Problems Treated

Stress

A feeling of being ‘stressed’ is a common complaint people make about their lives. But stress is an everyday fact of life. Stress itself is a completely natural and necessary response, as it refers to the mental and physical changes which occur when demands are made on us to adapt and change.

Stressors are the sources of stress (the people/circumstances/events) which elicit a stress reaction. Stressors can be external (e.g. sitting an exam, moving house, or driving through heavy traffic) or internal (in the case of self-generated stress). The self-generated stressed individual places more demands on him or herself (as well as on others, and the world) than are reasonable/realistic, and that are often beyond his or her resources.

Stressors can be positive (such as a holiday, buying a house, getting married, or playing sport) as well as negative.
Everyone is different in the kinds of situations that they find stressful. What is stressful to one person may be ordinary to another, and perhaps even enjoyable to another (e.g. riding on a roller coaster).

Not all stress is bad. Stress is essential to life. We all need a certain amount of stress in our lives in order to motivate ourselves to perform certain tasks. Stress can stimulate us to do the careful planning and thinking needed to deal with problems and difficulties. In fact, without some degree of stress, you would do very little or probably be extremely dissatisfied and bored. So too little stress can also be problematic.

But stress is more commonly problematic when it overwhelms us and we feel like we are unable to deal with it and/or that we cannot cope anymore. When the demands placed on us, and/or that we take on, strain (or exceed) our normal capacity for adaptation, the stress reaction becomes noticeably unpleasant and/or uncomfortable. High levels of stress are associated with a wide range of physical and psychological symptoms.

As with anxiety (see Anxiety), the stress reaction involves activation of the ‘fight or flight response’ in order to deal with the demands of the stressor. Thus an acute stress reaction can include symptoms like increased heart rate or palpitations; chest tightness/pain; knots in the stomach/nausea; shaking; numbness/tingling; feeling hot/sweating; hot flushes; fast breathing or difficulty breathing/choking; dizziness; and feeling out of control.

Symptoms of chronic stress can include sleeping disturbance; mental and physical fatigue (resulting in difficulty thinking clearly and decision making); physical and/or mental tension; irritability; emotional instability; depression; headache; constant chest pain; elevated blood pressure; skin problems (such as eczema); increased intake of alcohol, smoking, and/or caffeine use; difficulty winding down; intolerance of noise, interruption, or delay; loss of self-esteem/confidence. Prolonged or chronic stress can result in emotional problems (such as anxiety, depression, loss of self-esteem); in behavioural difficulties (affecting relationships with others); in poor performance; and in increasing symptoms of diseases, and possibly causing illness or disease.

Some people run a higher risk of having stress-related problems than others – such as those who worry a lot; people who want things done five minutes ago; people who are overly competitive; people who ask too much of themselves and/or feel that they are failures if everything is not perfect in every detail; people who feel the need to be liked by everyone; people who can’t say “no” for fear of rejection, and as a result take on more than they can cope with; people who procrastinate and leave things until the last minute; or people who have poor time management and have a lack of balance between work and leisure. Some people appear to thrive on stress and think that to be constantly ‘on the go’ is right and satisfying for them…but it may eventually result in ill-health.

There are important differences in the ease with which people adapt and cope with stressful conditions. Some of the more important include the individual’s level of fitness and physical robustness; the individual’s general health; inherited capacities such as temperament; as well as acquired capacities such as skills learned.
Some of the ways in which an individual might try to deal with stress (i.e. the use of alcohol, cigarettes, or tranquillizers) are of no help, and mostly make matters worse through increasing an individual’s vulnerability to stress.

Better stress management involves:

Improving and maintaining good physical health and fitness (including a healthy diet; adequate sleep; regular exercise; and reduce/limit the use of alcohol, cigarettes, and caffeine).
Developing and maintaining a balanced lifestyle.
Improving one’s coping skills:- such as relaxation/meditation, time management, assertiveness, and cognitive restructuring.
Reducing self-generated stress.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is a very useful, if not a necessary approach for improving stress management. How an individual thinks about situations (what is happening; how dangerous or how threatening it is; and what resources he or she has to cope with it) will have a significant impact on stress reactivity.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy can also be useful for working on those individual personality characteristics that contribute to being more stress-prone (particularly for the self-generated stressed individual).

Gary Vaughan

Treatment Approaches
Offered

To contact me

Problems Treated

Stress

Better stress management involves:

Gary Vaughan

Treatment Approaches Offered

To contact me

Problems Treated

Stress

Better stress management involves:

Treatment Approaches
Offered