Stress is your bodies natural way of preparing itself to handle situations in your life, whether they are real or imagined. When you become stressed your body automatically increases your heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate, your muscles tense up, and your digestion and immune system slow down. If you want to look at it like a machine, you are turning off the parts of the machine that are not immediately needed to help you get through the situation and adding more power to the parts that are needed. This is referred to as the "Fight or Flight" response. Not Always A Bad Thing
Stress is not always a bad thing, it's designed to get us through situations in our life, but when we are stuck in a constant state of stress, or the cause of our stress does not allow us a physical release for that stress it starts to be a problem. An athlete in a competition, say a basketball game for example, would have a physical outlet to burn off the stress. They would be putting the increased heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure to good use, the use the "Fight or Flight" response intended. But, a person sitting in their bosses office afraid they are about to be fired, has the same physical response as the athlete and no way to burn it out. In this case the stress wouldn't be very helpful and instead of helping the person to perform better like the athlete, would instead make the situation more difficult.
Long Term Stress
Sometimes, when the situation is not as short lived as a basketball game or a meeting with your boss, but is instead something more long term, like the loss of a loved one, or a situation at work or in your home, the feeling of being stressed can be almost constant. It's not always easy to identify when you are stressed, so lets look at the symptoms.
Symptoms of Stress
Stress effects different people in different ways, we are all unique individuals who have learned to handle situations differently so you may not experience all of the symptoms on the list. Stress effects us in three separate and unique areas, mentally, physically, and emotionally / behaviorally
Mental Symptoms of Stress
- Forgetting to do things, or about things, being disorganized
- Difficulty focusing or concentrating
- Mental fatigue
- Taking a pessimistic outlook on situations
- Dietary changes, overeating, under-eating, only eating 'junk food'
- Making poor decisions, or 'snap' decisions
- Constant thoughts, often negative, even when you are trying to rest
- Headaches
- Rapid heartbeat which may result in chest pain
- Upset stomach, diarrhea, nausea, constipation, other digestive issues
- Trouble sleeping, insomnia
- Sweaty, cold palms and feet
- Increased sweating even when you are not hot
- Tension in your muscles, resulting in pain, common in your back, chest, shoulders, and forehead
- Feeling fatigued, out of energy
- Changes in sex drive, loss of ability to perform in men
- Lowered resistance to colds, flu, and infections
- Grinding your teeth
- Nervous twitches or muscle spasms
- Feeling "pins and needles" especially in your hands and feet
- Difficulty swallowing or dry mouth
- Nervous fidgeting, nail biting
- Using alcohol, drugs, or tobacco to calm down
- Mood swings, easily aggravated
- Feelings of frustration
- Low self-esteem, depression loneliness
- Avoiding other people
- Unable to relax
- Feeling like you are losing control, or overwhelmed by the situation
Fortunately, stress is not something that we have to simply accept, stress can be reduced and even managed now that you understand how stress works. Since stress effects you in three areas at once, mentally, psychically, and emotionally, I recommend dealing with stress in a three pronged fashion.
Mentally Reducing Stress
When I am stressed, my mind never shuts down, it is constantly going on and on with things that I need to worry about and things that I need to get done. Of course, it decides to do this when I am laying in bed and trying to sleep. A method that I have found that is very helpful for dealing with this is to get my thoughts out on paper. An actual physical pen and paper works best because it allows you to burn out some physical tension, but typing, or even just talking to a friend can help you to clear your head. One of the things I like to do, especially while driving for some reason, is to talk into a voice recorder and get my thoughts out verbally.
Free Writing
One way to get your thoughts out on paper is called Free Writing. Basically all you do is sit down and just start to write about whatever comes to your mind. Keep writing for as long as it takes until literally nothing comes to mind. You may need to take a break from time to time if your hand starts to hurt, but keep going until nothing comes to mind. It doesn't matter if it's comical things from a TV show you watched, or things about what is stressing you out, just write it down. See, when things are coming up in your mind they are doing so because your subconscious wants you to process them. But most of us are too busy to process them so we just set them aside. It's like paperwork on a desk, unless we handle the paperwork when it is put on our desk it will pile up until our desk is too cluttered to work. Basically the same thing has happened to your mind. When you do free writing, you get that out on paper and you literally clean up your mental desk.
