stress relief

Stress is part of today’s society, a by-product of our way of living. Productivity has become synonymous with being a good person, working long hours the way to be promoted and to-do-lists are many people’s daily companions. The following article will look at what stress causes in our lives.

Besides the physical, mental, emotional and behavioral symptoms that stress can cause, it has some other secondary effects that we will specifically look at here:

1. Deteriorating relationships

Stress keeps people separated. Couples are spending time in front of their computers at home in the evening, finishing off work or personal things that no longer find space during the day, as opposed to spending time with each other. Families are divided as fathers work long hours and barely see their children, besides on the weekend. In the worst case, this can cause loneliness, dissatisfaction in relationship, separation or divorce.

2. Lost passion

Being under the influence of stress over a period of time can rob your passion for what you are doing. Even the most rewarding job or your devotion to your work can fade away if your body is dealing with the effects of stress. If stress remains unaddressed, lost passion can turn into losing passion for life, wondering what you are doing in this life, in this job, in this relationship etc.

3. Lethargy

Your body needs rest and relaxation to be able to perform. Another side effect of continuous stress is lethargy on a physical, emotional or mental level. On a physical level, this can lead to being overly tired even though you might have plenty of sleeping hours as your adrenals are fatigued. Emotionally and mentally you might no longer be able to deal with the simple challenges of life, like dealing with traffic or noise.

4. Accidents

Accidents are a known effect of stress. They are wake-up calls that will require you to stop and look at your life if you are able and willing to do that. Accidents are always signs that something is out of balance.

5. Death

This is not the most pleasant point in this article but it might serve to shake you up. People under various sorts of stress have killed themselves because they could not see any other way out of the situation. Asking yourself existential questions, as mentioned in point 2, can deteriorate into suicidal thoughts.

Death can also occur through stress-related accidents or through wearing the system down over a period of time until the reserves are no longer able to sustain the needs of the moment.

Make sure you notice early signs of stress and manage the stress as well as looking at the causes and making changes in your life to create a healthy balance for body, mind and spirit.

woman in field of flowers — Photo by Fanny Gustafsson on Unsplash

We all experience stress to a certain degree. If managed appropriately stress can help us, for example, to get things done on time. If however, you are experiencing a high level of stress on a continuous basis without adequately managing it, then it will have a detrimental effect on your physical, mental and emotional health.

Am I stressed?

In some cases, it is blatantly obvious that your current life situation causes you stress but for some people, it might come as a surprise to find out that they are dealing with too much stress. This is because the different situations that you might be dealing with, when looked at separately, do not seem like a big thing. What makes up stress is not necessarily one thing; it is often when we have a culmination of stressful events, situations or people to deal with that stress starts to affect us. A good way to find out whether you are stressed is to check for physical, mental or emotional indicators of stress. Please read my other article called ‘Stress Indicators’ for detailed information and a list of the symptoms.

What is stress relief?

There are various ways and techniques to help you manage your stress. The following is a list of possible methods to relieve stress:

meditation
massage
relaxing breathwork
changing your diet
exercise
building healthy relationships and having someone to talk to
reappraising your priorities in life
learning to control displaced aggressions and deal with their cause
working on the internal factors that causes stress, your attitude and beliefs

The purpose of stress relief

Given that we all deal with a certain degree of stress we have basically three options: 1. Remove or reduce the causes for stress or 2. Increase our abilities, options, solutions, resources or the time we need. 3. If those two options are not possible at the moment all we can do is to support ourselves with stress relief. The benefit of stress relief will only ever be short to mid-term and should not be expected to work over long periods of time. Stress relief is like a spare tyre that will get you around for a short period of time but you still need to get a new one fitted for better and safer driving.

Stress is experienced when there is an imbalance between, for example, the time needed to finish a project and the time or resources available. Stress relief will help you cope with this situation and support you get through it but it will never solve the imbalance.

What Causes Stress?

The Importance of Stress Relief