At some time or other most people suffer from stress, work-related, money problems, family problems, worry about health, traveling, in fact anything unusual to your lifestyle can cause stress.
You feel under pressure at work, the workload is too heavy, or you feel that workmates are against you, quarreling and bickering at who is getting the best jobs or who is being promoted above you.
What are The Causes of Stress?
The most common stress causes that can be a killer are:
- Money and financial problem
- Anxiety
- Work and job stress
- Family problem
- Health issues
- Traveling anxiety
- Low self steam
- Society and political problems
Money problems at home can cause serious stress, or a partner is drinking too much, or you believe your partner is having an affair; you find it hard to cope with the children.
Any anxiety can cause stress, and this can lead to illness and depression and even severe mental problems.
When you are stressed, your body produces chemicals such as adrenaline and noradrenalin.
These raise your blood pressure and increase the rate of your heartbeats, and you also perspire more.
They can also reduce the blood flow to your skin and normal stomach activity.
Cortisol releases fat and sugar into your body, and it also makes your immune system less efficient.
Side Effects of Stress That Could be a Killer
These chemicals are released to help protect you, but if you are in a situation where you can’t get away from the problem, then in time, these chemicals change, and they can damage your health and mental attitude.
With stress you may experience;
- Headaches
- Tiredness
- Nausea
- Indigestion
- You might experience palpitations or feel unable to breathe properly
- Suffer from aches and pains
- Muscles cramps
Tiredness from lack of sleep due to stress, instead of relaxing when you retire to bed, your mind constantly goes over and over the problems keeping you awake.
You may feel like crying or lose your appetite, suffer chest pains or nausea, and these are all symptoms produced by stress.
It can cause high blood pressure, which in turn puts you at risk of heart attacks, strokes, or even impotence.
Might experience feelings of anxiety, fear, frustration, and anger, which leads to depression.
All these feelings make you feel worse and, in their turn, have you believing that you may have a severe heart disease or even cancer, which causes you to become even more stressed.
Treatments for Stress that You can Beat
The first step is to consult your GP, and he will be able to advise you about treatment or refer you to a professional counselor.
He or she will talk through your problems with you; they are professionals and know how to deal with stress conditions and may often find a solution to your problems.
Stop and think!
“No matter how much you worry it won’t change anything;”
Take Control of Yourself and Beat the Stress That Can Kill you
1- Sit down for five minutes and try to relax, let all your limbs flop, and try breathing deeply.
If you do this, you will realize how much your body is tense.
2- Calm your mind by trying to think of something else, maybe a happier time in your life, or even what you would do if you won the lottery, how you would spend it and what holidays you would go on.
Anything that takes your mind off your problems for a short while.
This will give you a breathing space to try and think things out more clearly.
3- If you are in debt up to your ears and don’t know which way turn, worrying won’t help it.
Think of ways clearly that might help you like the people who take on your debts and reduce your monthly payments to a fraction of what you are paying now.
4- If your problem is at work-related then do something about it;
- Tackle your boss
- or refuse to be browbeaten by coworkers and give them back as good as you get.
- If you are not the type to rebel, then start searching for a new job where you will be happier.
5- If you are having marital problems, then seek help from a marriage guidance counselor or talk to close friends.
Keeping things bottled up will only make you feel worse and more stressful life.
6- By just stop and think you may find a way to overcome some of the problems that life throws at you.
7- Do not think you are alone; there is always someone that can help you if you lay your problems out before them.
8- You must relieve your stress or risk making yourself very ill or even damaging your mental health.
What Stress is All About and Dealing With It Effectively
Scientists are increasingly looking at stress as an important factor in the origin of illness.
Stress mechanism is something that starts and ends in the body.
When under stress, our bodies give a chemical response, and this response affects our emotions and the way we look at things.
Research Results About Stress
The researchers have proved the fact that prolonged, acute physical or emotional stress is likely to have adverse physical effects.
The fact that we always associate stress with a certain negative connotation also does not hold true.
It must be remembered that stress has a dual role to play. With stress, the anxiety & hormone levels fluctuate, which is essential, and these acts as a sort of protection too.
We have to understand that everyone and every living thing need to experience stress and adjust accordingly.
Being born and then making an effort to remain alive is stressful. And sans our stress hormones, we would not be able to react effectively.
In our effort to remain alive, we have to address hunger, traffic, infection, varying temperature, relationships, face up to the challenges of growing up, and so on and so forth. It takes stress to get out of bed in the morning!
Damages as a Result Of Stress
If stress has so many plus points and every reaction has some amount of stress in it, then why and at what stage do the physical effects of stress stop protecting us & start to damage us?
