Stress Anxiety
Stress and anxiety are not your enemies
Much like anxiety, stress is a normal part of life. Without them, you would not be nearly as productive, and your survival mechanisms would not be nearly as effective. Stress and anxiety are actually good for you, provided they remain within reasonable levels, of course. Otherwise, there’s a strong chance they will genuinely wreak havoc in your life.
If your stress and anxiety are so intense that you think of them as your mortal enemies, then you will benefit from learning some coping techniques, available later in this article. Just keep in mind that your goal is not vanquishing stress; in fact, you should always keep in mind they are normal and necessary parts of life that simply escaped from your control.
What you have to do is learn stress management techniques that may provide you with some relief from excessive stress. These will contribute to alleviating your anxiety levels, which in turn will reduce your emotional response to stress. In other words, the hardest part is getting started on the road to recovery, and that is a decision that you and you alone can make.
What is the link between stress and anxiety?
Similarly to anxiety, stress also has many ways to get out of order and disturb your enjoyment of life. As a matter of fact, there’s a clear connection between both phenomena; from all the environmental causes of anxiety, stress is the most widespread and recurrent in the adult population. As such, you should be concerned with keeping it under control, especially if you have anxiety disorder.
As a matter of fact, you should know that intense stress caused by a specific traumatic event you’ve experienced could be the single driving force behind your anxiety disorder, in which case the diagnosis “Acute Stress Disorder” or “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” would apply.
Much like with depression and anxiety, Stress often goes hand in hand with anxiety.
If you’ve been experiencing abnormal stress responses, you should realize that’s an opportunity window for anxiety. In fact, there is evidence suggesting that excessive stress will indeed aggravate psychological diseases such as anxiety disorder and depression, as well as several physical diseases – anything from skin problems to high blood pressure, heart disease and gastrointestinal diseases.
Major contributing factors to chronic stress
Stress is usually a combination of external and internal factors that work together to gnaw at your well-being. Once you determine the factors sourcing your stress, then you will have a chance of dealing with them, one at a time. Moreover, being aware of stress in your life is a good starting point to start managing its intensity and improve your coping mechanisms.
| External factors | Internal factors |
| Work related pressures | Bad coping skills |
| Relationship troubles | Weak health and fitness levels |
| Family related pressures | Poor nutritional status |
| Financial difficulties | Low emotional well-being |
| Social expectations | Sleep problems / deprivation |
Stress management techniques that work
Exercise: while people tend to think of exercise as something that promotes their physical health and well-being, its effects are much broader. Regular physical activity will provide you with an evasion from your daily stress, and it will boost your emotional stability even as it promotes your overall fitness.
If you’ve been feeling as though your stress levels are getting out of hand, it’s likely you haven’t been engaging in much physical activity lately, if any at all. You probably feel as though you’re always too busy to exercise, but let’s face it: if you’re going to spend your time running a pointless stress loop in your head, you might as well spare one hour to run around outside.
Meditation: you have probably heard about meditation, and like most people you probably have a hard time believing it can help with anything. However, it has been repeatedly proven by proper scientific research that learning how to meditate and doing it regularly will indeed contribute to alleviate the severity of stress, as well as depression and anxiety.
In the 2008 study by Schreiner and Malcolm, the researchers clearly noted that “participants with severe emotional difficulties at the time of commencing the meditation course demonstrated the most notable improvement over time”.
If you haven’t bothered to learn about meditation yet, you are doing yourself a disservice. Meditation is free. It’s simple and relaxing… and it will give you noticeable results in terms of anxiety / stress management.
Reduce anxiety by keeping your stress levels in check
You should not think lightly of stress, but all the while you must not think of stress as something you’re just hopelessly subjected to. The same reasoning applies to anxiety: perceiving it as an enemy you have to vanquish from your life will only make things harder. Stress and anxiety are just a part of life, and your focus should be on managing them.
You must find ways of dealing with these natural aspects of life, keeping in mind that doing so will help improve your physical and emotional well-being. Try to remain pragmatic when dealing with your stress rather than worrying so much about it, and you will find much quicker improvements.
Additional Reading:
Schreiner, I. and Malcolm J. 2008. The Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation: Changes in Emotional States of Depression, Anxiety, and Stress. Behavior Change vol. 5, issue 3. pp 156-168
