Stress
Stress
Stress is a normal response to demands—deadlines, personal expectations, external crises like natural disasters; it can even be motivating. However, when stress becomes frequent, prolonged, or intense, it can seriously impact your mental and physical health.
Everyone experiences stress differently, with symptoms presenting in different ways.
Common Symptoms of Stress:
- Physical: headaches, digestive issues, sleep problems, nausea
- Behavioural: irritability, withdrawal, increased substance use
- Emotional: anxiety, sadness, frustration, anger
Research has shown that long-term, chronic stress can negatively impact growth, reproduction, and digestion, and weaken the immune system. It is often linked to other illnesses such as high blood pressure and obesity, and mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, and addiction.
Effective Stress Management:
Recognising stress as a problem and identifying its causes are crucial steps to reducing it. Setting realistic expectations, prioritizing commitments, asking for help, and saying no to additional tasks are key strategies in stress management.
Other helpful methods include mindfulness and meditation, exercise, healthy diet, good quality sleep and supportive relationships.
All of our psychologists at the Rosy Room are skilled in assisting with stress management. Sometimes, simply talking through the sources of stress in your life can provide some clarity and relief. Some therapies that your psychologist may offer include mindfulness, dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) for working on distress tolerance skills and emotional regulation and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for coping mechanisms, grounding techniques, and reframing thinking patterns. There various techniques and tools for stress reduction beyond these examples, and your psychologist can explore these with you.