And what measures do we need to take to combat these effects?
Taking stress affects our Allostatic systems.
When the amount of stress is more than what we can normally handle its called Allostatic load.
Allostatic systems form part of the nervous system, which controls heartbeat, blood pressure, cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune systems.
The nervous system controls functions like the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands, which work together to produce a hormonal response.
Allostatic load affects our immune system adversely. It can also lead to insulin resistance, which could eventually be a cause of diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, osteoporosis, etc.[note]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allostatic_load[/note]
Lack of Control In Certain Stress Situation
In extreme cases, stress may even promote cancer. Stressed individuals can also feel isolated and may lack control in certain challenging situations like stressful jobs, ailing close relative, etc.
Stress may occur because of many reasons. Genetics may be an important factor.
What happens to us in life, where we stand economically and educationally, may also have a role to play in our everyday handling of stress.
How to Cop With Stress?
The treatment accorded us by the peer group. Also, the way we live, eat, smoke or don’t, our alcohol intake, our overall lifestyle, whether it is active or sedentary etc.
Coping with stress, learning to handle the challenges better are some lessons we all have to take. Each one of us will have a different way to deal with it, and we must know it clearly before the situation gets better of us.
We have to learn to steer clear or such a situation by trying to work out a positive solution, problem-solving technique, and attitude.
This may require re-arranging our thoughts to an extent. We cannot change what has already happened to us, which is likely to reflect in the way we react.
But we can change our mindset and attitude. We can certainly bring changes to our lifestyle;
- Get into activities
- Pursue hobbies
- Quit drinking and smoking
- Inculcate exercising habits
- Join a peer group or community to increase the level of social interaction etc.
Living in isolation and trying to deal with stress without social support will worsen the existing situation. For overall well being, it is must that we learn to deal with stress positively.
News You Can Use About Stress and Burn Out
The same Creator who thought of covering the orange with a thick sour peel to protect it from being eaten away and damaged by insects has also equipped the human brain with an in-built mechanism to deal with ups and downs in our everyday life.
The researchers and scientists over a while have discovered that this is possible because of chemical circuit breakers technique that shut off the stress hormones to entire networks of nerves, and it’s only function or job is to calm the human brain down.
Certain things work in a certain way in our brains. And our internal systems react to them in a particular way. There are specific techniques we will discuss and adopt in our daily life to protect ourselves from being various ailments, which are a result of nothing but stress.
When we are stressed out, we should practice deep breathing. Inhaling and exhaling slowly. This rhythm takes care of the health of the heart.
Let’s look at ways to deal with burn out. Burn out is nothing but loss or absence of interest and enthusiasm at work. These are quite often as a result of stress. Stress should be avoided at all costs. It’s also been confirmed by researchers that stress ages you before time. Stress damages the immune system.
People who are low on self-esteem are more prone to stress than people who are comfortable with and confident of themselves.
Handling stress and burnout differ from person to person. People who suffer from anxiety have to identify their ways to relieve stress. What may work for one may not work for another because each one is built differently in terms of various responses and the ability to judge.
Some people get frustrated and stressed when too many rules around them change, and then the stress syndrome takes over. While some people may burn out of boredom. Nothing around them ever changes! To find out where do you belong and once you’ve done that you know how to tackle it.
Very recently, I heard some prominent person on television who was speaking about inner peace, which is nothing but a situation where one can feel stress-free. And it was very sensible.
I will try to explain it briefly over here, and I hope the hidden message goes down well with the readers. This gentleman was trying to explain that peace is the easiest to achieve. Peace means no disturbance. Then he put his hands together and clapped and asked people what it was?
The audience replied, sound. Then he did nothing for a long time and made people go through an experience that since there was no sound, there was peace! So let’s do just that. Let’s give our mind and body a break from everything. Good and bad reading, movies, music, gossip. Just disengage. That’s de-stressing.
What Causes Stress and Burnout and How to Deal with Them?
The fastest-growing disability category in the United States of America is Insurance claims for depression, stress, and job burnout. So it’s time we learned to handle stress and fatigue or burn out more effectively.
People somehow tend to find all the wrong things to do to de-stress.
They watch Television. Munch on unhealthy food and skip exercise in the process of being glued to the TV. And they consider it a way to unwind and de-stress.
Let’s know some more surprising facts in our everyday life that hardly help us fight or deal with stress, but we encourage them without giving it a serious thought.
- Some of our favorite, slick, and handy gadgets stress us out the most.
- Cell phones and mobile electronic mail devices are two examples, which make it difficult to get away from the office. We are not spending on gadgets; we are spending on ways to carry office in our pockets and cars.
