The word is pretty ,much everywhere-I'm stressed, How stressed are you?, What's your stress?
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics,
Stress is the uncomfortable feeling you get when you’re worried, scared, angry, frustrated, or overwhelmed. It is caused by emotions, but it affects your mood and body. Many adults think that kids don’t have stress because they don’t have to work and support a family. They are wrong!
What Causes Stress?
Stress comes from many different places.
From your family
From your friends.
Even from yourself. “I need to lose weight, wear the right clothes, get a better job, achieve more goals. Having the following traits;
Inability to accept uncertainty Pessimism Negative self-talk
Unrealistic expectations Perfectionism Lack of assertiveness
And from
Arguing or watching people around you argue
Working within tight deadlines or in a high pressure environment.
Relationship difficulties
Financial difficulties
Not being good enough at something
Worrying about your body image
Worrying about family and friends
Being too busy
Feeling guilty
How Does the Body Handle Stress?
First, here are 2 short definitions.
Hormone. A chemical made by one part of the body to send a message to the
rest of the body.
Nervous system. The brain, spinal cord, and all of the nerves. The nerves
send messages between your brain and the rest of your body.
Stress is a survival tool
The body is a finely tuned machine that can change quickly to do what we need it to do, like react to stress. The body actually has 2 different sets of nerves. One works while we’re relaxed, and the other works when there’s an emergency. These 2 systems cannot work together at the same time. It’s important to know this because we can shut off the emergency system by turning on the relaxed system. That helps us feel better!
Even when there are no real emergencies, our emotions can make our bodies act like there is a huge emergency. This is because the brain controls both emotions and stress hormones. If your brain thinks something terrible is happening, your body will react as if it really is! Even a little bit of stress that never seems to go away can confuse the body. It makes the body work harder to prepare for an emergency that may not really be there. This goes right back to ages ago when people needed to survive in Jungles and escape prey like Lions and Tigers.The emergency nervous system was a great thing to have keeping us alert and helping us work harder.
If Stress Is a Survival Tool, Why Does It Make Us Feel Awful?
Even when there are no real emergencies, our emotions can make our bodies act like there is a huge emergency. This is because the brain controls both emotions and stress hormones. If your brain thinks something terrible is happening, your body will react as if it really is! Even a little bit of stress that never seems to go away can confuse the body. It makes the body work harder to prepare for an emergency that may not really be there.
Obviously, A tiger running at you is a real crisis. If you believe a mild stress is an emergency, you will not be able to effectively handle it. Your body will be preparing to deal with a real tiger. You won’t be able to concentrate on anything but escaping. The trick is to figure out when something really is an emergency and when your emotions are only acting as if it is one.Stress is a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your balance in some way. When you sense danger – whether it’s real or imagined – the body's defenses kick into high gear in a rapid, automatic process known as the “fight-or-flight” reaction, or the stress response.
The stress response is the body’s way of protecting you. When working properly, it helps you stay focused, energetic, and alert. In emergency situations, stress can save your life – giving you extra strength to defend yourself, for example, or spurring you to slam on the brakes to avoid an accident.
OK enough already! Down to what we really want to know-How to manage stress, since we know we can't get rid of it completely.
Learn how to relax
You can’t completely eliminate stress from your life, but you can control how much it affects you. Relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation, and deep breathing activate the body’s relaxation response, a state of restfulness that is the opposite of the stress response. When practiced regularly, these activities lead to a reduction in your everyday stress levels and a boost in your feelings of joy and serenity. They also increase your ability to stay calm and collected under pressure.
Invest in your emotional health
Most people ignore their emotional health until there’s a problem. But just as it requires time and energy to build or maintain your physical health, so it is with your emotional well-being. The more you put in to it, the stronger it will be. People with good emotional health have an ability to bounce back from stress and adversity. This ability is called resilience. They remain focused, flexible, and positive in bad times as well as good. The good news is that there are many steps you can take to build your resilience and your overall emotional health
Dealing with Stressful Situations: The Four A’s
Change the situation:
Avoid the stressor.
Alter the stressor.
Change your reaction:
Adapt to the stressor.
Accept the stressor.
easier said than done-I agree, keep an eye out for the part 2 which will analyse each of these and how to do them
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