Ten years of data from emotional resilience firm Calm People reveals how people from different geographical UK areas may be dealing with coronavirus strain.
Buckinghamshire is officially the UK’s least angry county, and Greater London folk are a lot less stressed than those in other areas… all this and more has emerged from fascinating research conducted by a successful emotional resilience firm.
Calm People, a Derbyshire organisation which runs anger management and emotional resilience courses for individuals and organisations, has conducted the research based on questionnaires on its website.
Founder Julian Hall explains how the data shows how people in different UK areas may be coping very differently with the terrible strain brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.
He said: “The data we have collected and analysed through our website gives an interesting picture of the different levels of stress factors experienced by people in various geographical areas of the UK. The anxiety that coronavirus has brought upon us all is acute. Our research gives a valuable insight into how people living in different areas may be coping.”
The website has two questionnaires helping users to get a sense of their own anger and stress levels. One questionnaire: How Calm are You, asks website visitors to answer a range of questions, covering areas such as their judgement of others; whether they tend to take things personally, and their satisfaction with how they settle disputes. The second invites people to rate areas of their life, such as whether they consider they should have more money; whether they lack energy; whether they feel their life is boring; whether they find it easy to make friends and whether they feel they ‘belong’.
The quick quizzes give users a personalised score giving them a percentage of their level of anger and stress. Users are then asked to provide a geographical location, which has enabled the website founders to analyse the responses by UK area.
Headline results are that those who answered the questionnaire from Buckinghamshire felt the lowest levels of anger in the UK.
Meanwhile:
- East Sussex had the highest levels of assertiveness – the healthiest way of dealing with anger
- The biggest stressor for people in Greater London was concern over physical health
- Essex had one of the lowest levels of stress in the UK
- Hampshire has one of the highest levels of passive aggression in the UK – not such a healthy anger management mechanism
Julian said: “At Calm People, we teach people that there is nothing wrong with being angry, it’s how we deal with it that counts. We teach people not to avoid conflict in their lives but learn how to deal with their emotions in a healthy way.
“Unfortunately, this pandemic has seen a rise in domestic aggression brought on by people living in closer proximity to each other. Lockdown has meant we don’t have so many outlets for our anger, a trip to the gym, for example. When it comes to dealing with anger, we could all learn from people in East Sussex where we have seen the highest levels of assertiveness in the UK. Being assertive is very different from being aggressive. Assertiveness involves calmly explaining why you are angry and what you need, as well as owning up to your own responsibility in the conflict. It’s good news when people are more likely to deal with anger through healthy assertiveness rather than simply losing their rag or being passive aggressive, which can be equally as toxic. Learning to deal with anger well should really help people cope with the severe added strain this pandemic has brought.”
Julian says it’s not surprising that concern over physical health is a high stress factor for many people, particularly in London. According to Calm People’s research, it is consistently the thing that is making people more stressed than anything else.
He says: “Lockdown has limited our ability to take exercise in some ways, if our preferred method is by going for a swim in the local pool, or using equipment in the gym. But it has allowed many of us more time to do simple things like just going for a walk in our neighbourhood. Our research shows high levels of worry about physical health, so this tells us something interesting about what is really bothering us as human beings these days. A quiet walk around the block can do wonders for our mental wellbeing and ability to gain some perspective on domestic situations, for example, which may be getting out of control.”
In addition to the questionnaires available on Calm People, there is a further, comprehensive, emotional health questionnaire available on the company’s sister site: My Internal World. By answering this questionnaire, users are given a tailored report helping them understand their emotions and stress triggers, with tools and coping strategies on how to deal with them. The site is aimed at individuals and corporations who may wish to offer the service to their staff. See www.myinternalworld.com for more.
