Stressing your stress

Do you notice yourself always nagging at someone? Hands in your head grasping it and closely wanted to fly anything you are holding? Up to your eyeballs and feeling insane from mind-boggling ventures? No need to doubt, you’re now strained!  

Stress is simply a fact of nature -- forces from the inside or outside world affecting the individual. The individual responds to stress in ways that affect the individual as well as their environment. Because of the excess of stress in our modern lives, we usually think of stress as a negative experience, but from a biological point of view, stress can be a neutral, negative, or positive experience.

In general, stress is related to both external and internal factors. External factors include the physical environment, including your job, your relationships with others, your home, and all the situations, challenges, difficulties, and expectations you're confronted with on a daily basis. Internal factors determine your body's ability to respond to, and deal with, the external stress-inducing factors. Internal factors which influence your ability to handle stress include your nutritional status, overall health and fitness levels, emotional well-being, and the amount of sleep and rest you get.

Signs and symptoms

Excess stress can be evidence itself in a variety of emotional, behavioral, and even physical symptoms due to sleep disturbances, muscle tension, muscle aches, headache, gastrointestinal disturbances, and fatigue. Emotional and behavioral symptoms that can accompany excess stress include nervousness, anxiety, changes in eating habits including overeating, loss of enthusiasm or energy, and mood changes, like irritability and depression.

It is also known that people under stress have a greater tendency to engage in unhealthy behaviors, such as abuse of alcohol and drugs, cigarette smoking, and poor exercise and nutritional choices, than their less-stressed counterparts. These unhealthy behaviors can further increase the severity of symptoms related to stress, often leading to a "vicious cycle" of symptoms and unhealthy behaviors.

Teen stress

The teen years often bring about an increase in perceived stress as young adults learn to cope with increasing demands and pressures. Studies have shown that excessive stress during the teen years can have a negative impact upon both physical and mental health later in life. For example, teen stress is a risk factor for the development of depression, a serious condition that carries an increased risk of suicide.

The presence of foster family, support from the circle of friends, other affiliations can help diminish the ill effects of stress a teen feels. Though in severe cases, a physician recommends to undergo treatment or counselling. 

How one can handle stress?

Worried people seek outlets such as using drugs, moderate alcohol, and cigarette smoking. But in fact, these can increase more the difficulties. It can produce big surges of chemicals and probably will lead to ailments.

 

Exercise is the most essential answer from being stressed-out. Since the stress response prepares us to fight or flee, our bodies are primed for action. However, we usually handle our stresses while sitting at our desk, standing at the water cooler, or behind the wheel stuck in traffic. Exercise on a regular basis helps to turn down the production of stress hormones and associated neurochemicals. Thus, exercise can help avoid the damage to our health that prolonged stress can cause. In fact, studies have found that exercise is a potent antidepressant, anxiolytic (combats anxiety), and sleeping aid for many people.

Create predictability in your work and home life as much as possible. Structure and routine in your life can't prevent the unexpected from happening. However, they can provide a comfortable framework from which to respond to the unexpected. Think ahead and try to anticipate the varieties of possibilities, good and bad, that may become realities at work or home. Generate scenarios and response plans. You may find that the "unexpected" really doesn't always come out of the blue. With this kind of preparation, you can turn stress into a positive force to work for your growth and change.