Short Term Physical Symptoms

These mainly occur as your body adapts to perceived physical threat, and are caused by release of adrenaline. Although you may perceive these as unpleasant and negative, they are signs that your body is ready for the explosive action that assists survival or high performance:

* Dry Mouth
* Cool skin
* Cold hands and feet
* Increased sweating
* Rapid Breathing
* Faster heart beat
* Tense Muscles
* Feelings of nausea, or 'Butterflies in stomach'
* Diarrhea
* A desire to urinate

These are the symptoms of survival stress.

Short Term Performance Effects

While adrenaline helps you survive in a 'fight-or-flight' situation, it does have negative effects in situations where this is not the case:

* It interferes with clear judgement and makes it difficult to take the time to make good decisions.
* Where you need good physical skills it gets in the way of fine motor control.
* It can seriously reduce your enjoyment of your work
* It damages the positive frame of mind you need for high quality work by:
o narrowing attention,
o damaging self-confidence,
o promoting negative thinking,
o disrupting focus and concentration and
o making it difficult to cope with distractions
* It consumes mental energy in distraction, anxiety, frustration and temper. This is energy that should be devoted to the work in hand.