Dear LPG,

I have been Googling and found myself focussing on the whole DASS question the other day.  I think that I started looking because I was not sure what DASS meant, but I soon found out that it is one of those American acronyms that can be loosely described as a measurement of personal stress levels, and whenever you come across any information about a state of mind there is usually a self-test to help you measure yours just a few clicks away.

I tried it and wondered if the rest of LPG world might be interested.  They do say that the person who is least likely to realise that they have a problem is the person themselves and, even though I think all online quizzes need to be taken with a pinch of salt, if all you friends are telling you something that you are doing your best to ignore, it might just be the extra friend that helps you to realise that they can’t all be wrong… 

Having taken the test I am glad to tell all readers that I am not too stressed which is, for me, a bit of a relief in spite of the fact that we are always being told to take what we find on the net with a pinch of salt.

Lastly I have just one more thought to add.  I always think of stress as being something that we experience when we get into tense situations and, like most of the readers of  these pages I am well past the age of retirement,  I don’t really get into many traumatic  situations anymore so I was interested to also read a report that links boredom and stress. 

I found an online report that shows monotony to be a stress factor too.  So it appears that too little stress is not good for us either.  We definitely need to keep a busy/boredom balance.

KB, Beckenham

KB offered us an explanation of what DASS is and what boredom has to do with it...

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… the test itself …

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… and a few video explanations

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