Stress

Stress - causes and symptoms

Stress describes your physical or emotional response to demands or pressures that they may experience from time to time.  Common causes of stress include work, money, relationships and illness.  Symptoms may include irritability, difficulty sleeping or relaxing, headaches and muscle tension.  Stress management approaches include lifestyle changes, relaxation and counseling.

Causes of modern day stress

Stress can be a positive thing - helping an individual to grow, develop, be stimulated and take action.  However, if stress exceeds a person’s ability to cope it can impact on their mental and physical health in a range of ways. 

For our ancestors, stress often came in the form of physical threats that required individuals to react quickly and decisively. The body helped out by automatically clicking into high gear at the first sign of trouble, releasing a surge of hormones (notably adrenaline and cortisol) to accelerate the heart rate, raise blood pressure, increase blood sugar, and enhance the brain’s use of glucose. This stress response meant that the caveman was instantly ready to fight or flee.

Modern day stresses are more likely to be psychological in origin and prolonged in nature (eg: work-related stress, financial worries, inter-personal relationships, chronic illnesses).  But they can still set off the body’s alarm mechanism and the associated hormone surge.  Over-exposure to those stress hormones can, in turn, have a range of negative impacts on the body’s systems - brain, cardiovascular, immune, digestive, musculoskeletal and so on.

People deal with stress in different ways and the capacity to deal with stress changes throughout life. Those who have developed effective strategies to deal with day-to-day stressors are less likely to develop physical and psychological symptoms.

Signs, symptoms and diagnosis

Stress that is not controlled and continues for a long period of time can cause a number of psychological and physical symptoms.  Psychological symptoms of stress can include:

• Sleep disturbances

• Difficulty concentrating

• Lack of confidence

• Depression

• Difficulty relaxing

• Difficulty with decision making

• Irritability

• Tearfulness.

Physical symptoms of stress can include: 

• Muscle tension and pain

• Low energy

• Headaches

• Nervous twitches or muscle spasms

• Changes in appetite

• Decreased sexual function

• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing.

Treatment options

To treat stress-related symptoms, we need to get to the bottom of why you are stressed. Sometimes this can come from old beliefs that are no longer helpful. Sometimes the stress can come from trying to communicate with people in your life, being overloaded with responsibility or a recently challenging event. Therefore treatment is individual and often we must get to the root cause of your stress before we can treat it effectively. Treating stress is fun though because we can integrate creative evidence-based treatment options for a positive outcome.