Stress Management

WHAT IS STRESS?

Stress is an individual's response to any excess demands from his environment or it may be caused by a build up of negative thoughts in the mind. Stress is a state of unease that we need to learn from, and to understand so that we can create a positive strategy to overcome the adversity. With stress, comes adaptations and in life, there are many times where we need to learn how to adapt to changing influences. Thus, we must learn how to cope with difficulties rather than run away from it. If we can learn about how the mind creates stress then we can be on the way to finding the solutions to the problems.

STRESSED?

Do you feel that you have not enough time to do anything, that problems just keeps piling up. No matter how much effort and tasks you seem to have found solutions to, it just doesn't seem to lessen the problems that you have left? Are the relationships in your life creating unease and tension? This mental tension results in Stress, and stress will create unhappiness and lead to a breakup of relationships, both personal and professional. Stress can also create ill health. So stress if left unchecked, can cost you a loving relationship, your job and even an early grave. Therefore it is important to remove or reduce stress. Is there anything more important than our relationships, work and our health?

THE CAUSES.

Life Crises
This entails the emotional experiences that you may have gone through over the years. Research has shown that these experiences in earlier years may contribute to the development of diseases which would not manifest till latter on in life. The event that causes the highest stress scale would be the death of a spouse, followed by divorce and a marital separation. The lowest on the stress scale is caused by minor violations of the law. One can deduce that the situations involved in relationships with people who are important to you, causes you to experience the most stress.

Occupational Stress
Our time is spent most on working as compared to any other activity.

Occupational stress occurs when a factor or a combination of some factors at work, interacts with the worker and disrupt his psychological or physical wellbeing. Stress at work is usually caused by either:

Work overload - where demand is over what the worker is able to do.
Or it may be caused by ambiguity of task that they are required to perform.

Stimulus underload - little or no jobs for worker to perform.
Occupational Stress Produces: -

• job dissatisfaction
• increase in level of cholesterol
• increased heart rate
• excessive smoking which would lead to a risk of heart disease