Recognising the warning signs of stress

Recognising the warning signs of stress

Each person tends to have his or her own pattern of stress response, so that warning signs of stress vary from person to person. There are many signs that a person is under stress.

One of the most obvious and early signs of stress to look out for is an intensification of personality traits. However, perhaps the earliest and most apparent warning sign is an exaggeration of eating habits. Some people lose their appetite when they become stressed, anxious or depressed; others eat more or over-eat, perhaps to comfort themselves. 

Stress warning signs include:

·      Feeling unable to slow down or relax

·      Explosive anger in response to minor irritation

·      Anxiety or tension lasting more that few days

·      Inability to focus on your attention

·      Fatigue

·      Sleep disturbances

·      Tension headaches

·      Cool hands or feet

·      Aching shoulder or neck muscles 

·      Indigestion

·      Loss or increase in appetite

·      Diarrheas or constipation

·      Ulcers

·      Heart palpitations 

·      Allergy or asthma attacks 

Although we all experience some of these symptoms at various times for various reasons other than stress, be alert if the symptom occur frequently. However, it is important not to panic, as this in itself will cause stress.

The Stress Response

The Stress Response

From our primitive ancestors we have inherited a remarkable capacity to arouse and energies the brain and the body in the service of superb performance. We can prime and focus our physical and mental resources to respond quickly to a challenge or threat. 

The ‘fight and flight’ response produces a chemical cocktail to activate your system when you are under stress. The adrenal glands produce the hormone adrenalin to stimulate your system and pituitary, thyroid and pancreas glands also secrete their own hormones. The effects if these chemicals being released. These chemical reactions can be a source of great strength given the right situation- that is, short term defense- encouraging athletes to excel and ordinary people to preform amazing feats.

Yet if the stress is long term the body doesn’t get chance to detoxify from this chemical cocktail. At the end of a stressful situation your body, because of its homeostatic or rejuvenating nature, should return to its normal, relaxed state.

The physical characteristics of the ‘fight and flight’ response may not be appropriate in many modern-day situations, for example, in an argument with the boss or in middle of a traffic jam. The increase in adrenaline level, heart rate and blood pressure (all aimed to supply more energy) have nowhere to go, and we are left fuming. Over time, these reactions build up, and one day there may come the straw that breaks the camel’s back. With frequency excitation and awkward natural instinct, blood pressure and heart rate do not return to normal and one is left with hypertension or high blood pressure or some other disease.  Indeed, medical experts estimate that 50-70 per cent of all diseases are at least partially caused by stress. 

Cause of Stress

Cause of Stress 

We all react differently to different potential stressors. One person’s mild stimulation from life is another person’s intolerable burden. What is severely stressful for one person may no more than a tiresome niggling incident to another. The degree of stress you experience is determined not simply by eternal events but by how you perceive and respond to it.

The way which you perceive the event and respond to a potential stressor is called ‘stress motivator’. There are four identifiable categories of stress motivation: cognitive, emotional, psychodynamic and situational 

Cognitive Stress 

A natural phenomenon of the human brain is the constant chattering (talking to ourselves) that goes on inside our head. However, few people are aware that what we say to ourselves has a strong bearing on our mental well being. 

If you tell yourself a particular situation is helpless, or that there are no way out, it will be more than likely to end up that way. Also, worrying something will not work out as you would like causes anxiety and even harmful distress.

Like destructive, but still unsatisfactory is a much used half heated attempt: “I will try to do my best”. The correct self talk is “I will do the best I can:. A positive, self-assertive statement is  more likely to get the job done, and thereby help you to avoid a lot of unnecessary stress.

Emotional Stress

Frustration is another common phenomenon we face in our daily lives. The resultant emotional stress can result to maladaptive behaviors which make us even more ineffective to handle the cause of the frustration.

When faced with a frustration and a stressful situation we may repeat negative behaviors because they familiar. Another response includes anger and irritation not a relaxing response and one which probably will not calm an already tense situation. Both these responses simply compound the initial stress. 

Psychodynamic conflict 

When you are under stress you are quite likely to do over and over again the things that got you into trouble in the first place. This unconscious preoccupation with past events can keep you in the same stressful situation, and even aggravate it further and thus intensify the stress.

When your proper perception of a situation is blocked by stress, you may not see that you need to respond to the problem differently than you need to respond to the problem differently than you have in past. Instead, you reply past responses, becoming frustrated and further stressed when these methods don’t prove effective. 

Situational Stress

This is imposed upon us by the physical environment and takes many forms: crowding, sudden or repetitive noise , cold, heat and s on

Life’s stressful events

Various event in everyone’s lives commonly cause stress. The following lists includes some of the most stressful events. 

• ·      Death of a spouse or partner
• ·      Divorce
• ·      Separation from spouse or partner
• ·      Death of a close family member
• ·      Personal injury or illness
• ·      Marriage
• ·      Fired form employment
• ·      Marital reconciliation 
•      Retirement

What is Stress?

What is Stress?

It is hard to define exactly what is stress is as the word ‘stress’, like ‘success’, ‘failure’ or ‘happiness’, means different things to different people. 

Is ‘stress’ really a synonym for distress? Or is it effort, fatigue, pain, fear, the need for concertation, the humiliation of censure or even an unexpected great success which requires complete reformation of one’s entire life?  The answer to all these questions is a yes and no. that is what makes the definition so difficult. Every one of these conditions (and a thousand more) produce stress, but none can be singled out as being it, since the world applies equally to all the others. 

The word itself comes from the Latin strictus, meaning ‘to draw tight’. The word stress then became absorbed to the old French word estrecier, meaning‘to straighten or narrow’. These meanings accurately describe what actually happens to your body when you experience excess stress. Your muscles and fasciae (connective tissues) tighten, you tend to hold your limbs and torso straighter and your blood vessel narrow. These are condition the characteristics of your fight and flight response, tge condition that enable primitive humans either to stand and confront danger or to flee. 

