Stress

Stress is your body’s way of responding to difficult or demanding situations or threats. If the body senses danger, its defences work in an automatic process which is often referred to as the fight or flight reaction or known as the stress response. The stress response is not just a bad thing but can be considered a good thing as it helps you to stay focused and alert in emergency situations and helps you to defend yourself. The situations that cause the stress are referred to as stressors. Stressors can be external or internal. The external stressors are the things that happen around you or in your life that cause you to be stressed, such as, major life changes (getting married, having a baby etc.), work or school problems, financial problems (one of the most common causes of stress), being too busy and having no time to yourself and children and family (the general day-to-day duties of being parents). Internal stress is stress that is normally self-inflicted, eg. Setting unrealistic expectations, pessimism, low self-esteem and negative self-talk.

SYMPTOMS OF STRESS

There are a lot of symptoms that surround stress, emotional, physical and behavioural symptoms. Some of these symptoms include, depression and sadness, sleeping too much or insomnia, loneliness, constant worrying, memory problems and not able to concentrate, aches and pains as well as weakness, dizziness and nausea as well as many other symptoms.

Treatments

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

This therapy focuses on your mindset and attempts to change the negative thoughts of certain things into positive ones. Its premise is that events in our lives are not the sole cause of stress, but also the way that you think about them. You can work with your therapist using the cognitive approach to help to recognise and change the habits of negative thought patterns.

This approach can help to relieve stress and is shown to be much quicker than other therapies. It’s common to start seeing the benefits after three to four weeks. You can attempt this therapy at home with some simple tips, or you can visit a professional therapist for your treatment. Your doctor will be able to recommend someone to help you.

At home cognitive behavioural therapy

Write in a journal — try to write a general summary of your negative thoughts and comments at the end of the day or as you go through your day. You can also try free-flow writing about a certain topic and how to feel about it and then later go back to analysis and see what needs to change.
Thought-stopping — when you have a negative thought try and stop it mid-sentence by saying ‘stop’ preferably out loud and try to recognise how much you are doing and why you are having those negative thoughts.
Rubber band-snapping — place a rubber band on your wrist and if you notice yourself thinking negative thoughts give yourself a quick snap with the rubber band. It’ll hurt a little and act like aversion therapy so you’ll reduce the amount you think negatively to avoid getting hurt.
Milder wording — try to turn powerful negative words into neutral ones which can help to calm your experiences and mood.
Change negative to neutral or positive — rethink your thoughts when you have a negative one. Stop yourself mid-sentence and change your wording into a new sentence that’s either negative or positive.
Change self-limiting statements to questions — rather than saying ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘this is too hard’ change the statement to ‘how can I solve this?’ or ‘how can I make this easier?’

Medication

There are no medications for stress but your doctor may prescribe anti-anxiety medication like a mild anxiolytic such as buspirone (Buspar) as it’s a weak anti-anxiety drug but can help to calm you down. For something a bit stronger you might be prescribed anti-depressants like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

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