- Another newfound thing that gives stress is the concept of working from home. It may sound like a new mantra, but it does add to stress because somewhere we are erasing, or instead blurring the line between work and leisure.
We earlier related stress with the workload. Now the researches have brought some eye-opening facts before us.
Some recent studies, says Christina Maslach, a burnout researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, show that mismatch in values or things they believe in between employees and employers play an important role in giving rise to stress.
Are you selling things that you know people don’t need? Or are you manipulating the invoice of your client much against your will because of pressure from a senior? These things lead to stress without even realizing it.
The question is how to get over and handle this effectively?
- Breathe. Inhale- beat faster.
- Exhale- beat slower
It’s an old rhythm, which helps our heart last a lifetime. And it’s nothing but the simple first lesson in how to manage stress and avoid burnout. Take a deep breath.
Exhale as slowly as you possibly can. And while you have made an effort to exhale slowly, you may not have realized, but your heart has slowed down a bit again inhale, and the heart beats faster.
This process of now slow now fast heartbeat is a healthy sign pointing towards the head and heart coordination.
There are many other effective ways to relieve stress. This article focuses on ways to relieve stress.
Do We Carry An Enormous Burden of Stress Without Realizing It?
Many amongs us have no idea what stress is. Let me give you one example of stress.
Do you think being promoted in the office with a big raise in pay packet can result in stress? Many of you may reject it altogether.
The fact is the promotion and pays hike CAN give you stress.
- We always relate stress with worries.
- We are wrong to assume and connect stress with only tension or worries.
- We assume stress as an extension of worries, but in reality, it has a much broader meaning.
Definition of Stress in General
Our body’s definition of stress goes beyond tensions or worries. Any change that our body has to deal with is stress.
It’s difficult to accept that winning a lottery or our spouse surprising us with an unplanned outing over a weekend can also stress us out! But it’s true.
If our body has to re-arrange or alter itself in any way to deal with any kind of change pleasant or bad, it is stress. Let me wake you up to some more surprises.
Even imagination can give you stress.
Daydream that you own a big spacious apartment. It’s stress! Imagine having lost all your money in the gamble and have nothing left to pay the bills and its stress. And imagined stress is as evil and harmful as real-time stress.
Stress can crop up from different kinds of situations:
- Happy or unhappy situations
- Allergic or physical situations. This goes to prove that many of us carry enormous stress burden and don’t even realize it!
Taking responsibility for someone else is also a stressful activity.
Actually it can amount to significant stress. For the outer, socially helpful, its an act of benevolence, but it’s doing harm within.
It’s a burden that you don’t deserve or did not have to take. This way, sometimes we invite stress.
There are many types of stress:
- Emotional Stress comes from arguments.
- Disagreements or fights at work or home
- If you are ailing stress. Pushing your physical limits – working 18 hours a day, can result in stress that is bound to affect you adversely in the long run.
- The environment can give stress Extreme climatic conditions, pollution, noise, and traffic can provide stress.
- Tobacco is an all-powerful source of stress in one’s life.
- Hormonal factors like puberty, menopause, premenstrual syndrome, etc. can also give stress.
Looking at all the above, the least that we realize is that some types of stress are within our circle of influence.
At least those we should try and deal with.
Sometimes I myself sit and imagine situations and start worrying or feeling happy over them.
For Goodness sake, they’ve not even happened!
I am going to take charge and not let such things affect me here onward (Am I feeling stressed already!).
Headaches and Stress are Like Peas in a Pod a Pair Together
Headaches may seem minor when compared to other more serious problems, but when you look at the tons of headache tablets that are purchased every week, it must be one of the most common ailments in the world today.
The common or garden headache that pops up suddenly is easily cured, just open the cupboard door, and sure enough there they are the headache tablets, always in prime position ready and waiting to do the job they were made for.
Certain medications are picked up automatically with your weekly shop, whether you need them or not. Be prepared is your motto, and headache tablets are a top priority so rarely forgotten.
Stress is one of the leading causes for many types of headaches, and tension can be caused by anything at all.
If you have a new baby, just worrying about the fact that he is crying so often or sleeping too long and not waking for his feed when he’s supposed too.
However, It might sound a silly reason to get stressed about, but to a new mom, it’s a serious business, and stress brings on the headaches.
Rushing to work and worrying about being late can stress you out.
In fact, anything out of the ordinary that may cause a problem of some sort is stressful and will bring on the headaches.
These types of headaches are not a severe problem and easily cured, but if they begin to become too frequent or prolonged even after taking tablets, then it is time to seek help from your physician.
There is no reason to believe something serious is happening to you. Stress could still be a problem.
