Have You Been Stressed Out Lately

The most common stress for adults is due to the workplace. On estimation sixty to ninety-five percent of visits to a primary health physician is health related. Approximately one hundred and thirty million people take some form of medication fro stress-related symptoms, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control.

Stress is the wear and tear our bodies experience as we adjust to our continually changing environment: it has physical and emotional effects on us and can create positive or negative feelings. As a positive influence, stress can help compel us to action: it can result in a new awareness and an exciting new perspective. As a negative influence, it can result in feelings of distrust, rejection, anger, and depression, which in turn can lead to health problems such as headaches, upset stomach, rashes, insomnia, ulcers, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. With the death of a lobed one, the birth of a child, a job promotion, or a new relationship, we experience stress as we readjust our lives. In so adjusting to different circumstances, stress will help or hinder us depending on how we react to it.

Because some stress is positive, instead of eliminating stress we need to learn how to manage it and how to use it to help us.

You can better manage your stress by being aware of its effects on your daily live . Become aware of your stressors and your emotional and physical reactions. Be aware of your distress, don't ignore it. Determine how your body reacts to stress. Do you become nervous or physically upset? If you do then in what specific ways do you do this?

Recognize what you are able to change. Ask yourself if you can change your stressors by avoiding or eliminating them completely. Is it possible that you can reduce it's intensity? Is it possible for you to shorten your exposure to stress.

You are able to reduce the intensity of your emotional reactions to stress. The stress reaction is triggered by your perception of danger.

You should learn to moderate your physical reactions to stress. Slow, deep breathing will bring your heart rate and respiration back to normal. Relaxation techniques can reduce muscle tension. Electronic biofeedback can help you gain voluntary control over such things as muscle tension, heart rate, and blood pressure. Medications, when prescribed by a physician, can help in short term in moderating your physical reactions. However, the alone are not the answer. Learning to moderate these reactions on your own is a preferable long-term solution.

Basically, in order to reduce stress, you need to try to prevent it first. Staying in shape and eating a proper diet have been known ways of helping to reduce and prevent stress.

Stress is an unavoidable consequence of life. There are some stresses like the loss of a loved one that you can't hope to avoid and others that you can prevent or influence. The trick is in learning how to distinguish between the two so that you're not constantly frustrated.

Try following the Serenity Prayer, "Grant me the courage to change the things I can change, the serenity to accept the things I can't change, and the wisdom to know the difference.