Understanding Stress

Stress

Stress can be both positive and negative. As a positive influence, stress can motivate individuals into action and increase productivity levels. However, as a negative influence, feeling stressed can have the opposite effect and actually lead to adverse physical symptoms. Each individual will have different stress thresholds, and what is stressful to one person may be exciting to another, and vice versa.

What is stress?

Stress is caused by the body’s natural reaction to protect itself, so in an emergency stress will force us to exert maximum effort to defend ourselves. However if no emergency happens, all the extra energy has nowhere to go and negative stress can lead to anxiety, anger and depression, as well as headaches, high blood pressure and insomnia.

Stress can occur in different areas of our lives, such as work or our personal lives. Being stressed is recognised to be one of the main causes of absence from work, and research suggests about half a million people in the UK experience work-related stress that they believe is making them ill.

Changes in personal lives such as the birth of a child, a relationship or the death of a loved one can cause stress as individuals adjust to changes. Negative stress occurs when a person feels they are unable to cope with the level of stress facing them, presenting the need for stress management or help with stress levels.

Stress symptoms - Are you stressed?

If you are stressed you may have emotional, physical and mental stress symptoms which may benefit from some form of help, advice or stress management coaching. These stress symptoms may include but are not limited to:

Emotional:

• depression
• irritability
• low moods
• anxiety.

Physical:

• headaches
• fatigue
• nausea
• pounding heart
• insomnia.

Mental:

• loss of concentration
• negative thoughts
• lack of interest
• poor judgement.

Stress management and the ability to de-stress is therefore important, and although stress cannot be eliminated completely (as it’s a natural response), it can often be effectively managed. Some quick tips for managing stress are:

• prepare to the best of your ability for stressful events
• ask for help from family, friends and professionals
• set realistic goals
• exercise
• meditate
• eat a well-balanced diet
• try to get about 8 hours sleep per night.

Life Coaching and Stress Management

Stress management from a qualified life coach involves helping an individual to understand why they’re feeling the way they are and understand how thoughts can be modified to help manage their stress. Exploring an individual’s personal stress levels can also help them to identify their own stress threshold, and identify when they are feeling negatively stressed.

Types of stress, causes and symptoms

Stress can take on many different forms and be caused by a number of things individually or a build up of multiple issues. Working out how to cope with your stress levels and experience less stress will mean identifying the causes and symptoms. Here are some common types of stress, possible causes and symptoms:

Work stress

Something which is becoming increasingly common as a cause of stress in the UK is work related stress. As a nation we are now working longer hours, and recent statistics (2011) show that 6 out of 10 workers are working overtime with 79% of these hours going unpaid. This sort of pattern is a perfect platform for work stress problems, and stress is now the number one cause of long term absence from work in manual and non-manual employees.

If you are experiencing work stress it is definitely worth seeking help or advice. Whether it comes from a friend, colleague, manager or professional life coach, talking about what you are experiencing and the feelings you have will be the first step towards a happier life.

Some of the symptoms you might experience with work stress in particular are:

• dreading going to work each day
• finding it hard to concentrate at work
• low productivity levels
• trouble switching off from work
• breakdown of relationships outside of work
• feeling overwhelmed and can’t cope
• lack of enthusiasm.

There may be other factors outside of work which are causing or contributing to your work stress, so ensure you think carefully about where your stressed feeling is coming from before you are able to start addressing it.

Relationship stress

Being in a relationship with someone else can cause every day pressures for all of us, but sometimes this goes even further and you may experience high stress levels which you can pin down to being caused by the relationship you are in.

Relationship stress doesn’t only occur within couples (married or otherwise) but is also very common between family, friends, colleagues, bosses, employees and strangers. A lot of the time the stress in a relationship can be caused by arguments between people, however, there is also an awful lot of stress which is brought about by lack of communication. When you feel aggrieved or annoyed with someone or something they have done and you don’t express it the pressure and stress caused stays within you and can eat away at you. This is why it is extremely important to communicate within your relationships. This doesn’t mean you have to tell people about every single thing that annoys you, but if you think it is likely to cause an argument in the future, perhaps it is best to address it swiftly with a calm discussion. This simple action can make a massive difference to stress levels within your relationships.

Often your stress in a relationship is not coming from the other person or people in the relationship, as many people perceive it to be. A lot of the time, our own actions and thoughts which we are not fully aware of cause stress to us and addressing this first will enable you to feel less stressed.