You Resort To Coping Mechanisms
After a hard days work, you might want to just go home and grab a bottle of beer from the fridge while you catch up on some TV. While theres nothing wrong with having a drink or two after youve come home and relaxed for a while, theres definitely a problem with drinking in order to relax. Chances are youll wake up the next morning with an even higher level of stress than you went to bed with. If you find youre relying on drugs or alcohol more and more in order to alleviate stress, you should seek help immediately.
If you make your own coffee in the morning, chances are youre only making the same boring kind everyday. Now its time to put an end to the cynical habit and turn you into an instant coffee connoisseur.
For those who dont know, there are officially 38 different ways to make coffee. All, except decaffeinated versions will give you the same buzz that can either make you extremely productive or give you anxiety.
The only difference here is taste. And when it comes to coffee, taste matters. A lot.
Most of the methods and ingredients from the chart above dates back hundreds of years and have been traditionally passed down from generation to generation. Hence, its actually possible to tell where a person came from based on the type of coffee he or she drinks!
Signs And Symptoms Of Too Much Stress
Stress is defined as a state of mental or emotional strain caused by adverse circumstances.
At one point or another, most people deal with feelings of stress. In fact, one study found that 33% of adults reported experiencing high levels of perceived stress (
The condition is associated with a long list of physical and mental symptoms.
This article will look at 11 common signs and symptoms of stress.
Getting Help For Depression
If you think you might be depressed, take a depression screening. Print out the results or e-mail them to yourself and then show them to a counselor or doctor.
To get help, start with your student health center or counseling service on campus. Most community colleges provide limited free mental health services and can refer you to local providers for longer-term treatment. You can also talk to your family doctor. Your local Mental Health America affiliate can refer or in some cases provide services as well. To find the nearest MHA affiliate, call 800-969-6642 or go to Find An Affiliate.
Remember, depression and other mental health conditions are nothing to be ashamed of. Depression is not a sign of weakness, and seeking help is a sign of strength. Telling someone you are struggling is the first step toward feeling better. You will need the help of a mental health professional to beat depression. Talk therapy, antidepressant medication or a combination can be very effective.
In crisis? If you or someone you know is in crisis now, seek help immediately. Call 1-800-273-TALK to reach a 24-hour crisis center or dial 911 for immediate assistance.
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How To Tell If You Are Stressed Out
Posted on by Samara Stone
Stressmy old frenemy. Youve made rush hour commutes to work disastrous, packed schedules exhausting, and raising a rambunctious toddler feel nearly impossible. It seems all bad, I know. And many of you are probably scoffing at the suggestion that stress is both friend and foe. The very definition of stress is an individuals response to any demand or change. Yes, stress can be good. If you were completely relaxed and in recliner mode while taking a driving test, you likely wouldnt do too well. Stress can keep us alert and performing at our best when we need to bring our A-game. But, when stress becomes too intense or is present for long periods of time, it can have detrimental effects on our physical and psychological well-being.
Stress is very subjectiveeveryone responds to it differentlyso its important to discover your own cues. When faced with a demand like having to swerve to avoid an oncoming car, the body begins releasing several hormones that help us react quickly, allowing us to stay safe. There are many physical responses to these hormonesespecially when stress has become a chronic problem. Paying attention to these symptoms may give you some clues that youre simply facing too many demands right now. People may notice skin and hair conditions, like:
- hives
- fatigue
- flare-ups of chronic illnesses
Improving Your Ability To Handle Stress
Get moving. Upping your activity level is one tactic you can employ right now to help relieve stress and start to feel better. Regular exercise can lift your mood and serve as a distraction from worries, allowing you to break out of the cycle of negative thoughts that feed stress. Rhythmic exercises such as walking, running, swimming, and dancing are particularly effective, especially if you exercise mindfully .
Connect to others. The simple act of talking face-to-face with another human can trigger hormones that relieve stress when youre feeling agitated or insecure. Even just a brief exchange of kind words or a friendly look from another human being can help calm and soothe your nervous system. So, spend time with people who improve your mood and dont let your responsibilities keep you from having a social life. If you dont have any close relationships, or your relationships are the source of your stress, make it a priority to build stronger and more satisfying connections.
Engage your senses. Another fast way to relieve stress is by engaging one or more of your sensessight, sound, taste, smell, touch, or movement. The key is to find the sensory input that works for you. Does listening to an uplifting song make you feel calm? Or smelling ground coffee? Or maybe petting an animal works quickly to make you feel centered? Everyone responds to sensory input a little differently, so experiment to find what works best for you.
