Demands placed on marine surveyors come in many forms.
One day you are conducting a hull inspection in freezing rain; the next, you are juggling tight deadlines with a gruelling travel schedule. Add in delayed vessels, restrictive port access, and intense commercial pressures, and stress can mount.
At such times, generic advice like “take a deep breath” or “go for a walk” can feel completely disconnected from the reality of the role. While these actions have their place, they are only half the battle.
Successfully coping with stress requires a range of strategies: some to manage its impact and others to deal with the stressor itself.
The good news is that coping is a skill, and one that can be developed.
What is coping?
Stress researchers Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman defined coping as:
The thoughts and actions an individual uses to master, reduce or tolerate demands that are perceived as challenging or exceeding their available resources.
In other words, coping is what we do when the pressures of work or life threaten to overwhelm us.
Importantly, coping is not a single action. It is a dynamic process that involves both how we think about a high-pressure situation and what we do in response to it.
Broadly speaking coping strategies fall into two categories:
Emotion-focused coping
These are activities that help us manage our immediate, physiological and emotional response to a situation. These actions do not alter the external reality, but they can calm the nervous system, clear the mental fog and help us feel better.
For a marine surveyor, this might look like:
- Decompressing with a peer: Talking through a tense disagreement with a difficult client with a trusted colleague on the drive home.
- Taking a deliberate pause: Stepping out of a hot engine room for five minutes after a demanding inspection just to catch your breath and reset.
- In-the-moment grounding: Practising a simple breathing technique in your car before walking into a high-stakes meeting with anxious buyers.
- Maintaining boundaries: Seeking support from friends and family to completely detach from work problems during your downtime.
While these actions may not solve the problem itself, they often put us in a much better position to deal with whatever is causing the stress in the first place.
Problem-focused coping
These are objective, practical actions aimed at managing or changing the external source of stress.
This might be:
- Triage: Actively prioritising your workload when three urgent survey reports are due simultaneously.
- Setting boundaries: Clarifying client expectations early regarding what can realistically be achieved during one day at the dock.
- Fact-finding: Gathering additional technical data, consulting class rules, or reviewing latest IMO revised guidelines to reduce uncertainty.
- Action planning: Breaking down a massive, overwhelming accident investigation into a step-by-step project plan.
- Leaning on expertise: Seeking technical advice or a second opinion from a more experienced surveyor when faced with an unfamiliar vessel.
These actions help reduce the weight of the stressor itself by giving you a greater sense of control.
Most of us use both forms of coping, often without realising it.
Putting coping into practice
Whilst coping can be divided into these two broad categories, when supporting someone to feel less stressed, I find it useful to think about stress management in three ways: managing the body’s response, managing the stressor itself, and managing ourselves through the experience.
Deliberately considering all three areas helps identify gaps in how we’re coping. For instance, you might be working late to meet a client deadline (focusing on the stressor) while completely neglecting your own sleep and nutrition (ignoring self). Conversely, you might be exercising and eating well but avoiding a difficult conversation with an owner about an unseaworthy vessel.
Here is how to balance the triad:
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Manage the body
When we become stressed, our primitive fight-or-flight response takes over. Heart rate increases, muscles tighten, breathing becomes shallow, and our field of vision narrows. This physiological hijacking can make it difficult to concentrate or think objectively.
For marine surveyors, regulating this response can sometimes be challenging. Physically demanding inspections, long hours, frequent travel and irregular sleep patterns can all place additional strain on the body.
Taking three slow, deep breaths helps calm the nervous system, making it easier to think clearly and decide what to do.
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Manage the stressor
Once our body’s threat system has been dialled down, we can look objectively at what is causing the stress.
It can help to ask:
- What exactly is creating the pressure right now? Isolates the trigger from the emotional noise.
- What specifically needs to be done? Forces a focus on the immediate next step
- What aspects of the situation can I influence? Separates what you can control from what you can’t
- What can be safely delegated, delayed or simplified? Creates breathing room and drops unnecessary burdens
- What technical support, information or resources do I need to move forward? Identifies the external tools or expertise to bridge the gap.
This shifts attention from a vague sense of being overwhelmed to the specifics of the situation. Even simple actions – like making a list or breaking a massive project into smaller components – can reveal practical solutions.
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Manage the self
Some situations simply cannot be changed. Surveys are delayed. Weather deteriorates. Clients make commercial decisions we fundamentally disagree with. Projects change direction.
In such situations, coping becomes less about changing circumstances and more about supporting ourselves through them.
This might involve:
- Getting adequate rest
- Maintaining baseline healthy routines
- Consciously limiting caffeine or alcohol
- Challenging unhelpful, all-or-nothing thinking
- Making time to recover between demanding periods
Acceptance isn’t about giving up. It’s about conserving our mental energy for where it can be best used.
A critical question to ask yourself
The next time pressure builds and your stress levels rise, pause for ten seconds and ask:
“What does the situation call for, and what do I need?”
This single question can help you decide where to focus your energy. It may point you towards a particular action, helping your body relax or identifying how to support yourself through a challenging period. Often, coping well involves a combination of all three.
Final thoughts
Marine surveying inevitably involves a high degree of pressure.
Effective stress management is about knowing where to focus our efforts and using a range of coping strategies that help us remain calm, think clearly and exercise sound professional judgement, whatever the circumstances.
Tracey Hewett helps teams and individuals stress less, focus better and work more sustainably. Find out more .