Stress and Lifestyle Management Counseling, Stress is often defined as a bodily response to the demands of life. But there are also emotional and mental aspects of stress. It is experienced as thoughts and feelings as well as in the body. Another way to define stress could be as an internal and conditioned response to external pressures.
Mental health professionals often help people reduce and manage their stress. They can also help people work through other mental health issues that have developed while coping with high levels of stress over a period of time.
WHAT IS STRESS?
The American Institute of Stress calls stress “America’s leading health problem.” In many cases, the stress Americans experience today is a response to psychological threats. Some of these threats might be losing a job or looking for employment, the death of a loved one, or relationship issues. Any of these can occur more than once in the course of a life.
Stress evolved in the form of a fight or flight response. This response was a reaction to physical threats on one’s life. The fight or flight response causes the physical aspects of stress, which appear when adrenaline and cortisol are released into the bloodstream. These hormones cause increased blood flow, clotting, and elevated heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar.
The stress response is immediate and uncontrollable. Someone with high stress levels may experience these physical aspects several times throughout the day. Consistently high levels of stress can cause people to develop conditions such as hypertension, stroke, diabetes, chronic pain, and heart attacks.
SYMPTOMS OF STRESS
Stress can have physical, mental, and emotional symptoms. Stress affects people on different levels. It can help to identify which parts of ourselves are being affected by stress. Stress can affect people on one level, such as only mentally, or on multiple levels, such as both physically and emotionally.
Physical symptoms of stress include:
Mental symptoms of stress include:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Suicidal ideation
- Food and eating issues
- Addictions and/or compulsions
- Substance abuse
Emotional symptoms of stress include:
- Irritability
- Sadness
- Anger
- Apathy
- Overwhelm
To Overcome from this consult a Stress and Lifestyle Management Counseling,If you are worried about how any of these symptoms are affecting you, it is okay to reach out for help. Talking with a trusted therapist or doctor about your stress can help you learn how to manage it.
WHAT CAUSES STRESS?
Stress and Lifestyle Management is not always caused by a negative event. Some positive life experiences can be just as stress-inducing as negative ones.
The Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory indexes common stressful events and uses a numerical value to rank them. It uses these values to determine a person’s potential for becoming ill as a result of stress. Some common stressors in life, many of which appear on the stress inventory, include:
- Losing a job or starting a new job
- Getting divorced or going through a breakup
- Getting married
- Being discriminated against
- Experiencing a change in financial status
- Following the news or politics
- Having a child
- Moving
- Beginning or ending school
- Experiencing a loss
- Being diagnosed with a serious illness
For many people, these events are normal parts of life. Not everyone experiences a divorce, marriage, or having a child. But many will experience discrimination, lose a job, go through a breakup, or experience another major or minor event.
For most people, stress is a part of life that is not going anywhere. But it may be easier to manage in smaller amounts, especially when other factors help mitigate it. A marriage, for example, is generally considered to be a happy event. Though it can be stressful to plan and prepare for the ceremony, the excitement experienced by the couple may help reduce the physical and mental effects of their stress.
UNHEALTHY COPING MECHANISMS FOR STRESS
People may also develop methods for coping with stress. A coping mechanism is a response that develops over time to help someone deal with an overwhelming external force, like stress. Some coping mechanisms work as healthy tools for managing stress. Many others are unhealthy and can magnify the negative effects of stress instead of reducing them.
A few examples of potentially harmful coping mechanisms for stress include:
- Drinking alcohol to excess
- Smoking
- Emotional eating
- Illicit drug use
- Gambling
- Shopping
- Self-harm
Stress and Lifestyle Management Counseling can help people identify an unhealthy coping mechanism for stress and develop a healthy one to use instead. If a person uses an unhealthy coping mechanism for dealing with long-term stress, they can end up with a secondary mental health issue.
Individuals may start using an unhealthy coping mechanism to lessen physical, mental, or emotional pain caused by stress. However, continued self-medication or self-soothing using the method may then lead to a reliance on it for coping with stress. In the case of addiction, this can lead to more stressful life events, like physical illness or unemployment. Other unhealthy coping mechanisms may cause people to develop mental health issues as a result of feeling hopeless, isolated, or ashamed.
