars or do other things to alleviate stress.?

?The danger of stress in our society is that it is chronic and if don?t you have a break from it you could get seriously ill. A vacation is only temporary as you will return to the same environment.?

?I try to build self image and self respect and get participants to recognise they are valuable people. Acceptance is the key, the fact they need to do something different. You have to learn to build stress breaks into your day.?

He said deep breathing, exercise, learning to set boundaries and avoiding associations with negative colleagues are some the methods he suggests to cope with stress.