During your lifetime, you will face a range of totally different problems, but medical research has shown that in many respects the body responds on the stereotyped manner outlined above, undergoing identical biochemical changes which are essentially designed to cope with any type of increased demand upon the human machinery. In other words, although stress-producing factors (technically called stressor0 are different, they all elicit essentially the same biological stress response.

Short-term arousal due to stress can be lifesaving, but long-term arousal can be damaging to health as the body strength is continually drained at a higher rate than normal and no time to recoup energy given. Long term depression and feelings of being unable to cope, which may result from prolonged stress, produce slight different changes and it is thought that they may have even greater potential to be damaged. 

The distinction between stressor and stress perhaps the first important step in the scientific analysis of this most common biological phenomenon that we all know only too well from personal experience. Dr. Hans Selye, an internationally acknowledged authority on understanding stress, defines stress as a ‘nonspecific response of the body to any demand made on it’.

Each demand made upon your body is, in a sense, unique- that is specific. When cold, you shiver to produce more heat and the blood vessels in your skin contract to hold in the heat. When hot, you sweat because the evaporation of perspiration has a cooling effect. Similarly, any drug or hormone you take have their own specific effects on your system. 

 No matter what kind of derangements is produced, all these stressors have one thing in common: they increase the demand for readjustment. Therefore, although the cause and consequence reaction may specific, the demand itself is non-specific, requiring adaptation to a problem, irrespective of what that problem may be. The non-specific demand for activity is the essence of stress .

Studies show that many illnesses have no specific cause but the result of a constellation of factors among which non-specific stress often plays a decisive role. We have to consider that such ailments  as peptic ulcers, high blood pressure, nervous breakdown, and so on may not be primarily due to such causes as diet, genetics or occupational hazards. They may be simply be the products of the ongoing  non-specific stress that results from attempted to endure more than we can.

Thus instead of undergoing complicated drug therapies or surgical operations, we can often help ourselves better by establishing wheatear or not the decisive cause of our illness is stress, which may stem from our relationship with a member of our family or our employer, or it may merely be due to our over-emphasis on being right every time. 

Stress of Life

The Stress of Life

Everybody has it; everybody talks about it; yet few have taken the time to find out what stress really is.

We often look back longingly to a time when we imagine that the human race had no stress, but in fact human beings have always been subjected to stress of one kind or the another. Yet with each generation, complexity and additional stress are added to our lives. The technological advances of the last hundred years, particularly the last fifty, are supposed to have made life easier, but paradoxically they have intensified the stress in our life daily existence, mainly by increasing expectations and standards of performance. No longer is it enough, for example to keep the house clean, the clothes washed and food on the table; we feel compelled to keep the house looking like a magazine advertisement, the clothes whiter than white and completely wrinkle-free and to cook food of gourmet standard. Washing machines and microwave ovens, computers and facsimile machines may have taken the labor out of work but they have also moved expectations and goals even further out of reach. 

Stress is a part of our lives which, though it can be overcome cannot be avoided. Indeed, it is very often a topic of conversation: the stress of living in a recession, executive life, unemployment, retirement, exercise, family problems, pollution, the death of a relative or friend. Even schoolchildren are placed under enormous stress, caused by a host of factors such as parental expectations, fear of unemployment in the future, and peer pressure, to name a few.

7 Reasons Emotional Release is crucial for your mental health

7 reasons Emotional release is crucial for your mental health

Many of us suppress our emotions for a variety of reasons. We may not have felt safe expressing strong emotions in childhood, or we may have learned to suppress emotions from our parents. Some people believe it is inappropriate or unacceptable to express negative feelings. Others think it makes us appear weak. Sometimes we don’t express our emotions because we may fear that others just won’t understand. However, emotional release is vital for our mental health and wellbeing.

1.    Suppressing emotions can cause stress

When you repress emotions, they do not go away. In fact, they can have even more serious effects on your body, causing a rise in blood pressure and flipping you into fight or flight mode and making you stressed. Though we think we are successfully repressing emotions, our bodies and nervous systems know differently and over time, this can cause major damage to our bodies and our sense of well-being.

2.     Suppressing emotions can cause poor sleep patterns

Suppressing emotions only works while you are conscious. When you sleep, you are less able to squash down the feelings. They may emerge as bad dreams or a feeling of anxiety that prevents you from sleeping well. Poor sleep has a negative impact on the body and mental health.

3.     Suppressing emotions can cause mental exhaustion

Attempting to suppress emotions is a lot of work. Being constantly on the alert for the emergence of negative feelings puts a strain on our systems that become exhausting. We use up huge amounts of energy and psychological reserves just keeping the emotions at bay.

4.     Suppressing emotions can cause money problems

When you suppress a negative emotion, you have difficulty remembering not just the event but also the time period and events surrounding it. This can cause gaps in our memories that can be worrying.

5.     Supressing emotions can harm relationships

Those who suppress emotions have more problems with relationships than those who express emotions easily. When we fail to have good relationships, this has a negative effect on our well-being and mental health.

6.     Suppressing emotions can cause damage to your temporal lobe

The temporal lobe is the part of your brain that is associated with mood stability. If you are suppressing emotions, you are interfering with its work. Over time this can cause a reduction in the temporal lobe function and difficulty keeping moods stable.

7.     Suppressing your emotions can cause serious mental illness

Suppressing emotions prevents the brain from working properly and efficiently. Its ability to see situations objectively becomes impaired which can lead to mental health problems such as anxiety and depression and sometimes substance abuse.