HOW STRESS AFFECTS PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH
Few people will deny they have been stressed at least once in their life. But for many, stress can be ongoing and unbearable. Chronic stress can contribute to numerous mental health and physical health issues. Research has linked high stress levels to:
- Insomnia or hypersomnia
- Feeling more or less hungry than usual
- Self-soothing with drugs or alcohol
- Changes in mood or mental health
- Less productivity and enjoyment at work
- Intimacy problems
- Migraine headaches
- Chronic pain
- Anger issues
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Loss of enjoyment in social activities
- Heart attack and stroke
When these complaints occur as a result of stress, they may clear up when the stressful situation is resolved. But they can also become serious if present long-term. Treatment from a doctor or mental health professional may be necessary, especially if stress persists a stress and Lifestyle management counseling.
Stress and Lifestyle Management Counseling Changes for More Effective Stress Management
- Seek your own optimum stress level. Strive for excellence within your limits.
- Choose your own goals. Do not live out choices others have made for you.
- Become part of a support system. Look out for yourself by letting friends help you when you are under too much stress. Likewise, help friends when they feel overloaded.
- Think positively. Your mind sends signals to your body to prepare for danger whenever you think about possible negative outcomes. Hence, you become tense regardless of whether or not the event happens. Train yourself to think positively, even when faced with adversity. For example, “it seems awful right now, but it will work out in the end” is a positive thought.
- Make decisions. You can learn to live with the consequences or you can change your mind. Any decision — even consciously deciding to do nothing — is better than no decision.
- Accept what you cannot change. If a problem is beyond your control, you are better off accepting it for now than spinning your wheels.
- Anticipate potentially stressful situations and prepare for them. Decide whether the situation is one you should deal with, postpone, or avoid. If you decide to deal with the situation, practice what you will say and do, before you actually do it.
- Try to keep your perspective. This is admittedly an arduous task when it feels as if the entire world is about to cave in. Ask yourself: Will it matter in ten years?
- Manage your time. Prioritizing and planning can keep the demands of school from becoming overwhelming.
- Take care of your health. Exercise regularly, eat a balanced diet, get enough sleep, and avoid alcohol and other mood-altering drugs.
- Take time for yourself. Make yourself your priority. Find time to relax — even if only for a few minutes — every day.
- Break down a stressor into manageable components. More often than not, problems that seem huge and unwieldy are quite manageable when looked at as a series of smaller tasks. For example, the thought of doing a dissertation may seem overwhelming. When broken down into small steps it may seem much more do-able.
- Avoid comparing yourself to others. When you are stressed or upset, everyone else may seem smarter, more organized, more directed, and more talented than you are. You have to remind yourself that stress can play tricks on your mind and that just because there are a lot of talented people, it does not mean that you are a stupid, clumsy clod.
- Learn to plan. Disorganization can breed stress. Being able to do long and short term planning gives a sense of control over your life. Many people benefit from making daily to-do lists, prioritizing the items, and doing them in order.
- Keep your expectations realistic. You are not now, and will never be perfect. Accept your own strengths and limits and work within them. Expect some problems reaching your goals and realize that you can solve most of them with perseverance.
- Avoid unnecessary competition. There are many competitive situations in life that we cannot avoid. Too much concern with winning in too many areas of life can create excessive tension and anxiety, and make one unnecessarily aggressive.
- Be a positive person. Avoid criticizing others. Learn to praise the things you like in others. Focus upon the good qualities those around you possess. Learn to do this for yourself also. Notice your own good qualities and reward yourself for improvements (even small ones).
- Learn to tolerate and forgive. The intolerance of others leads to frustration and anger. An attempt to understand the way other people feel can make you more accepting of them, and hence, less stressed.
- Exercise regularly.
- Have fun. You need occasionally to escape from the pressures of life and have fun. Find pastimes that are absorbing and enjoyable to you, no matter your level of ability.