Mental Stress

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state.It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.
~Natalie Goldberg

Stress is the trash of modern life - we all generate it but if you don't dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life. ~Terri Guillemets

Give your stress wings and let it fly away. ~Terri Guillemets

What is Mental Stress?

Mental stress is actually a kind of feeling which is created in our minds when we feel threatened & tensed, we feel pressure to meet a demand and we are uncertain about the way to solve the issues which are creating those threats and pressures.

Our modern day life is full of challenges, threats and demands. We want so many things and put ourselves to the limits to achieve those things. As a result we unintentionaly create stress.Sometimes we get burdened with lots of work load and we get stressed.

We are in an emergency situations
We are unhappy with our relationships
Someone or more than one people expect us to do something but we are not sure if we can fulfill those expectations
We have to meet a deadline which is harder to achieve
We wait for something to happen
We have to deal with more than we are used to deal with
We do any risky job

Symptoms of Mental stress

Mental stress affects our body,mind and also behaviour. Some symptoms of mental stress are common to other mental problems. The following symptoms are related to mental stress. If you notice the below symptoms especially the mental symptoms then you should understand that you are stressed mentallly.

But, sometimes it may happen that you don't feel mentally stressed and you are noticing any or many of the below symptoms. In this situation you should visit a doctor to identify if it is really mental stress

Mental Symptoms of Stress

Lack of concentration
Poor memory
Poor judgement
Confusion about simple things
More Negative thinking
Worrying too much
Feeling frustrated
Sadness

Physical symptoms of stress

Headache
Dizziness
Lack of energy for introvert people
& Excess of energy for extrovert people
Trouble in sleeping
Short breathing
Sometimes diarrhoea & constipation
Uneasyness and restlessness in body

Emotional and Behavioral Symptoms of stress

Frequent up and down of mood
Easily getting angry
Lack of sense of humor
Depression
Sense of loneliness
Getting isolated from social activities
Not eating properly (Too much or too less)
Feeling overwhelmed frequently

Causes of Mental stress

There are actually uncountable number of causes for stresses. Someone may feel stress for something and others may not feel stress at all for that. Following factors play very important role about whether you will be stressed or not in a given situation:

Personality type
Age
Financial Condition
Ability to cope with situations
Level of education
Struggle in relationship
Way of thinking

Stressors: The situations, events and causes which creates stress in us are called stressors. What is stressor to you may not be stressor to me. Most of the times stressors are negative situations or events.

But sometimes a positive change or positive event can be a stressor. As for example, wedding can be stressful for many people, although it is not a negative event.

Classification of stressors: All stressors can be classsified in two types:

External Stressors
Internal Stressors

External Stressors

This kind of stressors act from outside of us. Some of them are created by us and some of them are by our fate ans others. Common external stressors include but are not limited to:

Death of spouse or death of a close one(i.e: father, mother,brother, sister, close friend, close colleague)
Divorce or separation with spouse
Losing job
Bad financial situation
Problem in conjugal life
Physical problems
Losing home for natural calamities
Not getting a due promotion in job

Internal Stressors

Internal stressors creates stress from within us. This kind of stressors reside inside of us. With a sincere effort and proper guidance these kind of stressors can be controlled. Somwtimes they can even be eiminated. Internal stresses include:

Negative attitude and negative self talking
Inability to accept reality
Inability to handle pressure of different situations
Inability to tolerate uncertainty
Pessimistic attitude
Bad communication skill
Unrealistic expectations & demands

How to manage stress?

For most of us life is full of stresses. Modern day lifestyles have taken us to a point where stress is an inegral part of life. The bitter truth is that, we will always be in situation where there will be stressful situations & events.

The good news is that, stress can be managed. I mean it can be really controlled in such a manner that, stress will create very low or any effect at all in your body & mind.

Managing stress is easier than you think. You will need

Dedication and
True desire

to manage stress. You may need to spend some time every day or even every moment you feel stressed. Over time a self defense system will be developed within you and you will feel less stressed for the stressul situations and events than before.

