Stress Management: How Stress Effects You and Techniques to Cope
Stress is a part of life that you can’t avoid. Especially in this day and age, stress is present in our lives in some shape or form. Stress levels are affected by external and internal factors. External factors include your job, family or other people in your life and daily challenges or situations. Internal contributors include your general health, fitness level and diet, and the amount of sleep you get. But stress is manageable and it involves taking control of your life to create a balance of work, fun, relationships, relaxation and the strength to battle through tough situations.
Management Stress and Stress Symptoms
Poorly managed stress can show up in a number of ways. Some of the most common symptoms of stress are trouble sleeping, muscle aches and tension, headaches, fatigue and gastrointestinal issues. Behavioral and emotional issues can include anxiety, loss of enthusiasm or energy, irritability and depression, and overeating. People under stress also are more prone to engage in unhealthy behavior such as excessive drinking, drug and alcohol abuse, cigarette smoking, and poor exercise and nutritional habits.
Stress Management Techniques
Before you can learn how to deal with stress, you need to pinpoint the sources of stress in your life. In order to do this, you have to examine your habits, excuses and attitudes. Figure out if you explain stress away as a temporary issue, think of it as a permanent fixture in your home or work life, if you blame stress on outside forces like other people and events or if you see it as normal an unexceptional. You can keep a written record of the things that stress you out daily and identify patterns. You must accept responsibility for the role you play in creating and maintaining stress in order to be in control of your stress level.
Signs and symptoms you are not coping with stress in a healthy way
There are correct ways to deal with stress and unfortunately there are many wrong ways too. These include:
- Sleeping too much
- Procrastinating
- Overeating or under eating
- Smoking
- Drinking in excess
- Withdrawing from friends, family and interests
- Overloading your schedule to avoid facing problems
- Lashing out at others
- Spending hours in front of the TV or computer
The effects of stress on your health
In order for the body to respond to stress in a healthy way, there must be an immediate response by the brain that is maintained for a certain amount of time and then turned off. When the body over-responds to stress or is unable to turn off the stress response, the result is can have negative effects on an individual.
Management techniques to beat stress
Here are just some of the ways you can handle the stress in your life:
- Regular exercise helps to lower the production of stress hormones and other neurochemicals. It also acts as an anti-depressant, sleep aid and a tool to combat anxiety.
- Avoid unnecessary stress by knowing your responsibility limits and learning how to say no.
- Limit the time you spend with people who stress you out or cut them out of your life.
- Take your breaks at work. Go for a walk instead of getting coffee and don’t talk about work during your breaks.
- Create structure and a routine in your life you so can have a comfortable framework in place when the unexpected happens.
- If you need more help dealing with stress, individual and group stress management is available from mental-health care providers.
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