The experience of stress is a curious thing; you won’t find many people who deny it exists, and doctors indicate that it is a genuine harm to human health, affecting everything from blood pressure to hormones. And yet, for people who are experiencing stress, the penny is often extremely slow to drop. If you’ve found yourself saying things like “I’m just having a bit of a day of it” or “Seriously, I’m fine” repeatedly to concerned loved ones, you’re not alone. People generally don’t want to admit to being stressed.
There are plenty of reasons for this to be the case. Admitting to feeling stress feels like admitting that you can’t handle stress; a lot of us feel that if we keep going and perform in stressful conditions we will appear like a superhero. We also believe that stress is temporary; if we just get over this next hurdle, it will all be easier. But there will always be another hurdle, so we need to improve at recognising and dealing with stress. To help with this, here are some facts we could all do with absorbing.
Stress is NOT just a state of mind
A lot of health issues are impossible to deny or ignore: a broken leg can be seen on an X-ray; a kidney infection will show up on simple tests. Stress is less easy to pin down, and there are many people who think it’s purely a mental condition – and if it’s all in the mind, then you can beat it by just being stronger mentally. But stress can actively raise the levels of cholesterol in the blood, or of glucose in people with diabetes. It raises cortisol, which affects our skin and leads to some sufferers needing hair loss treatments. Stress is so much more than just a mental thing.
Other people will notice it before you do
The natural human reactions to stress are not huge red flags in an otherwise normal moment. They’re generally more subtle than that, and for the person who is experiencing them they may even go unnoticed. Other people will notice, though, that you’ve become more irritable or are isolating yourself more. By the time they comment on it, it will have been happening for a while. So if people are asking whether everything is OK with you, it might be worth considering that it’s gone far enough and needs to be addressed.
Pushing it away makes it grow
There are very few problems that can be ignored until they go away. If you have a problem with mould in your home, it won’t just stop one day and disappear. If you have a debt that needs to be paid, it’s not going to suddenly get smaller. Time is a multiplier in most cases, and that’s certainly the case with stress: the earlier you take steps to remedy it, the easier it will be to remedy.
If you are struggling with a heavy workload or a personal or family problem, and it’s causing you to experience stress, meeting that problem head-on and starting to deal with it will reduce the stress. Even if the problem doesn’t go away immediately, knowing that it is in hand will prevent the stress from snowballing until it becomes all-encompassing. The first step in dealing with stress is always the hardest, but it’s also the most important.
Leave a Reply