Managing stress comes down to mainly to four processes:

Identifying Stressors for you
Avoiding stressors which is causing stress for you and
Lessen the intensitivity of stress with physical and mental activities
Dealing with the stressful situations and events

Identifying stressors for you

This one is very crucial and basic step to deal with the stress. Your know yourself best and you also know which situations and events create stress for you. But sometimes it is not that much easy to identify the stressors clearly. Sometimes reason for stress may not be clear.

As for example, you are a student and you have an important exam on next saturday. You have 7 days to take the preparation. You know that 7 days are quite ok for you to take the preparation. But, instead of taking preparation you have passed 3 or 4 days.

Now you have started to feel the pressure, because 2 or 3 days are not enough and you are stressed. In this kind of situation the stressor is not the exam rather, the stressor is you and your procrastination

So, identify the stressor for yourself. If you want to identify stressors for you then you can do the following:

Keeping a small notebook: Keep a small notebook. You can call it stress journal. In your stress journal you can note the stressful situations and how you are reacting to them. This sounds unrealistic for many of us, but it works extremely well to identify the stressors. So try it

Observing with patience and care: Observe carefully the situations, locations, conversations and events to identify the stressors for you.

Avoiding stressors which is causing stress for you

Avoiding stressors may seem hard at first thinking. But with a careful practice it will become a habit of avoiding stressors. Say for example, certain topic in conversation with people creates stress for you. Then make a habit of avoiding that particular topic to avoid stressful situations for you

You can do the following to avoid stressful situations:

Avoid people who make you stressed
Avoid news in newspaper and TV news which stress you out
Avoid stressful topic in conversation
Manage time effectively so that you are not stressed for mismanagement of time in your daily schedule

Lessen the intensitivity of stress with physical and mental activities

Physical and mental activities help to relieve the stress. By doing certain kind of physical and mental activities you can make the harmful effects of stress weaker.

Do the following physical and mental activities to weaken the effects of stress.

Physical Activities:

Do aerobic exercises. Common example of aerobic exercises are walking, jogging, running and swimming
Do meditation. By meditating you relax your body and mind. As a result you will be less affected with
Take proper rest everyday
Sleep sufficiently everyday
Take a massage
Do yoga
Take a bath
If you have place to make a garden, then make a garden & spen time in gardening

Mental Activities:

Think positively
Try to think about present. Thinking too much about bad memories of past or worrying too much about future cause stress.
Listen to music
Try to do things that you enjoy. Make a hobby and work with your hobby
If you are a believer in religion, then say your prayer regularly
Try to learn to say "NO" to the thoughts which acts as stressors for you. Whenever you find that a thought is creating stress for you, say "NO" to that thought immidiately and fill your mind with another thought
Learn to communicate more openly.If you are angry with somebody, you should try to communicate with that person in a way that your stress level gets lower. Express your concerns.

Dealing with the stressful situations and events

At many times, we face unavoidable situations and deal with events which cause stresses. We cannot avoid stress in those cases.

But we can change our reactions to strss.In these cases we have to deal with these situations and events in such a way that, we are less affected by stress.

So what should you do to deal with stressful situations and events?

Learn to utilize stressful situations: Sometimes we get caught in situations which cause stress like getting stuck in a traffic jam. In this case, we can use the time by listening to a relaxing music or, reading newspaper or, a favourite book instead of blaming the traffic jam

Learn to acceptt things as they are: You must accept some things as they are. There are some things and some moments we cannot change. You cannot control and change your aging process, you cannot control natural calamities, you cannot control the deaths of your dear ones and like these you won't be able to change many things in your life. But you can try to accept them as part of your life and reduce the stress caused by them.

Learn to forgive: People make mistakes. To make mistakes is in human nature. Sometimes we get stressed by the mistakes & bad behave of the people around us. In the big picture of life, these are insignificant in most of the cases. So learn to forgive. This will give you a great relief feom the strss.

Learn to forget: Don't make your head clumsy and your mind filled with evey information you get. Unnecessary information sometimes cause stress within us. So learn to forget as well to get relief from stress

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