Understanding stress
Here as part of stress awareness week, we look at understanding stress. Also we look at how it affects you both mentally and physically.
What is stress?
Stress is a reaction to an overwhelming thought which triggers physical changes in your body. Your brain logging your tense thought, prepares you for fight or flight, a survival reaction your body uses to protect it from danger. This reaction is useful when for example, you have to run away from an aggressive dog, or you need to carry out a task quickly to finish it. In the fight/flight reaction, your body releases the hormones – adrenaline and cortisol, to release glucose in your bloodstream for energy and activate your muscles, prioritising this over other bodily functions such as digestion. Having successfully run away or fought off danger, your body begins to return to its relaxed state and resume its natural processes. When your perceived stress does not involve direct danger, where a fight or flight response will not be utilised which results in an ending to the stress reaction, the adrenaline and cortisol continues to be released.
What happens when we experience stress for a long time?
When we experience sustained stress, we have increased level of cortisol which affects sleep. As a result, it can cause you to have difficulty getting off to sleep and wake you up early early. In addition, it causes an interchangeable jittery feeling and tiredness. It makes you irritable and irrational as your emotional part of your brain is in a state of negative bias, colouring your daily experience leading to constant misinterpretation of events and people, relationships suffer. Over the long term and leaving it unaddressed, it can increase your risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cause weight gain because cortisol can increase your appetite and signal the body to shift metabolism to store fat, as far as the body is concerned it’s all about survival.
Why do we get stressed?
In our time, we are less likely to experience physical dangers that warrant our fight/flight survival reaction. However, instead we have an overwhelming feeling of having too much to do. It’s the feeling of having too many plates to spin and a lack of time to unwind. Also, you may reach for a glass of wine instead to cope, initiating other problems over time. The constant feeling of having too many demands and lack of control, affecting you emotionally, can make you feel like a failure, someone who is not coping, a victim, or make you feel angry and resentful towards others causing relationship issues, culminating in new problems.
You are not alone if you feel stressed
You are not alone if you are stressed. Did you know recent research reported one in five people said that they had more stressful days per month than not. In addition, 74% of adults said that they had experienced stress to the degree that they felt unable to cope. Also, many did not feel in control as a result. The pandemic affected people in different ways. So, consequently for some, money worries accelerated and was their source of stress. On the other hand, others had fewer tasks to do due to lockdown restrictions so felt more in control as it gave them more time.
How to cope with stress
There are many ways to cope with stress. Firstly, one starting point is reflecting to see what the causes may be and try to address them. You may have experienced behaviour changes over the long-term which can have a major impact. Activities like breathing exercises, meditation, and enough general down-time to experience some relaxation is important. This can help counteract the tension accumulated in your body, which will really help you feel better and to sleep better. You could examine your thoughts and beliefs about yourself. For example, if you are constantly telling yourself, you must do things at the expense of your health, stop. Instead, think ‘do I really need to do that?’ This is because you may have got into a routine of doing too much which can result chemical changes in your brain. Read up on it, make some changes, only you can help yourself.
To read our article called A Supply teacher guide to managing burnout, click here