WB - Living Well Today
Stress
Self Care
Stress in Everyday Life
Everyone's talking about 'stress' these days. How stressful modern life is! How our situation is more stressful! And life can be stressful. People also realize that stress and how we deal with it is actually very important not only to how much we enjoy our life, but our health. The bottom line is that everyone needs pleasure, productivity and creativity in their lives and chronic stress robs us of these.
If you look at the stress scale, we all want to be living in in the Low-Stress Zone most of time - creative, relaxed, confident, using our resources to find positive solutions to life's challenges.
Sometimes we need to step back, look at where we are with stress and figure out how to get to where we want to be living.
There's information about stress in the sections below. Can't wait? Want to skip ahead? Check out Three Simple Steps To Manage Your Stress
Where do you put yourself on this stress scale?
1 — I’m creatively and cheerfully engaged in life.
2 — I’m relaxed and expect to stay this way.
3–5 — I can handle stresses and think of positive solutions to my challenges.
6–7 — I’m moderately irritable, anxious or overwhelmed, and stresses feel burdensome .
8 — My problems seem unsolvable. Many things are irritating or upsetting me.
9 — Help! I’m about to lose it!
10 — I have chart-topping negative emotions
Source: American Heart Association. Accessed 07.27.2018
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Symptoms of stress
What is stress? What's its purpose?
3 Types of Stress
Chronic daily stress - weighing us down
How does stress affect me? My health?
Symptoms of stress
Body Responses & Symptoms of Stress
Everyone's body reacts differently to stress. What have you noticed?
Some of these symptoms might be related to a medical problem and not stress. If something is unusual for you or severe enough to prevent you from doing your every-day activities, it's a good idea to check it out with your healthcare team.
- Backache
- Change in Sex Drive
- Chest Pain
- Chest Tightness
- Digestive Issues
- General Muscle Tension
- Headache
- Heart Palpitations
- Fatigue
- Lack of Energy
- Muscle Cramps/Spasms
- Neck & Shoulder Pain
- Pain
- Sleep Problems
- Smoking
- Teeth Grinding
- Upset Stomach/Nausea
- Blaming
- Depression/Anxiety
- Forgetfulness
- Lack of Motivation
- Loneliness
- Sadness or Depression
- Crying
- Eating When Not Hungry
- Frustration
- Irritability/Anger
- Restlessness
- Worrying
- Difficulty concentrating
- Infertility
What is stress? What's its purpose?
What is 'stress'?
Stress is how the brain and body respond to any demand. Every type of demand or stressor—such as exercise, work, school, major life changes, or traumatic events—can be stressful.
"Good Stress"
Stress can motivate people to prepare and perform. It prepares us to do our best. It can give that extra edge when we take a test, or go to an interview, or make a presentation.
It's even life-saving. When we're in 'danger', stress triggers a 'fight - flight- or - freeze' reaction. It's a heightened feeling of attention, alertness and being ready to deal with whatever is happening or is about to happen. Your pulse quickents, you breathe faster, muscles tense, and your brain uses more oxygen and increases activity - so we can survive.
This is a natural, and healthy response to 'danger'. Animals have the same response. After a sudden event, our body needs time to recover. Animals will go to a safe space and 'shake it off'.
3 Types of Stress
There are different types of stress - and all of them affect us physically and mentally. A stress may only happen once or it can go on for a short-time or keep repeating for a long-time.
Types of stress
1) Traumatic Stress:
This is an event that happens such as a major car accident, war, being attacked or assaulted, or a natural disaster like a flood or hurricane where peole are in danger or being suddenly hurt or killed.
Symptoms of stress may be temoporary - but most recover more rapidly.
2) Stress with sudden changes:
Negative changes: Loss of a job, divorce, a death, illness
Positive changes: new job, marriage, birth of a child, travel/vacation
3) Routine Stress:
These would be everyday events that are felt as pressures: work, school, family, finances.
Conflicts with family
Loneliness
Lack of confidence
Planning for retirement
Traffic
World events: Global warming, war, world economyText...
Chronic daily stress - weighing us down
Chronic Daily Stress - Routine Stress
Routine stress may be the hardest type of stress to notice at first. It happens over and over. If we aren't doing anything to calm and center, the body gets no clear signal that it's ok to return to normal functioning. so - it just stays in a constant state of preparing for danger, pumping out adrenaline to stay prepared.
It's like driving with your foot on the gas pedal all the time. Pretty soon - the car at least runs out of gas and stops!
Our body has its own way of trying to tell us it's in overdrive and it needs to stop. It does it by the symptoms we feel. Besides treating the symptom directly, it helps to recognize that it's being fired by stress. It won't 'go away' until we bring down our level of daily stress.
This can be tough to accept - we all want to feel in control, tough, strong and always there for our loved ones. We don't want to know anything is gettting to us.
The good news is - we are all those things - and we can use our experience and knowledge to to address what's happening and "put the brake on stress" before it gets to us, takes over.
How does stress affect me? My health?
How Stress Affects Health
Prolonged, high levels of stress continue to send messages to stay on high alert to all parts of our body - and mind. It can become a problem when it becomes every day. It starts to affect our health.
The 'fight-or-flight' response increases blood flow and activity in the parts of our body we'll need to face danger - muscles, heart, brain, lungs. It slows down blood flow to the 'unnecessary' parts - parts not needed when we're in danger: the immune system, digestion, sleep, urinary system (kidneys/bladder) and reproduction (sex organs).
When the level of stress stays high, those are the body systems that develop the most problems. Symptoms and health problems related to stress:
- high blood pressure
- weakened immune system - get more viral infections like the flu and common colds.
- heart disease
- digestive problems: indigestion, heart burn, gas, diarrhea, constipation
- headaches
- aggressive behavior / irritability, sadness, anger
- sleeplessness
- low energy
- diabetes
- depression and anxiety
HOW DOES IT WORK
Three Simple Steps to Manage Stress
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01
FIGURE OUT WHAT YOUR STRESSES ARE
This is the most important step - figure out what your personal stressors are. You may already know. Just in care, take a look at the list of common stressors.
Figure out how important the stressor is and how much of it is under your control - and then decide what to do with that information.
COMING SOON
02
FIND WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR STRESSORS
There are proven thing you can do that reduce the feeling of stress. They help build 'resilience' - your energy reserve so you can bounce back faster.
Take a look at the list and pick the ones you think will work best for you.
COMING SOON
03
MAKE CHANGES & PRIORITIZE YOUR LIFE
In order to manage stress, you need to make changes to cope with life’s challenges. Create and stick to a schedule.
To start, prioritize those things of most importance and then add in stress reducers. Eliminate unnecessary stressors. Finally, make appropriate lifestyle changes for healthier living.