Get more help
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How Can We Avoid Stress
Experiencing stress from time to time is normal, but it is important to prevent stress build up that leads to high levels of stress and possibly burnout. Some simple ways to avoid stress include finding effective ways to balance all your responsibilities, getting enough sleep, not taking on too much, eating a healthy diet, and taking part in physical activity.
Breathing And Relaxation Exercises
Many people find exercises that focus on breathing and muscle relaxation to be helpful in relieving stress. The playlist below will help you to understand how stress works and start feeling better. These exercises can be done anywhere and are designed to help you feel more relaxed in general, as well as helping you feel calmer if you are becoming stressed.
This playlist is free to download, and you can also stream it using the Soundcloud website or app. You can download and listen to individual tracks if there are particular exercises that work best for you. If you’re listening to it for the first time, it’s best to start from the beginning.
To access a BSL version of this playlist, .
Find out more by checking out these 10 stress busters.
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What Are The Signs Of Stress
How you might feel
You may behave differently if youre stressed. You may:
- withdraw from other people or snap at them
- be indecisive or inflexible
- have problems getting to sleep or staying asleep
- experience sexual problems
- smoke, drink alcohol or take drugs more than usual.
If the stress is long-lasting, you may notice your sleep and memory are affected, your eating habits change, or you feel less inclined to exercise.
Some research has also linked long-term stress to gastrointestinal conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome or stomach ulcers, as well as conditions like cardiovascular disease.
What Does Too Much Stress Look Like
Stress does affect the heart. Some of the ways stress affects the heart:
- High Blood Pressure Skipping Heart Beats
- High Cholesterol Frequently Ill
- Inability to manage life
You see, you must recognize the symptoms. Being able to tell if you are stressed out is the way to protect yourself. Too much stress affects the heart. The list above tells us, stress affects the heart. The heart does not like to beat any faster than necessary. Extra pressure on the heart affects our bodies. When chronic stress makes the heart work harder it puts too much pressure on the cardiac muscle.
The leader in cardiac care, Cleveland Clinic says,
Unmanaged stress, especially stress-related anger and hostility, can affect your health.
- Putting Things Off
- Using Drugs To Handle Life
So, did you know that you are stressed out? Have you experienced some of these symptoms and did not know that stress was causing it? I have and did not even know what it was.
My neck pain really was a result of stress. I just did not realize it. But after thinking about it, the chaos in the house was making me feel stressed out. Clutter and chaos can make you feel stressed. Figure out what is causing your stress. Choose a responsible way to handle it and take action. Dont let it just ruin your day.
Choose to be healthy and dont let the hidden stressors in our lives send us to anxiety.
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Speak Up If Youre Stressed At Work
Sometimes the workload simply gets the best of us and we end up feeling stressed, whether we actively try to prevent that or not. But that doesnt immediately mean theres nothing to do about it. If youre feeling stressed at work or you have a stressful job in general, speak up to your manager or boss. They wont know how you feel until you speak up, so its important to indicate your limit. After all, they should be looking after their staff and will definitely not want to lose you as an employee. It might be scary to voice your concerns at first, but we promise you it will be worth it.
Set Boundaries For Home And Work Life Balance
Since the pandemic started a year and a half ago working from home has become a lot more common. In fact, some people work from home entirely now. This may not be your cup of tea and you may enjoy working in the office, but we probably all enjoy some parts of working from home. I mean, cooking yourself a nice lunch while youre still walking around in your trackies? Were here for it. But working from home can also affect your work-life balance since there is no hard line between work and time off anymore. Its all done from home. For this reason, its so super important to set boundaries. Things that could help you may include setting up a home office, which is the only place where you work. The couch is to relax during your relaxing evenings! Find out 5 habits that you can implement for a healthy work-life balance on our blog.
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Recognising Your Stress Triggers
If you’re not sure what’s causing your stress, keep a diary and make a note of stressful episodes for two-to-four weeks. Then review it to spot the triggers.
Things you might want to write down include:
- the date, time and place of a stressful episode
- what you were doing
- a stress rating
You can use the diary to:
- work out what triggers your stress
- work out how you operate under pressure
- develop better coping mechanisms
Doctors sometimes recommend keeping a stress diary to help them diagnose stress.
You Get Sick A Lot And The Illnesses Stick Around
The American Psychological Association says that three out of four people experience physical problems caused by stress. When we are stressed out our bodies work overtime to release cortisol, a hormone that is helpful when were being chased by a tiger but harmful when we stay in a constant state of fight or flight. Too much cortisol weakens our immune systems and makes us more likely to get sick. A change in the way you view stress, along with habits like meditation and exercise, usually helps.
