Recognizing Stress

The body’s reaction to harmful situation whether real or otherwise could lead to stress. Stress could be the cause of any unusual incident that may take place in one’s live and it need not be a bad or unpleasant one. Some may even tend to feel stressed while preparing an itinerary before a vacation, or planning for an event or an occasion. Stress can affect any individual and when one feels threatened, a chemical reaction that takes places in our body permits the person to act in self defense to avert an injury.

This type of reaction can be termed as stress response or the fight or flight reaction, wherein during this reaction, the heart begins to race, muscles get tightened up, breathing escalates with the blood pressure tending to rise and the person is prepared to defend and react in that situation. Some stress response also helps in coping up with challenges especially while at work during a presentation; it sharpens the concentration or leads the person to study during exams when they would rather prefer watching the TV.

Stress affects every person and while a little is tolerable, some stress is also beneficial especially while managing finances or in disciplining the children. Stress may vary among individuals and what may tend to be stressful for one person may not be the same for another. This can be due to controlling the stress level adopted by the person undergoing stress and since it affects the mind, body and behavior in various ways, each person may experience stress differently.

Stress can be controlled in identifying the symptoms but it is at times difficult to recognize it. It has been a factor in each one’s live from the beginning of time and it normally starts with the perception of our minds on some incidents or forthcoming events and if left unchallenged it may end in a physical or mental health issues namely heart disease, headaches, stroke, high blood pressure, etc; and too much stress can wear the person down both physically and mentally.

Signs and symptoms can be categorized into four types namely cognitive, emotional, behavioral and physical. With regards to cognitive symptoms, it could be memory problem, poor judgment, constant worrying, focusing on the negative and difficulty in concentrating while in behavioral, it could be isolating oneself from others, nervous habits of pacing or biting nails, shirking responsibilities, sleeping too much or too little and using alcohol, cigarettes or drugs to relax. Physical symptoms could be frequent cold, nausea or dizziness, aches and pains, chest pain, rapid heartbeats, diarrhea and constipation.

 In emotional, the symptoms could be irritability with short temper, moodiness, agitated with inability to relax, a feeling of loneliness and isolation, feeling of unhappiness and depression. Dealing with stress can be done by learning to manage the stress by way of staying in control and not going overboard with this emotion and this can be done by taking charge of one’ thoughts and the actions, learning to relax with quick stress relief.