Stress is arguably the major cause of physical and mental illness in our society today. Stress can manifest itself physically in a variety of ways including high blood pressure, ulcers, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, weight loss, nausea and heart palpitations. I believe extreme internalised stress can also cause more serious illnesses. Stress is a major factor in suicide.

Mentally, stress causes decreased memory and concentration, indecisiveness, mental ‘blanks,’ confusion and loss of humour. Emotionally, stress causes anxiety, depression, frustration, anger, worry, irritability and short temperedness. Behavioural symptoms include fidgeting, eating disorders, drinking or smoking, crying, yelling, swearing, and other forms of acting out.

Untreated stress can cause you major physical, mental and emotional health risks, can destroy careers and relationships and in extreme cases, can cost you your life. To treat stress you firstly need to be aware of it. The simple steps are to identify the causes of your stress, prioritise them as to what is major or not, assign ownership to the stress ie: is it your problem or someone else’s? And then action some remedial steps to deal with the stress. The worse thing you can do is internalise or “bottle up” the problem. You need to identify the causes and do something about it. Being honest with yourself, and communicating in an open way to others are two pre-requisite requirements to successfully dealing with stress.

Sources of Stress

Stress can be externally driven from a variety of sources including work, significant events, (eg: deaths etc.) deadlines, physical environment or internally driven.
“Most of the stress that most of us have is self-generated. We create the majority of our upsets, indicating that because we cause most of our own stress, we can do something about it.” (1) This gives us a measure of control and choice.

Internal stresses may include lifestyle (not enough sleep, overloaded schedules), negative outlook (self-criticism, over analysing, pessimism), personality (workaholic, perfectionist, victim), and mindset (unrealistic expectations, all or nothing, taking things personally).

External stress is often the most blamed yet it is our reaction to the external stress, the way we handle it, which actually causes most of the problems.
Recognising that we create most of our own upsets or stress is the first step to helping ourselves.

Reducing Stress

The bottom line in reducing stress is simple: In order to manage stress, you must change. We can’t usually change other people; we can only change ourselves. We need to identify what we are doing to contribute to the problem and change.
- Change your behaviour.
- Change your thinking.
- Change your lifestyle choice.
- Change the situation you are in.
However, in order to change, you must identify the root cause or the real cause of your stress. Often you misdirect the cause of your stress or the target of your stress.
Identify it, deal with it, and don’t take it out on others.

Dealing with Stress

There are some simple and practical ideas to help manage stress:

- Decrease caffeine (it is a stimulant that actually generates a stress reaction in the body).
- A well balanced diet – decrease junk food.
- Regular exercise to drain off stress energy.
- Relaxation/meditation – time out, rest periods, listen to music, hot relaxing bath etc.
- Sleep – the most important way of reducing stress. Sleep is the cheapest and best medicine (chronically stressed patients almost always suffer from fatigue).
- Having realistic expectations of others.
- Reframing – this means to try and find the positive side of an otherwise negative situation – to find the “silver lining,” eg: my husband has left me – now I can be who I want to be, play my sort of music, re-decorate the house etc.
- Humour – laughter relieves tension. When you can laugh at yourself or the situation then you can deal with it more realistically and certainly less stressfully.
- Ventilating your stress – articulate it – create a support system, a problem shared is a problem solved. By talking about your problem to an empathetic listener who can provide concern, care, advice and encouragement, the stressed person can “get it out of their system.”

By talking about it, the person is identifying the problem, acknowledging it and is well on the way to resolving their stress. By bottling it up, internalising it or avoiding it, the person creates more stress, which will manifest itself in either physical, mental or emotional ways. You must express yourself. A good first step is to actually write down your thoughts.

- What is the problem?
- Who is causing it?
- How do you feel?
- How are you handling it?
- What is a possible solution?

Think about this for a day or so and then refine your list. Then prepare yourself to confront the problem or the person.

Conclusion

The most important thing with stress is to acknowledge it is there, identify the causes, prioritise, assign ownership and actually do something about it. Do not go into avoidance mode – the problem is not going to go away unless you deal with it. Do not internalise it. This makes it worse. Ventilate or express your thoughts on the problem. Write about it. Talk about it. Do something about it. Finally, if you have
been guilty of misdirecting ie: blaming someone else or taking it out on someone else, a simple brief acknowledgment and apology will go a long way.

(1) David Poulsen
Canadian Journal of Continuing Medical Education
April 1995