In our hectic day-to-day life, while traffic jam is the regular scenario during office hour, who has the ability to keep his heart pumping less and hold his breath patiently? In any awkward situation, while we feel restlessness within our throbbing heart, then it causes stress. It is stress in layman’s term. In medical term, it is an emotional and physical repercussion of the strain, which causes due to sudden changes in a situation related to you.
Life without stress is apparently impossible. Even very calm and patient person having no creases in his forehead muscles can also be the victim of stress. In our life, this symptom is like a part and parcel of everything.
What are the symptoms while your stress level is abruptly high:
Stress has two kinds of symptoms: Mental and Physical
Mental Symptoms caused by stress involve
• Trouble sleeping or insomnia
• Concentration problem
• Irritability
• Tension
• Feeling of tiredness
Physical Symptoms caused by stress involve
• Increased heart rate or palpitation
• Palms Sweating
• Bowel Problem
• Frequent urination
• Numbness in limb
• Muscle pain and strain or cramp in muscle
• Dryness in mouth
Some causes of stress due to some overburden situation:
1. If you are staying in a joint family. You are working fulltime and so your spouse is. Your baby and your job both require your attention the most. There is some erratic schedule of day-to-day life. There is no spice of life due to overloaded situation of family and work. It might cause stress in a huge amount. In this situation, you are always tied up between work-family demands. You have no time for yourself to laze around or spend some leisure time with own self at least by reading a book.
2. If you are a single parent and divorced with your former spouse. If sharing of responsibility of your children with your spouse is not smooth. If he/she is causing you pain in legal and financial matters upon trivial issues to make your life more complicated. This particular situation might raise your stress level in abundance.
3. If you are living all alone. No one on this earth is there to take care of you. You are likely to bear all your expenses and regular bills. No one is there to lend his/her hand to help you out, not even while you are ill. Your loneliness may lead you as a stressful person.
4. If your work is over-demanding and boss is bossy in an excessive way. It might lead to stress in a high level. Working in a stressful environment and under non-cooperative boss can make your life miserable.
Thus, it is seen that stress is everywhere in our life. But as there is way out for every problem, stress also has different solution. So to enjoy life, make your life stress free.
What causes stress and how it affects our life?
Stress does not mean it has to be the effect of any unpleasant situation or event.
Stress can be the result of any pleasant surprise like wedding planning, newly born baby or its care, or any new purchase.
Regarding this Stress, many researchers have given different views. But as per "Holmes-Raye" scale, statistic of stress is according to the certain life situations:
• Death of a spouse causes stress up to 100 points
• Divorce rate rises stress level up to 73 points in this scale
• Marriage is the result of 50 points stress
• Pregnancy also gives birth to 40 points of stress.
• Out of over excitement on purchasing a new house might rise your stress level up to 31 points
• Christmas causes stress up to 12 points.
Few more researches show that stress due to over demanding jobs take place in the society. As per Jobs Rated Almanac, top five stressful career options are:
1. President of the United States
2. Race car driver
3. Senior corporate executive
4. Taxi driver
5. Firefighter
As per Jobs Rated Almanac, least stressful career options are:
1. Medical records technician
2. Forklift operator
3. Janitor
4. Forklift operator
5. Florist
What are stressful situations for you?
Stressful situation varies highly from person to person. Few people are stressful under very common situation. And few are really relaxed even in a highly panicky situation.
So, stress level in human being varies:
• human nature
• upbringing
• family history or heredity
• physical structure
• past experience
• level of perceiving things
• any mental illness
Given below are few situations where few people are normal and others are not:
• Some people are really cool under over workload, and some are hypertensive under the same situation.
• Some people are very comfortable in social gathering, some are highly reluctant and stressful while to face people.
• Some people are mad at waiter or at poor restaurant service while some are non-complaining about the situation.
• Some people are excessively annoyed at traffic jam, rebuking the signal and watching their watches every now and then, some are highly relaxed, listening music and singing.
• Some people engage themselves in a several festival as an initiator; some are very tensed and stressed out while they are given such responsibility.
• Some people gladly help others in difficult times some are not much comfortable rather stressed out under this situation.
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It means that few people are overtly vulnerable to stressful situation, while few are not.
So, many situation and events cause stress in our life. We just need to know how to handle them and stay happy in our life.