Stress is your body preparing for physical action, to either fight for it's own safety, or to run away from something big and dangerous. So think of it like a sling shot, when you pull back on the cord and just hold it, there is an awful lot of tension built up, that tension is designed to be released, if you don't' release it sooner or later the cord will break. When your stressed you are just like the cord of the sling shot, so give yourself something physical to do in order to release that tension, that's what it's there for in the first place anyways.
Get Moving To Relax
It doesn't matter what you do to burn off the stress, if you want to play basketball, go for a walk, or a swim it doesn't matter, as long as you start moving! The best part is if you make this a part of your regular routine you will have a much better foundation for dealing with stress. The down side is if you are really stressed out it may take a couple of days of doing physical activity for you to burn out all of the stress, you will however feel some relief after just the first day. Just make sure you pick something that is within your physical capabilities and that you don't push it too hard. If it's your first time walking, for example, don't try to walk 15 miles. Just start out small, a short 15 minute walk will have a profound effect on your mood, and if you do that same 15 minute walk every day, you'll build not only your body, but your ability to handle stress.
For some tips on how to start a walking regiment, check out my article on Walking for Stress Relief!
Emotionally Reducing Stress
Stress puts out bodies in a position where we are emotionally charged, the idea behind it was if we are emotional, scared, excited, even angry, we are more likely to use those emotions to boost our physical response to the object that is causing us stress, this would in turn increase our chance of survival. Unfortunately this doesn't help us if the object of our stress is our boss, so we need to find ways to burn out the emotional portion of stress.
Daily Meditation to Calm Your Nerves
Meditation is the act of focusing on one thing, and one thing only, in order to allow our body, mind, and emotions to balance out. The act of 'Centering' means that you find a point where all three parts of you, mind body and emotions, are all equally focused on one thing. This is actually a lot easier then it sounds, and has many health benefits including increased immune system, increased mental focus and greater emotional stability, not to mention reduced stress. First off, forget the idea of sitting of cross legged on the ground humming, there is a place for that but that is not what I want you to do. What I want you to do instead is get into a comfortable position, sit in your favorite chair, lay in bed, I don't care just be comfortable. Then close your eyes, and focus on your breathing. All I want you to do is take slow deep breathes, feel your chest open as you inhale and shrink down as you exhale. The physical action of taking deep breathes stretches out your chest and shoulder muscles which will release tension. It also increases your oxygen level, which will increase your immune system and indicate to your body that everything is okay, you are getting enough oxygen it can relax and turn off the fight or flight response. Once you are comfortable and breathing deeply, just be aware of the sound of your breathing, and how your chest feels. As I said meditation is focus, and what you are focusing on is your breathing, nothing more nothing less. As you do this thoughts may come to your mind, this is a good thing, take the time to acknowledge that thought that comes to mind, examine it, become aware that it is there, then, set it aside and focus on your breathing. If you are doing this for the first time it's perfectly natural for your mind to wander, with practice you will learn to focus only on your breathing and the rest of the world will slip away. It may take a while to reach that point but when you finally do it is a wonderful feeling. I recommend you meditate for at least 5 minutes a day, the effects are cumulative and after a week or so you will see a definite improvement in how you feel.
When in Doubt, Cry
The act of crying has a bad stereo type in our society, but it's actually our bodies natural defense mechanism to releasing a great deal of tension in a short period of time. If you are feeling so overloaded that you feel like your might cry don't fight it, let it out, it's happening for a reason. There is no shame in crying, everybody does it, just find someplace private and take a few minutes to yourself to let your body release some of this tension. You'll feel better when your done, and you can take a moment to clean yourself up and go on with your life, free of the excess tension.
Final Thoughts
Stress is something we all have to live with, but learning how to focus on what is causing you to be stressed can help you to take control of the stress and use it in situations where it would be helpful and to burn it off in other situations. Remember the best thing to do in a situation where you are stressed is to remind yourself to relax, take a walk if you can to burn it out, but if you can't a few slow deep breathes will help you relieve the tension. Good Luck!
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