What is Stress And How to Treat It

Stress, in simple terms, is a feeling that people have when they are overloaded and struggling. This can be with the jobs they have to complete or the feelings generated by difficult relationships, for example. In fact, the cause of stress can come from many things such as the simple existence of uncertainty relating to a future event.

Stress as a motivator

The truth is that being human means you'll always have to deal with stress in some shape or form in your life. And although you may not know this already, stress is an incredibly important part of the human process and when you deal with it in the right way, it can be a powerful motivator.

Whether you're feeling stressed about an upcoming job interview or the health and safety of your family, stress is actually an essential component of surviving life's challenges. It is a fight or flight mechanism that informs your body how to respond to danger. However, the problem is when this mechanism is triggered too easily and individuals are not prepared to cope with its effects.

Anything that poses a perceived threat or challenge to your life can cause this reaction but if you are able to harness its potential, you can use it to motivate your future actions to avoid any unwanted outcomes. However, if you are unable to do this, it could undermine your mental and physical well being.

What happens during stressful moments?

Each person reacts to stressful situations in a different way, but ultimately, the process is similar for each person. When faced with danger or predators, the body is flushed with hormones that trigger your systems to confront danger or evade it, by escaping or hiding. It is a way for the body to prepare itself and its resources to face a potential challenge.

Larger quantities than normal of the chemicals cortisol, adrenaline, and nor adrenaline are released, increasing the heart rate and improving the ability of your muscles to react to and perform certain actions should they need to. This is why people often feel overly alert and reactive in challenging situations.

While this is happening, stress slows normal bodily functions, such as the digestive and immune systems, prioritizing resources on rapid breathing, blood flow, alertness and muscle use. As such, you can start to see more clearly how stress is vital and necessary in certain situations.

Even in moments that should be celebrated, like moving abroad for a dream job, stress levels are high. This is simply because your body is bracing itself for a momentous change, and understands that it must be alert and aware in the face of new and potentially unknown dangers. Once life returns to normal and routine continues, stress levels typically come back down again.

Chronic stress

Short term stress (although you may still need convincing of this...) is a good thing. However, long terms stress certainly is not. This is the most harmful type of stress and can lead to many health problems for an individual. It typically occurs when a person never sees an escape from the cause of stress and stops seeking solutions.

Among many negative consequences, people with chronic stress can have heart attacks or strokes. They may also experience feelings of depression and melancholy as a result of helplessness. In short, it is the human body's natural reaction to survive turning on itself and in the very worst cases, it can lead to a full breakdown and even suicide.

Treating stress

Treatment for stress includes many different methods and strategies. One of the most common is stress management, where individuals use specific frameworks and management strategies to negotiate their stress levels and channel it into positive outcomes.

Medicine is also used in some cases as well as therapy, sports, aromatherapy and reflexology. Some also believe that nature sounds is an effective way to curb the effects of stress.