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You Cant Think Clearly
If you arent sleeping well, there is a good reason you cant concentrate, but there may also another cause. Research shows that the brains memory center, the hippocampus, shrinks when it is overwhelmed by cortisol, and this may even be related to dementia later in life. Mindfulness and deep breathing exercises are good stress relief techniques.
Wait Where Did You Put Your Phone/keys/brain
Here’s the funny thing: A tiny jolt of stress in some situations can make your mind do totally amazing, somewhat super-human things . But when every project, paper, practice, etc., etc., etc. is weighing on you to the point where you just feel stuck? Your memory goes fuzzy, your focus becomes non-existent, and your ability to actually listen gets squashed. It’s like stress hijacks your brain.
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Symptoms Of Uncontrolled Stress
Like in any medical condition, the starting point towards the resolution of the problem that is stress is symptom recognition. Stress is your bodys way of protecting you it is a normal physiological response to any threatening event that comes your way. But beyond a certain point, stress stops being helpful and starts causing harm to your health and life in general. Below are some of the common warning signs and symptoms of too much or uncontrolled stress. If you seem to be experiencing many of the symptoms listed, then it likely indicates that you are not coping with the stress in your life effectively.
Cognitive Symptoms.
Cognitive symptoms refer to problems that have anything to do with brain processes like thinking, attention, perception, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. The most commonly observed cognitive symptoms of poorly managed stress are as follows:
-
Memory problems
If you make your own coffee in the morning, chances are youre only making the same boring kind everyday. Now its time to put an end to the cynical habit and turn you into an instant coffee connoisseur.
For those who dont know, there are officially 38 different ways to make coffee. All, except decaffeinated versions will give you the same buzz that can either make you extremely productive or give you anxiety.
The only difference here is taste. And when it comes to coffee, taste matters. A lot.
Your Muscles Are Throbbing
Strained neck? Tight shoulders? It may not be due to that new workout or a poor pillow. You carry a lot of tension in your muscles when youre stressed out and that can appear as strains or injuries. For men, lower back pain can be a common side effect of stress and women typically experience issues in their upper backs, Readers Digest recently reported. Can someone say massage time?
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Recognize When You Need More Help
If you are struggling to cope, or the symptoms of your stress or anxiety wont go away, it may be time to talk to a professional. Psychotherapy and medication are the two main treatments for anxiety, and many people benefit from a combination of the two.
If you are in immediate distress or are thinking about hurting yourself, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline toll-free at 1-800-273-TALK . You also can text the Crisis Text Line or use the Lifeline Chat on the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website.
If you or someone you know has a mental illness, is struggling emotionally, or has concerns about their mental health, there are ways to get help. Read more about getting help.
Try Aromatherapy To Reduce Stress
If you feel like youre not being heard, the workload keeps adding up or you quickly feel stressed, theres other ways to reduce or even eliminate stress completely. Aromatherapy has been used for centuries as a way to calm down your body and mind to feel more relaxed and at peace. Essential oils are commonly used when people are feeling stressed and when specifically designed to deal with stress, these aromatherapy products can be very effective. Scentereds DE-STRESS Aromatherapy collection includes balms and candles that use a blend of soothing scents to relieve you from stress. By inhaling the scent deeply, the limbic system of your brain gets activated which can help you to transition moods. If youve felt stressed for a longer period of time, we recommend using the DE-STRESS Balm every evening after work. This will help you to remove your thoughts from work and the scent will promote calmness and relaxation.
Is stress affecting your sleep at night too? Then you can combine the DE-STRESS Balm with our SLEEP WELL balm or candle. The SLEEP WELL collection has been formulated specifically to improve your sleep by using an alluring blend to relax your body and ease your mind. A perfect combination to deal with stress, but of course preventing is always better than cure. Gather some courage, talk to your boss and make sure your stress levels are going down.
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Signs Your Teen Is Stressed Out
Aron Janssen, MD is board certified in child, adolescent, and adult psychiatry and is the vice chair of child and adolescent psychiatry Northwestern University.
Although teens dont have to worry about bills, a career, or holding down a household, they experience different sources of stress. They deal with issues like bullying, peer pressure, and academic issues which can be very stressful.
Without appropriate support, stressed-out teens may be at a higher risk for mental health problems, academic problems, and health issues. So it’s important to be on the lookout for warning signs your teen is feeling stressed out. Then, you can intervene sooner, rather than later.
Here are some of the top signs that your teen is stressed out.
