Stress can be good for you or
it can be bad for you. There are both positive
and negative stressors in life. Good or positive
stressors can be things like going
on vacation, putting on a party, a close
baseball game, meeting
a deadline, getting married, a job
interview or winning a lottery. All of the
former can cause stress, but usually you get
feelings of increased energy and excitement.
Good stress can pump you up and help get your
creative juices going. Some stress is healthy
and necessary.
Everyone has a different threshold for stress.
One person may respond quite differently to the
same situation than another. For example,
someone being
cut off in traffic can create a stressful
response in one person and quite a different
response in another. This depends on the
attitudes and viewpoints we have taken on in our
lifetime. One person may react with road range
shaking fists at the perpetrator, while another
will rationalize that perhaps this person didn't
notice me or is in an extreme hurry and just
slough it off. The latter is the healthier
response.
Stress can either invigorate you or zap you of
energy. Some symptoms of bad stress or "distress"
are being tired all the time, always on
edge with a short fuse, depression, change in
sleeping patterns, frequent headaches, sore
shoulders and neck, changes in weight patterns,
relationship problems, diarrhea, dry mouth,
sweaty palms and tight throat to name a few.
Your body will let you know that you are under
too much stress. Pay attention to what your body
is telling you.
Consistent
distress (bad stress) can lead to
physical illness such as high blood pressure,
heart disease and anxiety. Stress is like a
guitar string, if you have the right amount of
tension you can play beautiful music, but too
tight a string and it can snap! This is when
people have nervous breakdowns. They overload
with distress and have no way to cope with all
the bad stress in their life.
Remember stressors are the situations that
happen to you on a daily basis ie: being cut off
in traffic. The degree of stress you experience
is your own response to that stressor. You must
adapt to the stressors of daily life. There are
many demands to life that we have to deal with
on a daily basis such as working, raising
children, getting along with our spouses
and the people around us, finances, illness,
ageing, isolation, lack of friends, everyday
events in the world, etc.
It can be tough, but we must deal with it or it
will deal with us. If you are over stressed you
must get support from your doctor, friends and
family or a psychologist. It is healthy to reach
out! You may think that this is just simple common
sense, but sometimes we can't see the
forest for the trees and the obvious is not
always visible, when someone is in the middle of
distress or a crisis in ones life.
This article was written in order to get you
thinking about your everyday experiences and to
assess how you react to everyday stressors.
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