Stress Signs and how it affects our body
Different people are susceptible to stress in a different way. Stress causes different changes in our life situations. It changes our life to a great extent if it is staying with you for a good period of time. It causes harm in different phases of our life, like:
• Changes in our physical health or body functions
• Changes in feelings and emotions
• Changes in thought process
• Changes in attitude and behavior
How stress changes our physical health or body functions:
• Dry mouth
• Backache or body ache
• Tiredness
• Muscle cramp
• Breathing problems
• Stomach problems
• Frequent urination
• Dizziness
How stress changes feelings and emotions:
• Irritability
• Sadness
• Worried
• Tension
• Anger
How stress changes attitude and behavior:
• Sleeplessness or over sleeping
• Overeating or less eating
• Increased libido or no desire for sex
• Boozing excessively
• Getting doped frequently
How stress changes thought process:
• Negative thinking
• Forgetfulness
• Lack of concentration
• Helplessness
• Hopelessness
Now it is a major food for thought how stress affects physical health to a great extent.
Under certain stressful circumstances human body releases “stress hormones” or adrenaline. After pumping out stress hormone, certain changes in body functions occur like:
• Rate of heart beat increases.
• Due to raise in heart speed, more blood goes to our brain and goes up 400 percent more.
• Then digestion functions get upset.
• Tension in muscle goes up.
• Breathing rate goes up and it sends more oxygen to the muscle.
How stress can cause harm to our health:
• Stress causes irritable bowel syndrome or IBS, chronic fatigue and dizziness, headaches, body ache, and back ache.
• Excessive stress can cause hyper tension, high blood pressure, and that can lead to stroke at any age.
• Stress can affect the immune system by causing harm to your blood cells, which can make you more prone to common cold, allergies, and several other diseases.
• Due to stress, you can feel short of breathing sometimes and it can worsen asthma problem.
• Stress causes certain problems in behavior like lack of confidence and concentration, overeating or binge eating disorder, alcoholism, drug addiction, excessive smoking etc.
• Stress leads to lack of libido in men and women at any age.
• Stress further makes situations worse while people want to give up smoking and overeating but finds it impossible.
Thus, if stress is not cured or treated properly it can be life threatening and it might cause huge problem in your life. So, try to find some solution of your stress and lead a normal, stress free life.
How to manage Stress
To make your life stress free, you really need to work hard and practice certain things to get rid of this situation. Stress can become life threatening if it is not treated on time. So to get away from stressful life few help from the expert or certain self-help strategy is very much desirable.
Certain therapies and expert support can help you beat the stress:
• Autogenic training
• Conflict resolution
• Cognitive therapy
You can opt for some relaxation techniques like:
• Artistic Expression
• Fractional relaxation
• Progressive relaxation
At the same time, few things for which you don’t have to go anywhere you can do on your own to beat the stress:
Regular exercise: Getting involved in any kind of physical exercise on regular basis gives you good reason to become stress free. Jogging over a treadmill or swimming at least for an hour is a great relaxation process, which helps you to get rid of stress very easily.
Spa Visit: No doubt after a hectic routine of daily life, while you lie down on a spa bed and any expert masseur relaxes your body muscles with the help of his/her specialized massage, it soothes your nerves and makes you relaxed.
Time spending with nature: Different hues and views of nature make you very enchanted and rejuvenated. It gives you real treat for major relaxation. Thus, spending some quality time in fresh air and speaking your mind with flying birds or passing breeze can be your stress buster.
Hobby pursuing: Your favorite time pass activity can make you extremely refreshed while you’re overtly stressed out with your daily routine. Hobbies like painting, singing, dancing etc. can give you good amount of pleasure to get rid of stress. Many people find their solace in reading books, cooking, gardening etc. So, main agenda is to get relieved from the stress whatever you do and choose as your hobby.
Meditation: There are many meditation centers ready to help you with the definite meditation process. You can also practice deep breathing and meditation at your own place regularly. Meditation keeps stress level low and your concentration goes up.
Some Products: Few products like stress balls, some stress relieving medicines etc. are helpful in beating the stress and those products give you stress free, normal life. In this regard, it is always good to go for natural medicines to get away from stress.
Some more techniques like both Time Management and Anger management are very much essential to get rid of stress.
Listening to good music can give you good relaxation from stress. Thus, your iPod or MP3 player can be your best friend while you are at stressful situation.
Thus, there are many methods, which you can apply as your stress buster. To make yourself happy, pick and choose any of the techniques and stay stress free.
