Alyson Swan

Stress-Does it Affect Your Life?

Posted on 05. Oct, 2009 by admin in Health & Wellness

Stress-Does it Affect Your Life?

We hear the word stress bandied around often.  You may ask the ques­tion, how are you today? To hear the reply stressed.  It’s all too com­mon.

So, what is stress?  We may not realise that stress means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple at dif­fer­ent times.  A bit of stress can be quite advan­ta­geous to give us a lit­tle push along to get things done.

Stress is a term that refers to our response(s) we have when faced with unfa­mil­iar sit­u­a­tions, or those sit­u­a­tions that require you to make a change to say your daily rou­tine, how you man­age your self, cir­cum­stances that may present them­selves infre­quently.  These are often referred to as ‘stres­sors’.

Many of you would have heard of the ‘fight or flight’ response, in which your body can trig­ger many invol­un­tary changes.  It can present as an instant boost of energy, have you ever heard of the man who could lift a car with his bare hands high enough for a trapped per­son to get out from under­neath it.  The burst of energy that is required to keep us alive. That’s a fair exam­ple.

There are many types of ‘stress’.  For exam­ple job stress, being in the wrong job, chal­lenges with co-workers, feel­ing a lack of appre­ci­a­tion per­haps.  Expe­ri­enc­ing burnout-a term that describes the need for more bal­ance in our lives.

School Stress.  There are many pres­sures put upon our young peo­ple today.  For exam­ple, test anx­i­ety, per­for­mance anxiety-public speak­ing, the need to excel, gain­ing the scores we require to get into our Uni­ver­sity course, or course of choice be it an appren­tice­ship or any other direc­tion one may choose.

Hav­ing a stress response occur for an extended period of time can lead one to expe­ri­ence what is termed Chronic Stress.  This is where stress can affect your body in a neg­a­tive way.  If ones body is taxed for an ongo­ing period of time; your body may react by hav­ing a lower immu­nity.  In fact, stud­ies have shown that stress can be a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to a vari­ety of ill­nesses.

So, what can we do to man­age this thing called stress?

There are short and long terms goals of man­ag­ing stress.  Address­ing the sit­u­a­tions that are caus­ing the stress.  Work­ing your rou­tine to include reg­u­lar enjoy­able activ­i­ties e.g. exer­cise, med­i­ta­tion, all of this can help us to move for­ward in a pos­i­tive way assist­ing the growth in our per­sonal devel­op­ment.

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Tags: affect your life, chronic stress, Health & Wellness, mediation, Personal Development, relaxation, stress, stress management