You experience stress from four basic sources:
· You also must cope with social stressors such as deadlines, financial problems, job interviews, presentations, disagreements, demands for your time and attention, and loss of loved ones.
· A third source of stress is physiological. The rapid growth of adolescence, menopause in women, illness, aging, accidents, lack of exercise, poor nutrition, and sleep disturbances all affect the body. Your physiological reaction to environmental and social threats and changes can also result in stressful symptoms such as muscle tension, headaches, stomach upset, and anxiety.
· The forth source of stress is your thoughts. Your brain interprets and translates complex changes in your environment and body and determines when to turn on the “emergency response.”
How you interpret and label your present experience and what you predict for your future can serve either to relax or to stress you.
Chronic stress and disease
There are times where stress response is still adaptive today: you need it in the face of physical danger or when participating in sports that require fast, rigorous muscle activity but chronic or persistent stress can occur when the stressors of life are unrelenting, as they are during a major reorganization or downsizing at work or while undergoing a messy divorce or coping with a chronic or life threatening illness. Chronic stress also occurs when little stressors accumulate and you are unable to recuperate from any one of them. As long as the mind perceives a threat, the body remains aroused. If the stress response remains turned on, you can be increasing your chances of a stress related disease.
Tactics for Coping with Stress
There are a variety of methods to cope with stress such as remedies, improving your sleep pattern, and making life changes. At DC Counseling, we can help you work on the source of your stress to improve your sleep pattern, learn methods that will enable you to relax and develop healthy coping mechanisms.