How Stressed am I?
Warning Signs and When to Get Help
You feel both wired and tired. You find yourself forgetting things, struggling to focus and concentrate, you are irritable, impatient and maybe even more tearful than usual. You know you need to keep going, but managing your usual workload is feeling increasingly difficult.
You may be alternating between mainlining coffee in the morning to get going and an adult beverage (or two) in the evening to try and wind down.
Does this sound familiar?
Motivational vs Problematic Stress
Not all stress is bad – we need some energy and motivation to get up every morning and get things done. This functional, motivational stress gives us focus and a sense of urgency to move, complete a task or meet a deadline.
The problem arises when our stress becomes chronic and there is little to no downtime between periods of high stress: when our lifestyle foot becomes stuck on the stress accelerator and our ability to hit the brake of rest and relaxation is impaired or not available.
What is Stress?
Stress is our body’s innate physiological response to a challenge, demand or change in environment.
Our fight/flight nervous system is activated to give us more energy, focus, muscle strength and sense of urgency.
The following changes take place:
- Release of stress hormones (such as adrenalin and cortisol)
- Increased heart rate, blood pressure and release of sugar into the blood stream for energy.
- Increased focus on the problem/challenge
- Activation of fight/flight/freeze response
Emotionally this can feel like you are energised to tackle the problem (fight); become fearful and anxious and want to avoid the problem (flight) or feel overwhelmed and unable to act (freeze).
What are the Red Flags to look out for?
Untreated and unchecked, chronic stress can lead to mental health issues such as anxiety depression, substance abuse and other forms of addictive behaviour as well as physical illnesses and burnout.
If you are experiencing clusters of the symptoms below, you need to take your stress symptoms seriously and take active steps to reduce, relieve or mitigate what is happening.
- You feel constantly overwhelmed (even after completing tasks).
- Your normal coping techniques no longer seem effective.
- You constantly struggle with headaches, digestive issues, IBS, insomnia, muscle tension, a lowered immune system or other physiological symptoms of chronic stress.
- You are unable to switch of and relax during downtime periods such as evenings, weekends and when on leave.
- Your work performance is below par and you are struggling to keep on top of demands.
- Your use of self-medicating behaviours increases e.g. over/under eating, drinking (alcohol), smoking, or taking other substances and/or behaviours such as gambling, gaming, shopping, self-harm etc.
- You struggle with volatile moods, irritability and/or anger which is affecting your relationships.
- You frequently feel anxious and worried without any discernible cause.
- You experience panic attacks.
- You feel chronically emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted and deplete. You feel unable to carry on – this is a significant indication of burnout.
- You feel cynical and demotivated about your work/ job. This is a sign of burnout.
- You show signs of depression:
- Feeling sad and hopeless
- Emotional apathy or numbness
- Loss of enjoyment in activities you used to enjoy.
- Suicidal thoughts
What to Do?
Ignoring your stress, soldiering on or ‘just being positive’ are not viable self-help techniques when stress is significantly affecting your life, your relationships, your work performance and your health.
You need to look for some supportive help.
Working with a counsellor or psychologist will help you to:
- Learn stress relief techniques
- Explore the stressors affecting you and how to mitigate/ relieve/ reduce/ manage these stressors.
- Develop new coping skills and tools to boost your stress resilience.
- Combat the trajectory into complete burnout and/or debilitating illness.
For more information contact Tracey at: tracey@collabcounselling.co.za
