How to Easily Identify Signs of Stress and to Relieve it

Are you stressed?

Lately your job has been too demanding, there’s unending inflow of bills to pay, you are anxious about your health and that of your family. There seems to be no hope for an end to worrying.

Does that sound like your life?

How can you know if what you dealing with is chronic stress? And if it is, how can you find relief?

Everyone has stress to some degree. And stress in itself is actually good for you.

How can that be? You wonder.

Let’s find out by answering a few questions about stress.

What is Stress?

Stress is your body’s reaction to a demanding or dangerous situation. When you are dealing with such a situation, your brain reacts by prompting your body to release extra amounts of hormones into the blood stream.

This causes your heart rate to increase, your muscles to tense, and regulates your blood pressure among other reactions.

The benefit of this is that your body is enabled to act or react fast.

So, good stress is really good for you.

But sometimes, your body can stay in a state of stress for too long or you may deal with stressful situations too often causing your body to suffer instead of benefiting from stress.

How can you tell if you are dealing with chronic stress?

What are Some Signs of Stress?

Since stress affects your entire body, its signs can be seen in almost all of your body’s systems: Nervous system, endocrine system, cardiovascular system, musculoskeletal system, reproductive system and respiratory system

But you aren’t a physician. So how can you tell that stress is affecting you? Your body tells you.

Anything that affects you so much is going to show in the way you behave and that’s how you find out.

The following signs can be observed:

• Always feeling tired and overwhelmed
• Poor eating habits – loss of appetite or overeating
• Insomnia or sleeping too much
• Difficulty remembering things and concentrating
• Tendency to procrastinate or avoid responsibility
• Nervousness – seen in behavior like fidgeting, nail biting and so on
• Anxiety
• Anger and irritability etc.

How can You Relieve Stress?

1. Take care of yourself

Because stress affects your body, the best place to start in relieving stress is to practice self-care. You may need to make a few changes to ease the stress.

Think about eating a healthy diet, exercising, and getting sufficient sleep.

Can you start a self-care routine? This works wonders.

As part of everything you have to do each day, budget for your “me time”. Use this time to slow down and just focus on taking care of you.

What can you do? Take a long shower. Meditate. Practice aromatherapy. Grow and take care of your plants. Walk. Exfoliate your skin. Get a massage. And the list goes on.

Some of the activities mentioned here don’t sound like self-care practices. But go ahead and try them. They work. And yes, they are part of self-care, Google it ;)

2. Ask for Help

If you notice that your stress is a result of having too much to do with inadequate time to do it, ask for help from the people around you. You may be surprised just how ready they may be to help you out.

Talk to your workmates or family members about whatever it is you need help with. Just taking a little out of your plate can relieve so much stress.

3. Trust Other People’s Abilities

Is it possible that you are insisting on performing tasks that could easily be done by someone else simply because you want to do it yourself?

It’s important to realize that pushing yourself to do more can easily jeopardize the quality of your work and cause you too much stress.

You can easily relieve stress by delegating extra tasks to someone else.

If you don’t have someone in the office to handle extra work, consider sourcing online for freelancers. The few dollars you spend paying them cannot be compared to the stress you will deal with if you don’t.

4. Spend time with family and friends

Social life is part of self-care. If you are dealing with stress, don’t underestimate the power of spending time with people you care about and who care about you.

Although the temptation to stay by yourself may be strong, you need to fight it.

Spending time with family and friends provides an opportunity to focus on other things other than what is stressing you.

They also provide a listening ear if you need to talk to someone. You know what they say about a problem shared. You will feel much less weight afterwards.

5. Take one day at a Time

Constantly worrying about what you have to do by the end of the week, the month or the year is a sure cause of stress.

But is it possible to take one day at a time and still reach your goals? Yes.

How?

Try breaking down your long term goals into short term goals. Set goals for the week and break that down into days. This way you only worry about what you need to achieve “today” and let the rest wait until the next day.

This type of outlook reduces anxiety and increases your productivity.

Of course unforeseen tasks may come up now and again. Handle those as soon as possible so that you can get back to your daily targets.

Stress doesn’t have to take over your life. You can regain control of your life if you decide to.

Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone. You can get help whenever you need it.

We are here to help you through.

Check out our coaching and lifestyle management services.