Is Your Stress Impacting Your Family? Importance of Caregivers Managing Personal Stress
As parents and caregivers, we might not always make ourselves a priority. Daily pressures can add up, causing us to stress out. When you do start to stress out, are you able to not only recognize it, but also take steps to de-stress?
A New Year signals a new beginning, so in 2016, let’s slow down and take a look internally at what we can do to understand and lower the levels of stress we experience.
What is Stress?
Stress is your body 's way of responding to any kind of demand. It can be caused by both good and bad experiences. When we are stressed, our bodies release chemicals that signal us to react.
Good stress on our body, to a point, increases productivity. However, negative stress can cause the opposite effect on our bodies. In essence, we have a breaking point after which our bodies start to signal that it’s time to pull back and relax: (Photo Credit: Elon.edu)
What Causes Stress?
Stress can be brought on for a number of reasons. It’s also important to note that some instances might impact you much more than the person next to you and vice versa. For example, think about that popular ride at the amusement park. You might freak out and be scared to death about going on a ride. Your palms might sweat, your heartbeat might start spiking and maybe even your breathing becomes intense. However, your friend might be excited, laughing and having the time of his life going on the
According to Janeway1, “stress is a physical or psychological stimulus which, when impinging upon an individual , produces strain or disequilibrium”.1 Stress is a biological, physiological and behavioural response to environmental demands. An appropriate amount of stress has protective and adaptive functions however a high amount of stress can cause pathological changes or even death.4 Exposure to stress can lead to painful emotions such as anxiety or depression, as well as physical illness.3 People under an overwhelming amount of stress may experience tachycardia, palpitations and rapid breathing.7
Constant worrying – Stress can cause over load on the body and this in turn can cause the body to find it hard to handle things. You start to constantly worry about what is happening and what is going to happen.
Our bodies are in homeostatic balance and the addition of stress causes an imbalance. Recall the issues that arise when our bodies deviate from homeostasis.
Stress is your body’s way of responding to any kind of demand; it can be caused by both good and bad experiences.
The feeling of being stressed is caused when the body perceives a threat. During this time, the mind relies on reflexes to aid the body in the flight-or-fight response.
Stress can get bad enough to where it starts to affect your body system. Things like depression, heart attacks, diseases, rashes and a low immune system can all occur to people dealing with stress bad enough. The number of common signs and symptoms is outrageous and is depressing to see that there are so many people dealing with this and how it’s such a common thing in this world. On stress.org, they talk about the different body systems and how they’re affected. The nervous, musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine, gastro and reproductive systems are all affected in some way and in many ways to say the least. If your stress ever gets so bad, I consider seeing a doctor or specialist seeing how dangerous this can get.
Although small doses of stress are good, too much stress is unhealthy and tends to overrule us at times, causing physical and mental harm.
Stress does not allow that. The body's reaction to stress is different for everyone. Stress can be the cause of low work performance, sleep deprivation, or other addictions such as alcoholism, drugs and smoking. Your body might respond through skin breakouts, grinding your teeth, a panic attack or a low immune system. Just having some of these problems can lead to even more stress.
In the workplace, stress can be both a positive and negative contributor. Positively, acute stress can increase performance, motivate, encourage, and improve efficiency. Negatively, acute stress can produce decreased performance, productivity, enthusiasm, and social responses (Carson et al).
Stress is part of the body's reactions. Stress is a natural body response. When the brain perceives something as threating it sends out a surge of hormones that that prepare the body for a challenge. The hormones are able to make you sweat, shake or other symptoms like increasing your heart rate . Our stress response has evolved to help us survive. It is triggered often by something or events that aren't life-threatening. Stress is often created by social media and some man made things.
First, stress is defined as an unpleasant state of emotional and physiological arousal that people experience in situations that they perceive as dangerous or threatening to their well being (Patel, 14). Stress is a universal feeling to everyone but the word stress means different things to
As one has seen, positive stress adds anticipation and excitement to life, and we all thrive under a certain amount of stress. Deadlines, competitions, confrontations, and even our frustrations and sorrows add depth and enrichment to our lives. Our goal is not to eliminate stress but to learn how to manage it and how to use it to help us. Insufficient stress acts as a depressant and may leave us feeling bored or rejected; on the other hand, excessive stress may leave us feeling "tied up in knots." What one needs to do is find a safe level of stress, which will individually motivate but not overwhelm them.
Every day people describe their lives as intense and stressful. There are many causes of stress such as job related, family, and financial. However, there exist multiple types of stress. Nonetheless, stress levels can vary from one individual to the next and remains to be a challenge definitively. According to Colella, Hitt, and Miller (2006) "stress can be defined as a feeling of tension that occurs when a person assesses that a given situation is about to exceed his or her ability to cope and consequently will endanger his or her well-being." Stress is more common today than it ever has been before in our society (Wallace, 2007). Stress is more common to discuss and people are complaining more and
We have all experienced some type of stress in our lives, whether we’re aware of it or not. Everyone’s experience with it will be different and there will be a variety of reasons and causes for each individual. While one inconvenience is minor to you it may be enough to send your friend running. This is why it’s important to understand your stressors. The first step in managing your stress is understanding what it is that triggers it.
Stress is also linked low fertility in one’s reproductive organs, and can cause problems during pregnancy or one’s menstrual cycle (www.everydayhealth.com). This happens when one is overwhelmed with the stress he or she is going through in their lives. No one person is the same, meaning stressors as well as stress levels differ for each individual. This is why it is hard for scientists to reach the core because it is a subjective sensation related with a variety of symptoms that differ for each of us. Because of this, stress is not always a synonym for distress. Situations like a steep roller coaster ride that cause fear and anxiety for some can prove highly pleasurable for others (www.stress.org). Each person also responds to stress differently. There are numerous physical as well as emotional responses to stress. Stress can cause an ocean of different emotions that are often times unpredictable. It can have wide ranging effects on people’s emotions, mood and behavior (www.stress.org). Stress has said to have been America’s number one leading health problem. It has been shown that stress levels have escalated in children, teenagers, college students and the elderly for reasons that of which have lead to: increased crime, violence, and other threats to personal safety; pernicious peer pressures that lead to substance abuse and other unhealthy life style habits; social isolation and loneliness; the erosion of family and religious