Stress: What is it and How to Cope with it?

Stress is best described as the feeling of strain and pressure – which often leads to both psychological and physical distress.

Stress is closely aligned with Anxiety disorders, and many other mental health conditions. It is important for an individual to control the level of their stress – otherwise it may exacerbate and become a fully-blown mental health condition.

Not only that, but long-term stress increases the risk of several physical health problems. Fortunately, there are many ways to manage stress, and channel it into more effective emotions.

Definition of Stress

Simply put, Stress is a natural reaction to a situation where someone doesn’t believe that they have the resources required to cope with the demands of the circumstances.

Who gets stressed?

Everyone appears to experience stress in different ways, as such, there are a plethora of symptoms involved. Symptoms of stress include:

• Emotional Feelings such as being overwhelmed, irritated or anxious
• Psychological feelings such as endless worrying and poor concentration
• Physical feelings such as headaches, dizziness, appetite changes and trouble sleeping

As a result of these symptoms, an individual will often see a change in behaviour. These can include snapping unnecessarily at others, avoidance of perceived stressful situations, or harmful coping methods like abusing alcohol or increased smoking.

Common causes of stress

Stress can be caused by a huge range of things. Everyone has different causes of stress. General causes may typically include:

• Major Life Event: A major life event such as getting married, childbirth, moving house or the death of a loved one can all cause stress. For instance, these events can cause uncertainty, which is key to causing stress.
• Traumatic Event or Situation: Any traumatic event or situation like homelessness, illness or financial worries can cause stress. Or a crisis like a natural disaster, which is out of the control of an individual, can lead to the onset of stress.
• Interpersonal Relationships: Relationships are a crucial element of an individual’s life. Therefore, when someone encounters relationship difficulties, stress is common.
• Day-to-Day Irritations: Day-to-day factors that cause annoyance like meeting deadlines, annoying humans, traffic jams or public speaking can all cause rather mild stress. Each individual in this respect will have different irritations.
• Genetics: Genes appear to play a key role in stress, with stress sometimes running in families.
• Upbringing: The way an individual was brought up can be linked to the stress they encounter.

Treating stress

Treatment is available for Stress. It isn’t possible to completely rid an individual of stress – as it is a completely natural reaction. Instead, the aim is for the individual to find ways of learning to cope with certain situations more, learn relaxation techniques and other useful tools. Some methods for treating stress include:

Self-help

Stress can be significantly lessened when a combination of factors are implemented – an individual will be encouraged to make these changes themselves.

Some ideas to implement include meditation or mindfulness – as these are great ways to relax and ease fears. Avoiding alcohol too can help an individual.

Regular exercise, along with a healthy diet, can all help too. Breathing exercises too can help an individual stay calm. Ensuring that an individual gets enough sleep is important.

To ensure all activities and tasks are completed on time, setting some time aside to plan the days and weeks ahead is a useful idea. Finally, putting time aside for relaxing and engaging in hobbies too can help lessen stress.

Talking Therapy

Therapies like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy have proven benefits for helping individuals with stress. This will typically lead an individual to finding better coping mechanisms, and helping them to cope with their problems in a more positive way.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): CBT is a type of therapy that is used to treat a range of mental health conditions. CBT involves an individual talking face-to-face with a therapist, although sometimes CBT can be conducted in a group setting. CBT attempts to improve an individual’s wellbeing and mood. The therapy focuses on the link between thoughts, feelings and actions. This can be useful for those with low self-esteem, anxiety, unhelpful personality traits or intrusive thoughts. CBT can help an individual understand their feelings more, and in the long run should lead to an improvement in quality of life.

Stress and mental health

Stress is linked to a multitude of mental health conditions. It shares many symptoms with Anxiety disorders like Generalised Anxiety Disorder.

Someone who is persistently stressed is more vulnerable to developing Depression. Stress may also lead to an individual dissociating – leading to a Dissociative Disorder.

Stress is also linked to many Trauma-related conditions like Adjustment Disorder or Acute Stress Disorder. Substance Abuse may also be caused by excessive stress – especially if someone who gets stressed a lot has harmful coping mechanisms.

Can stress actually be a good thing?

Yes it can be – but mainly in small amounts. Stress can actually result in an improvement in efficiency and motivation.

But it is a delicate balancing act – there is a fine line between efficiency and a small amount of stress, and low mood due to too much stress.

Summary

Stress is a very normal feeling. But for some people, it can interfere with living their life how they would want to. Therefore, if this is the case, accessing treatment is very important – and may lead to an individual attaining a higher quality of life.

It also lessens their chance of developing a mental health disorder. The intention is for anyone accessing treatment to find better ways of coping with their stress – and helping them create healthier ways of processing events.

For both them, and those around them, it should result in many improvements.

See Also

• Everything You Need To Know About Mental Health Medicine
• Everything You Need To Know About Talking Therapy
• Freud’s Theory of the Id and Mental Health
• Are Mental Health Medicines Safe? Are There Long-term effects?
• Ashley Massaro: Forever Remembered