Stress

Stress

Is the stress of daily living causing health and wellness problems?

Have you ever said “I just need to relax”?

How does this affect your bottom line?

One of the components of daily living is Stress. It seems as if we can’t live with it and we can’t live without it! It's an unavoidable consequence of Life. It is the result of Change. Whether Change is postve or negative, whether it makes us happy or unhappy, it still has an impact on us. It's our skill at coping, our ability to relax and let go of the negative impact of stress that can affect our well-being.

When our ability to handle the daily consequences of life is over-worked, then stress becomes a problem affecting our health and well-being. When this happens on a regular basis it may lead to poor or failing health and wellness.

What can I do?

Often the techniques we use to deal with stress – drugs, alcohol, overeating – are even more harmful to our well-being. In order to remain healthy or regain our health, we may need to learn coping skills or healthy techniques of relaxation.

The Negative Effects

The negative effects of Stress cause loss of quality of life, poor health, high cost of health care, family turmoil, and relationship problems among others.

This Is No Small Problem

The total health and productivity cost of worker stress to American business is estimated at $50 to $150 billion annually – it has been reported that 1 million absences each day are stress-related and that 40% of job turnovers are due to stress.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimates that 70 to 80% of doctor visits are stress related.

A Canadian survey found that most employers believe that over 25% of all sick time taken by employees is related to stress. Many other studies have confirmed this.

Disability rates have tripled.

Corporate stress disability rates doubled in the ten years from 1990 to 1999.

Prescriptions for anti-depressants and minor tranquillizers now nearly equal those for high blood pressure and related cardiovascular problems.

In Canada work absences rose by 12% in the year from 2000 to 2001, due to the stress of juggling work and family in two career families. By the way, that’s a TOP stressor in today’s lifestyle – but you already knew that, didn’t you?

Workplaces today are incubators for serious stress. And, highly stressed employees are less able to complete their job tasks at their workplace. The drain on employees is both physical and emotional. What do people do? The best people, the smart ones, simply leave, if they can.

What is it?

Anything that causes change in your life causes stress. Change can be positive or negative but still be stressful. Therefore, if we win the race, get the promotion or get married to the one we love, that’s stress, positive stress. If we need to react in a hurry, we appreciate the ‘fight or flight response’, but if it doesn’t get turned off due to ongoing stress, it affects our health and well-being negatively. Planned surgery or a dentist appointment or going for a job interview can all cause us stress but sometimes our worries are almost unnecessary as when we imagine ‘something that may happen’. Sometimes a one time occurrence can cause ongoing anxiety as our thoughts ‘race’; we may even have anxiety attacks whether we know the cause or not.

So, stress can protect us, drive us to excel (sports) and help us to achieve great things. But ongoing situations that are stressful (work-related, separation and divorce, our own or family major or chronic illness, aging parents, general poor health and lack of exercise, financial worries, retirement, and so on), pressures that nag at us or fears that become over-bearing, even out of control, can play a major role in our body’s – mental, emotional, intellectual, physical, or spiritual – breakdown.

How does it affect ME?

Stress can affect most of the systems of our body:

· menstrual periods may stop, impotence may occur , or even difficulty getting pregnant may occur with otherwise healthy people,

· immune systems may be affected, leading to greater susceptibility to infections, such as colds and the flu,

· prolonged stress has been known to aggravate arthritis, chronic pain, and diabetes,

· changes in the lungs may occur, affecting asthma, bronchitis, and other respiratory illnesses,

· may cause rise of degenerative disease – cancer, arthritis, cardiovascular disease – irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, even heart attacks,

· can cause, affect or exacerbate emotional problems such as depression or anxiety,

· increase the risk of back and upper extremity musculo-skeletal disorders, especially on the jobsite,

Stress can affect us emotionally, causing a lowering of our confidence, loss of humour, increase in fear. People who are stressed may withdraw from social activities, increase in loneliness or aggressiveness, or may have increased feelings of rejection. There may be a lowering of our mental abilities, concentration, memory, lowering of our intellectual abilities, feelings of boredom and apathy, and an inability to make decisions. Sometimes stressed people feel a sense of hopelessness, desperation and emptiness, often they lack joy and lose touch with their spirituality. We are also affected economically through the loss of our own, or our employees, work days or early retirement.

What can I do?

We can’t always change the situation but we can learn coping skills. We can learn healthy techniques of managing stress.

Relaxation and visualisation skills have proven to be one of the most beneficial methods of learning coping skills. Learning these skills can help us to become resilient to the cares and worries of daily living. We can learn to let go and relax.