When your physician explains this to you, your stress may mysteriously diminish, and the headaches disappear simply because you know the cause of your problems is stress and not something more serious as you had begun to believe.
Don’t Be a Worry Wart! How To Stop Worrying
You’ll recognize the signs when I tell you that you’re the one who can’t let go of yesterday’s mistake, today’s work, and tomorrow is undone tasks.
You worry about everything from the moment you wake up till you sleep at night. And this worry is eating into your life and senses.
You may read all the books and magazines you like on the topic but until you recognize yourself as a chronic worrier and decide to put into action some of the tips I give you here, you won’t get out of the vicious web you’ve spun around yourself.
Worrying can be debilitating. It will affect your health, both physical and mental and lead to depression and anxiety. It will take away from the joys of your daily life and reduce everything to insurmountable problems.
Once you’ve acquired the habit it’s difficult to let go and it prevents you from thinking clearly about solutions to problems.
It fogs up your brain, and you will find yourself always stressed. How then do you go about stopping yourself from worrying yourself into insomnia and therapy?
The first step has been for you to diagnose yourself as a chronic worrier. Then you tell yourself that you don’t want to worry.
After a while, the insidious habit has become almost second nature to us so that we feel bereft if we’re not worrying about something.
Then, once you’ve decided that you want to get out of this habit, you can take steps to do so.
An effective way to do this is to immediately jot down in a small notebook what exactly it is that worries you. It may even be a vague, nebulous fear you can still note it down.
You give this concrete shape then, and it may make you realize that perhaps it is not a thing you should be worrying about!
Next, give yourself permission not to worry.
Tell yourself that you can postpone the act of worrying to a later time.
Learn breathing techniques such as yoga that you can put into practice. Breathe deeply and exhale slowly right to your diaphragm. You can chant something like a prayer or a mantra that helps fix your brain on the breathing and takes your mind off the worry.
Keep doing this. If you can, however, take the time, then go for a jog or a brisk walk. The adrenaline boost will clear your brain, not to mention to induce a deluge of endorphins that will make you more cheerful.
Also, try this:
- Make a note of what you worry about
- Then check to see if what you worried about actually came to pass. In most cases, your dread is about something that might never happen. So the next time you worry, remind yourself that actually what you fear might not take place.
- Keep telling yourself this, and that should calm your mind. If you keep track of most of your fears and realize that you worried for nothing, then you could recall the incidents and reassure yourself that you needn’t worry and that things will turn outright.
If you feel that your worrying is taking over your life and you have no control over it, then consult a physician. You can even try hypnotism to cure yourself of this syndrome.
In the end, however, you have to take the first step and free yourself from worrying. It will add days to life and happiness to your days.
For Robust Emotional Health Read This!
The more you have or possess in terms of worldly possessions and luxuries, the happier will you be. That’s not how it works!
The opposite works better in the long run. You will be more comfortable by limiting your choices.
Freedom of choice, increased expectations, indecision, and unhappiness at some point get entwined and make a lousy picture, leading to a stressed life.
People who build houses and offices come across people preferring vaulted ceilings many times, but did not know why, until this exciting business-related study done at University of Minnesota confirmed that ceiling height might affect the way folks act and think.
It further elaborated and said that a higher ceiling of about 10 feet or so stimulates more abstract, free form thinking while lower height in the 8-foot range may push people to focus harder on the specifics.[note]university of Minnesota[/note]
According to studies done by Decision Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and the RAND Corporation – good decision-making skills lead to a better quality of life. Decision-making is a separate skill in itself and has nothing to do with verbal and non-verbal intelligence.[note]Carnegie Mellon University[/note]
This bit is full of good news. Another one to follow is that socio-economic status doesn’t have much to do with a single ability to make good choices. Decision-making skills can be taught, learned, and improved upon.
Scientists have identified a specific group of compounds in the apple peel that have potent anti-cancer properties besides their earlier findings that said that the apple peel holds most of the health-enhancing phytochemicals (which contain natural antioxidants which help reduce the risk of chronic type of health problems like stroke, heart and lung cancer.
A new study reveals that the way people react to a crisis in their lives (negatively or positively) depends upon the amount of compassion they have for themselves. Such people handle the negatives better.
Possessing self-compassion allows people to accept the responsibility for a bad experience in their life and bounce back.
Not only bounce back but also learn the lesson and become an improved person from it. They emerge better.
Conclusion!
However, I realize that these are just a few of the problems you may be faced ,and I pray you will find the answer somehow and start to live and enjoy your life once again.
Moreover, If you have experienced any stress or other similar problems and you have found a way out to beat it, then tell others and try to help them also.
