Stress and How to Manage It- Paul The Therapist

A lot has been said about stress, but what does it actually mean? Stress is something very much personal to us in our lives and we experience it in different ways. Stress is essential when a situation or change exceeds an individual's coping abilities.

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Take a skateboard ride for example. You might have two people that go on skating together, one may take a genuine enjoyment out of that experience. Other individuals might take a genuine sense of fear and anxiety. Skateboarding itself doesn’t change but our perception of it will certainly differ. This can be said for other stressful situations. It ultimately depends on one's perception of that situation and that determines whether or not one sees it as a stressor.

Certainly, the skateboarding example is an example of short-term stress. This in isolation may not cause any harm whatsoever. This is only when the stress accumulates beyond your coping abilities and without adequate recovery, the stress can be a problem. This is likely to occur after an accumulation of life-changing events. Those events can be positive and negative, it might include a promotion at work or even something enjoyable such as a holiday. What matters here is that there’s a change to your normal routine.

This tends to have an impact on your resilience and your stress when there are a number of changes to your life within a short space of time. One can feel under pressure, agitated, and sometimes overwhelmed as a result of being under stress.

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But then, how does stress affect our body and our mind and what exactly can we do about it. Within the human body, there's the central nervous system, which is made up of the spinal cord and brain. Ther's also the autonomic central nervous system which regulates things outside of our control. This includes blinking, breathing, and your heartbeat. This system has two branches. One is the sympathetic nervous system; which is also known as the fight or flight system and the other is the parasympathetic nervous system; that’s the rest and digest system. Even though these systems interact with each other, they have different roles.

The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for increasing blood pressure, increasing the heart rate, and increasing blood sugar levels to help you perform when stress hits. The parasympathetic system is responsible for suppressing heart rate and bringing you back down to what’s referred to as homeostasis. Stress tends to also have an effect on the functions of the brain.

With effective stress management, it’s very important for an individual to focus on the factors that are within their perceived control. Sleeping quality is one important factor. The lack of sleep can lead to increase activation of the amygdala in the brain, which is responsible for the increase in fight or flight reactions. Furthermore, an improved sleep structure can help improve the regulation of the hormones in the body.

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Exercises are very important. Low to moderate exercise can be useful for stress management. Exercises that place focus on deep breathing and muscle tension, such as yoga, for example, are very good. This is because it causes the activation of the parasympathetic system. This is not the same as a high-intensity exercise that causes the activation of the fight or flight system. Therefore going for a light brisk walk before going to bed can be a more effective stress relief than going for high-intensity jogging.

Moreover, performing regular exercise can be a good distraction from the stresses in an individual's life. There are other lifestyle factors to consider too in this situation. It is well known that caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol are often used for de-stressing. However, these increase the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and in doing so increase stress than reduce it. Because of this, the casual cup of tea or the occasional glass of wine to help de-stress after a long day might not be as effective as we thought.

It's important to take these factors and do your best to modify your behavior as this will help you to improve your ability to prepare for, react to and recover from stresses in your life.