How do I cope?

There are many healthy coping strategies. Among them are:

· increase physical activity; stretch, go for a walk, join a gym, do yoga or tai chi

· have regular, nutritious meals

· talk about your problems with someone you can trust

· go to a funny movie, laughter and humour help (so can crying at a tear-jerker)

· take up a new hobby or revive an old one

· learn something new

· play with pets

· know your values and goals; have a sense of purpose

· limit consumption of alcohol, coffee and other sources of caffeine and sugar

· stop smoking

· learn time management skills

· journal about what is stressing you and how you felt

· do something creative; write, draw, garden

· breathing exercises or self-massage

· meditation

· aromatherapy

· hypnotherapy, visualisation, progressive relaxation (have a session, listen to a cd or learn self-hypnosis)

How can Hypnotherapy help?

Progressive Relaxation and Visualisation Techniques in Hypnotherapy can help you relax and learning coping skills, such as, Thought Stopping and Problem Solving, Sessions can help you to understand causes of stress in your life and see yourself being successful at making changes. You can gain insight and understanding and even be able to work through difficult relationships (work or personal) until you can resolve issues and develop new approaches. You can learn to access your Inner Wisdom and strengthen your intuition as you discover your own unique Place of Peace and Relaxation. With every session, as you increase your skill at self-hypnosis, your body increases it’s skill to relax and feel at ease.

Hypnotherapy sessions can also:

· elevate your mood

· lessen anxiety

· overcome insomnia

· lower your blood pressure

· boost your immune system

· help you to gain insight into your goals and needs

· help with goal-setting and to solidify your goals in your mind

· help you to problem-solve

· serve as an instant Stress Release that you can do in minutes, anytime, anywhere.

Is there anything else I can do?

Yes! There are many other things we recommend that can help alleviate the problem of stress in your life or in the lives of your employees. At our seminars, we encourage many strategies as well as teach the basics of self-hypnosis.

· Knowing and understanding your values and beliefs

· Goal-setting to gain a sense of purpose

· Journaling for release, insight and tracking

· Time management skills, planning your day, eliminating procrastination

· Lifestyle and habit changes, exercise, nutrition, sleep, fresh air

· Attitude adjustment

· Communication skills

· Healthy hobbies, family and social time

We also research other Wellness products for use in home and/or office.

The following products come highly recommended.

Minimize Stress - Maximize Control...

Mind Tools' Stress Management Masterclass shows you how to tackle the deep structural problems that cause stress in your working life. As well as introducing you to relaxation techniques, its unique approach shows you how to win control of your job and career, build positive relationships with powerful people and co-workers and thrive under the intense pressure of a successful career. We strongly recommend it.

Find out more > Stress Today

Today, researchers believe that stress is a “condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.”

A short way of saying this is to say that people feel stressed when they “feel out of control”. People feel little stress when they have the time, experience and resources to manage a situation. They feel great stress when they think they can't handle the demands put upon them.

Stress is therefore a negative experience. And it is not an inevitable consequence of an event: It depends a lot on people's perceptions of a situation and their real ability to cope with it.

Combating Stress

Aware of the negative effects stress can have on our lives, specifically on our professional lives, the team at Mind Tools called on Dr. Susan Mitchie, Stress Specialist at the Center for Outcomes Research and Effectiveness, Department of Psychology, University College London, to assist in compiling a single reliable resource that can be used to understand stress, recognize the symptoms, pinpoint the sources, manage it, reduce it and perhaps most importantly, recover from it.

The result: Mind Tools’ Stress Management Masterclass, a clear, concise, comprehensive resource on stress.

And, in its nearly 200 pages, the Stress Management Masterclass shows participants how to:

And, much like the other products offered by Mind Tools, the Stress Management Masterclass is complete with resources, exercises, tried and true tips and techniques, all aimed at combating stress once and for all.

And who couldn’t use help with that?

More than this, the Stress Management Masterclass can be counted on to help users overcome work overload and bring joy and fulfillment back to their professional lives.

This practical course shows you how to win control of your job and career, build positive relationships with powerful people and co-workers and thrive under intense pressure. Click here to find out more about Mind Tools' Stress Management Masterclass.

Warning: Stress can cause severe health problems and, in extreme cases, can cause death. While these stress management techniques have been shown to have a positive effect on reducing stress, they are for guidance only, and readers should take the advice of suitably qualified health professionals if they have any concerns over stress-related illnesses or if stress is causing significant or persistent unhappiness. Health professionals should also be consulted before any major change in diet or levels of exercise.

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